Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF), we awarded the prize “Global Brain Five-Star Startup” to the startups with remarkable achievement that were supported by GB. Notable startups in Japan and from abroad gathered at the ceremony.

Also, a pitch battle was organized and the Next Five-Star Startups that areexpected to follow the footsteps of this year’s award winners and make great achievements participated.

Global Brain Five-Star Award Ceremony

At this year’s GBAF, celebrating the 10th anniversary, as Five-Star Startup, we selected and awarded the prize to the startups that received GB’s support and achieved outstanding growth.

We awarded a shield as a prize to the winners and they each presented a 1-minute pitch to introduce their businesses. At the end of the ceremony, Mr. Yurimoto, the representative of GB, said, “These 12 startups that we invested in and selected as Global Brain Five-Star award winners are our pride and also Japan’s pride, and are becoming the world’s pride.”

Global Brain Five-Star

• AXELSPACE – Aiming at establishing a platform using microsatellites.
• BASE – Providing services for preparing online shops.
• Creema – Operating a market place for craft items.
• Geniee – Developing and operating SSP and DSP.
• Giftee – Providing social gift services.
• Mercari – Operating a flea market app in Japan and the USA.
• Minrebi – Providing funeral-supporting services.
• Near – Having advantages in ad distribution using Geofence.
• Life Robotics – Developing robots characterized by simple actions.
• PatSnap – Providing SaaS for searching and analyzing patents.
• Raksul – Providing cloud-type online printing.
• WonderPlanet – Developing and operating game apps for smart devices.

Global Brain Next Five-Star Startup Pitch

In the last session of GBAF in 2016, startups with a great expectation of growth in the future participated in the pitch battle. The participants were 9 startups in which Global Brain invested in 2016.

Cognitee – Developing services for evaluating communication quantitatively.

Trillium – Developing security solutions for connected cars.

Dronomy – Developing services for autonomous drones to highly precise 3D models.

Coins – Providing a platform on which money can be transferred and payment can be made without a bank account.

NBT – Providing a platform on which ads are distributed to the locked screen of a smartphone.

Material Concept – Putting the utilization of copper instead of silver for wiring parts into practice.

HACOSCO – Developing and operating services for providing a virtual reality experience simply with a smartphone.

XSHELL – Providing PaaS that greatly reduces man-hours for IoT development.

Crowd Realty – Developing investment-type crowd-funding specific to real estate.

Each startup presented a 6-minute pitch and judges sometimes asked sharp questions at the end of the presentations. Also, not only judges but also ordinary participants cast ballots for “the most attractive and interesting startup.”

Networking party

A networking party was held from 18:00 after all the programs finished.

At the party, we announced the results of the Global Brain Next Five-Star Startup Pitch. The judges’ award went to Trillium and Dronomy, which both got the same scores. The audience award decided by ballots of ordinary participants went to “XSHELL.”

A lot of people actively networked, including booths exhibited by more than 50 startups, and we ended the party very successfully.

Photo: Rera Naru