XSight participated in 4YFN startups-investors conference as part of MWC2023, which took place in Barcelona, Spain. Mobile World Congress is a leading annual conference and exhibition in the mobile and technology industry, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and consumers to showcase the latest products, services, and trends in mobile technology. The event features keynote speakers, panel discussions, press conferences, and exhibitions by over 2,000 companies worldwide focusing on innovation.
We had a startup stand, plenty of meetings and of course - a pitch from the main 4YFN stage. It was amazing! But let me walk you through all the details step by step.
Our goal for this conference was to find investors for our current round of fundraising. We are raising $1M and already found more than half of the money. So this conference was a good chance for us to finalise the current round of fundraising.
Secondary goal was to connect with relevant media outlets for future press releases, since we are going to launch a web3 ambassador program - everyone who will invite other users into XSight will get a certain amount of coins, this amount will be multiplied to a factor depending on how many users an ambassador had invited.
Previously, in November last year, XSight took part in Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. In comparison 4YFN had a lesser number of investors present, but it was not critical. It was about 20% less investors at 4YFN compared to Disrupt.
At 4YFN and a preceding ShowStoppers event we connected with a good number of media outlets. European and international ones. We recorded several interviews, including an interview for Associated Press, Bloomberg, live MWC23 broadcast and several individual video bloggers. Most importantly, we found a number of investors interested in investing in XSight. We will definitely continue conversation with them after the conference. Investors we've connected with represent different verticals and fund sizes. From a small fund like BCombinator to a huge enterprise fund like Huawei ventures.
One of the funniest moments of the conference for us was an elevator pitch to one of the Plug&Play fund representatives. I came to their stand and asked what type of startups they are interested in investing in. Then started pitching and showing an XSight promo video (the one available on our website). The representative interrupted me and told me she's been told by her friend about a cool AR gaming startup with limitless possibilities for e-commerce during a casual conversation the day before the conference - about XSIght. And it couldn't be one of our teammates, plus we never used any paid marketing.
Of course we will continue the conversation after the conference. We also connected with two strong investors from eastern Europe with a ticket size $500K to $1M, several angel investors and investment departments from big telecom companies such as Orange, Telefonica and Kyivstar.
We didn't expect this, but 4YFN actually provided us with a solid stream of leads to build and sell custom adventures for our future clients. That's even better than securing investments. We are talking about companies that can see their business benefit in launching an adventure on our platform.
A simple example - before a famous music band concert, users can walk around the stadium with the XSight app and collect virtual album covers in AR. When they collect 10 albums - they can get a 50% discount for the actual ticket.
And this is just one of thousands of gamified business experiences - possibility to create custom mini games like this is the core thing that makes XSight a platform. Companies came to our stand and wanted to create their own custom adventure. From small to big, from mini-toys related companies to big enterprises and telecoms. The bright highlight to this part is an interest from Wall Street Journal to run a pilot adventure with us. In total we've got 30+ leads to create and sell custom adventures, to solve their business problems. Major verticals that demostrated an interest are: metaverse, tourism, media and even fintech (aka "Metaverse virtual bank branch through your camera").
Final thing - we had a 3 minutes pitch from the main 4YFN pitch scene. It was incredible. In an hour after the pitch we had a constant flow of people wanting to talk about XSight non-stop. It was exhausting but super satisfying and fun.
Overall, it was a great experience for us, heaps of extra motivation for the team and lots of fun.
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