The teams were winners of their respective university’s entrepreneurial challenge granting them wildcard entry to Slush Festival, a seven-day startup and tech event in Finland. On the morning of the grand finale, the teams unexpectedly found themselves pitching to the jury on a tram while sightseeing Helsinki.
‘We didn’t expect this at all. Suddenly we were in an old-school tram pitching our ideas,’ says Alexander Habtezghi, co-founder of UT startup Flawless Workflow. Flawless Workflow is a programming service that automates tasks for companies so that they can focus on their core activities. He continues. ‘There were different booths and we switched around presenting to different jury members and they could ask us their questions.’
’I still feel weirdly happy’
In the end, a team from Eindhoven University of Technology won the event. ‘Even though we didn’t win, I still feel weirdly happy,’ says Jordi Boons, co-founder of 2Scope. ‘It felt great to present. We expected that we wouldn’t win since we are still working towards building a prototype.’ 2Scope aims to bring artificial intelligence to a traditional stethoscope by equipping them with sensors to accurately diagnose a patient. Habtezghi shares the same feeling as Boons. ‘We have gotten a lot of support from Novel-T. We attended bootcamps where we were coached on how to deliver good pitches.’
Exploring the landscape
‘This event is a great opportunity for us to see what’s out there, to see what’s the competition and to meet potential investors,’ says Habtezghi. ‘There will be a variety of workshops and several talks by different startups through which we can learn a lot,’ he adds. Boons also sees this as a promising boost for their startup. ‘Our next step would be to create a minimum viable product that can be clinically tested. We are looking forward to discussing our ideas and receiving input from different investors.’
