Tech Crunch Disrupt London: Innovative Apps, Machine Learning and sir Alex Ferguson

Every startup dreams of appearing on Tech Crunch posts and participating in their events. One of these events is Tech Crunch Disrupt London (7-8 December).

It’s a great opportunity to meet potential investors, partners and customers and it’s widely followed by entrepreneurs from all over the world.

People may think it’s just focused on young tech entrepreneurs who have developed an app. But people from all kind of industries  participate. For instance, one of the featured speakers was sir Alex Ferguson, former Manchester United manager. It was a really interesting keynote presentation about how to manage leadership and how to manage teamwork.

Several speakers of Tech Crunch Disrupt highlighted that startups may be created anywhere, i.e. ,  you don’t need to live in the US to start a profitable startup. In that sense Andy McLoughlin,  venture partner with SoftTech VC, pointed out:

“You should be where your customers are. You needn’t  be in Silicon Valley to succeed .”

Tech Crunch Disrupt also held the Startup Battlefield. Fifteen companies competed in order to win the prize of £30,000 . On the first day four companies were selected:  

• Jukedeck: It’s a platform to easily create music for videos, games, etc. They use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to compose custom tracks and the users don’t need previous musical knowledge to create the songs.

• Lystable: A tool to improve the management of the external workforce. They rank freelancers and organize them by categories.
• MAX: Metro Africa Xpress is a delivery service for urban Africa areas. They’re based in Lagos (Nigeria).

• Yoobic: They provide consumer-facing brands with the opportunity to collect real-time data and monitor the pricing, placement and promotions of the products.

Finally, the winner of the £30,000 prize was Jukedeck .

Apart from the Startup Battlefield, there were also interesting projects at the exhibition area, as well as at the Tech Crunch Disrupt Hackathon (5-6 December). The winner of the hackathon was a team who developed Free Me. According to TechCrunch:

It gives a women in distress the ability to push a help button in the feminine hygiene dispensers located in a public restroom [..] It creates a profile and shares a photo with metadata (time, location, gender, age) with the police. It also simultaneously dispenses a sanitary pad with an embedded beacon.

When the woman is in the proximity of a police officer, at a border crossing for example, the police officers will receive an alert with the profile, and know that she is nearby and needs their help immediately.

With this solution Free Me won the prize of £3,000 .

Another interesting project of the Tech Crunch Disrupt Hackathon was SMSNAV.me.

This app uses SMS communications to send you local directions without a data connection. It may be really useful when travelling abroad as well as in areas where no data connection is available.

Tech Crunch Disrupt it’s not just about technology and mobile solutions, but also about any innovative solution which can improve people’s live, regardless of the industry in which it has been developed.