In front of an illustrious, albeit all male (we know, we asked) panel of judges at the New Diorama Theatre in London last night, six proptech start-ups pitched their businesses for the chance to claim as much as £150,000 of investment from VC investor Pi Labs.
The inaugural EG Techtalk Academy, in partnership with Pi Labs, CBRE and KPMG, saw nervous and excited entrepreneurs battle against a five-minute stopwatch and the threat of being hooted off stage before enduring 10 minutes of frank and tough questioning from a panel that comprised Dominic Wilson, managing director of Pi Labs, Nick Leslau, chairman of Prestbury, Chris Grigg, chief executive of British Land, Dave Eisenberg, senior vice president of digital enablement and technology at CBRE, Mike Sherwood, former MD of Europe at Goldman Sachs and Kevin Brown, founding partner of REV.
Six pitched but only one could be crowned the winner and take home the EG TechTalk Academy trophy, plus that investment with Pi Labs.
For the judges, the winner was clear. It was a business that appealed to the financial brains on the panel as well as those that understood the true bricks and mortar of the real estate business.
Demand Logic, led by Sonny Masero, is a “fitbit for buildings” a piece of tech that feeds into existing building management systems and rapidly reads that data to provide a fitness regime for the building.