Pitch X: A Pitch to Remember Recap

YBF Ventures was the proud host of Academy Xi’s latest pitch night. The event was held in partnership with Melbourne Silicon Beach and Luna. Ten startups pitched their ideas in front of an audience of 150 and a panel of five judges. The judging panel included:

• Ronen Heine — Founder & CEO of Luna.
• Faiza Bukhary — Lawyer at Lander & Rogers Lawyers
• John Webster— Founder of Shiftiez
• Courtney Blackman — Head of PR & Marketing at YBF Ventures
• Laura Blue — Co-Founder of LaunchLink

Prizes for the evening included free desk space at YBF Ventures, mentoring from LUNA Startup Studio, PR workshops with LaunchLink and access to Academy Xi’s courses.

Pitch X finalists and judges

The competition was emceed by Linda O’Grady and divided into two rounds. The first round gave each startup 90 seconds to pitch followed by a quick-fire Q&A session with the judging panel.

Three startups progressed to the second round. With five minutes to present, the competitors were tasked with elaborating on their ideas and selling their startup to the judges.

See the pitches of the three finalists below:

Winner — The Neighbourhood Effect

The Neighbourhood Effect combines technology and behavioural science to make local, green living easy. The Neighbourhood Effect builds digital products to make it easy and financially rewarding for users to reduce their carbon footprints, adopt green habits and support green initiatives.

Team: Lily Dempster

Second Place — Pearlii

Pearlii uses AI image processing to scan photos of teeth, taken with smartphone cameras, to check for dental problems. Pearlii seeks to increase early detection of cavities, gum disease and plaque by bringing dental check-ups to users conveniently and affordably.

Team: Dan Borthwick & Lucy Wark

Third Place — Abadog

Abadog provides automated behavioural assessments for dogs. Users complete an online questionnaire regarding their dog’s behavioural problems and are provided with a comprehensive report containing advice/recommendations.

Team: Dennis Wormald

YBF Ventures would like to congratulate all startups and participants who contributed to the night. See you at the next Pitch X!

Words by Leahan Shimon

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