Congratulations to AIVA technology, Passbolt and and Yollty. In addition, master of ceremonies, Antoine Hron, Luxinnovation’s Head of Start-up Development, announced the winners of this year’s pitch process and the new participants for the Fit4Start Spring 2017 edition as, BodyQ, Daanuu, L7Defense, Viewport, and Ziggu. 

Michele Gallo from the Ministry of Economy was on hand to help with the event. He spoke briefly on the reasons for the success of the Fit 4 Start Programme’s growing success which this year had 230 applications for the Spring 2017 programme from 23 countries, saying, “There are key elements that make this programme a success. One, is that it is very selective. Out of more than 100 start-ups pitching, only 5 can make it to the six week programme. Another is that the coaches work very hard to challenge the participants.”

The three graduate start-ups were announced as, Aiva technology, (Artificial Intelligence composing classical music), Passbolt, (open source password manager) and Yollty, (helps businesses incentivise their customers to engage with their social media pages).  Each team gave a brief presentation of what they gained most from the programme and what advances their companies had made.

Next up was Andrew McCarthy of Whitespace Ventures Ltd, described online as “the quintessential tech entrepreneur who has travelled from bedroom coder to chic geek”. He spoke about the journey of a successful start-up in his own inimiative way, inciting the graduates to continue to reach for success despite the occasional failures.

Andrew also said that the 5 keys to start up success are, “team, team, team, team and tech” because all great upward journeys are difficult and done with a team that does it with you and deserves your thanks and because your tech should always be a solution to a problem.  Andrew allowed the audience to ask direct questions and brought up Genna Elvin, founder of Tadaweb, the first small data platform designed to clone and amplify human intelligence for web data collection and analysis, who knows the Luxembourg start-up scene well and could answer any questions on that topic.

Finally, the end of the graduation programme was the official launch of the Fit 4 Start Spring 2017 edition including an Introduction of the jury members & coaches and Elevator Pitches by the new participants.

The 5 new startups selected are:

• BodyQ Analytics (open data): body intelligence software – Team: Tanicha Nichole Green/ Jamica Greene.
• Daanuu(supply chain): Optimise the work of your mobile workforce ( daanuu.com) -Team: Sacha Thommes / Stéphane Este-Gracias.
• L7 Defense(cybersecurity): Advanced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks – Team: Yisreal Gross.
• Viewport (virtual reality): Publishing technology allowing large scale publishers to publish VR content – Team: Vineet Devaiah / Varun Nayak.
• Ziggu(real estate): Engagement platform allowing real estate developers to better interact with customers – Team: Yannick Bontinckx / Pieter Gistelinck/ Vincent Van Impe.