Manchester’s Turing Innovation Catalyst (TIC) opened its doors this week to a roomful of investors, entrepreneurs and industry leaders for their demo day.
Hundreds of people packed into Manchester’s Renold Building as companies from the second AI accelerator programme showcased their talents.
The programme supports selected companies with their fundraising and scaling goals with world-class AI and startup experts.
All the founders involved are Greater Manchester-based and committed to building AI platforms that span education, healthcare, climate and more.
The cohort either took part in panel pitches or individual three-minute presentations to the room.
Here’s BusinessCloud’s take on the 11 individual pitches.
Habeo
CEO: Alexandra Morris
Description: PropTech helping households run efficient homes, saving money, time and the planet.
The pitch: The pitches were kicked off by experienced tech entrepreneur Alexandra Morris, who is on a mission to ‘change our outlook on climate change.’ Its platform uses data about people’s homes and empower them to make changes within their budgets in order to reduce costs and save the planet. Morris finished a thought-provoking pitch by saying: “Change your world to save ours.”
Circkit
CEO: Joe Darwen
Description: AI tool simplifying ESG data and compliance in fashion.
The pitch: Joe Darwen is best known as the founder of Veo but was pitching his startup Circkit, an AI-powered tech platform. Darwen is a confident speaker and told the audience that fashion is the second biggest polluter on the planet – only behind oil. In total, the $3 trillion industry has a waste value of around $400 billion. He wants to ‘close the yap gap’ by managing brands’ product lifecycle and optimising circular product design across environmental, social, and economic considerations.
Connected Impact
CEO: Lucy Walton
Description: Uses patent-pending AI approaches to track and compare company performance
The pitch: Hugely important subject but I struggled a bit to hear all CEO Lucy Walton’s pitch because she had her back to the audience for parts of her presentation as she read her PowerPoint slides. Connect Impact helps companies use their ESG performance to build brand, enhance value and manage reputational risk.
MindPsy
Senior Data Scientist and Engineer: Robert Daly
Description: Uses data analysis and AI to improve evidence-based psychological support for children experiencing mental health issues.
The pitch: Robert Daly is the former head of data and insights at ORCHA and appeared a bid nervous, which is understandable. He explained that an average of 10 children in every school class experience mental health challenges but they won’t tell anyone. The startup found that children want to talk to someone, but don’t want to talk to a human. Its platform, therefore, creates a virtual AI ‘buddy’, that children can talk to when they’re experiencing struggles. Looking for £800k investment.
The Real Birth Company
CEO: Zoe Wright
Description: Digital antenatal platform to support midwifery practice and access to information for people.
The pitch: Real Birth CEO Zoe Wright is a registered midwife and opened up with the funny line: “Who has never been born?” On a more serious note, Real Birth is helping to take stress out of the emergency services. Wright believes that everyone giving birth should have access to evidence-based birth preparation. It has been shown that the women who have taken this course have better outcomes.
Decently
Co-founder: James Chapman
Description: HealthTech which has developed web-based AI platform Melo, allowing teams to make more evidence-based care decisions through data collection.
The pitch: James Chapman set up Decently with co-founder James Burch in 2021 after a close friend of his suffered a brain-related injury. Chapman gave a polished performance without notes describing Melo as being ‘built with clinicians, for clinicians’. The long-term goal for Decently is to support 10m patients, clinicians and families over the next 10 years with more evidence-based decision-making through AI. Currently raising £1m.
Pet Trust UK
Co-founder: Felix Robinson
Description: Has created a digital tag that links to a pet’s microchip and profile, filled with life-saving and critical information.
The pitch: Felix Robinson started the second round of pitches by bravely hobbling onto the stage on crutches on the same day that Pet Trust UK’s digital tag went live. The digital tag links to a pet’s microchip and profile. If a pet goes missing or is in an emergency, anyone can tap or scan the QR code to instantly access vital details.
gigmate
Acting CTO: Gavin Sherratt
Description: gigmate is an event discovery app that connects fans with gigs, venues, artists and fellow fans.
The pitch: Gavin Sherratt introduced himself as a ‘sh*t friend’ and recounted how he missed a gig at a small venue with his friend when he was younger. That gig was Oasis before they went on to become global superstars. To prevent this from happening again, gigmate connects solo gig-goers together to build a community and encourage people to get to the events that they have tickets for.
GetSociable
CEO: Peter McCleery
Description: MarTech platform for businesses in the hospitality, nightlife and live entertainment industries, maximising online engagement with real target audiences through personalised content.
The pitch: Described as the ‘home of live entertainment’ Belfast-based GetSociable is aimed at increasing customer engagement. CEO and founder Peter McCleery acknowledged that nights out for young people are now ‘all about Instagramable moments’ and his business uses that to its advantage.
LinkyThinks
CEO: Dan Rosenberg
Description: Platform designed to give children the skills they need to succeed beyond the classroom.
The pitch: EdTech LinkyThinks’ approach to education is all about helping children link different ways of thinking by teaching the critical life skills. CEO Dan Rosenberg was so excited to pitch that he accidentally got up early. His platform now has over 6,000 active users.
AUDITSU
CEO: Jason Crispin
Description: Pioneering the future of accessibility audits for mobile applications.
The pitch: Despite being the last person to pitch, Jason Crispin made sure he still had the audience’s attention when he entered by slamming his folders and notepads to the ground whilst shouting. He did this to emphasise his annoyance about the time it takes for businesses to ensure that they are compliant with regulatory standards. He believes AUDITSU has the solution.
Conclusion
In conclusion the demo day was a really interesting exercise. Some of the companies are very early stage and it wasn’t always clear to me where the AI was. It was obvious that some of the people were more confident than others when pitching, which came across in their delivery. However the problems they’re trying to fix – especially climate change – are global so if they get it right the opportunity is limitless.