BlockStart: Blockchain Startup Pitches

[Music] hello everyone how are you doing i am here joined by four amazing startups and joel who is a accelerator manager at block start and so it is time for an amazing uh session of blockchain startup pitches job welcome on stage sorry i wanted to ask the audience also to pay attention to the peaches and prepare one or two questions for each of the startups so that they can also answer your questions joel the stage is yours great thanks a lot daniel and thanks a lot first of all for the the kind invitation um for us to present vlog start and um and uh four of our great startup finalists um so um i'm joanne fernandez i'm accelerator manager at block start program and also investment analyst at wright pixel an early stage vc fund held by the largest retailer in portugal but today we are here to talk about block start so i'll try to tell you how eu funding can be an enabler of blockchain pilots and so block start is a eu funded blockchain accelerator it's it has supported 60 solution providers so startups and 60 end user smes it is tackling the fields of retail fintech and ict it has almost 800 000 euros equity free to support these startups and smes it ran three acceleration programs from 2019 until early 2022 uh so the last acceleration program is about to end so no more opportunities for further startups and this program is run by early stage vc bright pixel innovation consultancy firm civita and startup community f6s so this program apart from the equity free funding up to 20k per startup up to four and a half k per smb adopter it helps also startups in their market validation through demos and tests uh growth support through mentoring sessions with business and tech experts and also networking via events like this one or matchmaking with investors and so this program is very much relying in a strong network of ecosystem partners including vc investors as lead block partners acceleration programs as block rocket communities as our three other european programs as needed to invest and of course awesome events like the best blockchain conference in the world european blockchain convention and also relying on over 30 great external mentors from investors founders ctos that have been helping our startups to to thrive during our our support program this program the structure is typically starts with two days an event that we call the ideation kickoff where 23 startups present and meet smes then uh this pool of startups is narrowed down to 10 startups who actually develop their mvp solutions uh in four months period that we call prototype stage and lastly the pilot stage when five to six startups implement their pilots in actual clients in smes and pitch at the final demo day event so looking back some of the the the kpis that we've achieved over 300 startup applications over 150 sme applications from over 40 countries so a pan-european project over 200 mentoring sessions and the satisfaction rate is above 90 percent um so um looking at the the testimonials from some of our startups so for instance ibiza is emphasizing the fact that we we stimulate startups to do a product development faster uh also very much focused in the testing by users so aiming to define clearly the target customer and to test and actually managing to uh to achieve some potential commercial agreements and uh in several examples we managed to help startups to to to discover and to meet potential customers so if you are curious about getting to know better our startups so 60 startups that you have to to to check you have in our website the all of their profiles and so we are definitely very proud of our startups and uh some achievements that would like to share as peter ella one of the finalists from the previous acceleration program signed a two-year contract with the european space agency kidian fund raised 400k from from techstars and some other investment investors and also ibiza just recently fundraised 1.5 million and a digital village fund raised 2 million dollars so of course that this is not due to block start support of course this is all the merit of of our startups but we at least we like to believe that we gave a slight contribution to these achievements of our or our great startups um so you are right away invited to our final event on the 24th of february it will be a hybrid event held in brussels but also online streamed online the third acceleration program uh demo day event where the six finalists from this last acceleration program will be presenting their developments and also their implementations in uh in sme adopters so stay tuned to our website and you'll you'll get to know in the coming weeks uh the the connections to this to this event uh but for sure the stars of today's talk should be the startups and so i'm very proud to announce the the second acceleration program finalists struggles from come together and hui from notary matthias from lonexchain and c money from moto blockchain so without further ado i'd like to to ask stravos uh to tell us a bit about come together please yeah hello i'm stavros i'm gonna sell my screen now so hey i'm ceo of come together i come together we unlock new revenues from secondary markets while improving and then the experience events business is being cannibalized by ticket scalpers and fraud they use ticket boats to buy tickets the moment they go on sale only to resell them later at much higher prices even horse some fans are denied access to events because they were sold fake or skunk tickets the root of these problems is static qr code tickets come together introduces a new form of digital ticket first it's based on blockchain and secondly we developed an innovative ticket delivery through a dynamic qr code that changes every 30 seconds this gives control and tracking of tickets that resales and transfers to event organizers we provide tools to set resale prices ranges and commissions and the benefits are better fun experience as ticket threatened scouting are prevented organize the success secondary market revenues we also provide audience insights knowing who the attendee is even if the ticket changes hands or in case of group purchase and the benefits are targeted marketing covet tracing and compliance with regulations regarding our product we are technology providers for event organizers and ticketing companies to sell tickets under their own branding it has three layers a new cio ticketing network a cloud api and white level ticketing tools the tools provide an end-to-end plug-and-play ticketing solution that includes a primary and secondary ticket marketplace a ticket wallet and an organizer's transport event tickets worldwide was 73 billion dollars in 2019 with an additional 15 billion from secondary sales currently in a top market for the vendor ganaches for 2022 satisfaction projects recovery 28 of 2019 market since 2018 our tickets are our nfp in this however are collecting not only tickets but also other memorabilia from events so we now bring this to the digital uh world with unique together now we offer tickets as nfc collectibles with digital art nfd collectibles such as event highlights or fun generated content and our unique selling point is a profit of attendance mechanism that enables exclusive energies for event attendees unique together is integrated with count together ticketing but is also offered as a standalone product nfts leaving our eocio network but can be withdrawn to ethereum for liquidity and interoperability purposes nft collectibles unlock massive new revenue streams for live events also they give event organizers performance royalties out of their events and they can increase fund engagements first by giving funds an extra incentive to go to an event to redeem exclusive entities and secondly through gamification and contests nft collectible is a very new market with explosive growth nba top topshop alone did more than 500 million in revenue is in six months come together launched in october 2019 and has provided ticketing to 54 live events customers include the most popular hip-hop label in greece and the uk ticketing company come together was part of blockstar program program and with their help we managed to hire two people to run two pylons and to participate to several events acceleration with qatar sports tech drives expansion into the sports industry and the qatari ecosystem and incubation with orpheum to music industry we also have business development partners such as supportive ways introduces to the top sports properties in the world who are a team with deep blockchain software business marketing and event index expertise fundraising so far is 500 000 euros and we are now looking for an additional 1 million to reach 2.7 million monthly revenue by the end of 2023 thank you very much for your time well great presentation stavros thank you very much i like your guitar so i'm just gonna take uh take the lead now on the on my presentation uh my name is ruiz orpikos i am co-founder and ceo of notary notary solves a very simple problem of notarizing contracts be it collateralized or non-collateralized project contracts and we we do this with multiple ways of of signing and you'll see this further down so essentially the problem is that contracts take not just time money but in most cases it takes it's hard for international validation and we've tackled this uh during covid because um uh during 2020 uh some of the initial pilots actually were solving specific business problems like uh coveted subsidy uh automation contract automation and this is actually what we did so we uh we streamlined the the contracting and the workflow of of contracting between multiple parties and essentially the the solution is is a web-based and and it's completely custom oriented for not just document creation and as well as uh signing but also notarizing with the with blockchain so it's blockchain agnostic so it's it's a layer between a client interface and any type of blockchain this is a good example this is a an accounting firm that needed to to notarize their subsidy forms and this is done with multiple parties so you log in you have access to your your profile you can sign documents and you can notarize the documents all in one go so these are the companies that we've uh with with the help of of block start we've we've worked with the azure plastic pre-certification and tso for actually deploying the applications and presently we're working with the different uh different prospects especially on certification because it's it's a very interesting niche and we're looking into other niches like uh e-governance and and financial services as well as supply chain management certification uh this is our team um as i said i'm a co-founder uh with uh with a team of programmers and uh this is a core team obviously but uh the the two other uh gentlemen and lady uh they have a background in legal and programming which is very helpful because contract automation actually uh requires massive expertise in in legal especially for multiple geographies and finally i'd like to thank not just our prospects and customers with block start for the mentoring the ecosystem access the networking and the exposure the access to to multiple events such as this and the ability to interact multiply with uh or with a multiple of stakeholders that would fine-tune our product and would give us lots of feedback on how to how to evolve our product and that's that's it from our site [Music] amazing thank you i think it's my turn just wanna share my screen and introduce myself and the company okay hope to i hope to see everything so hi everyone i'm matthias alessandra co-founder of loan exchange i think the company based in milan that focuses on applying blockchain to the credit market to digitize the assets and chain out funds and change our functions so starting from our vision therefore is the the core thing that define everything created we imagine that the new landing mark the new market the one that can fulfill the need of the people of the con of the economy and all the companies working in europe needs to be more comparative needs to find a way where investors and lenders cooperate put together the resources to try to increase the lending to the real economy to support the digital transformation the energy transition and so on and so forth so many more resources than the one now we have invested that will be needed and so the system has to change this also will generate positive benefits like more growth a more sustainable economy they interns help lenders and investors to increase their reserves so with this circular cooperative open ecosystem we think the future can be made more more achievable from considering all the goal of the european union and so on and so forth please also answer the need specific of the loan market because lenders after the financial crisis and even more after the public prices have capital equity constraints that limit their complaining capability better more and more resources every year but they have to find ways to invest them and so they need new channels to target to to reach the real economy to invest those money and finally on top of public public authorities regulators that are quite scared by the credit crunches and all the difficulties the law mark may have and its impact on the real economy so to answer all this specific need and we're generally speaking enabling this vision that fulfill the long-term goal of our our society we create a loan exchange that is a digital multilateral secondary marketplace it's a platform that connects lenders institutional investors answering the needs of the market in terms of liquidity transparency speed and participation so the b2b solutions that enable this kind of transaction in a more business as usual manner moreover doing so we digitize everything from the assets to the processes and so on and so forth and so we enable a new ecosystem of value-added services that together we don't have in the low market that's very legacy in terms of technology but that is somehow growing expanding also leveraging the open banking framework artificial intelligence and all the solution based on those data and so on and so forth so we try to be like an enabler also of a digital revolution that go that is broader in a sense compared to what we try to achieve to do so we created an enterprise level platform that has three major components is highly integ is open and easy to integrate in any financial institution and is also highly secure also the data layer based on the core the blockchain in terms of components and functionalities we have a marketplace to buy and sell loans easily so it connects where the institutional players are connected our house that allows to easily digitize those loans monitor them take investment decision and finally at the infrastructure layer with api that enabled ecosystem i told you before and so it empowers this digitization of the of the landmark the result is a solution that really changes the market both at market level so it brings transparency liquidity it opens the market to new players but also at the transaction level because it increase speed quite a lot it cut the cost because it got intermediaries it got manual processes it got operative risks and at the end is also open to a new ecosystem of digital solution that may not be the future further where we stand we work quite a lot to create solution uh that is accomplished both in terms of the market targeting and the technology and how to put this new technology into a system that requires certain level of scalability security operational resiliency so and so forth and now after this year of development we reach the initial part of the go to market so we have some players as sellers and buyers in this space we have commercial partnership very relevant one yesterday for instance we won the startup challenge of accenture italy so this is a new partner that will help us to go to market and we have also the some loans on the platform that are ready to be sold in the meantime we also collected money one other course and did major events so it's uh we did quite a lot of stuff and achieved quite quite interesting achievements uh during our process and this has been possible thanks to the team this is the core part of the team that is growing actually so those are the people that started very at the very beginning with me and maura the other co-founder and the interesting thing of the team that since the one we try to put together in a balanced manner both junior a professional but with a very genuine approach to innovation and senior experts with his strong experiences in launching enterprise level solution for the banking system which is a particular one moreover we had two previously previously successful interference in the team and it's also something that we we think i really want to to really take the right decision at the right moment finally we've been supported by many partners some financial institutions but also technological partner and accelerators and so on and so forth that made this possible may made possible uh moreover to accelerate during the journey it really creates something so complex in a limited time framework and to conclude a couple of words on blocks are blocks that have been the core for us to accelerate our go to market we work on some activities that are that they were at the time uh the most relevant thing for us to do and they supported us and we saw so we completed the prototype but also we've been connected with new partners and even more relevant we had the chance to test with some some of these partners real world use cases where real world data real world transaction so really put our solution in a reproduction environment i would say this is all for our side but we are here and if you want to see a name of the platform or better understand the many use cases in the market we can enable simply give me a call and send me an email and we will be more than happy to work through all work with all of all with them good morning everyone i hope you can see my screen i'm simone brigina and i'm here to present you multiple chain and then the collaboration that we did with blockstar to develop our iot system the mobd this is our team we were actually five people in the core team but thanks to blocks that we earn a six member because joao really worked strictly with us it was like to have a new team member with us we are in the second motorcycle market where there is a problem of assimilative information i want to sell my motorcycle i own the information you as a buyer cannot access this information so there is a lack of trust between us the lack of trust lead to a low value of the user motorcycle that leads to a low value modification and accessories in order to solve this problem we create an historical database where the user can save all the information related with the motorcycle we backed it with blockchain architecture to make it stamper proof and to track the ownership transfer and now if you want to buy a motorcycle we can give you access to the historical information so you can trust the buyer you can give the right price for the motorcycle as well as the right price for accessory and modification if it's worth it how does it work we develop with another acceleration program the application so the user can manually upload information but thanks to block start we develop another step we make the motorcycle able to autonomously apply the information in the digital identity thanks to the mod our iot system and the application that will be developed soon to configure the information that the user wants to store in the digital identity let's have a closer look the mob is an iot system with an obd connection so it reads what's happening in the brain of the motorcycle it does autonomous digital identity creation but it's also able to read remotely the failure that's happened while the customer is driving the mechanics can do the failure and do customer incident prevention remotely we have an artificial intelligence on chip to do predicting failure detection we can call the emergency system in case an incident it finally happened we do gps alarm and tracking system and we do big data and ai the orange square are the functionalities that we developed with block start we were able to develop a first prototype the v1 later to minion armenia to rise it created the vichu and the vitru was sent to four early adopters that collaborated with us in the blockstar program three in italy three in spain and one in italy so if i need to resume the main advantages of blockstar first of all the training we received a lot of training about blockchain technologies really useful for us the mentoring the tutoring not only with joao but i was able to ask to be put in contact with other person from all over the world and it's everything it was always always really useful for us the shared roadmap api when you are a startup to agree with someone in this case blockstar that we are going to do something in that day it was really useful for us to go straight to do it in that date the networking the events invitation will still be invited in several events we have a lot of networking that we are using right now also if the program is sending obviously they found it not only for us that we received 20k funding but for the early adopters there's received 3k funding to work with us and the pilot testing and market validation i saw a lot of programs block start is the only program to work on market validation and pilot testing so an example of what we achieved we are in the eu support for blockchain ndlt in sme report we are choosing as an example this is great visibility for us thanks to to blockstat and blockpool we are thanks to blockstar we would put it in contact with mind the bridge and we are now in the best 100 au blockchain startup to invest in in the portfolio or the blockchain this is thanks to the networking effect we really trust acceleration program we already we worked with block staff but also with block pool and with other several acceleration programs and we push everyone to search for an acceleration program is someone interested we are opening right now to our investment round we are searching for 300 thousand euro for the ten percent of the company and so the best way to play the future is to create it better with us i would like to thank you blockstart for this opportunity and the blockchain the european blockchain convention too thank you thank you very much for the presentations we have few minutes left we have some questions from the audience i think it's a good idea if we can pick a few we could start with the questions for come together what other revenue streams of the startup is there any revenue stream coming from the second hand ticket sales yeah well currently actually have our revenues depending on live events that are taking part in greece uh under come together's platform so for now we are just hosting some events there and we are in talks for a wide level contract with a label hearing an organizer here in greece we don't have revenue from second hand tickets because of the types of the events that we were running but we will run some events soon that we believe that we will have some revenues from this side and we will test our valuable position there the second question for you and the last for you is where do you plan to spend the money raised i think you mentioned you're looking for an investment of 1 million where do you plan to invest this money yeah we're planning to hire some more people business developer and devs and we also have some plans to join the events that are related to ticketing industry and the live events industry to to expand our network and get some clients from there and in order to to test our use case in foreign countries outside uh countries thank you we have one minute left very quickly question for loan chain what kind of credit checks do you do yeah it's a very good question we work first on the data set we use asthma long templates and we integrate our solutions partners and capabilities in system integration to translate the data in that translation check uh the semantically uh the translation is correct uh we let the possibility to audit obviously documents but beside all all of these through apis we connect to um scoring rating agencies they can further reach the data set verify the data for third parties provide scoring of the company or or or a score of the borrower and so on and so forth so we try to leverage a a a thorough ecosystem and a photo use of technologies to try to bring as much as possible visibility and enrichment of the data field and verification of that as well understood and 10 15 seconds very quickly question for simone what is the incentive for the first owner to share the data or the details of the model yes this is really simple if you are a good owner you take care of the motorcycle you want to you are willing to share the data because the buyer will pay you a sales price so you are going to sell the motorcycle to an aggregate price you are going to have money back for accessory modification simple thank you very much thank you all for being here today and sharing all your amazing projects using blockchain technology thank you joao also for your unboxing convention and to the audience if you have any more questions for our entrepreneurs you can go draw to joe all's spiritual booth in the european boxing convention umbrella platform and continue the conversation there thank you very much thank you all thank you very much thank you guys a pleasure bye [Music]