Inspiring IoT pitches, interactive sounds and new doors opening for hardware startups – Our Batch #5 Demo Day!

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What went down at the Batch #5 Demo Day 

The fifth batch of the HARDWARE.co accelerator went out with a bang! Berlin’s hardware community filled the betahaus Innospace for an evening of PechaKucha pitching, wild sound antics and the usual loud buzz of tech networking. In short, one of our most energetic Demo Days yet.

Batch #5 startups began the afternoon with a private session of rapid-fire talks with Berlin investors and VCs in the betahaus Arena. They gathered as much feedback as they could and warmed up for their pitches in the early evening. Soon enough, it was time to start heading to the Innospace to kick off the festivities with an interactive synth performance from our experimental music host Ain The Machine.

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The Batch #5 Platinum partners Deutsche Bahn Mindbox, Siemens Mobility, Bosch Car Multimedia and Audi took to the stage first. They each shared what attracted them to partnerships with hardware startups innovating mobility, logistics and maintenance through IoT, AI, machine learning and autonomous systems, and gave insight into the growing opportunities on offer for founders from pilot partnerships to new corporate accelerator programs. Then, the pitches began.

For this Demo Day, startups pitched in classic PechaKucha style – 20 slides, with 20 seconds presentation time on each slide, plus question time with the jury and the audience. Once all eight startups had pitched, the jury began their deliberation. Startups and community members mingled until it was time to announce the long list of prizes offered by our partners.

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Prizes, partnerships and what’s next for the Batch #5 Startups

Sensefinity from Portugal was named the Jury’s darling, having scored the most points in all categories for their presentation of an integrated IoT platform for global asset tracking, compliance monitoring and logistics management – this won them a Renkforce 3D printer from Conrad. Sensefinity also walked away with an offer for pilot partnership from Siemens, as well as a fast-track ticket to StartupBootcamp’s upcoming hardware accelerator. On the frontier of intelligent, self-regulating commercial buildings, BEAD was awarded the Audi Driving Experience, an opportunity to work with the automotive giant, as well the chance to join forces with Schleicher for their next round of prototyping. Berlin-based startup Car2Ad also received an opportunity to work with Audi, plus free consulting hours with Texas Instruments. Estonian startup Dorbeetle won a wildcard spot in the DB Mindbox accelerator for their autonomous cleaning robot, which we might see scooting around Deutsche Bahn train stations in the future.

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Along with the People’s Choice award of another Renkforce 3D printer from Conrad, the environmentalist engineers at ImagineXYZ won a place in brincs Hong Kong hardware accelerator for Remora.iot, a tracking system to ensure that government subsidies in their home country of Costa Rica only support sustainable and ethical fishing practices. Dox from Lebanon won the Honorable Mention award of the final Renkforce 3D printer from Conrad, for their end-to-end, cloud-connected system for smarter and safer drone batteries, and bikesharing analytics startup Joyride won a Siemens IoT keyring. All startups received a custom 3D-printed medal thanks to our friends at Formlabs.

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We want to give a big THANK YOU to all our partners, our mentors and of course, the Batch #5 startups for their dedication and commitment. We’ll see you all soon at the next meetup!

In the meantime, ambitious hardware startups should keep their eye open for the announcement of the dates for Batch #6. Stay tuned!

 

Photos by Dominik Tryba