By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Guavus, Neverware and Fantoo won the votes of the judges at the first Pitch Slam event at Dell World.
Michael Dell cast his vote for Guavus, based in San Mateo, which has raised $48 million in three series of funding since 2006. The company has created analytics applications that pull data from companies and give them a competitive edge by uncovering new insights to help them make better decisions.
The United Nations Foundation’s Resident Entrepreneur Elizabeth Gore voted for Neverware, which has created software to extend the lifetime of computers in schools and to allow them to run the latest software applications.
The New York-based startup, founded in 2011, has raised $1 million in seed-stage funding. It’s software and hardware, called a Juicebox, is currently in more than 100 schools in the New York area and it plans to expand nationwide next year, said Neverware’s CEO Jonathan Hefter.
And Shark Tank star and FUBU Founder Daymond John voted for Fantoo, based in London, has created a personal intelligence engine for email and messaging. The company can tell through data analysis which emails are priorities and send them to the top of the inbox, said Jordan Fantaay, its founder. This year, the company raised $788,000 in crowdfunding.
Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell’s Entrepreneur in Residence, moderated the event.
The seven startups had five minutes to deliver their pitch and three minutes for Q&A from the judges at the Social Media Theater at the Dell World Expo before a packed crowd. People filled every seat and several sat on the floor while others stood along the perimeter to watch the event.
Ihiji co-founder and CEO Stuart Rench pitching at Dell’s Pitch Slam event at Dell World.
It was seeking a partnership with Dell.
The other teams included Nebula, an integrated hardware and software appliance to provide cloud services, SimpleRelevance, an email marketing company, and Bottlenose, an enterprise trend intelligence company.
Video from Dell:
