Plugg is a conference that combines a list of top-notch speakers with a start-up rally. Startups that are selected for the conference can present themselves in front of the audience and VC's. The best startup receives a monetary price and eternal fame.
"We will set up", "Our idea is", "Be believe that" or even "Research shows" used to be the most common opening lines of startups pitching their new business. The wording already implies that a considerable amount of thinking and analysis has been done, but execution is yet to be started.
The value of any idea is only as good as it's execution. And that is where this year's startups really shined: Of the 19 startups that presented themselves, each and everyone of them had a product to show. A working product that demonstrated their idea. Sometimes it was not yet polished, sometimes it was not yet generally available. But what counts is that there is a first version that clearly demonstrates where the startup is going to.
The winner selected by the audience is Razwar, a cool new shaving brand. Their social media strategy already got them a nice start in the market. By mentioning they want to deliver "shaving as a service", they sure won a lot of votes from the attendees.
The professional VC jury selected fits.me as a winner. Fits.me supplies online clothing retailers with a robotic fitting doll. the robot adjusts itself to thousands of different shapes and sizes to imitate anyone's body contours. The idea is that an automated photo shoot results in thousands of photos of every clothing item. The customer then enters his body measurements in the merchant's website and all clothing pictures directly reflect how the item will look on the customer's body. The idea is that this not only increases sales, but also eliminates a lot of returns.
Organiser @robinwauters did a great job in organising the conference and the photos taken by @pietel and @dipfico went online near real-time. Even the videos of presentations were immediately available on Vimeo. Maybe the sponsors could have been highlighted a bit more, or maybe it was just me not paying enough attention.
I was very happy to have been invited by @ftack from sponsor Nomadesk. Nomadesk is a cloud-based file server that includes sharing, synchronizing and backup. You always have a copy of your network drive present on your local hard drive. And when you change files off line, they are synced in the background once you connect to the network again. Nomadesk is for small and medium enterprises what Dropbox is for individuals: magic in the cloud that makes your life easier.
Networking opportunities on the floor were great too, I went home with a lot of partnership opportunities for our Mobile Vikings. Sad to have missed out on the "Belgian Beers" after-party, since I know Robin Wauters is a great host for these kind of parties!
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