“Our relationship with our physical world is profoundly changing,” said Matt Turck, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital as he keynoted Worldwide Investor Network (WIN)’s Global Innovators II last week. A huge proponent of the Internet of Things, Turck is also founder of two large New York tech community events, including Hardwired NYC, covering all things related to the Internet of Things, 3D printing, open hardware, robotics, etc. “Jawbone. Scales that tweet your weight. Connected pills that go into your body and tell you what’s happening. Our world is starting to look like a sci-fi movie. It’s happening now, and at a staggering pace.”
He did point out that there’s also a lot of hype in the space. “People are talking in trillions,” he added.
Then again, we are an industry somewhat given to hype, so onward to the evening’s presenters, all culled from a global pool (although several already have a NYC presence), who were offered feedback from a panel that included Marc Michel of Metamorphic Ventures, Erin Griffith of Fortune Magazine, Eliot Durbin of BoldStart Ventures and Micah Rosenbloom of Founders Collective.
Now in Store (Canada) is a platform that allows businesses to instantly create product catalogs. Over 6,000 businesses already use the service, which, according to the founder, is ten times faster than its competitors’ product. It’s one of the Top 5 apps on Etsy and the company is seeing a 20% month after month growth.
SqueezeCMM (Canada) is a content marketing platform for the enterprise. 91% of B2B companies currently use content to market, but measurement is very difficult. SqueezeCMM allows a marketer to get a universal view of actions on the content, no matter where it is shared, posted or promoted. Think the back end of content.ly.
Tomigo is an innovative recruiting platform designed for today’s social media culture, allowing companies to circulate information about job openings through their own employees on social networks including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Google+. The Israel-based company boasts an 85% customer retention rate and are looking to expand to NYC.
PopMarker (Turkey) is an in-image advertising platform that allows you to tag images, the company is targeting publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. Launched this past October, the company won for Best Presentation of the evening, undoubtedly due in no small part to founder Sarper Kocabiyik’s presentation skills and sense of humor (“Ali and Merk are my co-founders. They look like terrorists, but they’re good guys”).
Springleap (South Africa), an embeddable creative crowdsourcing platform and community, won the UN World Summit Award for e-business. With its access to a global talent pool of over 300,000 members, global brands are using Springleap’s unique creative social media marketing campaigns to empower creatives and engage brand fans. To date, Springleap has rewarded creatives with over $320,000 in the last year and placed them on magazines, sites and TV across the world.
Metamorphic Venture’s Marc Michel won the room as the Best Panelist.
Image credit: @worldwidein on Twitter
