Member Article

Ten startups poised to pitch at Thinking Digital

A group of ten exciting UK startups have been shortlisted to pitch on Tyneside next week as part of the third Thinking Digital Startup Competition.

The groups will descend on Newcastle’s Campus North on Tuesday looking to impress judges including Tech City UK CEO Gerard Grech, Wordnik.com founder Erin McKean and SendGrid’s Martyn Davies.

Two lucky winners will go on to appear in from of the 500-strong audience at the Thinking Digital Conference at the Sage Gateshead.

Paul Smith - the founder of Newcastle-based startup accelerator Ignite - will return as master of ceremonies, and two finalists will be selected to pitch on the iconic main stage of The Sage the next day.

An overall winner will be picked by the audience at the sold-out conference, which will feature more than 500 leading lights from the worlds of tech, digital, mobile and media.

This year’s competition is run in association with the Ignite accelerator and North East startup blog Betarocket, and sponsored by SendGrid, Particular, Palringo and Transmit Startups.

The ten shortlisted startups are:

All4Coaches www.all4coaches.com (Sheffield) - Fronted by ex-footballer Hugo Cortez, All4Coaches is a web and mobile app that allows amateur football coaches to collect game and training data, and even recommends improvements

Audiowings www.audiowings.co.uk (London) - Audiowings styles itself as “Google Glass, but for your ears instead”. The company is developing smart location-aware headphones that enable users to browse, share and consume great sounds, and access personalised, relevant audio in real time.

Boutiny http://boutiny.com/ (Sheffield) - Boutiny acts as a dress discovery and shopping app, enabling shoppers to browse dresses from multiple stores and pay with one payment.

FoneSense https://fonesense.com (Waterford) - FoneSense offers users the opportunity to use an advertising jingle as a ringtone or message sound, allowing them get paid whenever their phone rings into action.

Formisimo http://www.formisimo.com (Manchester) - Formisimo helps companies build better checkouts and online forms. Described by The Next Web as the “Google Analytics for Forms”, it enables companies to improve checkout conversion rates, and even intervene in real-time if a user looks set to give up on a form.

I Can Make http://www.icanmake.co/ (London/Oxford) - I Can Make is building a store of fun educational content for 3D printers. From Stephenson’s Rocket to Spaceship One, children can 3D print models of iconic items, and even find out how to make them themselves.

Reframed.tv reframed.tv (Newcastle) - Reframed.tv is a different way to have conversations around video. Users can create contextual conversations with time-specific comments in video, share them with deep links, follow users and favourite comments.

Rormix http://rormix.com (Manchester) - Rormix is a free app that allows users to discover new emerging music videos from independent and unsigned artists. It was launched on iOS and Android in October, and was hailed as one of the best apps of 2013 by The Next Web.

Wibbu www.wibbu.com (Newcastle) - Wibbu is a smartphone and table application which aims to teach Spanish speakers in Spain and Latin America how to speak English, based on an understanding of how their native language is constructed.

Zipcube zipcube.com (London) - Zipcube is an online market for desks, meeting rooms and venues. It helps save time in booking office space, allows offices to list their unused space for free.

Thinking Digital founder Herb Kim said: “We’re blessed every year with a fabulous group of fascinating startups from across Western Europe, bringing their best stuff to win the Thinking Digital Startup Competition.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .