TechHub, London’s latest co-working space for the evolving tech start-up scene, opened up a fortnight ago to praise from the industry, following on from the success of similar schemes such as White Bear Yard et al. On the 14th July, it hosted its first pitch slam, and believe me; it put Dragon’s Den to shame!
The event was like all other pitch slams with one rather big exception, every company there was allowed to pitch. All you had to do was fill out a form and off you went. First round was a short but sweet sixty seconds to get the audience (and the judges) interested. Do that successfully and you were through to the second round – and three minutes and one slideshow away from first prize.The evening was packed and those pitching had a daunting audience of VC’s, journalists, angel investors and a host of their peers to pitch to. It was a great sight though, given the constant discussion of the European tech scene, to see such as packed space with some of the most influential people in the industry there. The judging panel alone was noteworthy with Eileen Burbidge, angel investor and co-founder of White Bear Yard; Wendy Tam, Moonfruit; Katy Turner and Ben Tompkins, Eden Ventures; and Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners all on hand to grill the companies and give a useful insight into the mind of those investing. Mike Butcher, European Editor, TechCrunch, was host for the evening and did a great job of keeping the event running smoothly and ensuring all ran to time.
The only complaints I had were the heat (broken air con) and at times, the noise. Whilst half of us wanted to watch the pitching, half were networking throughout, which made for a slightly noisy, and at times distracting atmosphere. But, more importantly, on to the pitches; as there were so many, I’m only going to talk about the top five that really caught my eye, but at the bottom you can find a link to the full list (and another article on the topic), written up by the wonderful Eileen Burbidge.
Top of my favourites list, and eventual winner of the evening, was Calaboard, a new service offered by CalaMeda. A conferencing tool, it incorporates augmented reality into your otherwise awkward video conferencing call – making it less work and more play! A SaaS product, it works on a subscription based model, with basic, pro and enterprise options available. The audience, and the judges, were enamoured with the product, and Francesco Masia gave a sleek, simple presentation (possibly the best on the night), resulting in a well deserved win for the team.
Next up are Geomium, who came third overall. A real life interaction tool about you and your life, its tagline is ‘live local, live social,’ which seems like as good a motto as any to me. A community for people to share and experience what everyone is up to and what’s happening around you, it’s kind of like FourSquare. Free to use, the idea behind it is to have a greater awareness of the events in your area. It’s cool, it’s funky, they gave a great presentation and had everyone wanting to sign up for a private invite; request yours here: http://geomium.com/accounts/register/
Mindquilt is next up in my list of favourites, though it made it to the final round, it sadly didn’t make it in to the top three. An enterprise knowledge management platform with intelligent question and answer matchmaking, Mindquilt is designed to help companies communicate better and capture knowledge in the organisation. It uses gaming dynamics to promote employee participation, giving badges, recognition and titles for those who ask useful questions and provide relevant, helpful answers. Another tool (like Calaboard), which could make work a lot more fun! Importantly for me, this was a fantastic presentation (a rarity on the evening); it was simple, but effective, kept everyone engaged and got to the point.
Duedil come fourth in my list, though they walked away with a fantastic second on the evening. A service, which is aimed at giving transparent and constructive feedback on your profile, it allows people to rate you in your industry – I like to think it’s like Yelp, but for people. A browser application, it sits on top of your LinkedIn profile, allowing people to read and write reviews of others in their professional network; also allowing you to go back and reply to those who have commented on you. Whilst I like this idea a lot, I don’t think I’d like it if someone had something nasty to say, and my only worry is, by answering back to criticism, it could lead to an all out online slanging match – which is never pretty!
And last but note least, is Getyoo, a service which lets you exchange virtual business cards and collect digital information about objects in the real world thanks to its Getyoo key/Clickey device. Though they never made it past the first round, I really liked the idea of this, and having a small device that lets you connect to people and objects in the real world and collect online information about them sounds like a fantastic time saver (if not a little stalker-y!).
All in all, it was a great, informative evening so a big congratulations to all those involved in the organisation, and all those who bravely got up to pitch. As promised, you can find a full list of the start ups involved here: http://catalyses.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/notes-from-techcrunch-europe-summer-pitch-battle-tcbattle-2010/
