The Results are in at #TCDisrupt Battlefield–How did my predictions fair?

Well the folks over at Tech Crunch have come out with their official list of the final six startups of the Battlefield.  These firms will move on today for the final battlefield in front of an all star panel of judges.

They are:

• COTA
• Dryft
• Fates Forever
• Layer
• Regalli
• SOIL IQ

How did my predictions fair?  Well two of the finalists (Dryft and Soil IQ) were on my official list and two of my alternates made the list as well (Layer and Fates Forever).   If held to the letter of my predictions I am sitting at a 33% accuracy rating.  If I include my honorable mentions list, I am at 60%.  Not to bad as I am not certain how the rating process over at Tech Crunch actually works.

In general I rank on three axes.  The first is the ability to monetize the idea or business, the second is an assessment of how interesting and disruptive technology actually is, and third is the timeline for success.

Based on my thinking some of these finalists scored high in one factor, but low in another which precluded them from my list.  For Example:

At a high level the COTA technology is amazing!  With a nod to the genius of Tesla, Wireless charging of devices and batteries from a central home or building based platform would be highly lucrative and there is huge consumer demand.   The Tech is cool, the overall monetization looks to be good.  The reason this one did not make my final list is the extremely long cycles that are likely going to be involved getting this device through all the various regulatory bodies, safety evaluations, etc.   This will be big but the timeline for success on this is quite a long time away.  Having spent a good portion of my professional career dealing with the intersection of Electricity, regulatory requirements, and modularization of equipment, this is coming from a place of some experience.

Regalli, on the other hand, has an amazing business model that is likely to monetize very quickly. However in my mind there was nothing really exciting or disruptive about the technology.  Do I think they are going to make a killing? Absolutely.  There are some likely business development challenges ahead for them, and perhaps some Latin American regulatory issues, but nothing insurmountable.  

As you can see any kind of judging is highly subjective and my rankings are not to say these firms don’t have a great chance of great success.  Its just the standards I hold myself in evaluating these companies are the things I would use in evaluating the use of my own money for investment.

As for the others I will be actively rooting from the sidelines.   If history is any indicator, however, its mostly theater from this point (except for the team that gets the money!) because in reality, ALL of these firms have just won in a very big way.

\Mm