At SaaStock we never shy away from a bit of friendly competition. The Startup Pitch Competition is the perfect opportunity for up-and-coming startups to hone their competitive side and get in front of SaaS experts and big-name VCs. And while we haven’t been able to get together in person this year, the Startup Pitch Competition at SaaStock Remote proved a huge success.

You may have seen a Pitch Competition when you’ve been to a previous SaaStock event, but for our online conference things worked a little differently… 

How does the Online Pitch Competition work?

We are on a mission to find the best B2B SaaS startups of 2020 and get them in front of the top SaaS market leaders as well as most reputable VCs to accelerate their growth. We want to recognise younger companies that are growing fast, as well as those that are changing the way we see SaaS. To tie in with our content themes at SaaStock Remote, we also looked at each startup’s adaptability and scalability in the current landscape.

We wanted to give all startups on our Startup Program the opportunity to apply for our Pitch Competition. For this online version, we kept applications open for as long as we could, until just one week before the event.

We received 50 applications from incredible startups. These were evaluated with support from a panel of VC judges, including partners from Notion, Storm Ventures, Lakestar, DTCP, and Smedvig.

From there, we selected the top 10 startups, who went through to the live semi-finals on day one of SaaStock Remote.

The shortlist

This year, the startups were assessed in the following elements:

  • Business model: Is the business model viable in the current landscape?
  • Innovation: How you’re solving the problem and how relevant it is.
  • Scalability: Is the product scaleable?
  • Traction: Evidence of traction
  • Competitive Advantage: How it stands out from the competition
  • Pitch Performance: Ability to relay all relevant information in pitch and judge questions

From these semi-finals, four companies were selected, and went through to the final that was held live on the Scale stage on the final day of SaaStock Remote.

Meet the Judges

Semi-Final Judges:

  • Michael Rager – Principal at DTCP
  • Stephanie Opdam – VC at Notion Capital
  • Susie Meier – Investor at Notion Capital
  • Andrew Macadam – Western Europe MD for Startups at Microsoft for Startups
  • Joe Knowles – Principal at Smedvig Capital
  • Pascale Diaine – Principal at Storm Ventures
  • Michael Hart – Senior Analyst at Lakestar

Live Final Judges:

  • Andrew Macadam – Western Europe MD for Startups at Microsoft for Startups
  • Itxaso del Palacio – Partner at Notion Capital
  • Tae Hea Nahm – Managing Director / Co-founder at Storm Ventures

Meet the Finalists

  • Blendr.io – a powerful, hyper-scalable and secure integration platform (iPaaS) for SaaS companies and agencies. 
  • Know Your Customer – award-winning technology empowering compliance teams to protect their business against money laundering and terrorism financing through the power of automation. 
  • KPI Sense – the CFO platform for SaaS businesses: tech-enabled automation paired with SaaS expertise at one low monthly cost.
  • Usercentrics – a market leader in the area of enterprise consent management platforms (CMP) that empowers companies to obtain, manage and document the consent of their users across platforms.

Watch the final of the SaaStock Remote Startup Pitch Competition:

And the Winner Is…

We’re delighted to introduce Usercentrics as the winner of the SaaStock Remote Startup Pitch Competition.

Usercentrics is a leading Consent Management Platform (CMP). The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution enables advertisers, publishers, agencies and technology providers to obtain, manage and document the consent of their website visitors to process the data of different web technologies. Founded in 2017, they have over 800 customers and their solution is implemented on over 30,000 websites.

We spoke to their CEO, Mischa Rürup, who shared more about their SaaStock Remote experience, and what’s next for Usercentrics:

What were your goals for joining the startup program at SaaStock Remote?

The SaaStock Remote Startup Program was a good fit for us due to the stage our company is at, and the benefits the program offers like networking possibilities and feedback from investors.

Tell us about the pitch competition: how did you prepare and how was the experience?

Two days prior to the event we got the notification that we were selected as one of the finalists for this year’s pitch competition. So honestly, preparation itself was a little bit spontaneous! But it was a great experience and we’re really happy with all the great feedback we received. We would also recommend other startups to give it a try next time. 

How has Usercentrics been impacted by the covid crisis? How have you overcome this?

We’re over 50 employees who are either working from our headquarter in Munich or  London, Lissabon and California. Therefore our company has always been set up in a way that would make working remotely possible.

The pandemic has just proven that with all the available tools nowadays, working remotely can run smoothly, even over a very long period of time – and we think that’s also one of the perks of being a SaaS company. 

Despite the ongoing covid crisis we have seen a large number of incoming leads and closed deals of companies of all sizes. Furthermore, the use of tracing and tracking apps to contain the spread of the virus has fuelled discussions concerning privacy. This proves: Privacy matters – even in times of crisis!

What’s next for Usercentrics?

Our goal is to become the leading and category defining Consent Management Platform in our core markets in the EU and US. Furthermore, we are working on building a network standard for obtaining and forwarding consent information and use this network effect to create the global consent standard. So stay tuned!