• Flashpoint’s SummerSaaS startup pitching competition has a final winner
• 5 winning startups from vertical-specific competitions competed for the title
• The final winner is APSY

On June 20, the startup pitching competition was the main attraction of SummerSaas by Flashpoint. First, five winning startups were determined by five vertical specific competitions: vertical SaaS, horizontal SaaS, developer tools, health tech, and fintech. At the end of the event, they crossed swords in the finals.

The judges of the competition were:

• Anton Fedorov, Partner at Flashpoint
• Tomer Meridor, Principal at Viola Growth
• Daan Sanders, Investor at VNV Global AB
• Joshua Stein, VC at Target Global
• Marta Szczerba, Tech Growth Investor at KKR

The startups took approximately three minutes each for pitching and a few more minutes for Q&As. After all the pitches were done and all the judges made up their minds and voted, the winners were announced: APSY won decisively, and CarbonSpace came second.

CarbonSpace

This is a satellite and airborne platform that helps food producers track their carbon footprint and reach climate goals. According to Dr Oleg Demidov, the startup’s COO and co-founder, food supply chains are responsible for almost 1/4 of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, they possess almost 1/2 of the emission reduction potential. International legislative initiatives relating to carbon emission accelerate the use of this potential, aided by the consumer demand for sustainable products.

CarbonSpace primarily targets food supply chains in the USA, Brazil, and South-East Asia, and large food supply chain players, including Nestle and PepsiCo. The startup helps their sustainability departments reach net zero targets and their procurement departments – to select suppliers based on their carbon footprint.

CarbonSpace’s business model is subscription-based per ha of monitored land. The company is in the process of obtaining ISO certification.

APSY

This US-based startup provides an AI-based no-code engine for app development. It helps people turn their ideas into apps. As it often happens with startups, APSY’s CEO Tooraj Helmi started it because he couldn’t find such a solution on the market. According to his numbers, 80% of the apps that enter the AppStore fail. It takes creators about five months to build them, three months to learn how to use the existing tools, and even then 90% of their results suffer from poor UI. At the same time, when they try to use the existing low-code tools, they find out that these tools are still not easy to use, and the project is still long.

With APSY, the user just speaks their mind, and the startup’s AI does the rest. Building an app takes several hours, and the result is exclusive. The business model is subscription-based with additional features available.

Other honored esteemed participants were:

• Helping Minds – a mental health assistance provider
• Abillio – an invoicing and transaction processing platform for freelancers
• Boost Space – a centralized cloud data storage platform for businesses

You are welcome to watch the complete final pitching competition of Flashpoint’s SummerSaaS 2023 at Flashpoint’s official YouTube Channel.