By Eliza McLellan - 17th January, 2018
The PLASTARC team has been working with Verizon over the past few years to convert a range of unique spaces into coworking sites. These facilities provide an opportunity for Verizon to connect with business customers, innovators and the technology community. Some examples of our work include this spring's launch with Justco in Singapore, last summer's Alley in Cambridge, and Work.Life in London. This December, we were excited to attend the launch of an additional Alley location in Palo Alto.
Pitch Night marked the opening of Alley’s new space in collaboration with Verizon Ventures and Verizon 5G Labs. The event drew both seasoned and budding entrepreneurs to the downtown location for food, drink, and cutting-edge technology. Attendees explored the amenities, from the kitchen to the bar to the bike parking, while meeting some of the area’s leading innovators. When the pitches began, the room was packed with eager ears.
Six companies pitched to win prizes such as an Alley membership, 5G technology, being featured on Alley.com, and direct access to Alley’s community of executives, investors, and entrepreneurs. Among the six companies included: Kiana, which uses integrated sensor architecture to provide a new level of safety and security; Parkimon, which proposes a technology to enforce parking, tolls, and public transit fares based on satellite data; Sweep.ai, which closes the current gap between businesses and critical infrastructure with AI technology; xapix, which builds fast data connections for the automotive space; Swim, which creates data insights by using edge devices rather than the broader big data; and Foresight, which builds dynamic HD maps for mobile robots.
Judges for the evening included heavy hitters from the industry: Serhad Doken, Executive of the Emerging Technology Incubation & Innovation of 5G Ecosystems; Kristin Serafim, Director at Verizon Ventures; T.M. Ravi, Managing Director and Co-founder of The Hive; Evangelos Simoudis, venture investor and senior advisor to global corporations; and Laura Kennedy, Vice President of Corporate Development at Techstars.
We are excited to see what ideas and technology develop from the new connections fostered in this space.
