Elon Musk speaks at SXSW Interactive 2013. Pphoto by Sean Mathis/Getty Images
Two Irish start-ups will make their way to Austin, Texas, this March to compete in the 2014 SXSW Accelerator pitch competition, past winners of which include Apple’s voice-controlled personal assistant Siri.
Viddyad and Trustev – both named in our list of Irish tech start-ups to watch in 2014 – will travel to Austin as part of an Irish delegation headed by Enterprise Ireland, highlighting the innovation coming from Ireland with plans for international expansion.
Disruptive cloud-based video-ad creation platform Viddyad will compete in the Innovative World Technologies category against start-ups from Denmark, Slovenia, the US and Canada. No stranger to pitching to win, the Dublin-based start-up recently walked away with the Spark of Genius Award from the 2013 Web Summit, where it was up against 100 other start-ups.
Cork start-up Trustev will pitch in the Enterprise and Big Data Technologies category against six start-ups from the US and one from Finland. The e-commerce security firm has gone from strength to strength in the past year, having won the European Commission’s Tech All-Star Award and raising one of Europe’s largest seed-funding rounds (US$3m), followed recently by an additional funding round of US$500,000.
SXSW (South by Southwest) Conferences and Festivals – a convergence of music, independent film and emerging technologies – takes place from 7 to 11 March this year. Over the past six years, US$587m in funding has been awarded to Accelerator finalists and winners, and the event is hailed as a launchpad for new creative content.
Accelerator pitches will take place on 8 and 9 March. The panel of judges will include representatives from Google and Bloomberg, and former Apple CEO John Sculley.
