NEXUS Startup Competition Winner Announcement - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

I'd like to invite our three judges back on stage, Tom, Akshhat, and Nihal, who had the very difficult task of choosing our final winner for the Nexus startup competition. And we'll have a little bit of a chat with them on stage before we announce our winner. So, can we get our three judges, please? And if he's got miked up, even better. Tom Ashak Nihow.

Gentlemen, look at you here.

You get your moment on stage now instead of sitting at the front there. So, everyone's seeing the front of your faces rather than the back of your heads. But, uh, awesome job. Uh, I'll start. We just we might as well just go from from near to far here.

But, how was that experience? How how I mean a how were the pitches and b

Yeah,

how how difficult was it to to to judge?

Yeah, I mean the pictures were amazing, right? They were all very thoughtful. They were presented really well. It's always hard in such a short time frame to try and figure out what's valuable, but honestly it's uh it's very reflective of the actual process of running diligence because often that's all you get. You know, you have maybe there's a lot of deal flow.

You have you have to prioritize and the questions you ask have to be in order of what matters to you as an investor. So that's basically what we were replicating.

Yeah, well said. I think as always, it's also a little bit about getting to know the founder, but some people came in with really really strong pitches. Felt like I was like watching an Apple keynote almost, but ultimately it kind of came down to, you know, which products do we love, which markets do we love, who had come along the furthest, and so a lot of really great progress, a lot of really great pitches.

Yeah. N

Yeah. Yeah. No, um the founders all thought on their feet. I know we had like seven minutes of like pretty deep questions for them. And so really good quality just in general on the Nexcom.

Yeah. You know, I I mentioned it live as as much as I enjoyed the actual pictures, I thoroughly enjoyed the Q&A a lot more because I know you guys had your job to do, but you bridging the gap between judge and pitch and the audience was absolutely perfect. So some of the questions I was like, "All right, I like this question. Now I want him to answer it." and and they did, you know, for the most part, their answers were solid and it was really cool to see that flow go back and forth.

My question or my next question would be, was there a big difference between the five pitches you saw today compared to the five that they did yesterday? You know, cuz I know some of them went went away with your notes. Some of them made changes. And I, for one, saw some of them up here with a bit more gusto and a bit more, all right, I've made it to the final. Now, this is my real chance to to to really shine here.

Uh, but did you notice any real major significant uh differences compared to day one and day two?

I I think you nailed it on the head. A lot more confidence from the people who were pitching. Um, they seemed very secure on, you know, the information that were giving out. Obviously, they took some notes from what we kind of discussed last yesterday and uh that information was crucial when we were delivering as well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well said. a lot more confidence and they could kind of read our questions from yesterday and bake that into the pitch. So, I saw a lot more data, saw a lot more metrics, which VCs love. So,

yeah. Okay. Since the judges wanted some metrics, we'll put them in. I like that. Um, but again, judging is difficult.

It's a difficult process, but you guys enjoyed it. What What's your key takeaway though from from, you know, doing doing something like this?

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's it's a mix of art and science to do this kind of thing. And um it's it's just such a reminder when you do it in this format that this is a very human to human business.

Yeah.

Ultimately it's about connecting with each other. You know that confidence and gusto we saw I think part of that was a reflection of just this mutual empathy that they were building with us and also with the audience and that you know was being reflected the other way around as well.

Yeah. And you know what kudos to the guys and and everyone that came up and did a pitch because doing something in three minutes to get as much as you can it's difficult. it's difficult and for the most part again a lot of them really nailed it which I thought was super cool. So we knew the hard work and dedication they were putting into this and again I I never envy judging. I I've judged uh various competitions in my lifetime too and it's not easy.

It is not easy separating the subjective from the objective. Really sitting back and looking at the parameters had they hit the KPIs what what what do we need? What what's needed to be done? And again, I don't envy it, but you guys did it. You guys got our grand winner.

We've even got a lovely little trophy to give out. Are we good to announce our grand winner? We are. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for staying with us. Thank you to our three judges who put in some hard dedicated work to really choose our final winner.

And that winner for the Nexus startup competition of Token 249 Singapore is

Yeah.

And you made it back. You were on your call and you made it back, my friend. Congratulations, Benjamin. judges here.

I love it. Pop yourself in the middle there, my friend. Oh, yeah. Just right there. And I'll I can come in as well.

It says, "I'm going to take some some time with this." And we make it nice.

And one video over here, gentlemen.

Yeah.

Congratulations. That's awesome.

Fantastic. I thank you very much, judges.