Silicon Gorge 1.1. is happening today! Following on from the success of the last Silicon Gorge event in March, TechSPARK and BathSPARK have again joined forces with SETsquared, WebStart Bristol and Invest Bristol & Bath to showcase tech startups drawn from the Bristol and Bath area to an audience of angel and institutional investors from London and beyond.
There are 17 pitches altogether, 10 that are graduating from the second cohort of the WebStart Bristol incubator programme and seven who have been selected by a process run by TechSPARK, read on to find out about the upcoming startups keen to get investment:
The companies pitching associated with Webstart Bristol:
Binoley – Darcey Beau
What’s the business?
An easy-to-use web app which helps students identify and work towards
their goals with the support of parents and teachers.
Why is it great?
Direct focus on student engagement as well as parent and teacher support.
What stage is it at?
Research with a wide variety of educational stakeholders and developing
the app.
Blast App – Jubair Jalil
What’s the business?
Location based messaging platform.
Why is it great?
Makes sharing and communication easy where other services fail.
What stage is it at?
Signed a massive commercial deal with a platinum-selling band, where our marketing will be kick-started at the Reading Music festival, who have agreed to distribute our product to all 8000 ticket holders.
Call of the Brave – Dave Martin
What’s the business?
Call of the brave is a crowd funding platform for tee shirt designs with a >mission to change the fashion industry one shirt at a time.
Why is it great?
It’s a Win, Win, Win, Win, Win model: the makers, designers, printers charities all get a fair slice of the Tee shirt pie… you’ll feel like a winner wearing one.
What stage is it at?
Webstart has taken us from being just an idea to MVP stage. We are taking orders, causing a lot of buzz and ready to grow.
Habu – Jak Ollet and Robert Ollet
What’s the business?
Inspired by an increasingly flexible, entrepreneurial and creative world, Habu is an elegant web-app for mixed use and event management venues.
Why is it great?
It makes our customers and their teams happier and more efficient by reducing administrative chaos, enabling faster workflows, better collaboration & generating deeper business insights.
What stage is it at?
MVP completion end of July with continual updates and improvements thereafter.
Huskr – Henry Kirkness, Peter Edin and Sam Datong
What’s the business?
Huskr is a group deals platform that uses curation to support the growth of independent and up and coming online sellers, while providing a discovery platform – initially for students and the like-minded with an interest in the alternative.
Why is it great?
It acts as an affordable way of facilitating the growth of your online store by increasing traffic, sales and brand awareness. It harnesses the existing functionality of promotion code generation, while allowing customers to get deals on beautiful products at discounted prices.
What stage is it at?
We came into WebStart with a concept and launched just two and a half weeks ago. We have since proved that people want Huskr by gaining traction – in the form of both sellers internationally listing promotions and customers buying our deals.
In Your Stride – Shaun Lancaster
What’s the business?
In Your Stride is the app that helps runners of all types get to the finish line.
Why is it great?
It’s the first app to focus 100% on giving runners what they need to reach their race goal. We’re launching the world’s first Adaptive Training Plans – the ability to fit your training plan around your life is something that runners have been waiting for.
What stage is it at?
In Your Stride MVP version is due for release mid July 2014. Further funding will enable us to release the fully functional version early August.
Missionly – Chris Dalley, Will Duddell and Denis Sellu
What’s the business?
Missionly is an online platform that is setting the way for businesses to connect with and recruit students and graduates across the UK.
Why is it great?
We’re incredibly passionate about creating a platform that makes recruiting students and graduates beautifully simple, efficient and cost effective.
What stage is it at?
V1 of Missionly was launched in February, which attracted over 40 paying Customers. We are now hard at work on V2 to be released in August which provides an entire management and job distribution platform for businesses who are recruiting.
Senta – James Kilford and Phil Murphy
What’s the business?
We’re making cloud software that helps accountants run their practices.
Why is it great?
Because we’re totally driven to make our software useful from the first moment people use it.
What stage is it at?
Research and design done, planning and forecasting done… now we’re building the software.
Storelens – Ben Trewhella and Stuart King
What’s the business?
We provide a cutting edge analytics service to games developers and publishers.
Why is it great?
Our combination of state of the art analytics presented in a simple, accessible and easy to understand way.
What stage is it at?
We are forging ahead with development and will launch within four months. We are looking for investment to support our current development cycle and product launch, and expect to be profitable in Q2 2015.
Talent Blok – Rebecca Wasley and Christos Constantinou
What’s the business?
An online platform where job seekers can create interactive and visually engaging professional profiles.
Why is it great?
It makes the job seeking experience more enjoyable and allows job seekers to demonstrate their personality as well as their skills.
What stage is it at?
Just launched with first customers signed up.
The companies pitching at Silicon Gorge associated with TechSpark:
CiteAB – Dave Kelly
What’s the business?
CiteAb is the world’s largest Antibody Search Engine. It is like Compare the Market for Antibodies!
Why is it great?
CiteAb is free to list (for manufacturers), free to use (for researchers). It is also the only un-bias antibody search tool (i.e. search engine rankings aren’t based on how much you pay) making it the most popular and fastest growing.
What stage is it at?
CiteAb is currently experiencing it’s first large sales orders
Gleem – Joseph Edwards
What’s the business?
High Quality. Modern. Cleaning.
Why is it great?
Bringing cleaning into line with other revolutionised sectors.
What stage is it at?
Operational for 6 months
Horsology – Christina Carter Jones
What’s the business?
Horsology is an online platform for the horse industry, aggregating products and services that make life better for horses and their owners around the globe.
Why is it great?
Because it solves problems, makes the users happy and makes us money!
What stage is it at?
We’re 90 days post launch, generating revenue and rolling out new features.
The Media Lounge Group – Dean Bryan
What’s the business?
We incubate emerging musicians establishing the finest global talent for generations to come.
Why is it great?
We provide affordable access to resources, in addition to a global pool of talent and expertise.
What stage is it at?
We are at development stage and ready to begin our alpha development post funding.
Opposable Games / Salvaged – Ben Trewhella
What’s the business?
Video Games! Specifically a free to play, high revenue generating mobile games company.
Why is it great?
Because we’re using proven mobile gameplay (think Candy Crush) in an exciting sci-fi universe (think Star Wars).
What stage is it at?
We’ve developed all the tech and IP through our other games, we’re now putting the beta together for launch early next year.
Spuddy – Dominic Stevens
What’s the business?
Spuddy is the new and innovative platform that enables users to discover and meet new people who share similar sporting interests and abilities. It takes into account the user’s sports, abilities and location to find them sports buddies nearby. Invite people to play, arrange games, keep track of your results, view your badges and more…
Why is it great?
Because it taps into the £20bn sports market in the UK (and we plan on expanding into USA). Sport is such an important aspect of our lives, we’re encouraged to get more fit and active, but it’s hard! Spuddy takes away the hassle of organising your sports life, you can find people to play with, join local sports classes or sports clubs all at the tap of a button.
What stage is it at?
Spuddy is in Beta testing and is planned to launch in September.
Green Running – Peter Davies
What’s the business?
A cutting-edge energy monitoring and management systems using Artificial Intelligence for the domestic and commercial sectors.
Why is it great?
Our technology is at the forefront of the entire industry for energy saving, full of Artificial Intelligence and patent pending
What stage is it at?
We have been working on the technology for over five years in secret and now have Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Power involved in our commercial offering and DECC endorsing our Domestic technology pre-product launch trials.
