On Friday, May 3rd, Sonavi Labs CEO, Ellington West claimed the title of Northeast Regional Champion in the Startup World Cup for Sonavi Labs. The Executive team, consisting of West and Brandon Dottin-Haley, traveled to Boston for the day to pitch in front of a room of investors, business leaders, and innovative entrepreneurs, and ultimately earned the top spot among the group of 10 startups that were invited to pitch.
The Startup World Cup, now in its 3rd year, has been supported by Fenox Venture Capital and Pegasus Tech Ventures. The Pegasus Tech Ventures team has worked to grow the reach of the competition from 8 regional events in 2017 to 40 different events around the globe. The competition functions as a vetting process for the venture firms and winning teams will receive a $1 million investment in their startup. The Startup World Cup Fund was developed to bring emerging technologies to new markets around the world and to connect startups with industry experts, CEO’s and financiers.
The competition will be held in San Francisco, where the 40 regional teams will compete in the Semi-Finals on May 15th. The top 10 startups will then be invited to pitch in the Grand Finale on May 17th at the SF Masonic Auditorium. “We were over the moon when the judges announced our name as the Regional Champions, but when we got back into the office on Monday, we knew that it was really GO time, so we’ve been working really hard to perfect our pitch and get ready to win the grand prize!”, West said. She continued as she reviewed notes after watching her pitch on video. “There are so many amazing startups that every little detail is going to set us apart from the other companies that will be there.”
Previous winners of the competition include, UniFa, a Japanese company that creates IoT solutions for monitoring the physical and mental growth of Kindergarteners, as well as Leuko Labs, a company dedicated to helping cancer patients monitor white blood cell counts.
This year’s competition is very stiff as startups from around the world have developed novel solutions for some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Finalists in the Regional championship included E-Health Now, a platform that connects leading American oncologists with telehealth cancer patients in China, and Waste Technologies , a company that is working to create a system that converts plastic into usable fuel.
The Startup World Cup Boston regional event was co-hosted by the Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) at the Hynes Convention Center. The room was packed with investors, tech entrepreneurs, and conference attendees eager to hear about all of the innovations being presented. Justin Jackson, of Pegasus Tech Ventures, said “This competition is an opportunity for investors to find innovative startups, but its also great place for startups looking for mentorships, guidance and capital to fund their ventures.”
Thousands of startups from all over the world applied to the Startup World Cup. The Sonavi Labs team is extremely optimistic, however, about their chances at claiming the $1 million prize. “Because respiratory diseases affect millions of people all over the world, we know there is a huge need for our technology.” Brandon Dottin-Haley, Executive Director of Business Development remarked, “but no one is doing what we’re doing. No other company has been able to deploy their analytics on to their hardware like we have. Feelix is truly something unique.”