By: Roger Hislop

Last session for the day, a bunch of start-ups pitched their businesses, some looking for funding, some looking for audience, and some just happy to get some gongs.

Each start-up gave a few minutes pitch, took a couple of questions, and then people voted on Twitter with a hashtag #ignite #t4a, and a panel evaluated and then picked a winner.

In order of appearance, the pitches were:

Snapbill

Online billing system to allow companies to sell online without needing e-commerce – or to handle their billing and invoicing online. The company is already selling to a global base, has customers all over the world in all tax jurisdictions and in all currencies. They’re looking to kick their growth up a notch, so are investing R1m of their capital and looking for a couple of mill funding.

Lessfuss

This is an online assistant to answer your questions, or find you a service at R30-R50 a pop. There’s a number of these kind of concierge services. Lessfuss recons their differentiator in that they understand South African stuff (who is Telkom, what is “just now”), unlike, say, India-based services. They’re also building a useful database of questions and replies. It’s a kind of PA service, limited to a task that takes ½ hour or so that you can do on telephone or Google. Agents work through a software platform they’ve built, from home.

10layer

Publishing and the Internet have not reached each other. Traditional content management systems don’t do a great job – don’t really suit the publishing game. They’re currently providing a platform for M&G, Daily Maverick and another unnamed company. Systems like Drupal are too stretched, don’t work brilliantly for niches like online publishing. The pitch worked great for me as a publishing guy – people from outside the industry were a bit baffled by what it is they do. Trust me – publishing is a bloody tricky game, offline or on, and newsrooms and production teams need all the help they can get. Very niche.

Plotmyride

This very neat system to allow you to plot a cycle race (or whatever kind of ‘travelling’, such as sailing, etc) in real time. This allows support people at the end of a bicycle race, for example, to see how you doing. It’s also historical: how you performed, fellow riders, clubs, etc. It also makes it easy to share your riding experience via social media. It is a very slick-looking product (waterproof, rugged unit with GPS and GPRS radio). Updates happen in real-time, you don’t need to upload later. It also has features such as crash detection to alert someone to an accident. In addition, it pushes to and from other devices – so you can stay in touch with teammates throughout an event. Sure, smartphones can kinda do this, but are not ruggedised. A big opportunity is to be able to have an entire event – tracked in real time for anyone to see the field as it progresses.

FeedbackRocket

Usefulness vs. Confidentiality – a 360 review in Human Resources process gets a bit useless because anonymity stops a manager knowing useful stuff about someone with a problem, but without anonymity no one opens their mouth. FeedbackRocket acts as a proxy to allow conversations through a ‘virtual confessional screen’. It can also interrogate data, for example to allow you to look at people who “disagree” in a sample to find out what their problem is. The company is also looking at using the system for anti-bullying measures, and tying up with something like GetAGreatBoss.com. Built by an actuary, it also kicks in lots of analytics and other clever stuff.

iSign.pro

Do deals faster by reducing contract processing time. iSign manages contracts signing, archiving and auto-review. Primary market is SMBs – these have lots of employment contracts, mobile phone contracts, etc. The joke the pitcher gave is that 21,000 registered attorneys must be doing something… iSign is faster, cheaper, greener by reducing the time delays and admin. The product will be sold through Incredible Connection, and also have a strong viral thread (every customer will essentially bring in a new customer), and there is a built-in affiliate deal for customers (anyone they bring in gives them back a small cut).

Mobiflock

Someone think of the children. Mobiflock is for making smartphones safer for the children. It stops kids accessing inappropriate/unacceptable content, or even limiting hours of use. They are adding features like geo-fencing (alert if outside area). From the control panel parents can see what kids are browsing and the messages they are exchanging (with AI to look for grooming), with logs of where the phone’s been. A timetable function lets parents limit use to a particular time of day. The business is privately funded, but it’s looking for exposure and users.

Realtimewine

75% of wine are purchased through supermarkets in South Africa, with 4,200 independent wine producers. The funny things is that all these guys are trying to reach the wine snobs. Wine review apps (like Platters) are full of bloody meaningless wine snob drivel that says little of value to the normal wine drinker. And that’s where realtimewine comes in. They have writers, and one in four reviews are user generated. Since most supermarkets are ludicrously unsuited to choosing wines, this app should be a winner (especially if you’re trying to choose something nice for a dinner party) So: scan your wine, or enter the name. You’ll get the community’s vote, as well as that of “favourite” top reviewers. And then it can add incentives: Golden Tickets that can give you free stuff, like discounts. They are also looking at sales online, plus a wine of the month type thing (chosen by your friends). And they can sell consumption details to retailers. A whole lot of revenue streams.

Stay tuned, winners to be announced tomorrow.