Three amazing start-ups. Three rockstar judges. And a £100,000 investment up for grabs. Find out what happened at Dreampitch London 2018, and who walked away with the business-changing investment…
Defending your young company in front of an intimidating panel of business stalwarts might not be everyone’s idea of a fun Thursday afternoon.
But for start-up megastars like the three Dreampitch finalists at Salesforce’s World Tour in London, it was a fitting culmination for their hard work, passion, and determination.
The packed closing session of this sold-out event, Dreampitch saw visionaries from Vyn, SalesOptimize, and Digital Fineprint compete for a £100,000 investment from Salesforce Ventures.
The format? Simple. A five-minute pitch, followed by five minutes of Q&A with the judges. To score maximum points, each contender had to ace three key criteria:
- Team – The people and skills they needed execute on their goals
- Technology – Their power to innovate in their marketplace
- Business – Their business model and market knowledge
Awarding the points were three undisputed business luminaries:
- Jacqueline De Rojas – President of techUK and Chair of the Digital Leaders board
- Dale Murray – Co-Founder of Omega Logic and executive advisor to Xero
- James Caan – Former investor on the BBC’s ‘Dragon’s Den’ and CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw
On with the show…
Vyn: smart video note pioneers
First up was Vyn, headed by Co-Founders Kapil Singhal and Arti Khanna.
Vyn quickly demonstrated that some of the best ideas start with a simple proposition. And Vyn’s mission couldn’t be simpler: eliminate millions of time-consuming forms with smart video notes – dictated instructions that can get intelligently converted into data for business systems, like your CRM.
Not only does Vyn’s technology have the potential to free up valuable sales time – it can also help teams do a lot more, with a lot less.
The company has already attracted some impressive clients such as P&G, Cognizant, and Vodafone.
Here’s the Head of Sales Operations at Vodafone to explain: “Vyn empowers our field teams to share insights at scale via mobile. It’s an integral part of our approach to digital telco.”
Of course, the market opportunities for Vyn are massive. When probed by Dale Murray after the pitch, Kapil Singhal suggested that, with 100 million field workers in the world, there’s a $150 billion market to tap in this area alone.
By the time Vyn left the stage, it was clear that regardless of the judge’s decision, the future was looking bright for the 19-strong company.
SalesOptimize: a world of information at your fingertips
SalesOptimize is a sales lead generation and market intelligence platform headed by Founder, CEO, and game-changing-tech-veteran Liz Fulham. As a former Head of Telesales for PayPal, Liz is no stranger to the world of e-commerce and its potential for significant growth.
Indeed, despite the clear revenue possibilities, out of the 500M+ websites in existence, only 2% offer e-commerce. What’s more, there are no global e-commerce sales lead generation or market sizing intelligence tools available. Enter SalesOptimize.
The company’s algorithms scour the internet for data, and merge it into the Salesforce platform to create high-quality sales leads and market intelligence. Not content with the level of industry-changing insight she’s created, Liz is already looking ahead to the next opportunity:
“I’ve five more products. […] Why not have a consumer e-commerce shopping search engine? It saves all your favourites so when you go out, you don’t lose your searches.”
Little wonder that global brands like J.P. Morgan, TrustPilot, and DHL are already convinced of the platform’s potential.
Digital Fineprint: InsureTech innovators
Jin Chen, CTO of Digital Fineprint, has a clear goal: supercharging commercial insurance sales, by helping brokers combine internal data with open data sources. This means prefilling quote forms when customers are browsing online, presenting them with smart, data-driven product recommendations – and much more.
The company already has some big brands like MetLife, Allianz, and Hiscox on its books.
As Jin explains, the company sees the Salesforce platform playing a key role in the company’s future success:
“We’re really keen to further our opportunity by partnering with Salesforce – for three main reasons. […] We think our solution can help Salesforce’s customers better interact with their end users, we want to learn from the best in the SaaS industry, and by partnering, we believe we can open up a lot of new opportunities.”
And the winner is…
SalesOptimize!
Despite the tough competition, a completely overjoyed and overwhelmed Liz Fulham returned to the stage victorious – to be congratulated by the judges, and accept her company’s £100,000 prize.
Think you’ve got what it takes to win the next Dreampitch? James Caan has some words of advice on how to sell your start-up: “The thing that always grabs me is when somebody spends less time on the idea, and more time on the execution.”
Catch up with the rest of the tour
Watch the pitches in full and see these incredible entrepreneurs in action. And to catch up on the rest of the event’s keynotes, visit the Salesforce Wolrd Tour London page, or download the keynote e-book to digest all the big news and customer stories from the day.
