Sales Software Frux wins CA Technologies Startup Challenge
What are promising Austrian startups in the field of software development and IT-systems? The Austrian branch of CA Technologies, one of the largest independent software corporations in the world, wanted to find out and launched the CA Technologies Startup Challenge in partnership with the City of Vienna and the initiative DigitalCity.Wien. Proud winner of the challenge is Patrick Kirchmayr (picture above in the middle) from FRUX. His startup develops a B2B sales intelligence platform. Second place went to INDOO.RS (on the picture left: Co-Founder Bernd Gruber), an indoor navigation and positioning app. Jakob Etzel (on the right) won with PredictR, a banking software for personal financial forecasting, the third place.
All three startups get prices with a total value of 100.000 Euros including tickets to the IT conference “CA world” in Las Vegas and PR services. Additionally, Frux can use one year CA Technologies software for free, including support and training.
from left: Ulrike Huemer (City of Vienna), Mario Reismüller (CA Technologies) and Martin Giesswein (DigitalCity.Wien)
Presentation with finalists
Preceding the awards ceremony, five finalists had to pitch their idea on October 20th at the Vienna University of Technology. Besides Frux, Indoors and Predictr, the startups CareerMoves (job portal for people with disabilities) and Wave (mobility assistant app) got nominated. The best startups were selected through a jury as well as an audience vote, which was conducted with the app from DealMatrix.
Dealmatrix CEO Christoph Drescher explains how to use his app for voting. © David Bohmann
“We were surprised by the high number of applications and impressed by the variety and creativity of the ideas – it was not easy to make a preselection”, says Mario Reismüller, CEO of CA Technologies in Austria.
In total, 24 startups applied for the challenge. Venionaire had the responsibility to screen and analyze every startup and consult CA Technologies on the possible synergies and growth potentials of the candidates. From our point of view, startup challenges such as this one, innovation2Company or Security Rockstars are a good sign, that the awareness within corporates for collaborating and engaging with startups is growing. This is great news for the whole startup ecosystem as it enables new growth opportunities for startups while corporates profit from a new stream of innovation and business ideas.
Our Partner Alexander Rapatz (on the left) was part of the Jury at the CA Technologies Startup Challenge. © David Bohmann
If you are interested in launching your own startup challenge or want to cooperate closer with startups, just give us a hint. We are more than happy to help!
