Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #100: IoT and AI

Boston New Technology Startup Showcase 100

April 23, 2019

This month, Boston New Technology’s startup showcase featured Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence startups. Boston New Technology is a not-for-profit, community-supported network of 24,000 business professionals with a mission of helping Boston’s local technology startups launch and grow.

April’s showcase, BNT100, was hosted by Mendix at their offices in Boston’s Seaport district.

Boston New Technology Startup Showcase 100: Mendix in Boston, MA

This month’s event was rather special. It was BNT’s 100th event, so it featured tributes at the beginning and cake at the end. At the very beginning, though, before the speeches and the startup presentations, was the usual hour of food, drinks, and networking.

The presentations always begin with quick introductions of Boston New Technology’s sponsors in attendance. In addition to host Mendix, tonight’s other attending sponsors, who each received brief introductions, were Ink’d Stores, Your Profile Video, The Boston Headshot, The Yard: Back Bay, and Tom Maloney Coach.

The quick sponsor introductions are generally followed by the meat of the program, five-minute presentations (plus five minute Q&A time) by each of the evening’s showcasing companies.

Tonight’s six showcasing company presentations were, however, preceded by a presentation about the Boston Innovation Ecosystem from Boston’s Startup Manager, Matheus Lima. Matheus spoke at length about the inviting Boston startup ecosystem. A key point of his presentation was that he specifically mentionted the three different constituencies his office supports: startups, institutions that deal with startups, and entrepreneurs.

Next up were the showcasing companies. As always, my notes are brief, so I’d encourage you to follow the links if you seek any more information, and then contact the companies directly if you have a particular interest. Spanning the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets, this batch of startups is on the cutting edge of the tech world.

Products & Presenters

Mendix, the evening’s host, kicked things off. Mendix is a no-code/low-code platform that allows people who aren’t coders to be able to design and create apps. I had been very much looking forward to this demonstration, as a quick walkthrough of “how it’s done” is far superior to all the reading in the world.

Up next, Zome is a tool for creating and controlling micro (power) grids. It allows power grids to curtail demand centrally whenever desired – for example, in case of reduced supply or non-competitive pricing. In addition to its presentation, Zome showcased a demonstration, which gradually slightly adjusted the heating/cooling system of a group of its participating residences.

Divinio is a robust, unobtrusive, multi-sensor measuring platform that is designed for use in sports and industrial equipment. It was put through its paces via a field test in a challenging environment, the sport of cricket, and it passed that significant stress test. The device uses a bluetooth connection to transmit data from the sensors to an edge device.

Posh is one of the evening’s chatbots. It’s a context-aware conversational bot that can be used across multiple channels, across text and voice. Though its client list extends well beyond the financial services industry, Posh’s initial focus is upon selling into the banking industry. Specifically, it has made significant inroads with large players in the credit union market.

Orbita is healthcare-focused conversational AI, utilizing both voice and chatbot powered assistance. Counting among its user base such healthcare organizations as Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Mayo Clinic, Amgen and Merck, Orbita is playing in the big-time healthcare space.

The final presenter of the evening, Talla automates customer support via machine learning and natural language processing. For its niche, Talla focuses specifically on customer service interactions that require quick turnaround.

Obviously, my summaries above are quite brief. For more details, please follow the links I provided to the companies’ websites. As usual, Boston New Technology assembled an interesting group of presenters from among Boston’s tech startup community.

Looking Ahead

Next month’s BNT startup showcase, BNT101, is scheduled for May 20th at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, and it will feature EdTech and CareerTech startups.

Check out BNT’s upcoming event calendar at its website for other events, too. At the moment, in addition to BNT101, May 14th and May 21st AI-focused events are also on BNT’s calendar. The May 14th event, “AI Talks: Use Cases in Machine Learning,” will take place at General Assembly in Boston. May 21st’s “AI Talks: Next Generation AI – Memory, Causation and Adaptability,” is scheduled for the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, also in Boston.