The annual Sydney-based startup conference attracts more and more from WA every year. This year, the attraction is greater than ever…
An artificially intelligent robot that can beat the world’s best from trivia to medical diagnosis, a NASA veteran tasked with solving important problems by working with global communities, a partner at one of the world’s hottest early stage venture capital firms and the region’s brightest new startups line up for Australia’s largest startup event, StartCon.
Sydney over the weekend of 30 November and 1 December will be the place to see who will grab the $1M investment awarded to the best startup pitch in the region.
Speakers for this year’s landmark conference include IBM’s Jeopardy!-winning cognitive computing system IBM Watson, which will deliver a keynote presentation, along with Jon Chang, IBM Watson Digital Marketing Director.
Other featured keynote speakers include NASA Centre of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation Deputy Manager Steve Rader and Matthew Brimer, co-Founder of 21st Century educational institution General Assembly.
StartCon 2018 will also feature Head of McKinsey’s New Ventures Platform Alana Podreciks and Marvin Liao, Partner at 500 Startups, a global seed venture capital firm and startup accelerator, as well as April Dunford, founder of Rocket Launch Marketing.
This year’s theme for StartCon is, ‘Silicon Valley is dead. Long live Silicon Valley!’ which shines a light on the tremendous change that has swept through the technology sector’s traditional Californian hotbed, as well as emerging startup hotspots across Australia and the broader Asian region.
The main event will feature a pitch-off between the winning startups from “X Factor” style pitch competition events across Asia-Pacific, where the judges from Pitch for $ 1M have searched for the very best startups from a population base of over 4 billion people.
With semi-finals in fifteen cities across the region, including Perth, over 600 startups are battling it out for $1 million investment from Australian venture capital firm Right Click Capital.
Perth startups Noisy Gut, The Volte and Cellr will be there representing WA, with the former pitching for the million.
“This year’s StartCon will be bigger and better than ever”, StartCon CEO Cheryl Mack said. “The main event in Sydney is set to feature over 65 speakers, 150 exhibitors, thousands of attendees and the grand finals for Pitch for $1 Million.
“This year, the new expanded StartCon will feature dozens of expert workshops, a tech expo and startup alley that will feature some of the most innovative businesses in the local market and across Asia, a blockchain hackathon, prizes, a host of masterclasses, a FinTech stage and an artificial intelligence (AI) stage, networking events, and a corporate innovation forum,” Cheryl said.
Who’s in?
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Tickets to Startcon are available from www.startcon.com
