Battle of the tech startups: Pioneers Festival Vienna 2016

This year’s Pioneers Festival takes place in Vienna on the last week of May with over 2,500 attendees from all over the world battling it out for the most promising early-stage tech startup in their ecosystem.

Vienna, Austria will play host to the Pioneers Festival beginning May 24 and is billed as “the major event for future technologies and entrepreneurship.”

Apart from an All-Star lineup of keynote speakers that includes Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, along with Tim Draper of DFJ, and Manoj Bhargava, CEO of Living Essentials, the Battle of the Ecosystems is sure to steal the show.

The Battle of the Ecosystems consists of seven main topics with a jury selecting the 10 best startups per topic. The seven ecosystems include:

• Financial Services
• Business & Productivity
• Materials & Manufacturing
• Energy & Utilities
• Lifestyle & Entertainment
• Mobility & Transportation
• Life Sciences & Agriculture

“These 70 selected startups [10 per ecosystem] will receive exclusive mentoring by Pioneers Ventures, fine-tune their pitch at the Mentors Day on May 22, and showcase their business to 300 international investors on May 23 at the Challenge Day in Vienna,” according to Pioneers.

This is an incredible opportunity for early-stage startups to gain recognition and serious funding potentials should they be successful.

Previous winners have gone on to receive extensive media coverage by the likes of CNBC, the New York Times, Wired, and TechCrunch while others have teamed up with Y Combinator and have received over $100K from investors.

“Each Ecosystem Champion will make it to the finals, TOP 7 startups will pitch to the whole Pioneers Festival audience at the Arena stage on May 25. The best one out of the 7 finalists will be awarded Pioneer of the Year.”

Only startups that had not raised more than $3.4 million and fit into one of the 7 ecosystem categories were eligible for participation in the festival that includes some “100 hours of handcrafted content.”

The winner of last year’s Pioneers Festival, Dronamics, was founded by two Bulgarian brothers who created a delivery-drone prototype dubbed “The Black Swan.”

The brothers’ aim for the The Black Swan is for same-day international delivery while being “able to carry 350 kg of payload over a distance of 2,500 km and will thus have the best fuel efficiency of any cargo aircraft.”