Two Colorado startups will showcase their products at South by Southwest this year.
The annual SXSW event in Austin is a nine-day festival showcasing film, interactive media, music, innovative companies and more.
This year, a Boulder-based company will participate in the event’s notable pitch competition and a Littleton-based startup is up for an innovation award.
Based in Boulder with a satellite office in Cleveland, Afference is developing a wearable device that allows users to feel what they see in virtual and augmented reality environments.
Co-founder and CEO Jacob Segil describes Afference’s first product as a harness for your hands. The product, called The Phantom, slips on a user’s hand with rings that clasp on their fingers. It is then paired with 3D content from a mixed-reality headset or other device and allows users to feel the object they are virtually holding. This technology was first used to help people with prosthetic limbs feel through their prosthetics.
Founded in December 2022 by neural scientists Segil and Dustin Tyler, Afference recently won the CES 2024 Innovation Award for its product. The company has since launched its early partner program with enterprise clients who want to co-develop the device for games or training. Segil said he expects to raise a seed round this year and take The Phantom to consumers in a few years.
Afference is among 45 finalists at the 16th annual SXSW Pitch competition and will pitch in the extended reality and Web3 category against four other companies operating in that sector.
“We’re learning as we go here as well,” Segil said. “But what we know is that South by Southwest is the perfect confluence for us of content creators, artists, technologists and people excited about the future of technology. So for us to be pitching there is a very opportunistic moment. ... Nobody has seen this stuff before and for us to present to that audience basically opens doors to all the conversations that we’re looking for.”
Littleton startup Lune is also making waves at SXSW this year. The startup is one of approximately 50 finalists for the 2024 SXSW Innovation Awards.
SXSW Innovation Award finalists were broken into 10 categories ranging from artificial intelligence and climate change to community empowerment, interface design, student innovation and product design. Lune is one of five finalists participating in the interface design category.
Lune developed a “music companion” to help artists create, play and advance their guitar-playing. Its product is a smart amplifier with a 12-megapixel camera and a tablet on top that’s pre-installed with Lune software. The software uses AI to provide artists with guidance and information about their actions, give them a generative AI band to play along with and provide AI-powered sound adjustments.
Lune will show off its product at the SXSW Innovation Awards finalist showcase in Austin on March 9. Judges will name one company from each category as the winner and name an overall “best in show” honoree. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Austin on March 11.
A third startup based in the Centennial State was also selected as a semifinalist at this year’s SXSW EDU Launch Startup Competition taking place in March. Out of more than 100 applicants, seven finalists were named finalists and five were selected as semifinalists, including Denver-based Mili Llama.
Founded in 2023, Mili Llama is an on-demand marketplace that matches K-12 schools with qualified college students to fill substitute teaching assignments. The startup is working to help end the substitute teaching shortage and has also participated in Techstars and Access Mode programs.
As of now, Mili Llama won’t participate in the competition unless one of the seven finalists drops out.
