The Mad World of MadTech: March Roundup

March was such a crazy month. So crazy, that we're posting this half way through April – we know, we know, oops. But needless to say, the amount that went on for our startups, both our recent grads (wahoo class of 2017!) and alumni was pretty impressive. So, without further ado...

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1. Huge bunch of our Startups spotted in KPMG MadTech Shift 100

MadTech is not only making our daily life more comfortable but also taking the lead in the current digital world. This is why KPMG has created ‘The Shift 100’ highlighting those entrepreneurs responsible for this new era we’re living in, with consumers being able to get far more quick, efficient and flexible services than ever before.

And whilst all of this industry development is incredibly exciting, party poppers and streamers went off in the office this March as a huge list of our alumni were selected as part of the MadTech Shift.

Big congrats to all of you! Read more here. 

2. We made it! Collider's Big Day was quite a success

The end of the month saw our annual Demo Day, which took place at the incredible Unruly offices.

Needless to say, it was PACKED, and with its unique commercial focus, we saw many brands from the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo and Ogilvy, impressive investors and awesome startups.

With our new-stye Demo Day, not only our fifth cohort startups pitched but some of our impressive alumni, ending with Good-Loop being crowned the winner of the popular vote.

You can read more about it here.

3. Pixoneye spotted on the ‘50 most disruptive UK companies in 2017’ list

As we know, the UK is standing out because of its innovative and entrepreneurial mindset in all industries, and tech is taking the lead, with the Pixoneye team clearly playing an important role.

‘Future 50’ ranking by Real Business has awarded a deserved position to our class of ’15 alumni this year. Great work guys!

Read more here.

4. Cooala landed in the Top 100 Europe award 2017

March saw yet another win for one of our alumni, Cooala, who found themselves listed in the Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award.

A huge congratulations to our class of ’14 team for this brilliant achievement. Read more here.

Meet The Class of 2017: From The Crowd at Demo Day

With the very best in MadTech all under one roof, there were some incredible comments on social media throughout the day. Here's our round up of our Class of 2017 milestone Demo Day.

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1. Sarah Wood being totally awesome.

2. Jeremy Basset getting arty.

3. In response to Frenzi's pitch stating "banners are dead":

4. Startacus loving Good-Loop, our Class of 2017 Demo Day winner.

5. The Collider alumni being the lovely, supportive lot they are.

The Collider Class of 2017

Our Class of 2017 have been on one hell of a journey the past 16 weeks. They've met over 10 curious, ambitious brands helping them to validate their proposition, mingled with endless investors and presented some pretty incredible decks. So without further a do, please meet our 2017 startups.

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Vensy

Vensy is a platform that provides a simple way for brands to discover the best athletes to sponsor, powering their marketing campaigns, whilst also helping athletes build and monetise their marketability.

Frenzi

Frenzi Media is the fastest and easiest platform for brands to build and publish engaging interactive ad campaigns across different online and mobile publishers.

Rate8

Rate8 is a mobile and web-based platform for consumers to get instant feedback on fashion and lifestyle items, from friends or via the Crowd. For brands, Rate8 represents a commercially viable source of item-based and user-based preference data.

Pearlai

Péarlaí provides shopping centre managers with an easy to use platform which enables them to delight their shoppers, impress their tenants and provide detailed data to their landlords – all accessible to them at the click of button.

Good-Loop

Good-Loop unites brands, publishers and people in the shared endeavour of converting advertising money into charitable donations.

Tweepforce

Tweepforce – the social media commerce platform, turning private messages into transactions.

AdLaunch

AdLaunch enables simple, fast video creation and editing directly in your browser, so anyone can create good looking video content, not just professionals. The platform will soon include unique AI technology to enable even faster video creation based on image recognition and user data.

Greengame

Greengame wants to make sustainable living the norm. Our tech automatically tracks people’s activities that impact the environment - and enables cities and brands to engage and reward them for living sustainably.

How To Be Successful In A Startup Accelerator

After relaunching our Collider quarterly MadTech drinks, it would only be right to get someone to say a few inspirational words to a room of startups, investors and brands, right? And that someone could only have been Carl Wong from Living Lens. Check out his top six tips to all startups on how to really get the most from an accelerator programme.

1. Play the long game.

Don't ever forget who you've spoken to. Meet them. Follow up with them. Make demands of their time, but play the long game.

2. Keep at it.

It's bloody hard raising money, and much, much harder than you think it is now [early stage]. You have to keep at it, you have to keep going, and it's going to take three times as much effort and three times as long in terms of time. If you do keep at it, you will make it happen.

3. Craft your story.

That's a learnt skill, not an art. There's a way to tell your story, but make sure you know it inside out.

4. Be bold.

Show off. It's not about what you think you may be able to do, but what could you do if you had everybody behind you and all the starts aligned.

5. Be prepared.

You should be prepared for all the questions – that's what's going to help you in shaping, thinking about your product market fit, who your competitors are, what is your pricing, your distribution, how are you different from the rest, how do you prove that? Who is going to beat you? You need to know the answers to all of that because somebody is going to ask you and you need to be coherent.

6. Love it.

Have a brilliant time, because, do you know what? You may never get the exit. You may never even fundraise to the level that you want to. But if you keep thinking about tomorrow, you're not going to be able to enjoy today.

Launching in Amsterdam with a bang

We couldn't just launch in Amsterdam without something pretty special, which is why this week some of our team headed out to the Dutch capital for our second popup.

Bringing brands and startups together is what we do best, and so this time round we were joined by a number of senior team members from both KPN and NS, hosted in Deloitte's iconic The Edge building.

Working with Ellen, Amsterdam Collider's co-founder to help establish their challenges, we identified the best startups to select for the popup and work directly with the teams.

Joined by a number of Collider startups including Pixoneye, Scoop Retail, Syncspot, Locomizer and Seenit, Collider Booster startup Duel, we also welcomed three startups from Belgium and Holland – Cabture, Social Seeder and Storymail.

Trial funds were up for grabs, so the popup meant business and gave both the startups and brands the chance to really knuckle down to see where they could work together.

But KPN and NS struggled to only pick one each, and so with Social Seeder and Storymail picked as the number-one-let's-do-this, there were many other promises of future conversations for others.

Ellen said: We designed the popup as a highly interactive session, where the corporates shared their challenges and topics of interests, allowing to identify together relevant applications of the startups’ technologies. KPN and NS have each chosen a startup for a trial project and invited several startups for follow-on conversations."

You'll be hearing much more from us in Amsterdam as we're now open for applications, as we scour the globe for the very best startups to join our first ever programme in Amsterdam. You can apply right here.