Talent Fest, the sequel. Founders Factory Showcase, 23 May 2019

Following on from its successful 1 May show-case a noisy investor crowd filled London’s Ham Yard Hotel for a second time for Founders Factory 23 May show-case. This time, those within its portfolio raising pre-seed to seed round.

The early results have been impressive, with many of the startups leaving with a string of strong intros. Many investors have contacted Founders Factory congratulating us on the quality of the companies - and their presentations. Without giving away too many trade secrets, the fifteen companies were boot-camped through no less than 60 pitch sessions to make sure they were putting their very best feet forward. But our job was made easy, by the excellence of the portfolio and their absolute dedication to the cause.

First to the stage was Dan Bibas of Fountain, the Babylon Health for wealth management. Three key messages: first, that the secret to the future of wealth management is a hybrid of robo & real interaction; second, that the hybrid model is catalysed by AI triaging; and third, that b2b2c is the definitive go-to-market.

Next, Pat Whelan from Paddle HR wowed the audience by demonstrating how the human eye has a massively naive view of internal employee mobility, whereas AI has a much more comprehensive, wider (and often counter-intuitive) lens. Paddle’s platform puts this intelligence to active use, engaging employees, managers and recruiters to get talent moving.

Emily Sheffield journalist for 20 years & former Dep. Editor of @BritishVogue now CEO of This Much I Know  #TMIK gave an impressive and impassioned presentation about how the news is not dead - it’s evolving, and it’s our job to provide the news platform of the future. That is precisely what TMIK is creating.

Next, Thiago Azevedo, Co-Founder and CEO of ZOA explained how he is using his own hard-won experience to develop a monitoring-as-a-service product to allow automated monitoring of industrial plants by combining AI and their highly mobile robots.

Paul Massey - 15 year lawyer turned entrepreneur - is the perfect founder for Tabled which is building an operating system for legal teams using machine learning to triage work and automate simple legal functions - leaving the lawyers to focus on high value production.

Co-Founder and CEO of ROCKETO, Arunas Matacius told the powerful story of how he defied the medical odds and saved his dog’s life (yay for [name]) by re-inventing dog nutrition. By combining science and all the healthy benefits of a low-sugar, raw diet , he has created the world’s healthiest dog food.

Another founder with deep domain expertise, is Co-Founder and CEO of  Digital Insight, Shaun O'Mahony. With a sophisticated search protocol, the platform drives efficiency in the due diligence process, producing background profiles on companies and individuals in minutes. As much as looking for investment, Sean also put a call out for clients!

OnCare CEO and founder Alistair Cohen, self-professed product-nerd, is putting his skills to excellent use by revolutionising the elderly care sector with their mobile-first care tools and marketplace; he’s building a successful and impactful business.

Duncan Verry of Airsupply Solutions explained that the next vista for on-demand marketplaces are those for regulated industries. The marketplace has to take on more of the heavy lifting, but in doing so, it becomes more resilient to competition and harder to disintermediate. Starting in education, they are increasing the pay for teachers while reducing the cost for schools, with their revenue & usage stats spiking, it was a compelling presentation.

William Ritchie, Co-Founder and CEO, from Chosen. Chosen makes people analytics simple. Their insights solution leverages fragmented skills data to inform the strategic development of employees in organisations.

Influencer and entrepreneur,  Frédérique HARREL presented Rad Swan - her newly re-branded ethical and premium synthetic afro hair extensions and skin brand. She’s making protective styling ethical, inclusive, easy, and affordable, and has already sold in the hundreds of thousands.

Nicholas Oliver. the founder/CEO of People.io 'the Stripe of personal data & consent' enabling developers to rapidly build data-centric apps for voice, mobile and web blew the roof off the HamYard will his rockstar like performance, rocketing through no less than FIFTY slides in 3 minutes. Is the possibly the next Zuckerburg or Musk?

Jonathan Kruger, the co-founder and CEO of The Drop, demonstrated how he used his background in working with Chinese factories, to develop a personalised, on-demand, direct to consumer, online men's tailoring brand focusing on fit, quality and value for money.

Manoj Varsani, the founder and CEO of Hammock  who is (almost uniquely) both an experienced CTO and a landlord is developing the product that he himself wants:  a one stop shop for landlords offering savings, investments, rent collection and lending services

Finally, Guider is inventing the future of loyalty and learning through AI powered mentoring. UsingAI they help organisations build the best mentoring experience for their employees. Nick Ross, Co-Founder and CEO, who helped Perkbox go from ￡0-100m ARR explained how he saw Guider doing exactly the same thing.

If you are a start-up founder who would like to scale your business within our world-class accelerator, or an ambitious individual keen to build a start-up with us or an investor please visit FoundersFactory.com. If you are an investor, keen to know more about our portfolio, contact me on [email protected] .