Besides making their business real, the finalists have competed for the 3000$ scholarship and the chance to represent Iasi at the Innovation Labs Finals in Bucuresti.
A national exposure within the biggest Romanian pre-acceleration program is waiting for the Iasi winners at the capital. There, they will compete with other finalists from Bucuresti, Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu, and Timisoara, and also get the perfect environment to attract new clients, partners, investors, gain feedback and hunt new opportunities to apply for.
About the program: before jumping to the winners, let us tell you what it took the finalists to get to this point. It all started with a Hackathon, 24h of intense work on structuring their business idea together with mentors. 8 teams out of 17 were selected to enter the 3-month pre-acceleration program.
7 workshops with top experts, thinking and rethinking the business, endless mentoring discussions and a lot of work are what happened next. Not everybody made it through. And at Demo Day we’ve seen the evolution and checked the results of 4 finalists, 4 startup warriors, 4 innovative hustlers.
“If it was easy, everybody would do that”
Back to the winners. After a 2-minute pitch followed by questions from the jury, the teams also had to do a 5-minute demonstration of their product. A platform that filters the news, a device that takes care of fish, an extension that saves your money, etc. All of them were awesome to watch working. These things together made a hard time for the jury to make the decision. But it was made.
And the lucky winners are *drums please*…
– AquaSmart – an application that helps you saving your aqua pets. It includes fish feeding, plant fertilization, pH control, temperature interrogations and much more.
– Not This Time Pal – a Chrome extension that by 1 click on any product photo, on any site tells you whether the product is fake or original, the vendor is trustworthy or fraudulent and the offer is good or bad.
– vCatalog – Transparency, security, stability, modern technologies, blockchain, neuronal networks. If all of this has raised your interest, imagine all these to be used for schools, parents, teachers, and pupils.
– TrueStory – a Chrome Extension which helps you to be your own journalist by providing multiple perspectives over the subject you’re reading. You stay informed, save time and still read your favorite publishers.
The team that took those 3000$ home to invest in their work on the startup is vCatalog.
Although the program came to an end in Iasi, we are cheering on our local teams at Demo Day Bucuresti. And we are definitely following them and their next successes. There is still a long run till a sustainable business and even longer to become a unicorn.
If you are here reading this, feeling proud for the local startups, congrats, you are a community player and we encourage you to stay like that. Join our Innovation Labs Iasi community and be with us for the 4th edition too.
Let’s continue to #makeitreal together.
The Innovation Labs 2019 program in Iasi is organized by TechLounge and Asociatia Calemis together with our national partners Orange, Carrefour, BRD Groupe Société Générale, OMV Petrom, Medicover, and The Romanian-American Foundation, as a strategic partner.
Also, the program couldn’t happen without our local partners BEST Iasi, ASII, LSAC and RubikHub.
The success of Innovation Labs Iasi is also due to the possibility to reach innovators through the educational system the program being supported by Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi and Alexandru Ioan Cuza University. And the special contribution comes from the Faculty of Automatic Control & Computer Engineering and the Faculty of Computer Science.
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