Pitch Helsinki Kicks Off World's First Live Equity Crowdfunding Pitching Competition


    Enterprise Helsinki is putting on their biannual event, Pitch Helsinki, starting in one hour, and is bringing together a nice gathering of Finnish startups and investors with the goal of seeing the right kind of pitches and networking that leads to funding rounds.

    This event is also billed as the world’s first real-time equity based crowdfunding event, allowing unacreddited investors to bid on the six companies they see up on stage, through Invesdor crowdfunding platform. They will also see another six startups with that decided not to raise money through crowdfunding.

    “Slush 2013 was a great success and now that investors around the world have their eyes on Helsinki and Finland, we wanted to use the opportunity and offer them a way to continue following Finnish startup scene live in action”, says Ari Seppänen from EnterpriseHelsinki.

    Certainly it’s exciting that the Helsinki city government through Enterprise Helsinki and NewCo Factory has thrown together an event and wants to see companies funded through this new and powerful form of financing, but is this a good thing for equity crowdfunding? I would remind investors to do their due diligence on these companies. I know many of these companies and teams, but investing in startup companies is a very risky investment, and I’m a little anxious if there are any consequences to investors getting caught up in the moment.

    But without seeing any pitches and about one hour until kickoff (at the time of publishing), a number of these companies have already raised a decent amount of money. For example, PlayMySong has already raised close to €4,000, which isn’t a bad amount of money, considering it’s 19% of their goal for the night.

    The pitching teams can be found below, and the live stream can be found here.

    720° – Indoor Environmental Quality Solutions. Or in plain english – interior weather monitoring, that aims to help make your work environment better.

    Applixure Oy – In its simplest terms – Google Analytics for managing computer problems in large organisations.

    Audrey (Crowdfunding) – Dating site using real identities.

    Avansera Oy (Crowdfunding) – A very smart solution for supermarket (FMCG) analytics and prediction analysis. Basically they know more than you do about your shopping patterns and they can sell it.

    Blogat Oy (Crowdfunding) – Dating for bloggers and brands. That is if you want to promote your company, you can find the right blogger to do it for you on Blogat.

    Emotion Tracker – The name says it all. They want to track your emotions and tell you how you feel at any given moment in time.

    Exaget Oy (Crowdfunding) – Google AdWords for Radio. Basically provides a targeted approach to radio advertising. Nifty.

    Innovamo – The make NFC stuff. Guess we will have to wait for the pitch to find out.

    Playmysong Oy (Crowdfunding) – Ever dreamt of controlling the music at a bar? This is what Playmysong does and is pretty good at it.

    Smarp – Make your employees drive your social media and reduce online marketing cost per click in the process.

    Tespack (Crowdfunding) – Renewable energy is the way of the future, and so are these solar panel backpacks.

    Uniqul – Cash is not really my thing, neither are credit cards but to make biometric payments work is tough, really tough. Hope that Uniqul can crack it.

    UseTrace – Web Functionality Testing With A Human Touch Raises.