With so many innovative, scaling start-ups sharing their pitches with us, our panel of expert judges
played an important role on Pitch Day. Their experience and insight helped us to find our first cohort
and some of them shared a little of this insight during a brief panel conversation.
Bindi Karia, Venture Partner at Molten Ventures was impressed by the start-ups’ ability to illustrate their
technology and their mission in such a clear and concise way: “All of the teams have extraordinarily
complex solutions and to dissolve them into a five minute pitch is a very difficult thing to do,” she said.
“I’ve really been able to understand what it is the company does, what their level of traction is, and the
problem that it is they’re trying to solve – and that’s I know really hard for this kind of technology.”
For Hanadi Jabado, Entrepreneur, Advisor, Investor, it was their ability to convey the financials that
impressed her. “Usually when you listen to very complex pitches on very complex technologies, the
founders get lost just describing the science and the technology. Whereas today, what I’ve been hearing
are people who are trying to apply science and technology to make money – which is refreshing. They’re
telling us how they’re making money and how they’re planning to make more money.”
Global ambitions and the ability to make an environmental impact was a big plus for Irene Graham OBE,
CEO, Scaleup Institute. “They’ve all got global aspirations and it’s good to see the client traction as well.
Ultimately, that’s what’s going to build a product and make it scale,” she said, adding: “Several of the
companies spoke about the positive environmental impact that their solutions could make in relation to
the problem solving. That was really good to see.”
The sustainability impact these businesses can have was also a big take-away for Matt Ohlman, CTO,
Shadow Ventures. “There’s clearly an overwhelming need for these technologies. I think that blends into
what we need to do to fix the existential crisis we’re facing as a planet – like climate change,
environmental and social issues. Manufacturing’s plays such a key part in all of those. There’s a there’s a
lot here that is super important and it’s only going to continue to get more important as time goes on.”
The benefits of the technologies pitched to manufacturers wasn’t lost on Karia. “What I’ll observe about
all the solutions here, is the cash, efficiency and energy savings that are going to help these manufacturers leapfrog to the next generation of production.”
When asked what her advice would be on getting it right as the start-ups begin their Sixth Sense
journey, Jabado simply warned against where it can go not so well: “People get it wrong by forgetting
the reason why they’re there and that is to build a sustainable, scalable business. So they need to keep
their eyes on the ball and making sure that they don’t forget what is driving them.”
Before they went back to deliberating about the winning teams, the four judges gave their last pieces of
advice to the entrepreneurs.
Irene Graham OBE: “Be focused, be resilient. Build your team.”
Matt Ohlman: “Don’t chase capital. Chase customers”
Hanadi Jabado: “Remember your values and entrepreneurship is a team sport.”
Bindi Karia: “Find the product market fit, execute and revenue, revenue, revenue.”