For an accelerator which just a matter of months ago had no presence in Berlin, Startupbootcamp certainly put on a good show at its Demo Day on Tuesday. The ten participating startups pitched to a massive crowd packed to the brim with investors – and an audience vote will see the top three pack their bags to take part in next year’s South by Southwest in Austin.
It won’t be an easy decision, with ten polished pitches and ten products which will all have appealed to at least some of those in attendance. Among the VC firms represented were Wellington, Earlybird, Point Nine Capital, Balderton and Mangrove – as well as many more.
Update: The three winners were announced at the after-party – congratulations to Weavly, Capsule.fm and Credport!
Alex Farcet is the force behind SBC, which also runs programs in Copenhagen, Dublin, Haifa and Amsterdam. He has attracted a veritable army of mentors – 120 at the last count – to help the startups under his watchful eye. The ones who pitched at the Umspannwerk, a former electrical substation by the Landwehr Canal in Kreuzberg, included:
- Liquid State
- Capsule.fm
- Prizgo
- Weavly
- freestyl
- ItsPlatonic
- Raidarrr
- Spotistic
- Credport
- Brisk.io
There was also a chance to hear from Archify, a graduate of Startupbootcamp Amsterdam in 2011, which had launched earlier on Thursday.
And the current crop of entrepreneurs disappeared into the SBC office after the pitches for a chance to hobnob with the assembled investors and hopefully follow in the footsteps of Archify, which subsequently landed funding from Balderton.
In any case, three of the young companies will be heading to the US next year to join Tech Open Air in representing Berlin at the renowned SXSW festival.