Innovating at the Edge: EF Asia 4 Investor Day
On 22nd January 2019, we held our Asia 4 Investor Day featuring teams from our Singapore and Hong Kong cohorts.
This was our second ever multi-site event, and it had a lot to live up to following the success of our EUR10 Demo Day in September 2018.
Thankfully, it exceeded all expectations — and helped us kick off 2019 with a bang.
Of the twenty-two companies pitching at Investor Day, fifteen came from our fourth cohort in Singapore and seven from our first in Hong Kong.
Each team had their own unique story, but they were all made up of remarkable individuals, who we selected from thousands of applications.
As the world’s leading Talent Investor, we find these remarkable individuals from all over the world and encourage them to use their edge - their personal competitive advantage - to build a company that only they can build.
And each of the 22 teams at Asia 4 Investor Day were expressions of this philosophy.
The cohort was made up of founders from 39 different countries, with degrees from the best universities in the world, who left extraordinary careers at companies like Huawei, Bloomberg and Google to join EF.
The range of companies on show was extraordinary — using deep technologies from nano filtration membranes to revolutionary data convertor chips, they’re solving huge problems in areas ranging from manufacturing production to microbial contamination.
Overall, the Asia 4 Investor Day was the perfect expression of innovation at the edge — the companies on show have the potential to transform industries and change the world. And we’re delighted to be along for the ride.
Here’s a look behind the scenes at some of the best moments from the day.
WATCH: All 22 Asia 4 pitches available here
Preparation is Half the Battle
The morning of Investor Day, the EF Team and cohort arrived at the Singapore School of the Arts for a final practice session before the investors arrived.
The green room was filled with a cocktail of nervous energy, excitement and a sense of anticipation as the founders made their final preparations.
And, as usual, the EF team were on hand to jump in and help out when needed with some last minute pitch practice.
Top — EFSG4 & EFHK1 Cohorts; Left — Angela Conroy & Jamie Soo, Notarum; Right — Herve Roussel & Misha Filippov, QuodAI; Bottom — Ashish Justin, Carnot Innovations & Felicia Tan, EF Team
Team Work Makes the Dream Work
The EF team are a crucial part of the cohort’s experience from the day they join and without them, nothing would be possible.
The same is true for Investor Day — all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes from the EF team is what makes the day run as smoothly as a well oiled machine — and the investors definitely notice!
Top — Tanuja Rajah briefing the EFSG team; Bottom Left— Wei Ting Chin, Carmen Hong Kah Mun, Swarnima Korde; Bottom Right — Joe Ros, Saptarshi Nath, Oleg Kurochka & Doralyn Chan
Investors of the World…Welcome to EF Asia
We had over 300 of the world’s top investors attend Asia 4 Investor Day, many of whom flew into Singapore specifically to attend our Investor Day.
A handful of the names present included Sequoia, Wavemaker and Founders Fund — all ready and waiting to see the latest batch of globally ambitious deep tech companies from our Asia 4 cohort.
As always the investors were warmly received by the EF team on their arrival at the Singapore School of the Arts.
This time, we even had our own EF branded beverages waiting for them — and while we don’t like to brag, we did overhear an investor commenting that we’re so fresh now, it didn’t surprise them we have our own juice…
Top — Izzy Mendoza, Didier Vermeiren, Maegan Yip Rue Vey & Elise Tan; Bottom Left — Theodoric Chew; Bottom Right — Didier Vermeiren, Swarnima Korde, Monisha Jain, Maegan Yip Rue Vey & Elise Tan
If You Start Me Up I’ll Never Stop
Before the start of the first pitch, the founders got a rallying cry from Asia Launch Lead Joe Ros, who used the time to talk about how far the teams had come and loosen them up before their big moment on stage.
Our videographer Will Reynolds managed to capture the best bits so stay tuned for the raw footage of Joe’s pump up speech…
(Top — Joe Ros pumping up the Asia 4 cohort; Middle — Reaction shots from the cohort and team; Bottom Left — Sunny Saurabh, Interviewer.AI; Bottom Right — Yiyang Shao & Flora Suen-Krujatz, Narus)
Everything Begins with Alpha
Opening the show is never easy…but Rishi Ramchandani of Pin Alpha did a fantastic job, executing a perfectly structured pitch which went down a treat.
And it’s not just Rishi’s pitching that’s worth writing home about — his company, which delivers in-depth fundamental analysis in real time is pretty good too!
MC Anne Marie on the Floor for Asia 4
The show was hosted by our Head of Expansion Anne Marie Droste who helped EF expand to 4 new locations last year — Berlin, Hong Kong and Paris and now Bangalore.
After jetting in on Monday for Alumni Demo Day, she got stuck right into prepping some of the Asia 4 founders for their pitches and did an awesome job MCing the event on Tuesday.
Singapore Superstars
The progress the SG4 Founders have made in the last few months has been nothing short of remarkable and Investor Day was the culmination of all their hard work, with all of them nailing their pitches.
This time around we had another set of exceptional companies solving world changing problems from translating source code to lithium ion battery technology and cryptocurrency monitoring to microbial diagnostics.
(Top —Herve Roussel & Misha Filippov, QuodAI; Middle Left — Sheetal Sinha, Biopsin; Middle Right — Ulf Bissbort & Jeffrey Lee, Synchronous; Bottom — Yiyang Shao & Flora Suen-Krujatz, Narus )
Hong Kong Heroes
We didn’t even have a HK program until half way through last year, but just a few months later, an entire cohort had gone through the EF process, producing seven exceptional teams.
From underwater drones for ships to automating endoscopy and revolutionary data convertor chips to predictive analytics for buildings, the first Hong Kong cohort was the epitome of innovation at the edge.
(Top — Megan Lam, Neurum; Middle Left — Elizabeth Chan, Neptune Robotics; Middle Right — Ashish Justin, Carnot Innovations; Bottom Left — Sean Chen, AIMS; Bottom Middle — Chi Fung & Morris He, Caelus Technologies; Bottom Right — Animesh Jha & Arindam Haldar, Volt 14)
“Thanks for your patience and welcome to the main event”
Despite the fact that 21 companies had gone before him, Ben Stein kept the audience entertained throughout his pitch for Staple, the company he’s built in the last 6 months with Co-Founder Josh Kettlewell.
Staple builds cognitive automation that performs accounting faster, cheaper and more reliably than humans and if Ben’s pitch is anything to go by, he should keep investors interested in his upcoming meetings with them.
So Let Me Tell You About My Company…
Building a globally ambitious company isn’t a walk in the park — it’s a long and challenging climb with plenty of ups and downs.
So while Investor Day is an important milestone for our founders, they know they have to keep on climbing the mountain and go straight into fundraising.
And at the end of the final pitch, our founders headed to their stands outside the auditorium to chat to some of the investors they’d impressed earlier.
(Top — Hardesh Singh, Radicali; Middle Right — Amit Kumar & Sheetal Sinha, Biopsin; Flora Suen-Krujatz, Narus; Bottom Left — Sean Chen & Yufan Wang AIMS; Bottom Right — Elizabeth Chan, Neptune Robotics)
Stopping to Enjoy the View
As with any challenging endeavour, building a startup involves making big sacrifices.
You spend most of your waking hours putting out fires and trying to make sure your newly formed company doesn’t die.
But sometimes, over the course of the journey, it’s important to stop for a moment and forget about the climb — to just enjoy the view and show some love to the people that helped you get where you are.
That’s exactly what the first few hours after Investor Day feels like.
The team and cohort share some special moments congratulating and thanking each other, as the reality of what’s happened in the last six months starts to sink in.
This time around, EF Co-Founder Alice Bentinck made the journey out to Singapore for Asia 4 Demo Day and after the show was over, she addressed the full cohort back in the green room.
After Alice finished up, this spontaneous speech from SG4 cohort member and Notarum Co-Founder Angela Conroy really captured the gratitude the cohort feels for the EF team.
Congratulations EF ASIA 4!
22 remarkable companies, 44 remarkable founders, 2 remarkable cohorts — pitching in the same location in Asia for the first time in EF history.
ASIA 4 Investor Day will live long in the memory and we can’t wait to see what these amazing companies from SG4 and HK1 do in the future.
