New Zealand startups to showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt SF

MEDIA RELEASE: ecentre

New Zealand startups to showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019

ecentre-hosted New Zealand Pavilion in TechCrunch’s Startup Alley to show off Kiwi startups; Supply-chain startup Sparrows chosen as ‘wild card’ for Showcase pitch contest

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, October 2, 2019 – Seven New Zealand startups with US market ambitions are set to showcase at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this week, as part of an in-market immersion week in Silicon Valley organised by ecentre, the business incubator hosted at Massey University.

The Kiwi startup founders, recent graduates of ecentre’s Sprint Global programme, will join around 10,000 people interested in the startup and technology world at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019. A New Zealand Pavilion in Startup Alley, hosted by ecentre, will provide a valuable opportunity for the startups to showcase their tech products, platforms and services at the event.

The startups showcasing at TechCrunch, as part of the ecentre’s New Zealand Pavilion, include:

• Bee Intelligence – software and technology for precision apiculture from bee hive to honey jar

• Demandlytix - real time consumer demand platform to help business planning

• iLose - weight loss app for coaches and their clients

• Narrative Muse - an artificial intelligence company that engages audiences and predicts demand for women-focused content

• PICMI - the seasonal staffing solution - hiring and working made easy!

• Sparrows – real time freight tracking, monitoring and alerts for the supply chain

• Trickle - maximising hospitality venues by tracking every drop of beer poured on tap

Sparrows has also been chosen as a wild card from ecentre’s New Zealand Pavilion to do a 60-second-flash-pitch on the Showcase Stage in Startup Alley on the afternoon of Thursday, October 3rd.

Jackie Young, CEO of ecentre, says: “We’re looking forward to helping our dynamic Kiwi founders gain valuable market and business knowledge, make new connections, find new customers, and get media attention. Our New Zealand Pavilion will put our startups in the path of more than 10,000 attendees including leading technologists, investors, media and other influencers and business people who are interested in the startup and technology world.

“We’ve worked hard, alongside our fantastic ecentre community, to make sure our Sprint Global graduates maximise this fantastic opportunity. NZTE, KEA, Kiwi Landing Pad and Callaghan Innovation have delivered workshops on a range of topics, including: Doing business in the US, Networking in the US, and in-market resources and expertise.”

To aid networking at TechCrunch, startup founders use the CrunchMatch business match-making platform to help find and connect with people who can help them move their business forward. According to CrunchBase, last year's Startup Alley exhibitors raised over $37M in seed and series A funding within four months after exhibiting at Disrupt SF.

Young says, “We’re very pleased to have seeded the next wave of Kiwi startup success stories through our Sprint Global programme. By connecting founders to mentors, sector experts, investors and other resources in the startup ecosystem, we’ve been able to help accelerate customer acquisition and raise awareness of global markets to help them win on the global stage.”

The Sprint Global 2019 programme has been made possible by support from foundation partners Massey University and Callaghan Innovation, along with a long list of other partners and supporters including, Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development (ATEED), EY and Hudson Gavin Martin.

TechCrunch’s Startup Alley - NZ Pavilion – ecentre startup profiles:

Bee Intelligence enables precision apiculture from bee hive to honey jar by empowering apiculturists across the entire value chain to get the most out of their operations with technology and data analysis. Their suite of technology includes sensors, smart phone apps and web based dashboards all combined in the BeeApp package. BeeApp is a simple, robust and comprehensive SaaS platform that helps commercial beekeepers, queen bee breeders, and honey extraction companies to manage costs, track assets, minimise risks, drive efficiencies and optimise their businesses. https://www.bee-intelligence.com

Demandlytix helps large retailers understand demand drivers to forecast customers’ purchasing behaviour for accurate business planning and management. Demandlytix’s real-time demand sensing platform gives an unprecedented level of consumer insight by using extensive social, economic and consumer data and state of the art machine learning algorithms. http://www.demandlytix.com/

iLose helps weight loss coaches better connect with their clients by seamlessly integrating personalised programs, tracking, and messaging. iLose makes coaching smart and simple to save coaches time. Coaches using iLose were recently surveyed and 76% reported iLose had halved their workload and 77% of reported saving at least 1 hour per day. https://ilose.co.nz/

Narrative Muse: What if perfect movies and books were handpicked for you based on your mood without the need to scroll through every content platform you use? Narrative Muse does this using our AI-powered matchmaker that not only brings perfect audiences and perfect content together, it also predicts demand for women-focused content for producers and publishers. https://www.narrativemuse.com

PICMI simplifies the employment process and makes finding, verifying, hiring and on-boarding seasonal workers easy. PICMI seamlessly connects farmers to the right workers, at the right time and removes the repetitive admin associated with hiring. PICMI authenticates workers, verifies visas, gathers health and safety information and allows farmers to manage and hire with confidence. https://www.picmi.io

Sparrows connects growers, distributors and freight forwarders on one platform to enable tracking and monitoring of freight to reduce stock loss and food wastage. The propriety Sparrow tracking device collects data on location, temperature, shock and stoppages, and generates alerts for customers to provide greater visibility of their products in the supply chain. https://www.sparrows.io/

Trickle is a tap monitoring system for bars and venues that maximises revenue by tracking every drop of beer poured. A small device monitors the beer tap recording all pour activity, while our software platform automatically reconciles this activity against sales data to minimising wastage from every keg by up to 20%. To date Trickle has collected data on nearly 7,000 kegs. https://trkl.co

ENDS

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