Pick of the bunch from EIE12

Last Thursday (the 10th May) was Engage Invest Exploit in Edinburgh. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the event which puts investors in front of a range of high quality technology prospects.

For me the stand out pitch was RecommendedBy, a social shopping companion aimed squarely at the student market. Founder Cally Russell was first up and opened with a bold statement – £100 million exit in 4 years time. This went on to be a bit of a contentious issue throughout the day with advice given later from speaker Deborah Magid, of the IBM Venture Capital Group, being not to mention exits as investors want to see entrepreneurs build a sustainable business. Regardless of that Cally was confident, concise and had clearly taken the lessons from Bill Joos to heart. Another stand out of was the design of the deck, uncluttered, clean and with nice graphical effects and attention to detail.

Another standout pitch was by Sofant Technologies who aim to improve smartphone antenna performance (and therefore battery performance) whilst reducing the number of antenna required. The presentation by CEO Sergio was a bit dry but the technology is interesting and anything that can improve the battery life of my phone I’m all for.

Another few companies with talented people behind them that I’m going to be keeping an eye on are:

• Insight Arcade – Founded by Allan Lloyds, Insight Arcade is an online platform for learners aiming to connect with learners with peers and enable the discovery of training opportunities such as classes, courses and workshops and provide a framework for lifelong self directed learning.
• theCADcube – I liken theCADcube to a kind of GitHub for designers and architects. Providing a library of 3D CAD models from leading and niche manufacturers.
• PureVLC – pitching on the day and on a stall with some impressive demos PureVLC are the creators of Li-Fi, a solution to the radio spectrum crisis. They use visible light for high speed wireless communication using standard LED lightbulbs. They were demoing a world first – text messaging via light.

EIE12 was full of plenty more cool startups including seeu.at and Plantedd from Jamie McHale and David Wong who have written for RookieOven. Big thanks to Informatics Ventures for organising, hopefully next year will have some more startups there.