Eyeonic wins grand prize at the Pitch, with La Foundary named People’s Choice

This evening in Melbourne, SmartCompany hosted its fourth instalment of the Pitch, an early-stage startup competition, with Eyeonic named the winner.

Held at The Commons in Cremorne, the event was created in partnership with AWS, BlueRock and FinTech Australia, with a packed room in attendance to hear five early-stage startups pitch their ideas to an esteemed judging panel.

Our guest judges, Rachel Yang, partner at Giant Leap, Claire Bristow, senior investment associate at Skalata Ventures, Mitch Hancock, director of accounting at BlueRock and Rahul Kesavan, startups advisor at AWS, chose Eyeonic as the winner due to its clear purpose, solution and market opportunity.

Now, Eyeonic will receive AWS Activate credits, mentoring sessions, and a grants review from BlueRock as it works towards its mission of making glaucoma testing easier and more affordable.

Founded by Simon Skalicky, it uses artificial intelligence to enable home glaucoma testing on laptop or tablet screens.

“Large addressable market, ambition, passion, global strategy, and a clear pitch” brought it home for Skalicky, the judges said, in a close contest.

Members of the startup and VC communities packed out the room to learn more about the big ideas coming from Australia’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

Skalicky thanked all the people who’ve helped him on the journey so far in his acceptance speech.

As our fourth winner of the Pitch, Eyeonic joins previous winners Zipr, Diolog and nVest on the Hall of Fame list.

La Foundary wins the People’s Choice Award

For the first time, the Pitch included a People’s Choice Award.

Melody Wu, La Foundary co-founder

Members of the audience were invited to vote on the startup they deemed “one to watch”, for the prize of bragging rights and Australian Open tickets.

Elected the winner was La Foundary, whose impressive pitch and solution to turn farming waste into sustainable packaging using mycelium, won the crowd over. La Foundary was co-founded by undergrad students Melody Wu, Anh Van, David Sea and Shikhar Jung Shahi Thakuri.

SmartCompany congratulates Eyeonic and La Foundary on their success, and extends that to all other shortlisted candidates for their incredible pitches, and to every startup who entered the Pitch.