SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Months of preparation and pitching by hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world came down to 12 finalists at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale event on Friday, May 17, at The Masonic in San Francisco. The judges awarded the Grand Prize, a $1 million investment, to Abivin, an AI logistics platform that won the regional competition in Vietnam.
Second place went to Klue, from Vancouver, Canada, which provides competitive intelligence software for enterprise sales teams. Klue won the regional competition in Toronto. Third place went to Sonavi Labs, from Baltimore, which has developed a smart stethoscope. Sonavi Labs won the regional competition in Boston.
Contestants and attendees at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale were greeted with an extra surprise during Friday’s event when SoftBank Group’s COO, and Chairman of Sprint, Marcelo Claure, paid a visit to speak to the audience about the SoftBank Vision Fund and its global investment strategy. Claure expressed interest in collaborating with the Startup World Cup to support innovation and entrepreneurship around the world, and he hinted that he might help some of the participating startups.
The winning startups from nearly 40 regional competitions around the world came to San Francisco to vie for a $1 million investment prize, which was awarded by the all-female judging panel from IBM Ventures, M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), NEA, Foundation Capital, and 500Startups.
This year’s Startup World Cup, organized by Pegasus Tech Ventures, brought together over 2,000 registered entrepreneurs, investors, corporate executives and other supporters of high tech innovation, along with major media representatives from The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, Wired, and TechCrunch, who moderated many of the fireside chats with notable tech leaders.
The event included fireside chats with Tim Westergren, Founder and former CEO of Pandora; Ray Lane, former President of Oracle; Neil Hunt, former CPO of Netflix; Window Snyder, former CSSO of Intel; Terry Jones, Founding Chairman of Kayak.com; Stacy Feld, VP of External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson; Shekar Ayyar, EVP of Strategy and Corporate Development of VMware; Jay Fulcher, CEO of Zenefits; and Steve Schoch, CFO of 23andMe. Keynote speakers included Curt Carlson, the former President and CEO of SRI International, and Josh Constine, Editor-At-Large of TechCrunch.
The 12 finalists also included Tag Sensors (Norway), Aeraccess (Mauritius), Jeplan (Japan), Startsat60 (Australia), Finnos (Finland), Noul (South Korea), Mira (U.S.), Biosolvit (Brazil) and Mimbly (Sweden).
“We congratulate the Abivin team for their tremendous success at the Startup World Cup 2019 event. The results this year proved one more time that innovation has no boundary,” said Anis Uzzaman, General Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures, and Chairman of Startup World Cup. “A successful startup can come from anywhere in the world and still compete at the global level. This sets the right example for all startups from every corner of the world and encourages them to take the highest challenges.”
For photos of the event, visit: https://photos.app.goo.gl/JYrDsRJTpucVvxSS8
About Pegasus Tech Ventures
Pegasus Tech Ventures is a global venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Pegasus works with emerging technology companies across the world and specializes in helping entrepreneurs connect with corporate partners to achieve global expansion in North America, Asia, and Europe. The 90+ person Pegasus team, which brings together a wide range of domain expertise and investment skill, operates out of offices in seven different countries. For more information about Pegasus Tech Ventures, please visit https://www.pegasustechventures.com.
About Startup World Cup
Startup World Cup is a global series of conferences and competitions that bring together the top startups, investors, entrepreneurs and tech CEOs around the world. Starting with regional competitions in nearly 40 countries across six continents, hundreds of selected top technology startups compete for the chance to move onto the Grand Finale event in San Francisco to win a $1 million investment grand prize. Startup World Cup is organized by Pegasus Tech Ventures in partnership with investors and local sponsors. For more information on the Startup World Cup, please visit https://www.startupworldcup.io.
