Trying to find to the “right” person at a large company to do business with is about as hard as figuring out the “right” time to shop Costco. SwitchPitch tries to clear up the mystery by putting big companies in front of startups to solve some of their biggest innovation problems.

Have a clear idea of what you can and can’t do. That was one piece of advice from c-level execs at yesterday’s second SwitchPitch event in DC. Big companies are also looking for startups with the same core values, complementary skill sets, and chemistry, and they have to be realistic when it comes to timing and price of a project. Some big companies even shy away from working with a startup that offers a ridiculously low price. It’s called looking “desperate.” (Sitting on the Arena Stage were SwitchPitch founder Michael Goldstein, GeniusRocket CEO Mark Walsh, comScore CTO Mike Brown, Motley Fool CFO Ollen Douglass, OrderGroove CEO Greg Alvo, and Campus Direct CEO Devin Schain.)

Washington Post product analyst Angela Wong and product manager Alex Remington tell us the media company wants to get better at machine learning and was at SwitchPitch to find startups working in natural language processing. They'd like to use it to generate trivia questions on news stories and another that analyzes stories to predict and improve virality.

NPR business partnerships manager Kate Myers, here with colleague Steve Haptonstahl, says the media organization is getting ready to launch a prototype app for the future of radio. The NPR team was looking for startup partners to help with how its member data can be analyzed and shared. They’re also looking for ways to connect tech data with a better listening experience. So do these SwitchPitch events actually work? Organizers say the first two resulted in 12 signed deals worth $1.2M in revenue for the startups.