On Monday 23rd October, technology start-ups and tech enthusiasts gathered in London for CW’s annual Discovering Start-Ups Competition.
The event was kindly hosted at Deloitte’s New Street Square offices and sponsored by Provence Promotion and IC Resources.
Pictured: A few of the judges including Stephen Pattison (Arm Ltd)
Hoi Lam (Google) and Carol Cheung (Cambridge Investment Capital)
70 delegates watched pitches from 9 companies (1 from Edinburgh and 1 from Switzerland) each with very different business propositions. One person from each company had just 5 mins to pitch their business to 19 industry judges, followed by 4 mins Q&A with the judging panel. Yet again, David Cleevely did a masterful 1 minute summary before the next pitching company took to the stage.
A special thanks again to the generous support provide by the competition sponsors who make this important event in the CW diary possible.
Deloitte hosted Discovering Start-Ups last year, and delegates from 2016 will remember Scott Campbell’s excellent presentation ‘Collaborate or Die’ which explored business propensity to adopt process innovation and how skills matter. This year, Scott painted the famous picture of David & Goliath and how just a few years ago, Deloitte’s banking clients would advise them to compete with start-ups but now they collaborate. Certainly in the CW community, we are finding more international companies want to collaborate with the ‘Davids’ of the tech world.
Pictured: Scott Campbell, Director, Ventures Lead at Deloitte
Provence Promotion have been sponsors for the past 3 years and their aim is simple; to attract talented individuals and ambitious entrepreneurs from around the world to create sustainable jobs in Provence.
Pictured: Laurence Soldermann (DSU Judge) and Salima Chelabi from Provence Promotion
Neil Dickins, Founder of IC Resources, presented on the “gathering storm” that is impacting the Tech Industy around access to tech talent from overseas in the context of Brexit, and how this is affecting the recruitment landscape for start-ups, scale-ups and the entire sector. Delegates working in a startup shared their situation whereby a significant part of their workforce is drawn from European countries, and how recruitment and retention are now a challenging issue.
So what about the winners?
A big congratulations to the 2017 #DSRUPT winners:
Tangi0 is an R&D start-up, creating new generation of 3D controls for a wide range of applications. Ming Kong, Cofounder, Tangi0 Ltd after the win said: Tangi0 is thrilled to be one of the winners of the Discovering Start Up's Competition 2017. It was such a valuable moment for the team to feel recognised and validated working on such a novel tactile sensing technology. The work does not stop here. We have been in conversation with potential investment and collaboration leads thanks to CW’s wide reach. And we will make the most from it.
Pictured: Ming Kong & Ilan Olivarez from Tangi0
ZiFiSense develops ZETA – A distributed, low-cost, low-power wide area network (LPWAN) that brings connected intelligence to things, anytime, anywhere. Tongyun Li pitched for ZiFiSense and said: I would love to thank all the judges for recognising ZiFiSense’s business. This competition offered us a tremendous opportunity to showcase the company together with so many innovative start-ups. Although our initial success was made in the APAC region, the rich entrepreneurial environment and the ecosystem of top institutions, venture capitals and high-tech companies in the UK have always been inspirational for our business and technology development over the past years. Through this year’s competition, many connections with potential investors and clients have been established. We look forward to a greater success starting from here.
Pictured: Zhouqun Li and Tongyun Li from ZiFiSense
Codeplay Software connects the most advanced processor systems to artificial intelligence frameworks enabling the latest machine learning and vision processing applications. Charles Macfarlane: Codeplay are proud to be recognised as winners of CW's Discovering Startup Competition. Connecting AI to Silicon with ComputeSuite, Codeplay's products take advantage of widely adopted open standards to make machine learning more accessible to application programmers.
Pictured: Charles Macfarlance, Codeplay Software Ltd
Every year we receive a great response from applicants and we owe this not only to the CW community who are so passionate about startups but to our partners who help promote the competion to their communities, far and wide.
Pictured: Bob Driver, CEO of CW opening the competition
Many congratulations to the winners, pictured below with our chairman Raj Gawera and CEO Bob Driver, we look forward to seeing how their business ideas progress over the coming months.
To view photos from the event, head over to our Facebook page