Two days ago I went with Timo Bunk to Europe’s largest event for startups. It takes place the first Monday of each month in the Hiltion Stockholm Slussen Hotel. Usually, three lucky startups pitch a special guest live on stage and the audience chooses which startup joins the investor for dinner afterwards. On Monday evening only two startups presented their pitches. I want to write about my impressions in general and also about the two pitches.
In the first hour the investment companies (Draper Esprit, Wellstreet) have been interviewed. That was not so interesting for me. In my opinion the focus should be on the startups. That’s the reason why I just want to say some general information about them in two sentences. Since 2016, Draper Esprit has raised over $1B to become one of the biggest and most active investors in Europe. Starting less than 2 years ago, Wellstreet has already made 36 investments making them one of the Scandinavia’s newest and also most active investors in seed and early stage startups. Now I want to present the two pitches.
- Pitch – Live Shop
Live Shop enables the in-store experience online by bringing the power of real people to companies’ websites. They believe that nothing is stronger than the personal meeting because it leaves no room for misunderstandings. The applications allows companies to enable a personal meeting with their customers, look what are you talking about, drag and drop interactive objects on the screen and to take things step by step forward. They are also able to analyze the data before, during, and after the video-call (http://www.liveshop.se/).
The investors criticize the technical aspects and problems regarding to such a solution (plug-in, software, live streaming). Moreover there are many competitors on the market, which are offering identical products. I have also heard form solution like that before and there seems to be nothing which differentiated them from other alternatives. They also did not mention their selected target customer segments. That was my first impression but for a comprehensive and differentiated evaluation of the application I need more information.
- Pitch – Valossa (Video Artificial Intelligence)
The second startup built video artificial intelligence. That means, that they created a system that understand videos like people do. It recognizes faces, it identifies objects and places and it listens to the dialog and audio, so that it can actually tell you what your videos are about. That means it extracts and analyzes information from multiple information pipelines. This creates comprehensive interpretation of key elements in the video. Moreover it categorize the video in different segments. So the system automatically extract a lot of data on your video content that was not reachable before. In the past it was a manual task. Now you can use the software to improve discovery and recommendations of videos, or it allows advertiser to target moments in videoclibs that are more relevant to their products and services. They provide their service to media entertainment companies and the advertisement side as well (https://valossa.com/).
If you ask me the idea seems to be great because it can used for several things. For example, Netflix can analyze in more detailed way what kind of movies you like to watch. Also in sport it can be used to analyze tactics and how successful they are. So it open-up wide fields of applications.
With a clear majority the audience chooses the second startup (Valossa) as the winner. For me it is also a well-deserved winner.
On Monday I learned how difficult it is to present your own idea in such a short time and convince the audience. The startups have to pay attention to several things and be prepared for several questions. To summarize, the event was a great experience because I learned a lot for the future.

Additional Information:
- Next #STHLMTECH Meetup: 6. November
- Startup Matchmaking (Find your co-founder, build your team, or join a startup): October 16 ->Tickets link: www.eurpo.com
- Stockholm Innovation Scholarship: innovationsstipendiet.se
- Interesting article: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Start-Ups? (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sweden-startups/541413/)