The event's purpose was to bring face to face, innovative start-ups from West Romania with Jon Bradford, the co-founder of Springboard and a panel of local potential investors, in something more than a cozy exercise. While Jon's mission was to promote his organization and to scout for potential participants to it's first intake of startups, the group of local investors, including Ovidiu Sandor, Adorian Demeter, Claudiu Suma, Daniel Giurea and Adrian Erimescu, were looking to evaluate the attractiveness of new projects they can eventually support as business angels.
A number of 9 teams lined-up in order to pitch their folowing projects: SuitsMe (Belgrade, Serbia), Shelfster, Paymo (both from Oradea) and the Timisoara-based Mindquilt, 123contactform, EVENTO, Publishing/UTM.to, QandaPress, Green Wave.
Following the session, investors, pitching teams' members and also the "neutral spectators" that packed the Modatim Investment Council Room in Timisoara City Business Center were asked to evaluate the participating projects. Four classifications resulted out of the process.
The best project from the technology usage point of view was considered the Serbian SuitsMe, an augmented reality fashion consumer tool, presented by Miloš Žikić, Aleksandar Marjanović, of Gecko Solution. The same project also received the appreciations for the best presentation.
The best business value project was considered Paymo, a time tracking and online invoicing tool, pitched by Jan Lukacs.
The overall ranking included SuitsMe on the first place, followed by Paymo and Mindquilt, an enterprise knowledge management platform project developed in Timisoara and Austin, USA, pitched by Dan Damian.
It's worth mentioning that this pitching event follows a recent Investor Readiness training hosted by the incubator in the framework of the Achieve MORE project, last November, also with great involvement of Cambridge experts: Peter Hiscocks of Rivers Capital, David Gill of St. John's Innovation Center. Two of the ex-trainees pitched now their projects while, surprisingly enough, a third
one was on the other side of the table as potential investor.
Despite the fact that no rapid deal was reached this time, the interest expressed by the investors, the enthusiasm of the participants and the commitment of the Timisoara Software Business Incubator to supporting local and regional startups make the perfect combination for a successful future repetition of this type of events.
