Twenty-seven venture capital funds and investors have come together to hold a contest to find the best augmented reality (AR) pitch from impressive startups. The content is dubbed as the Global AR Online Pitch Event and the winning contestant can be sure to gain investment from one or more of the partaking groups.
Global AR Online Pitch Event is made up of The GFR Fund, Super Ventures and The Venture Reality Fund (The VR Fund) who are all come together to put on the Global AR Online Pitch Event. Though the deadline for submissions is April 23rd, the contest is still to run until late May as a number of different stages of review must be carried out until the winner is announced live on stage at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2018 in Silicon Valley on May 31st, 2018.
After submission period ends and the applications have been reviewed, eight startups will be selected as finalists to present at the online pitch event, which will take place live before investors. Each finalist will be giving five minutes to pitched, followed by two minutes of questions and answers from the selected panel of investors. The finalists will also deliver live pitches at AWE USA 2018 as well, in what can only be guessed to be in front of a live audiences as well.
The finalists will be given some support though, as once selected each finalist will work closely with a mentor to solidify their final presentation prior to the online event. There will also be constructive feedback from key investors and venture capital funds delivered to each finalists.
In order to participate in the Global AR Online Pitch Event, startups must meet the following criteria:
Pre-seed, seed or Series A investment
Working on a product(s) in AR space
Has at least an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
The amount of investment that is up for grabs for the winner is not known yet, but given that each of the investors will contribute towards the amount it is expected to be a large amount. With the recently launch of ARKit and ARCore making it more accessible then ever before to build and deploy AR experiences to the mobile market, it will be interesting to see what pitches come from the Global AR Online Pitch Event. Those looking for more details or to get a last minute submission in can do so at the events website.
VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest from the Global AR Online Pitch in the future so stay tuned for more.
Now in its 9th year, the Augmented World Expo (AWE) will be returning to the Santa Clara Convention Centre, California this May. Today, early bird tickets have now gone on sale, offering big savings for those wishing to attend 2018 event.
Tickets for the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) event are split into four categories. The first is the ‘Early Bird: Three Day All Access Pass (Includes Workshop Day)’ which is retailing $695.00 USD, saving $500. This gives attendees full access to all areas of the conference and expo for all three days (30th May-1st June, 2018) including Day 1 workshops, keynotes, breakout sessions, exhibit halls and the Auggie Awards Ceremony.
Then there’s the ‘Early Bird: Two Day All Access Pass’, sold for $495.00 instead of $895.00. This grants full access to all areas of the conference and expo for two days (30th May-1st June, 2018) including keynotes, breakout sessions, exhibit halls and the Auggie Awards Ceremony. For those who don’t want to attend for too long, then there’s the Early Bird Expo Only: Day Pass for $149. And for start up companies the Startup: Expo Only Pass + Startup Table ticket is available for $999. The first three tickets are on offer until 31st March, 2018, while the fourth startup deal ends on 18th May, 2018.
Currently AWE 2018 has some of the biggest AR and VR companies confirmed as exhibitors, including: Microsoft, Epson, Kopin, Qualcomm, Vuforia, Vuzix and many more, 300 in total.
As for speakers, the conference has 350 professionals lined up to discuss everything and anything regarding the immersive industry. A diverse selection of speakers has been chosen, companies discussing the future of AR and VR include: Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), Merge, Lockheed Martin, Ultrahaptics, Google, Walmart, Epic Games, Leap Motion, Niantic Labs and HTC Vive to name a few.
AWE takes place from 30th May – 1st June, 2018. For any further updates on the event, keep reading VRFocus.
On October 19th and 20th 2017, the European edition of AWE, Augmented World Expo, the most important event in the world on the topic of Mixed Reality, will be held in Munich, Germany.
The event is structured in a number of activities that include keynote speeches, specialist speeches from AR and VR industry experts, developer workshops, pitches of some of the most promising startups, and more.
This edition promises to be particularly interesting as it is the first appointment that follows the release of ARkit by Apple and ARcore by Google, namely the tools that have been animating the debate over the past few weeks, demonstrating the potential of native mobile AR in countless demo applications that developers around the world have begun to share. Another key topic will be the so much debated AR Cloud as a viable scenario of mass adoption of the technology.
As usual, both for the American and European editions, Inglobe Technologies will take part in the conference with a speech by our CTO Alessandro Terenzi on “Practical Object Tracking for Augmented Reality“, a session devoted to exploring the methods and bounds Object Recognition with AR, in a number of areas spanning from Cultural Heritage to Smart Manufacturing.
Augmented World Expo-2017 just got done and people are left with some old, some new and some innovative memories… We will see a lot of posts, updates, and images of products and companies that have made announcements and launches of their version “x” products… It is an exciting time for Augmented Reality and definitely an area to explore as we move forward…
The purpose of Conference?
Technology and display centers have always been a great attraction for years, these conferences help bring to light innovative or imitation-twister products that start-ups have been working on for some time. While some attend to understand and explore the emerging technology through the displayed products and services, some attend to enjoy these gadgets, some to invest & network and some to find new career opportunities. Overall these conferences are meet and explore places where the tech grows and shows its potential
The Take-Away
Many believe that disrupt technology is the new way of exploring & innovating ideas, the gathering of these conferences is to expand your thinking, explore opportunities get motivated and build new connections…
Another takeaway is to understand and connect with the Investor world, that is the backbone of the future for any technology expansion or for start-up growth …
The Motivation
For an entrepreneur it is very critical to have those few minutes of direct interaction with the Investor to explain his/her idea and build some interest which could lead to funding… while this is a noble thought, the path to funding is not this direct, or this simple.
Being an entrepreneur and a strong supporter of the start-up ecosystem, I have seen both sides of the equation. As an entrepreneur, the eagerness to reach the investor and get the funding and as an interested individual evaluating the start-up’s pitches to understand where and who may be the right fit for funding…….
The Investor Panel -AWE 2017
The second day of AWE 2017, I was invited to be a panelist for the Investor round table, along with my co-panelists from Canvas Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Motorola Ventures, Comcast Ventures and Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM)-Netherlands and it was a wonderful opportunity to be on the stage with some of the great minds. It was also an opportunity to understand the thoughts and answer the questions of the now rising entrepreneurs. While for start-ups, all Investors are equal as long as they are willing to listen and invest, the world of investment has its own cycles and this was shared very beautifully by my co-panelists during the session
While there were a lot of questions about the industry, landscape, and sector, three questions that stuck my mind and felt interesting were:
1) Do you take cold calling?
The clear answer is “NO”, but the thought behind the answer is different. Just like a job portal that takes your resume online, there is less than 1% chance you hear back (sometimes you do), however for the same job you go through a referral and the chances of getting the first visibility is close to 90% and landing with a interview is equally high , in the Investor world the story flows in a similar pattern. Any idea that comes through a network or strong referral will get their day to present and the cold calling, well…..
2) The counter-intuitive Advice to start-ups?
This question gets thrown at me a lot of times and my sincere answer is: know your product, know your team and know your market. Missing any of these dots, you may go through a rough cycle
3) What are the red flags in AR/VR?
The red flags don’t just exist in AR & VR, they exist in all technology innovations. To me, there is two type of start-ups. One that innovates and is first to risk and the other who follow the idea and try to fine tune it. My advice is: if you are the latter type you will be entering the market with a competitor who has had the first footing and probably the first the Investors saw or heard from. If you are the latter type, you need to have patience and think deeper in bringing your USP to the light to get the traction you need and this could take time. If you are the former type, you have the advantage being the first to market, however, it still may not be that easy as you need to prove your idea
Overall the panel was amazing and the questions thrown at us were great , the biggest takeaway for the entrepreneurs from this session I feel was ” let us know what you need and how you will change the world with technology”, unless that is clear , it will be an uphill battle for the start-ups and a challenge for investors .
My recommendation to all start-ups- as technologies emerge we will see many more new and innovative ideas — believe in your dream, because only then you show the passion and depth of your ideas which have a higher chance of visibility and acknowledgment
“For those who believe in their ideas, will find a way to make it happen”…..
I am an Entrepreneur and an advisor to a few select start-ups( in AR, mobile, semi and AI) for more than a decade. My passion is helping start-ups restructure and get them back on the growth path. Currently, working with a consumer product company and looking to help more companies…
Augmented World Expo 2013 was really an amazing experience. I’m co-founder and co-organizer of the conference, along with Ori Inbar, so it has meant a lot to me to see our event grow over the last four years, and thrilling to make such a big splash this year. There were 1,163 attendees, and the expo show cased an ecosystem of emerging technologies – augmented reality, gesture interaction, eyewear, wearables, and connected hardware of many stripes, that mark the beginning of natural computing entering the mainstream. It was a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with what it feels like to be an augmented human in an augmented world!
Videos of AWE 2013′s 35 hours of educational sessions and inspirational keynotes are now available on our YouTube channel. I am sharing my own talk (my slides are also up on slideshare here), and a few of my favorites in this post, but there are far to many to post here, so please browse further on the Augmented World Expo youtube channel.
One notable high point of AWE2013, for me, was the showcase sponsored by Meta, a startup developing the first device allowing visualization and interaction with 3D virtual objects in the real world using your hands. It was made possible by the generous contribution from the private collections of Paul Travers, Dan Cui, Steven Feiner, Steve Mann, and Chris Grayson, and passionate volunteers who are helping advance the industry. Sean Hollister of The Verge did this excellent report on the eyewear showcase 35 years of wearable computing history at Augmented World Expo 2013 Also for more on Meta see this article by Dan Farber.
My colleagues at Syntertainment, Will Wright, Avi Bar-Zeev, Jason Shankel, and LaurenElliott all gave great talks. Ironically, we’re not building augmented reality apps or H/W. We all just happen to continue to be very interested in the field. Â
