Last Thursday, dozens of the leading figures in Israeli high-tech gathered in Herzliya Pituah to select the next generation of start-ups. Of the twenty companies that went on stage and made the best presentations they could, seven start-ups were selected to advance to the finals of The Pitch start-up competition, jointly sponsored by Ernst & Young, IBM, and Canaan Partners.
According to Ernst & Young high-tech executive and The Pitch program manager Noam Canetti, 200 companies registered for the competition, in its third year, and this year the trend of a move from companies focused on mobile apps to high-tech companies strengthened.
The start-ups that advanced to the finals are: WakingApp. , which is developing an app that combines augmented reality technology with advertisements; ONDiGO, which is developing a mobile customer relationship management system (CRM) for small and medium-sized businesses; MobiliBuy, which allows brick and mortar retailers to establish virtual points of sale for mobile purchases; Optibus, which is developing optimization solutions for bus and mass transit timetables; Rewardpot, which developed a system for analyzing mobile-app traffic to maximize revenue from users; Rollout.io, which developed a system to identify and fix bugs in mobile apps; and Blackswan Technologies., which developed technological security solutions to protect governments and enterprises from cyber-attacks.
The finals will be held on October 30, at the Tel Aviv Hilton, as part of the Ernst & Young - “Globes” Journey Conference. The finalists will receive additional training through IBM’s Mentor Day. The winning company will be selected by the judges, including angel investor Tal Barnoach, Wix.com Ltd. (Nasdaq: WIX) co-founder and CEO Avishai Abrahami, ironSource founder and CEO Tomer Bar-Zeev, and by the audience, using a special app. The winning company will enjoy a road show in Silicon Valley, meetings with investors and managers at relevant companies, and will participate in IBM’s global SmartCamp competition.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 10, 2014
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