Judges of the WIT Start-Up Pitch 2014 placed their bets on the P2P sharing site for event spaces, Spacebase, while the People’s Choice award, voted by delegates, went to Local Alike – a Thailand-based community-based tourism platform.
Julian Jost of Capetown-based Spacebase pipped three other finalists, Mozio, Jayride and Local Alike, for the top prize in this year’s competition which received a record number of entries. Eight semi-finalists pitched their ideas at the WIT Bootcamp on Monday and four were chosen to vie for the top prize on Wednesday.
Hard work pays off for Julian Jost (right) who accepts award from Rani Francois-Marie Saad
Spacebase, with the tagline of “Changing The Way We Meet”, is a P2P marketplace connecting event and meeting organisers with unique venues around the world. Its mission is to offer curated venue spaces in key locations to professionals who organize events from product launches to boardroom meetings to huge conferences.
Julian Jost, CEO of Spacebase, said, “I love meetings but meetings tend to be boring, held in boring spaces. Creative spaces can add that magic to your meetings. It’s for the band that’s writing their next top hit, the boy proposing to the girl, the company announcing a product launch, executives brainstorming for the next big idea. We want to change the way people meet.”
Set to launch November 7, it works on an Airbnb-like model, earning commissions from venue rentals.
Chairman of the judging panel, Rani Francois-Marie Saad, corporate director, Abacus Ventures, which sponsored the WIT Start-Up Pitch, said the judges picked Spacebase for “the most improved presentation”.
Spacebase just barely squeezed into the final round and the presentation Jost made on Wednesday was a completely different pitch from that on Monday. “It showed he took our feedback and he was hungry enough to work really hard on his final pitch. That’s the quality we admire in entrepreneurs – that fighting spirit,” said Saad.
At the same time, he said the judges also loved the idea that Spacebase was tapping into a huge, untapped online business opportunity in such a structured manner.
In his presentation, Jost said the meeting industry in the US alone was worth US$126 billion. Miriam Moscowici, strategic marketing for BCD Travel, one of the judges, said corporate meetings was a huge untapped segment and if Spacebase managed to crack the market, it would have great potential as a scalable business.
Judges applauded the social purpose behind Local Alike, which was voted most popular start-up by WIT delegates. “Giving back to the community is a good thing, it’s a social idea you don’t find often. Our concern was that the team had to move to a more professional level and if the idea managed to scale, then would the community element be lost?” said Saad.
Local Alike co-founders – Noon (right) and Somsak
“We were also uncomfortable with how the revenue would be distributed among the community – if it went to one person – and that this system was not under their control.”
Local Alike matches travellers who are looking for authentic, meaningful experiences and 70% of income earned goes back towards the community around which the experience is based.
Both Mozio and Jayride are trying to crack the ground transportation problem. Mozio is positioned as a ground transportation technology partner offering airport transfers while Jayride is a service offering transfers and transportation in 50,000 local destinations.
Judges this year were impressed with the quality of entries as well as the diversity of the ideas. “It was very strong this year. The entrepreneurs were very confident, they knew what they were talking about and where they are going. They had established business models and ideas and we were surprised that we even had one team, Antuilla, from Montego Bay, Jamaica, as well as teams from Australia and Europe,” commented Saad.
“The entries also covered the travel value chain from pre- and post-trip and it shows the maturing of travel start-ups as well as the attraction of the Asian market.”
