This is CYzone first time hold the startup pitch competition in Singapore, it is their first step out of China, doing similar like Demo China. With the cooperation with Switch, they rent the facility from Switch, CYzone is responsible for arranging the startups, investor and Singapore government or accelerators.
Although I’m not sure if CYzone got any profit from this event, it was really lucky that as a startup, we don’t need to pay any fee to join the pitch competition. Because I know to join this type of competition, there are many event organizers is asking startup to pay for attending fee, I certainly understood their business model, at the same time, we are very appreciated CYzone gave us this opportunity.
We prepared the rehearsal one day before the Demo show, it was slightly different from Demo China, we just run through the presentation if function well, we didn’t have a chance to go up stage speaking about the whole presentation, I could sense Switch staff was tired.
Demo Asia is part of Switch, so many events are happening at the same time. On the Demo Show, the founder of CYzone Mary Nan is very exciting about their first time in Singapore, later National Research Foundation seems very important organization in Singapore. There was 4 keynote speech in the morning and 2-panel discussion in the afternoon. There was 16 startup in the competition, English was mainly spoken, but some startup spoke Mandarin as the jury was mostly from China, I think it was challenging for some jury don’t speak English, although simultaneous translation device was provided. The winner is the first speaker, sometimes the order is very important.
In the night there was a private dinner, the investors and startup speaker can talk face to face, it was a very nice arrangement as well.
Originally published at sofi.lafenice.co.
