Well the TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-Off in London is over for another year, and this one was arguably the best vintage ever in terms of quality of startups and the sheer enthusiasm from the attendees! Hundreds of startups entered the competition, creating a very competitive field.
We packed out the Old Truman Brewery in East London with over 500 people, to hear the pitches of the companies selected, with the top three winners getting tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin.
As with all TC meetups, the startups had just one minute to pitch their product (with no slides) to a panel of London VC judges. These were Carolina Brochado, Atomico; Suzanne Ashman, Local Globe; and Sital Teli, Connect Ventures. I MC’d and TechCrunch’s International News Editor Ingrid Lunden also judged.
The winner of the London Pitch-Off was Vyking (pictured above). This is “an integrated video ad tech and emotion analytics platform providing ad serving solutions, trading solutions and advertising formats to both publishers and advertisers.” They have built a software development kit (SDK) that can be integrated into any third party app. The technology leverages facial recognition technology – it is able to estimate age, gender and six key emotions. They are working with Fortune 500 advertisers that want to reach these audiences and engage with them through AR.
They win a will get two tickets and a demo table in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin.
In second place (getting 2 tickets to Disrupt Berlin) was Hyperion which has built an online course platform that allows human code review to be scaled, applying this methodology to help thousands of students from over 30 countries learn how to code in a novel way, using the top technical talent from Africa.
In third place (getting 1 ticket to Disrupt Berlin) was Vie, an innovative box, currently in prototype, into which you would simply place your hand. This would then read Heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, glucose and cholesterol levels to give you and early earning about the onset of chronic diseases.
The other startups which pitched were:
Capchain X
“The next generation Crypto Equity platform to create, manage and trade equity on the Ethereum blockchain. We provide captable and repository tools for companies to benefit from real time transfers, reduced costs associated with middle office fees and reduced paper work. Tokens can be exchanged for share certificates.”
Flicktek
“How are you going to control your computer in 20 years? Flicktek is a technology company that develops new Human Computer Interfaces. Its first product is Clip, a wearable sensor for finger gesture recognition. Clip goes on any watch strap and allows you to interact and control any bluetooth device by simply moving fingers in thin air like a Jedi. It is designed to improve the interaction with wearables and AR and HUD headsets.”
Sen
“Sen is building space TV with videos from space freely accessible on smart phones. We will film with our own satellites and video cameras aboard other spacecraft, our videos will range from wide angle views of entire worlds, including Earth in real-time, to seeing objects as small as 0.5m on the surface. A billion+ people use smart phones each month to find out what’s happening in the world. We are addressing that market, consumerizing space with real-time video that educates and empowers people with knowledge of what’s happening on Earth and in space.”
Timescenery
“Timescenery is a new international startup based in London and Moscow, offering an all-in-one travel arrangements platform with social flavor and money incentives for travelers. The startup sees itself as “the Airbnb for vacation packages”, a user-generated trip scenarios marketplace.”
Voicefox
“Voicefox integrates with existing video conference solutions (like Gotomeeting, Zoom or Google Hangouts) to record, transcribe and analyze business conversations. Voicefox helps capture key takeaways and action items from any meeting, as well as let users review key topics discussed, who said what or navigate to a specific slide presented.”
Wizme
Think of this as OpenTable for meeting rooms. “80% of all meetings enquiries are still booked offline while 62% of European companies don’t manage their meetings’ booking or have visibility on the spend. The main reason is the outdated and disconnected legacy systems used by all stakeholders involved in the supply chain. Hence why, we are developing the most comprehensive system which allows them all to have streamlined process.”
So now it’s onwards to Berlin, and Disrupt!
Here are more pictures from the event:
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