More than 400 people gathered on Tuesday to hear pitches from Australia’s best up-and-coming tech companies at Sydney’s Tech23. It’s the Aussie tech event which comes closest to a night of nights, with entrepreneurs, investors and government representatives gathering to recognise the most innovative new tech companies.
Zeptonics, an enterprise hardware startup, was awarded the big prize; the $40,000 Innovation Excellence Award. The company has developed network devices that operate dramatically faster than competing products, meeting skyrocketing demand for faster trading systems in the financial markets. The company was also awarded the ATP Innovation Explorer Award, which will see the co-founders spend a week in Silicon Valley, meeting with investors, potential customers and other entrepreneurs.
Rachel Slattery of Tech23 organisers SlatteryIT presenting this year’s awards.
The fast-growing OneSaas, a startup which helps business integrate their various Saas platforms, was another standout, winning the CSIRO Most Potential to Transform Australia Award, and the Paypal Customer First Award. OneSAAS CEO Jeff Perlman will also get to spend some time with VC firm OneVentures.
Marcus Schappi from Ninja Blocks delivered the pitch of the day, taking out the People’s Choice Presentation Award. Ninja Blocks were also awarded the $20,000 Outstanding Collaboration for Innovation Award and the Launch PR Campaign Award.
Education platform, Smart Sparrow, was awarded the other big prize; the $20,000 High Growth Catalyst Award.
Tech23 award winners:
NICTA Innovation Award – StreetHawk
Citrix Best Early Stage Company – Parotel
CSIRO Most Potential to Transform Australia – OneSaas
iLab Germinate Program – Ceeq
The New Agency Brightest Spark – 17Dynamics
Orien VM Best Cloud Technology – MobileNation
Delicatessan Films Award – StreetHawk
Launch PR – Ninja Blocks
Mentoring Session with Steve Baxter – Full Extent
Best Bootstrapped Business – Incoming
Saasuu Plan for the Future – Adbiddr
Lunch with Daniel Petri – StreetHawk
Meeting with Lars Rassmussen – Rome2Rio
Two Meetings with OneVentures – OneSaas
People’s Choice for Best Presentation – Ninja Blocks
AMP Most Promising Emerging Technology – Mobile Nation
Paypal Customer First Award – OneSaas
ATP Innovations Explorer Award – Zeptonics
Outstanding Collaboration for Innovation – Ninja Blocks
High Growth Catalyst – Smart Sparrow
Greatest Potential – ScriptRock
Innovation Excellence – Zeptonics
Great day, well done Slattery team. A real show of strength of the industry.
It was obvious to see Startmate companies who are veteran pitches tell good stories.
I agree, their pitches were very polished. Was helpful for us to see where we need to get to in terms of our pitch. I was at their demo days and looked over some of the slides, and Niki was at the rehearsals offering advice as well. That benefited us because we learnt from their experience and also had a good chance to catchup with them at the event about raising money, hiring, etc…