In August, Startup50 and Sierra Ventures teamed up to issue a new challenge to startups, one that would help them navigate rapidly changing market conditions. We asked startups to develop a plan to win over enterprise customers in a tough market.
The Customer Challenge started with 53 startups. They entered the challenge by completing an in-depth questionnaire that grilled them on their market positioning, go-to-market plans, and their ability to scale up high enough to take on incumbents.
We then whittled the field down to 25 finalists, who were invited to submit pitch videos pitching their products or services to enterprise tech buyers. We brought in Big50 Tech Advisor, AirDeck, to help with this challenge. AirDeck provides a presentation platform that makes it easy to add voice, video, and viewer tracking to your presentations.
Now, we’re down to 7 startups. Below are 5 runners-up, along with links to their challenge videos.
The two winners, who will get a chance to pitch enterprise buyers from Sierra Ventures’ CXO Advisory Board, will be announced Monday.
But first, check out our runners-up, each of which is a venture-backed startup with the potential to move markets:
Ascend.io
Year founded: 2015
Funding: $19M
CEO: Sean Knapp, who previously co-founded and served as CTO and Chief Product Officer of Ooyala
What they do: Provide a unified data engineering platform that enables engineers to build autonomous data pipelines to power cloud applications and infrastructure
3-minute pitch: Unified Data Engineering Platform
Spectro Cloud
Year founded: 2019
Funding: $7.5M
CEO: Tenry Fu, who previously served as Sr. Director and Chief Architect for Cisco’s Cloud Platform Solutions Group
What they do: Provide a policy-based Kubernetes cluster management service
3-minute pitch: Spectro Cloud Overview
Styra
Year founded: 2019
Funding: $14M
CEO: Bill Mann, who previously served as Chief Product Officer for Centrify
What they do: Provide a security service that enables enterprises to define, enforce, and monitor policy across their cloud-native environments
3-minute pitch: Styra, Creators of Open Policy Agent (OPA)
Syncari
Year founded: 2019
Funding: $6.5M
CEO: Nick Bonfiglio, who formerly served as EVP of Product at Marketo
What they do: Provide a data automation platform that unifies and manages customer data across apps
3-minute pitch: Data Automation: Better Data to Fuel Your Revenue Growth
Zero Networks
Year founded: 2019
Funding: $4.7M
CEO: Benny Lakunishok, who previously served as a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft
What they do: Build network control software that automates the development and enforcement of network access rules throughout complex enterprise networks
3-minute pitch: Zero Networks: Trust Your Network Again
Congratulations to our runners-up! And don’t forget to come back to Startup50 on Monday when we reveal the two overall winners of the competition, two startups that will soon be pitching their products/services to enterprise buyers from Sierra Ventures’ CXO Advisory Board.
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