Adbidx takes out top honours at pitching event

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Sydney, a non-profit group fostering entrepreneurship, held its Open Pitching Competition for 2014 with 16 entrepreneurs given three minutes each to compete for the chance to attend TiE’s annual event at Silicon Valley on May 16-17.

This year’s Sydney winner Chris Muir, CEO of Adbidx, will attend the US event – mixing with over 3000 angel investors, venture capitalists and other members of the global startup ecosystem.

Adbidx is a digital billboard advertising platform with a twist. Using advanced demographic targeting through biometrics and other calculations, it determines who is looking at the billboard and targets advertisements likely to resonate with the user.

The company recently partnered with two major digital billboard owners, securing a significant inventory for the technology.

Simon File, partner of Crowe Horwath and member of the judging panel, says the calibre of competition this year made it difficult to choose a winner.

“The judges all felt from the commerciality and scalability perspective, Adbidx was a deserving winner with a clearly defined user base,” says Horwath.

Adbidx joins other Australian success stories from previous TiE events including Maestrano, the cloud solutions vendor for small to medium enterprises requiring software without the potentially large capital outlays associated with enterprise packages. Maestrano recently secured $1 million in funding.

The event was attended by over 100 people including angel investors and venture capitalists from Sydney and Melbourne and entrepreneurs.

Mathias Kopp, president of TiE Sydney, says the active participation from angel and venture capital points to increasing activity and deal flow in this sector.

“Attendance, as well as quality of pitches has also increased year on year, reinforcing the need to nurture the ideas of Australian entrepreneurs which is a focus of TiE,” Kopp says.

Last year, TiE Sydney made a positive impact on close to 100 entrepreneurs, via its various activities of mentoring, pitching, workshops, training, networking events.