Check out the 12 finalists in the Uprise Festival pitch battle

17 Oct 2016

Competition. Image: alphaspirit/Shutterstock

The fourth instalment of Uprise, running in Dublin this week (20 October), brings together a dozen hopeful start-ups in an Ireland v The World battle royale.

Founded by Irishman Paul O’Connell, the success of Uprise Festival in Amsterdam in recent years has been such that Dublin plays host to its first trip outside of the Netherlands.

Largely aimed at growth-aspiring start-ups, Uprise is made up of talks, panels, workshops and more, with Microsoft, Google and Salesforce among those in attendance. But it’s the battles that seem the most interesting.

At the RDS in Dublin, Uprise will host a special ‘pitch battle’ that will see six Irish start-ups compete against six counterparts from Estonia, UK, Austria and the US.

Siliconrepublic.com was at the Amsterdam event earlier this year, with some of the start-ups from that festival making the trip to Ireland this week.

We already highlighted 12 start-ups to look out for at the event, with the likes of DeepstreamHub, MyOctopus and, most impressively, Link.fish worth a gander.

But today, the organisers announced the dozen competitors for the pitch battle. “Our pitch battle is an incredible way to pit Ireland’s most talented start-up entrepreneurs against Europe’s start-ups,” said O’Connell.

“I’m very excited to see what start-up scraps its way to the top.”

Bank of Ireland was behind the search for the final six, touring the country to source one start-up each from showcases in Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork, as well as two wild-card options that stood out the most.

Each start-up has two minutes to pitch their idea to the audience, battling through three knockout rounds. The overall winners will receive support and credit prizes from F6S and SendGrid.