In Person Pitches ARE BACK! Silcon Allee's pitchup event - 5th May, 2022.
by Ian Moss
There's something about the dynamic of in-person pitches that I've missed. Today, it was a pleasure to attend Silicon Allee's PitchUp event. Also available online, but well attended in-person too. They made a hybrid setup work, and this included an instagram stream an associate was watching.
6 startups took to the stage, compared by Andrew, who I hold entirely responsible for me thinking it was Berlin vs Australia today. No Ian, it's Austria :)
I love the idea of thinking which one would you invest in, and hold out for the event where attendees online and in-person, get tokens, that after they have watched all the pitches get to 'give' to each startup they like. In this age of made up crypto currency, it could actually be a thing of course, but I VERY happy today, that all of the startups are dealing with real issues, and have real solutions at various stages.
I made some brief notes. They maybe wrong, but hopefully gives people a feel for them. You can find all the links to the startups involved via SiliconAllee's event page.
- (Austria) aQvena: the waterfall air nebulizer.
- (Austria) Aurimod: personalized pain treatment.
- (Austria) myReha: AI for stroke therapy.
Break for networking, and tasty snacks.
- (Berlin) Infinit: unlocking manufacturing of medical psychedelics at scale.
- (Berlin) Remi Health: allowing patients easy access to STI testing.
- (Berlin) Shelly Sleep: sound therapy for quality sleep.
The first pitch made me think more about what the quickest time to market for a medical-related physical product could be. aQvena's nulizer seems like a fairly simple approach, so would this make it quick to gain approval? They are pre-seed with 10 customers at the moment.
2nd up, is the topic of pain-relief, from Aurimod. They have 10 employees, 2.2mln in funding, and 260k revenue, which is consistently increasing, after being founded 7 years ago. They are looking at a 3 million series A.
The pitches are fairly fast, and to the point, with some questions after. No chance to get bored, which is great. The 3rd pitch seemed to comprehensively cover the different aspects of this business in the founders expertise, with 1 each medical doctor experience, machine learning experience with google, and a legal expert too. Currently gaining some traction from 350 patients and 22 clinics. Rehab ends when the patient goes home currently, but myReha, are changing stroke (/maybe long covid) rehab with a speach recognition app and other planned services. Seed reed Q4/2022.
I don't think I was the only one who missed events with a little food, and very happy that this isn't pizza. Thanks SiliconAllee/Austria for the tasty snacks.
Back to the pitches with gusto. And this is where Berlin gets to shine.
Infinit get everyone's attention with a mention of pyschadelics. And the question do they hep mental health, which is the number 1 health issue in the world. Also, would it be scaleable? A few mentions of terms I didn't know came after!! Bring in the medical experts there haha.
Remi deal with bringing STI testing into the modern age, and online, with a high degree of maturity.
Shelly Sleep, woke me up, as I realised I could download the app. The app produces sounds that aid sleep. Cost of aquistion down from 4 to 1 euro, and organic acquisition is around 20% of users. Nice. They'd probably get some of my 'Berlin Startup Coins' if they existed - aka bottletops. Just because I could actually download something.
However, it's obvious that with most medical solutions, you're not going to be able to be able to download it. This makes it harder for casual user acquisition, but then the problems are often very specific. This will also create barriers to entry, alongside the time it takes to get approval.
More networking after, and it felt great to exchange LinkedIn with a few people - seems the QR code aspect is more known now :)
Missing inperson events too? Why not join myself and Wilham's community group, to list Berlin's upcoming events :) Ask me if you are unsure about that...
Follow alteris on instagram for more events, and technology thoughts.
That's all for now,
Ian.