A Look Back at Our Top Moments from 2020
We hope you’ve all enjoyed the holidays and that you now enter 2021 with health and happiness. Here at PowerPT, we’d like to take a look back at some of our favorite innovation projects from 2020.
We entered 2020 anticipating a slow start due to the typically slow winter months and it being an election year. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, we knew we were in for a wild ride.
But although the first half of the year was slower than normal, the second half was the busiest in 20 years.
Over the past seven months, we became flooded with projects from the government, corporates, and startups alike. Thankfully, our team rose to the challenge and finished the year strong. So, without further ado, here are some of the innovation team’s favorite projects of 2020.
Global Star Ventures
This was a program designed to help startups join accelerators and pitch events overseas. It was carried out for the Korean government organization, Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy & Innovation. And though we experienced some challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had great success.
One of our first projects was to help five startups apply to MassChallenge, a Boston-based accelerator with locations across the US, Israel, Mexico, and Switzerland. It’s one of the top accelerators in the world, and most selective, with an acceptance rate under 10%. Our client would have loved to have just one team make it past the first round into the semifinal stage.
But with our team’s hard work and determination, we helped one of the startups make it all the way to the finals and graduate from the program.
Shoutout to our friends at DACON, now a MassChallenge graduate!
Another project from this program was in helping startups join CodeLaunch, a pitch competition in Texas, where winners receive thousands of dollars in professional services. We worked with logistics platform startup Coconut Silo as they made it to through the quarterfinals, semifinals, and ultimately, to the final competition! Not only did they make it to a stage where over 1,000 startups applied, but they were also the first Korean startup to ever make it to the finals.
But that’s not it. They are also the only startup from all of Asia to make it to the finals in the history of the event!
Pre-Accelerator Program
We had been working with the Seoul Fintech Lab previously, and in spring of this year, they asked us to design a custom pre-accelerator program specifically designed for their in-house fintech startups. The goal of this program was to help five startups achieve more global awareness in order to increase interest from international customers, investors, and global programs.
The first major project was to create a general, all-in-one application form that the startups can use to apply for almost any global program or event, including most accelerators and pitch events. We sat with each team and compiled the perfect answers to each question on the form. The next project was creating beautifully-designed one-pagers for investors. Each one-pager was carefully crafted and designed to be shared digitally — the best scenario in 2020. And the last project was overall global awareness, which included creating LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Medium pages (and posts) for each team.
It will be difficult for anyone not to find these startups now!
SaaS Ecosystem Development
This wasn’t an actual project requested by a client, but rather one of our goals for the year. Korea’s SaaS ecosystem is well, underwhelming. This is a country where entrepreneurs and businesses alike tend to focus on hardware solutions or sexy trends like AI, robotics, biotech, and blockchain. Software solutions in the cloud don’t necessarily have the same ring. But we knew that if future entrepreneurs knew and invested more into SaaS solutions, it could be another boom to Korea’s startup ecosystem. This is why we decided to give back and dedicate ourselves to strengthening the SaaS community in Korea.
Our first project was our Global SaaS Tour, where we visited (virtually) SaaS ecosystems around the world in order to learn valuable insights, trends, and lessons. And we partnered with the #1 SaaS community, SaaStock. Our first event was a SaaS Eurotrip where we learned about the SaaS scenes in London, Munich, Krakow, and Ljubljana. Even SaaStock’s CEO, Alex Theuma, joined and spoke about London’s SaaS scene. The week after, we headed to North America where we heard from experts in Vancouver, San Francisco, and Denver. And finally, we headed to the APAC region, where we heard from SaaS leaders in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangalore, and Sydney.
Our other project to bring more SaaS awareness was Podium Star: SaaS. It was our first time hosting Podium Star virtually, which was initially a challenge. But this also meant that more eyes around the globe could learn more about our SaaS startups. As usual, we spent time scouting some of the top up-and-coming startups creating SaaS solutions for consumers and businesses. Then, we spent days working with the startups on their messaging and pitch deck design. Finally, we invited VCs and accelerators to take a look, including current and former executives from the World Innovations Forum in Switzerland and Walmart to act as judges.
One final note
We hope you enjoyed reading this look back at our favorite projects of the year. We had so many more we wish we could include, but alas, we could only choose three today. If you’re curious to learn about our other projects, don’t hesitate to get in touch! We’d love to tell you more.
Despite the hardships in 2020, we look forward to a brighter 2021. While we know hardships will continue, we are hopeful that innovation will help lead the way to a more prosperous time for all.
