A look into Microsoft Accelerator’s hottest startups.

At Sea containers, home of Ogilvy and our Labs, we welcomed Microsoft and the 11 startups they’re backing as part of their 2016 Accelerator programme. ‘The Pitch’ was a chance for Microsoft staff and Investors to meet directly with the founders themselves.

The day saw some of London’s top investors and business minds in technology, all in one room listening to the ideas from London’s upcoming entrepreneurs. For those who couldn’t attend, it was streamed live onto TechCrunch. Some 400 people externally watched, willing to learn what innovative solutions are becoming a reality.

You can watch ‘The Pitch’ livestream below:

Microsoft accelerator programme is an intensive three-to-sixth month program aimed to help these businesses that have great potential grow and scale into a global business. These eleven startups can leverage from Microsoft’s position in the market, to find customers and grow globally into markets which can often seem daunting.

Each company had 2 minutes to pitch at the Demo Day, followed by Q&A.

The eleven companies currently part of Microsoft accelerator programme 2016 are: Capitalise, Nivaura, FitWell, SIME Dx, Furo, Instanda, Pinipa, Altitude Angel, Dendrite.me, Glisser & Mention.

Here at Labs, we’re interested in the disrupters, the innovators and the game changers. We love new tech, and we thrive on change. So it’s fair to see we look at things differently than most. Here’s a run through of the company pitches and how we see their technologies being used in the future:

Capitalise

Back in 2008, when the debts markets crashed, it changed the market forever. Out sprung tons of new methods, such as alternative lending. Capitalise co-founder & MD, Paul Surtees asked himself, ‘with so many alternatives, how does a SME business or any of their advisers (lawyers, accountant, advisors) find the right lender for the business?’

Out of this thought, Capitalise was born. A market comparison site for SME businesses to find, compare and select the right lenders in a matter of minutes. 3 minutes to be exact.

Labs loves: that they were faced with a problem, and found a solution that improves the process. It helps businesses find the most suitable lender and generates new business for these lenders. A win-win.

Nivaura

Investment banking is traditionally hugely complicated, with intricate financial instruments, technology systems and the complex regulations. Nivaura’s CEO, Dr Avtar Sehra is a trained quantum physicist. By nature they find order in chaos. He explained, “when I started working in finance, I was shocked at the amount of chaos…this complexity is what drives inefficiency in financial banking”.

In 2008, when everything changed, the cost of compliance skyrocketed and profits plummeted and suddenly everyone was talking about efficiency. Dr Sehra mentioned the challenges of innovation within this sector, much like a startup faces in the early-stages.

Navaura’s solution: A platform that automates the full cycle of a complex product. Their technology reduces costs for implementation and changes to take car of the complexity to drive efficiency.

Lab’s loves: that despite being a startup, it is competing with market leaders. It’s stuck two fingers up to the norm, and positioned itself. By removing complexity for banks, it means they can focus on what really matters, the customers.

FitWell

Fitwell is a mobile coaching app aimed to encourage healthy eating and promote fitness. It’s simplistic approach on the journey to becoming fit results in higher retention that other competitors. By offering the user a digital personal trainer, nutritionist and life coach all in one app.

Founder, Baris Ozaydinli, former CEO of Havas Worldwide was a very busy man. He had a beer belly and back problems so got a personal trainer. Great it seems — but why are they so expensive? This is when he founded Fitwell. To reduce costs and make it easier for everyone to keep fit.

Labs loves: that they make data meaningful. The app can connect with wearable and IoT devices, process the data and display in a simplistic manner. Forget overwhelming charts, just simple results.

Mention

Having your brand spoken about online is great right? They say that any publicity is good publicity. But what about if you can’t find it… Mention monitors over 1 billion sources every day. Using real-time analysis, it can monitor your brand and the conversations people are having around it and the products, it can track competitors, generate leads and even manage a crises that would be a PR disaster without.

Founder, Matthieu Vaxelaire, describes Mention as “Google Alerts on steroids” and we agree. We love mention because of it’s real-time analysis. Previous tools were great, but not ideal… this is. When speaking with Microsoft after in the Q&A, Matthieu mentioned they monitor social for Microsoft. Their algorithms can pick out the important bits, and ignore the rest. Making something quite daunting like monitoring social media for one of the largest companies, seem relatively simple.

Labs loves: how mention turns what can be seem as quite a daunting issue to look how your customers are speaking about you, into a micro-managed bitesize chunk to pick out only the important stuff.

SIME Dx

“Today we treat disease, but wouldn’t it be better if we could prevent disease”. I powerful statement from SIME Dx CEO, Povl Verder. Their cloud computing platform uses mathematical algorithms to detect a disease before symptoms even show. It empowers healthcare teams to confidently carry out diagnostics at the point of care.

Povl has had a successful career in founding his own healthcare company growing it from 18 to 1800 staff in just 18 months (6th fastest growing UK company at the time), before moving to bSkyb overseeing their digital transformation.

SIME Dx are convinced that healthcare will go digital. Povl states “the winners (in future healthcare) will combine traditional healthcare with digital technology. Those that combine human intelligence, cloud computing, big data and machine learning”.

Labs loves: Their confidence in new technologies and their willingness to develop and explore. At Labs we challenge technologies, and it’s great to see SIME Dx doing the same.

Furo

Furo streamlines businesses through intelligent procurement. It is essentially a like-for-like comparison website for businesses. The SaaS company is hugely innovative using new technologies to compare and streamline buying for companies. They’re growing rapidly working with some of the largest companies.

After receiving an email with a link to a Tech Crunch article saying ‘wasn’t this your idea?’, Hamilton Keats, Furo’s CEO, had a working prototype within 3 months, and a month later, his first paying customer. Boeing capital.

Labs loves: Furo’s simple platform and effective solution for businesses. It has the potential to save businesses millions a year, and we like that.

Instanda

Insurance banking is big — $5 trillion annually. With a long history. Llyods of London has been around for over 300 years. Instanda CEO, Tim Hardcastle believes times have changed. People want personalised products and better solutions.

Their online management tool empowers insurers and brokers to build and and launch any insurance product within unprecedented timescales, and then distribute and self-­manage it online, globally.

Tim explained that the average wait time for a global insure to add a new product, due to regulations and technology constraints is 4 years. With Instanda, a matter of days. They stand by their 10:10 motto. 10 times quicker, 10 times cheaper.

Labs loves: how Instanda was founded — out of frustration. Tim consulted for the world’s largest insurers and brokers and was frustrated by their lack of solution. His innovative approach to problem solving is hugely innovative and is disrupting a hugely profitable industry with long roots.

Pinipa

Communication and project management can be difficult within large organisations. For a C-suite exec’s, it’s important to know what is going on. Pinipa is a SaaS platform that gives companies oversight which transforms what it means to manage a business. Pinipa’s Chief Executive, Faith Forster see’s Pinipa as an X-ray to look into the business. Using insights and intelligence, it highlights only the important information.

Their customers include Microsoft, LinkedIn, National Grid and Cancer research.

Labs loves: the emphasis on collaboration across an organisation, despite hierarchal structure. At Labs we have no hierarchy, we thrive from collaboration and it’s great to see this trend grow.

Altitude Angel

“The number of sectors that drones have the opportunity to revolutionise is quite impress” said Neil Kidd, CTO of Altitude Angel. Some examples given is to fly blood into hospitals, for construction and agriculture. The FAA (Federal aviation authority), predict that more than 2.5 million will be bought this year in the US alone.

At Altitude Angel, they help businesses with accelerating the adoption and integration of drone technology. By empowering manufactures to access reliable, authoritative realtime data sources that help drones and their operators make better decision about where and how to fly.

Labs loves: Drones! We believe that these have the power to disrupt industries, just like Uber did with the taxi industry, drones has the capability to disrupt a multitude of industries.

Dendrite.me

Aulden Denipace, CEO of Dendrite opened his presentation asking, “Imagine a car travelling 1000mph across the dessert in South America”. At Dendrite, their aim is simple. To inspire the next generation, through events like this (the apollo moment of the 21st century) to engage in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Dendrite.me is a social learning platform designed to enable teachers, students and parents to access outstanding, inspirational learning content from channel partners, and blend this content into their own teaching and learning experiences.

Labs loves: inspiring the next generation. Getting our future involved in tech and science is something we are hugely passionate about.

Glisser

We all watch a ton of presentations. Some are good, some are great, but most are terrible. When they’re good, we take pictures of them to share on social media, save for later or show colleagues. But surely there’s a better way? Glisser makes presentations interactive. It live shares presentation slides to the audience smartphones. Users can not only save slides, but tweet them directly and engage with the speaker through Integrated Q&A and polls.

Michael Piccock, CEO of Glisser, asked the question, “Why is it so hard to get a slide deck… in todays on demand world?”

Labs loves: The solution it solves. At labs we are often at events mapping out new trends, innovations and technologies to bring back into Ogilvy group and our clients. Glisser is a great solution to a problem that seems so obvious.

Overall, Microsoft accelerator program was hugely inspiring and a great look into just what might be the future!

Tom Sharman — Social Media Strategist, Ogilvy Labs.