With the cultural success of Shark Tank, many observers think the value of a pitch competition is the money. While everyone does like money, there’s much more to it. That’s certainly the consensus from last nights pitch competition at OPO Startups Demo Day in St. Charles, Mo.

“I think first of all, we all ‘plus’ each other up,” Chief Entrepreneur Officer for Lindenwood University Dan Lauher told bizblip. ” And so a founder can’t get in front of enough people. I think because of the size of the prize isn’t real to me that much. I tend to bet on founder.”

In addition to the first and second place checks for $1500 and $500 respectively, the judges hand over wads of cash any time a pitching founder says something they like… so don’t expect bizblip to keep track when the founders themselves don’t even know how much they won.

“I think I won $1,700 I didn’t count the cash yet,” first place winner Nicole Fordson, owner of Next Steps, told bizblip. Her company provides automated attendance reporting for schools and tracks the location of students while on campus. “The biggest thing is exposure… bringing awareness to the importance of attendance  reporting during a school incident”

“We won somewhere between 500 and 1000 I’ve not even counted,” Zipper CTO Kerry Ritter told bizblip. His startup helsp sports and health and wellness professionals build websites and grow their online presence.

“We won $250. The competition was a great help in getting feedback from the judges and getting more comfortable presenting, ” BleacerBook CEO Graham Mueller told bizblip. “I left with some items to work on as well as some positive feedback, so it was very useful.”

BleacherBook is a platform offering sports betting leagues that allow players to customized their own league, invite their friends to join and compete.

Meanwhile ClockTo is a  SaaS platform designed to simplify and streamline scheduling, communication, and job matching for flexible teams, focusing on temporary and hourly workers. It’s founders took home $150… and a lot more.

“This was my first experience to do the pitch in front of the judges, Mahdi Jadaliha, CTO and co-founder told bizblip. Note: ClockTo is pitching tonight at Pitches Get Stitches at Venture Cafe- STL. “And it was very good experience to see what they are asking and what they care about the solution, and how I have to manage my time to present everything.”