After 6 months of coding, business workshops and pitch training – the day had finally come. On September 8th we opened our doors to invite a selected crowd of VCs and business angels to the Arcotel Donauzentrum. The new tech hotel of the Arcotel group was the perfect match for a Chatbot Demo Day.
Investors Master Class
The day kicked off with an exiting keynote from Kaj Hagros – seed investor and CEO at Pivot5. Kaj founded 8 companies, served 30 boards and had several successful exits. He flew in from Helsinki to talk about his angel experiences and chatbot investments in Finland. As investor, the most important investment criteria for him is:
He argued that many teams are so excited about their concept, that they fail to see the importance of a smart go-to-market strategy. Also, he pointed out, investors should only invest in domains that they fully understand.
‘There used to be an app for everything. Now there is a bot for everything.’
Kaj talked about the many use cases for chatbots: from equity research to AI-based health assistance. However, he highly emphasised that a bot itself, is not the business itself – it is a way of reaching and engaging with your target audience.
The potential of chatbots
The keynote was followed by a panel discussion by:
Kaj Hagros – CEO at Pivot5
Wolfgang Bosch – Business Development Executive at IBM Watson
Natalie Korotaeva – Facebook Developer Circle Vienna Lead
Marc Isop – Chief Revenue Officer at Onlim
The discussion gave interesting insights into the potential of bots in the corporate and startup environment. Furthermore, the panellists discussed the role of women in the chatbot community and whether the majority of bot personalities is male or female. All speakers agreed that there are many use cases for bots, but that ‘building a bot company’ should not be the ultimate business goal – a chatbot makes sense if it is the best way to reach the consumer.
Pitch your bot
After a short coffee and networking break, it was finally time for our teams to step on stage. Our 4 chatbot companies had to face a though jury:
Selma Prodanovic – founder and CEO of 1MillionStartups
Nina Wöss – Principal at Speedinvest
Kaj Hagros – CEO at Pivot5
The jury had some tough but fair questions for the teams, and pointed out that all pitches were extremely well done and interesting.
After the last pitch, the vistors and people watching the livestream were asked to vote for their favorite pitch. Team Jingle collected the most votes and therefore received a hotel voucher from Arcotel Donauzentrum.
After that, the official part of the Demo Day was over. Food and drinks were served and TheVentury invited everyone to a fun afterparty in the first district.
We think that the demo day was a huge success. We received amazing feedback from visitors, our jury and the teams. We are extremely happy to release 4 market-ready bots to the world and we are keen to see them live their full potential! We will further support them and their way and will integrate them in the Elevate Alumni Group – they will always be important members of the ELEVATE family!
You couldn’t make it to the Demo Day? No worries, you can watch the livestream:
We also want to thank our partners for making this event happen:
