Constellation Research is a technology research and advisory firm based in Silicon Valley. The company helps companies formulate strategies to transform their businesses through the early adoption of disruptive technology. With that in mind, Constellation launched a startup pitch competition for tech enterprise startups called “The Pitch”. The finals will be held over two days beginning September 13th.
Constellation launched The Pitch to fill a void. It is the only industry wide gathering of startup founders, enterprise technology decision makers, early-stage investors, venture capitalists, corporate venture funds, and system integrators that identifies the next enterprise startup unicorns.
Eligible companies for The Pitch must be Seed, Pre-Series A startups or Series A and have a $3M ARR and below. The competition’s categories are: Customer experience and commerce, Future of Work, Data to decisions and AI, Core Tech Infrastructure Platforms, FinTech and HealthTech.
Senior level buy-side executives comprise the panel of judges who selected the finalists based on their demonstrated growing success among their industry competitors. The startups also showed more clearly how their solutions benefit the Global 2000 organizations with new and innovative ideas.
To participate in the pitch event, qualified startups submit a short video for the initial “pitch” that meets key criteria. Public voting in combination with expert judges determines the finalists. Public voting for The Pitch winners will take place on each of the competition’s two-day virtual event. Finalists for the pitch contest will be grilled by the judges for 30 minutes, and the winners in each category announced each day.
“We are excited to showcase a high-quality list of enterprise tech startups with the Constellation Academy, a super elite group of technology decision makers across all industries in the Global 2000. These finalists represent the best of enterprise tech startups in the early stages of growth,” said R “Ray” Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research.
On Day One of The Pitch finalists in three categories will make their pitch and then answer individual questions from judges which is termed “Crossfire”.
These are the four finalists for the Future of Work and Employee Experience Category:
Auditoria.AI: Makes organizations more efficient and competitive by accelerating key finance processes, increasing business visibility, and improving compliance using AI and machine learning technology.
Compa: Develops an integrated system of contract, technology, process and procedure that allow government clients to get the services they need when they need them,
Roots Automation: Bring the concept of Digital Coworkers to the marketplace, powered by Cognitive Process Automation,
Trustifi: A cyber security firm delivering solutions on software as a service platform, deploying email security products providing both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor.
Speakers and judges participating on Day One include: Joanne Moretti of JCurve Digital, Tracey Zimmerman of Robots & Pencils, Scott Strickland of BT 150 Alumni, Barbry McGann of WorkDay Ventures, among others.
Finals for the categories Customer Experience and Commerce and Data to Decision and AI will also be held, with the winners of each announced the same day.
On Day Two finalists will pitch in the categories: Core Tech Infrastructure and Platforms, Healthtech and Fintech and will follow the same format as Day One.
Intertwined in each day are fireside chats that include: Mei Lin Fung, an early CRM pioneer, women in tech champion, and pioneer for tech for good, Emily He, Enterprise Tech Executive, Ari Qayumi, Managing Partner of Mindful Venture Capital, Barbry McGann of Workday Ventures, and Lara Druyan of Silicon Valley Data Capital .
Horizon3.ai was chosen as a finalist in the Core Tech Infrastructure and Platforms category, which recognizes technology tools and platforms that cross over into automation and security. Horizon3.ai’s mission is to help find and fix attack vectors before attackers can exploit them. CEO and co-founder Snehal Antani is excited to have his startup selected and see it grow from his original business idea.
‘It is a great honor to be selected as a finalist in The Pitch by Constellation Research! When we came together in early 2019 to start Horizon3.ai, we knew we were building something security professionals needed and wanted because we are security professionals ourselves. We didn’t know if our security tools worked, or if we fixed the right vulnerabilities until we were breached, and by then it was too late. We set out to create NodeZero, an agentless, self-service and autonomous pentesting platform that enables enterprises to continuously find, fix, and verify the remediation of security weaknesses, so you can proactively improve your security posture.”
Finalists and winners receive great recognition that facilitates their finding potential investors that includes gaining angel investment that later involves venture capital firms. Achieving funding is critical for high growth early stage companies to grow into the stature of a unicorn that the competition sets out to identify.
