It's that time of the year. The days are slowly getting longer, New Year's resolutions are still going strong and SXSW is just around the corner.
On Tuesday, South by Southwest organizers announced the 45 finalists for the annual festival's pitch competition — and two Bay Area startups made the cut.
SXSW Pitch will be held in-person March 12-13 in Austin, Texas. The festival has been held in Austin since 1987, and the pitch competition is now in its 14th year.
The 45 startups from around the world will showcase their companies to around three dozen judges for a chance to be named the best in one of nine categories, as well as best in show overall. There's no prize money, but the startups get exposed to a whole network of potential funders.
The local companies competing are Mozart Data in the Enterprise & Smart Data category and Action Face in the Entertainment, Gaming & Content category. Here's what we know about each startup:
Mozart Data
- Founders: CEO Peter Fishman and CTO Dan Silberman
- Founded: 2020
- Funding: Just over $4 million
- HQ: San Francisco
- What it does: Provides an out-of-the-box data analysis and storage solution for people who aren't engineers
- Website: mozartdata.com
Action Face
- Founders: CEO Kenny David, CPO Joby Otero and Chief Design Officer David Kunitz
- Founded: 2018
- Funding: Not available
- HQ: Berkeley
- What it does: Creates realistic-looking action figures based on 3D scans that customers take with a smartphone
- Website: actionface.shop
The judges this year will include several Bay Area folks, as well:
- Deena Shakir, partner at Lux Capital in Palo Alto
- Bryan Stolle, managing director at Wildcast Venture Partners in San Mateo
- Reilly Brennan, general partner at Trucks Venture Capital in San Francisco
- Joanne Chen, general partner at Foundation Capital in San Francisco
- Tipatat Chennavasin, general partner and co-founder of The Venture Reality Fund in San Francisco
- Mohanjit Jolly, partner at Iron Pillar in Palo Alto
- Sarah Kunst, managing director at Cleo Capital in San Francisco
- Vincent Diallo, managing partner at Interlace Ventures in San Francisco
- Brian Dixon, partner at Kapor Capital in Oakland
