Join us to review the Class of 2022, watch their pitches live on Demo Day, and set aside time to meet the telco tech scouts, vendor partners, and communications industry investors who are committed to discovering the next set of innovation partners for the telecom industry. Showcase companies are selected based on their innovative solutions, readiness to deploy and ability to scale, and we look forward to introducing them to you on May 10.
Silicon Valley, California, May 11, 2022/Meeting Recap/ Telecom Council’s Annual Startup Competition culminated on May 10th with our Innovation Showcase event where we introduced the Class of 2022 to our members and the wider telecommunications community in an intensive morning of rapid fire presentations, demos, and our unique MatchMaker program.
Kicking off the morning, 4 of our global telco members - Swisscom, T-Mobile, Tata Communications and Telstra – introduced their innovation programs and priorities. The telcos discussed the specifics of which companies are the best candidates for a telco partnership, and which sorts of companies might consider a different path to market. Characteristics of good potential partners included: innovative, integral to telecom, scalable, low-risk, promotes 5G, & demanded by enterprises. The telcos had programs to partner with startups at all stages of maturity, but for less-mature startups it generally starts in a development or incubator program, as opposed to going right into the live network.
A testament to the truly international reach of our organization, our first wave of Showcase presenters joined us from Germany, London, Massachusetts, Silicon Valley, Poland, Ireland and Norway with Low Latency IoT, eSIM, Antenna, Presence, AR, Smart Building and LBS technologies. Each presenter fully exploited their 5 minute pitch time as they outlined their propositions and highlighted their differentiators. Our global tour continued with the second batch of Showcase presenters traveling to Silicon Valley or zooming in from Spain, Switzerland, Silicon Valley, London, India, New York and Canada, with innovations in IIoT, Cyber Security, Orchestration, Data Analytics, Private 5G, Network Optimization and Network Security. Each proving that a well-honed, 5-minute presentation can capture the interest of our telco Scouts and prompt follow-up conversations. We rounded off the morning with 4 Alumni companies with updates on their Positioning, SDN, Metaverse, and Gateways solutions.
The presentations are just the start of the Innovation Showcase experience. This event has always been about connecting the Scouts to the technologies that are transforming the telecommunications landscape and Telecom Council does that with our signature MatchMaker Meeting Service. After a week of previewing companies and pre-scheduling 15 minute introductions, a series of audible start/stop bells marshalled our speed-dating session. Companies rotated around tables to meet, discuss tech challenges and solutions, and explore synergies. Our MatchMaker Meeting Service is acknowledged by our telco Scouts as one of the most sophisticated platforms for making these introductions but the service doesn’t end with the final bell. A full day of online meetings continued the program, virtually, on the 11th.
Thank you to our telco Scouts, to all the presenters who travelled to Menlo Park to be part of the event, to our zoom audience who ignored the constraints of timezones to be with us, and to our host SRI International. Congratulations to the Class of 2022, we wish you continued success.
As always, members can find the presentations from this meeting in the member library.