Tag Archives: #pitch nights

Startup Vic FinTech Pitch Night

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The Australian tech sector, especially at the startup end of the industry, is having to grapple with what is fast becoming a major structural and operational challenge: how to hire, remunerate and retain staff. With closed international borders cutting off the supply of overseas students and graduates, and a lack of sufficient home-grown skills, it’s a problem that established businesses and startup ventures alike are having to address. Just last week, the AFR reported that some wages in the tech sector have gone up 30% in the past 12 months. Perhaps this issue was on the minds of the four founders who presented at the recent Startup Victoria FinTech Pitch Night.

The judges for this on-line event, sponsored by LaunchVic, were: Nicole Small, Investment Director at Rampersand; Kim Hansen, Co-founder and CEO of Cake Equity; Caitlin Zotti, Operations Manager at Pin Payments; and “the people’s judge,” Eike Zeller, Community Lead at Stone & Chalk Melbourne. Compered by Josh Sharma, Head of Labs & Startups at LUNA, the evening also featured a virtual fireside chat between Rebecca Schot-Guppy, CEO of FinTech Australia, Dom Pym, Co-Founder of Up, and Julia Bearzatto, Head of Technology for Financial Services at MYOB.

The four startups in order of presentation were (links in the names):

Elbaite

Claiming to be the “first non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange“, part of Elbaite’s mission is to prevent theft or misappropriation of crypto assets held in exchange wallets. What makes Elbaite different from other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and peer-to-peer platforms is that they escrow the fiat involved in any transaction. While they may not be charging the fees of centralized exchanges (CEXs), they are charging a 1% on crypto purchases (although there is 0% commission on sales). Elbaite is hoping to target institutional clients who may not be as comfortable trading on “traditional” crypto exchanges – although in my experience, many institutional clients actually need third-party custody services as part of their governance and compliance obligations. The judges felt that this is a crowded space (there are more than 250 crypto exchanges globally, plus numerous fiat on/off ramps, brokers, OTC desks and P2P platforms).

Sequrr

Speaking of custody and escrow, who would have guessed that stolen house purchase deposits are such a major issue, unless the team at Sequrr had told us? Despite the use of Real Estate Trust Accounts within the industry, apparently there is not much to stop the account holders from walking off with the deposits. Which rather begs the question why the industry does not already use something like multi-signature digital wallets, which mean that the funds can only be moved once all parties to the transaction agree. Even though this is a tech solution using a 3-way verification model (innovation patent pending), the different real estate laws in each State means that it’s not that simple to roll out nationally. However, the team also see opportunities for other professional and commercial sectors: solicitors, builders, aged care. (Note to the founders: I know that invented brand names were once flavour of the month for tech startups, but I question the wisdom of adopting a word that reads like a spelling error, and sounds like someone coughing up phlegm – especially if you want to be taken seriously by banks and solicitors. Just a thought.)

Nextround

Another issue of trust exists between employers and employees when it comes to reward and recognition schemes. There’s always a risk that whatever structure and incentives companies use, someone will try to game the system (or collude with colleagues) especially if the stakes are high; or, if the rewards are simply handed out for turning up and doing your job, their currency becomes debased. Then there’s the (ill-advised) link between rewards and recognition on the one hand, and performance reviews (plus bonuses and salary adjustments) on the other. It’s a balancing act which Nextround are addressing by making it easier (and less expensive) to reward and recognise all of your staff, not just the usual top 5-15%. They do this by offering managers and team leaders access to rewards of a smaller (yet still meaningful) value, which can be easily redeemed by the recipients, for hospitality rewards, events and experiences. The commercial model relies on an annual corporate subscription fee, and taking a cut of the reward vouchers. Nextround consults with employers on their preferred merchants and suppliers, who don’t necessarily see the vouchers as eroding their margins – rather, it’s another sales channel. This is not a hospitality app (e.g., loyalty program), more of a procurement app. And although there are numerous competitors for reward and recognition schemes, the “smarts” are in the way managers and HR teams can budget and allocate accordingly, without the need for onerous expense form claims because the transactions can all be tracked from the point of redemption back to the point of issuance. The resulting data will also generate a further revenue stream from the valuable analytics, although would I want my employer to know how I used my vouchers (assuming they are not tied to a specific reward)? My other reservation is that if the rewards really are as small as a cup of coffee, or even a round of drinks at the pub, isn’t it a bit like tipping?

SpendAble

Letting people make their own financial decisions is also a form of trust. Most of us would feel we can be trusted to spend our own money how we like. But this assumption may be challenged when it comes to people with a disability. SpendAble is developing payment, saving and investment solutions for people who face physical, societal and intellectual barriers to managing the financial affairs. Starting with a budget-based spending app, SpendAble helps users to allocate, identify and track their purchases more easily, and with much of the payment friction removed. The team will also develop specific applications such as voice-controlled functions for the visually impaired. Largely reliant upon the NDIS for funding and end users to cover transaction costs, SpendAble will plug into existing banking platforms – which might be a better way to underwrite the app? However, some of the online chat on the night suggested that SpendAble could provide well-needed general financial education to school kids as part of its offering, as well as helping to address financial inclusion.

Such was the enthusiasm for SpendAble that they took out the Peoples’ Choice as well as the Judges’ Award.

Next week: Accounting for Crypto

Intersekt FinTech Pitch Night

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The opening event of the Intersekt 2021 Australian FinTech Conference was a startup pitch night, organised by FinTech Australia, hosted by YBF Ventures, and sponsored by Seed Money. The esteemed judging panel was drawn from a range of VC funds: Todd Forest (NAB Ventures), Nicole Small (Rampersand), Rohen Sood (Reinventure), Lynda Coker (SpeedSpace) and Lucinda Hankin (Grok Ventures).

The pitches in order of presentation (links are in the names):

Boulevard

A cloud-based share registry management platform for startups, founders and their employees. Designed to to be an exchange for unlisted securities, the platform also offers Investor Relations support and automated compliance solutions. Using Distributed Ledger Technology (which underpins Blockchain), the team are working with ASX DLT Solutions (responsible for the CHESS replacement) and deploying DAML, the programming language for modelling digital assets. They have also developed ASICLink, to automate company filings with the corporate regulator, plan to support corporate actions (including the verification of company financials), and are working with equity crowdfunding platforms. Boulevard has already on-boarded 30 companies, comprising 4,000 shareholders.

COGSflow

Describing itself as “Performance based finance”, this is essentially a merchant service offering cash-flow funding solutions for physical goods. This involves purchasing client inventory, and getting repaid on the sales performance. Using a funding ratio calculation as the basis of its credit risk model, the COGSflow will track sales data from the likes of eBay and Amazon (although both of these platforms, like PayPal, Alibaba etc. already offer SME financing of various forms). COGSflow will also analyze variable marketing and customer acquisition costs as inputs to its lending model, and plans to become a member of the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR), as well as seeking B Corp certification.

Archa

Archa is solving the challenges many SMEs face when trying to access corporate credit cards – banks generally demand personal guarantees from owners or directors before they issue cards, and when they do the “product is awful”. As the pitch described it, many bank-issued corporate cards are really designed as “a line of credit to acquire air miles”. With a mobile app already in the market, Archa incorporates an administration and expense management solution. A major bug bear for many companies is managing corporate subscriptions – all those SaaS apps that are tied to individual employee cards; consolidating, renewing and cancelling those services can be time-consuming and painful. The account administrator can also manage each card’s credit limit. Archa itself has principal issuer membership with MasterCard. In addition to an equity raise, the team is seeking debt funding to offer lines of credit. Channels to market will include SME lenders, accountants and lawyers.

Sherlok

According to the founders, most people paying too much on their mortgages – based on their home loan rate. Because mortgage brokers have 60% of the market, and rely on trailing commissions, there is little incentive for brokers to help their clients find a better rate or provider. However, 15% of brokers’ clients are leaving each year. Sherlok is an SaaS platform that uses AI to help brokers reprice and refinance their existing mortgage book. Using a broker subscription model, Sherlok is aiming to offer “single click refinancing”, although there was some equivocation about becoming a virtual brokerage itself. The founders feel that mortgage broking is still a relationship based business, and requires a human touch.

Axichain

Axichain is building a blockchain-based agricultural supply chain – a digital trading solution for cross-border commodities trading, with an initial focus on red meat. The founders are addressing three main supply chain pain points – market access, paperwork and payment.
Axichain combines smart contracts, an escrow solution and traceability linked to legal processes. Overall, the platform envisages multiple products and revenue streams. The team are seeking both equity and debt funding, the latter to provide lines of credit lines.

Parpera

The meaning of “Parpera” is “fair wallet”. By that, the founders mean they want to offer a range of banking and related services aimed at SME owners, sole traders and freelances. This could include business registration and set-up, better financial insights, and access to smarter banking products etc. It will include card services, payments and invoicing. The plan is to target customers who are about to set up a business, and to promote the service at the start/end of the financial year, hence the intention to use accountants as a channel to market.

Next week: Monash University Virtual Demo Day

Victorian Tech Startup Week – Pitch Night

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As part of the recent Victorian Tech Startup Week, Silicon Beach Melbourne and YBF Melbourne hosted the city’s first in-person pitch night for over a year (thanks to the 3 lock-downs we have had in that time). Compered by Karen Finch of Legally Yours, and supported by OVHcloud, the esteemed judges for the evening were Farley Blackman (YBF), Yian Ling Tan (OVHcloud) and David Hauser (Silicon Beach).

The usual Silicon Beach rules applied – Round One featured 90-second pitches from each founder (and no slide decks), from which the judges shortlisted 3 startups for Round Two. The Round One presentations in order of appearance were (as usual, website links are embedded in the names):

TwistedXeros.com

Using “emotional phase shifting to accelerate personal growth and transformation through Insight, Manifestation and Neuroscience”, the impetus for this startup came about from the founder’s own experience. Designed to help overcome certain mental health issues associated with anxiety, the founder claims his technique can help practitioners overcome events such as panic attacks within 6 seconds (as opposed to 600 seconds with traditional CBT methods). Had been accepted into the Founders’ Institute, then COVID came along.

The Leaf Protein Co.

There is a growing demand for plant-based foods, both as a source of sustainable protein, and in response to the increased prevalence of food-based allergies (e.g., gluten and soy). Add concerns about GMOs, unsustainable agriculture and climate change, the founder is looking to develop a scalable process for extracting specific types of leaf protein, including arid-climate plants and Australian natives such as saltbush to counter soil salination. Currently seeking funding to pay for a CSIRO pilot to scale the protein extraction.

E-Toy Library

Essentially a toy-lending app, that provides an end-to-end process (source, distribute, cleanse, circulate) via a subscription model. In trials, already secured 50 customers and over 100 subscribers. Estimates there is a $2.4bn toy market in Australia – but it wasn’t clear how much of this market the founders aim to capture.

Kido Paint

This app aims to bring childrens’ drawings to life, using AI/ML to scan a photo of the drawing, and convert it into an animated 3-D digital file that can be rendered within the app using augmented reality.

Thorium Data

Using the oft-heard tag line “data is the new oil”, this B2B solution is designed to help companies organise, manage and extract more value from their data. It does this by resolving issues of data inconsistency, privacy, risk and governance. It also derives and assigns numerical factors to to individual datasets to assess the “value” of this data, and uses indices to benchmark that value.

QuestionID

This product feels like a cross between a wiki for academic research papers, and an open text search tool to find answers within the wiki database. I know from experience that repositories of published research reports (especially refereed and peer reviewed papers) are highly structured and tagged, with the emphasis being on classification, authorship and citation. Often, you sort of need to know in advance the rough answer to the question you want to pose. Significant resources are already allocated to maintaining and commercialising these existing databases, so I’m not sure how QuestionID will deal with IP and other rights associated with these reference resources.

HiveKeepers

HiveKeepers is designed to support beekeepers by helping them to establish and maintain healthier hives, and enhance their own livelihoods at a time when the industry is facing numerous challenges. At its core is a smart phone app that monitors IoT sensors (temperature, weather, weight, motion, sound, etc.) attached to the hive itself. Over time, the data will enable predictive analytics. With the launch of its MVP, HiveKeepers has already attarcted 700 customers globally.

Round Two

The three finalists selected from Round One were KidoPaint, LeafProtein and HiveKeepers. Each founder made a longer pitch, and then answered questions from the judges:

Kido Paint – The Q&A discussion centred on the commercial model (B2B/C, gift cards, in-app vouchers), the file conversion process (turnaround time can be 24- 48 hours), options for scaling, and getting the right price pint for user prices. So it’s not an instant result (which may disappoint some impatient younger users), and the 3-D rendering and animation is somewhat limited to the imagination of the AI/ML algorithms used in the conversion process.

LeafProtein – There was a further discussion on the approach to producing sustainable and allergen free plant proteins. For example, the attraction of pereskia is two-fold – a higher protein ratio, and an arid climate plant. Also, the aim is to counter mono-culture and GMO crops. A D2C brand has been launched (using small-scale production processes), while the CSIRO project is to designed to scale protein extraction, as well as develop an emulsifier for use in the food industry.

HiveKeepers – The founder talked more about the need to address climatic and environmental impact on hives. Having benefited from support from the La Trobe University and SVG Thrive AgriFood accelerator programs, this startup is seeking funding for product development – current price point is $105 USD per smart hive per annum. While the industry is seeing a 2% growth in new hives, it is also suffering significant hive losses due to parasites and diseases.

The overall winner on the night was LeafProtein.

Next week: From R&D to P&L

Antler Virtual Demo Day

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As with other virtual demo days I have attended this year, it was remarkable to hear how far the teams in Antler’s Sydney Cohort #3 had progressed in light of the current pandemic and associated lock-down restrictions.

Each participating team was categorised into an industry sector:

Consumer Tech

Remote Social is designed to connect remote and hybrid teams. The ethos is that with the shift in working patterns (heightened by the current pandemic) corporate culture and organisational engagement are “at risk”. The solution aims to foster socialisation and build culture through curated games and activities. Claiming to have generated over 200 organic signups, including team members at big tech brands, the founders are adopting a “bottom, land and expand” customer acquisition strategy. In addition to a seat-based subscription model, the platform will also offer a revenue share for marketplace providers.

Coder One claims to be “the home for AI sports”. The team describe their project as an API platform for AI games, with unique combination of AI and e-sports. The goal is to make AI and programming more accessible via an AI Sports League, where bots compete, programmed by developers. With more than 250 registrations for an upcoming competition, the team are also looking to secure sponsorship deals. The commercial model has three components: free access to programs for developers, individual subscription fees to access games/tournaments, and corporate fees to access talent for potential recruitment.

Feather is an online platform which enables instructors and creators to deliver and monetise their digital services. According to the founders, existing tools are not fit for purpose, complex or clunky. Initially targeting yoga teachers, the solution will sell tiered subscriptions, plus take a small revenue share. The team also see themselves as part of the “creator economy”, but I was confused by the name – is it a deliberate attempt to suggest a link to Dumbo Feather magazine? Plus, there was some feedback that the platform may be vulnerable once tools like Zoom start putting up more pay walls.

Tactiq is a tool to “capture valuable insights from remote meetings”. The founders claim it can be used with any conferencing software, and is platform agnostic (although currently limited to a Google Meet via a Chrome Extension). The product, essentially “speech to text plus”, also generates AI assisted summaries, and the team has attracted over 100,000 users from around 4,500 organisations. Pricing is $9 per user per month, plus $20 per month to access team functionality. While the team appears to know and understand their target users, they were questioned about privacy and security issues. Although the transcription content is not stored on the platform, my experience of other similar tools is that once they are integrated, they have a tendency to “take over” and insert themselves, unprompted, into e-mail and calendar applications – “you seem to have a meeting now – would you like me to record it?”

SaaS

Upflowy wants to help B2B companies improve their customer conversion rates. Intended to be a “no-code” sign-up engine, the team explained that from their experience, in-house developers tend to focus on product features, rather than improving the sign-up experience. Typically, in-house sign-up optimisation is slow, expensive or totally non-existent – the key issues being scaleability and reliability. Essentially a form builder, the solution enables A/B testing, and claims to deliver a 40% improvement in conversion rates (compared to 17% improvement achieved with other optimization tools).

Flow of Work Co is positioning itself as the “Future of Work SaaS”. With a mission to help companies to retain the best people, it is HR tech using AI in the form of a smart matching engine to identify in-house talent, based on proprietary ontology. It also helps employees to find development resources, as well as to match projects with in-house talent. According to the founders, talented staff leave because they are bored or lack career development. With an initial focus on software companies, the team then plans to tackle the financial services sector. The team was asked about integration with existing HR tech stacks, and how they ensure objective assessment of competing project candidates – but it wasn’t so clear how they achieve either.

Portant is an end-to-end project reporting tool, designed to be a “consolidated single source of truth”. Asked why existing project management tools don’t work, the founders identified a number of factors: teams are using different tools, the process is often repetitive and/or highly manual, or project tracking typically relies on data from different sources. The team have launched an MVP on Google Workspace Marketplace, and will soon launch on Microsoft AppSource (and appears to use AWS Comprehend as the analytical tool?). There is an SaaS pricing model, and content privacy is ensured via end-to-end encryption plus the use of private keys.

StackGo helps clients achieve stronger B2B sales via SaaS marketplaces, rather than relying on direct sales. However, the initial setup costs and effort required to connect to existing SaaS marketplaces can be daunting. With an approach based on “build once, deploy many”, StackGo enables users to connect to multiple SaaS marketplaces via a single solution. However, the team, did not explain what the setup costs are for StackGo nor were they very specific about the price range or typical sales value their clients achieve – “free to hundreds of dollars per month”.

EdTech

GradVantage wants to reduce the cost of getting graduates job ready, and reckons it can save employers $30k per new hire. Offering a personalised learning experience for each user, the founders have adopted a “Slack” model – team first, then enterprise sale. Acknowledging that the EdTech sector is crowded, the team think their point of differentiation is the fact that they are a career-entry solution, and not in the K-12 market. The focus is on tech talent and SaaS vendors. Employers pay per learner, and the platform saves time and reduces on-boarding costs. Typically, 30% of program content is about tech applications, and 70% on how to use the tech. A more fundamental issue is the huge gap between university courses and actual job requirements.

HealthTech

eQALY is an integrated tech platform that enables the elderly to achieve a higher quality of life in their own home, by predicting their individual needs in advance, and identifying the right Home Care Package funding (which can be worth up to $26k). Using 360 degree data inputs, a risk model, and a proactive care plan, the product takes into account client needs as well as family concerns, plus financial considerations. Although the aged care industry is regarded as being slow to adopt new technology, the founders plan to focus on aged care organisations, who will then distribute predictive data and analytics to care providers and managers. The platform is tech agnostic but IoT devices, AI tools and virtual assistants can be integrated, plus new voice analysis technology is emerging that can monitor client well-being, and
all of the activity monitoring tech is passive. meaning the end user does not have to worry about learning new applications.

Retail and E-Commerce

The One Two is a very specific, and very targeted, D2C solution offering a hyperpersonalised service for fitting and buying bras. According to the founders, current customer experience suffers from ill-fitting products, poor product design, bad materials, and inadequate size configurations. As a result, customers feel overwhelmed and give up. The basic product IP has been tested, along with an on-line measuring and fitting tool, combining to provide better customer diagnosis and product tips. The team have already secured a startup partnership with a global lingerie manufacturer and distributor.

m8buy did not make much sense to me. Maybe I’m the wring demographic, but why would anyone want to “shop online with [their] friends”? Describing itself as “a social layer on any e-commerce store”, it feels like this is aimed at the “buy now, pay later” audience.
According to the founders, merchants will only pay a commission (“low single digit %”?) on successful sales. But it’s not clear whether this is a group buying service, a discount marketplace, or a loyalty programme, nor how it will be differentiated within the Shopify marketplace.

PropTech

Sync Technologies is a digital solution for construction industry – with the tag line of “turning data into insights”. The problem being addressed can be summarised as follows: 1) Building
sites are fragmented and complex 2) Progress reporting and bottleneck identification is poorly done 3) 12% of a typical job has to be reworked 4) 80% of projects are late and/or run over budget. Using a digital twin concept, the solution aims to provide a “single source of truth”, and the team are already working with some key firms, and have 2021 forecast revenue of $2m.
Key obstacles to overcome are entrenched on-site behaviours, and slow the tech adoption across so many stakeholders in the construction industry. The founders claim to have identified the solution via their Construction Assistance System which offers better project and status visualisation via the digital twin.

Next week: Version / Aversion