The key to pitching to thousands is to be conversational, according to the CEO and founder of Tampa startup Fluix AI, Abhishek Sastri.
Sastri competed in a pitch competition at the Miami tech conference eMerge Americas and placed in the top five of over 100 competitors. Fluix didn't win, but it beat hundreds of startups — and has landed some additional perks.
"The biggest takeaway we got is now people see us," Sastri said.
People in the startup world now recognize the name and branded blue polos worn in the final round, he said. The pitching also gave them a connection to Miami, credibility and leverage from the event.
"Now we can tell investors that other people are interested, which is the truth," Sastri said.
It's the company's second time participating in the eMerge showcase and competition.
"Pitbull is there, you see all these celebrities, all these investors; you're in the VIP zone," Sastri said. "We didn't have access to [the main stage] before, so it's really cool getting access."
Although they hadn't perfected a stage pitch, they practiced and treated it with a conversational tone — and it kept working.
"Unfortunately, we didn't win, but we know [winner Andrew Satz and his startup Evqlv], we know them very well," Sastri said. "We might be a close second or third in the polling from what we heard, but it was an amazing opportunity just having 2,000 people hear our pitch."
Data centers are better than people
Sastri started Fluix in early 2023 in Tampa. He spent his childhood selling and fixing computers, and he studied aerospace engineering at the University of Central Florida.
At one point, he built cryptocurrency mining rigs for sale, which are powerful processing computers that can be used to find cryptocurrency. He would later work with a Florida company in the data center management space.
His past venture, Fluix Pro, sold a patented liquid-cooling technology for data centers. It didn't find a broader customer base, but it led Sastri to Fluix AI.
In 2023, he realized he could leverage this background in data center management. He founded Fluix as a tool for data centers to use AI to improve costs and temperature control. He learned the industry from working in it. He partnered with California-based Chase Overcash, who graduated from University of California Irvine with a master's degree specializing in artificial intelligence.
Since 2023, he has graduated from the startup nonprofit Tampa Bay Wave's TechDiversity accelerator program and grown the company's valuation to nearly $12 million. It has closed investments from Tampa angel investors and the Morgan Stanley Inclusive Lab Ventures. Recently, Sastri recently moved to San Francisco, but the startup has a presence in this region, he said.
The startup is building a platform that manages the air conditioning systems of data centers using AI predictions and controls. It has four pilot programs, and one pilot program has saved 65% in energy consumption, Sastri said.
"If you go after an office building ... there's a limit on how much you can save money, but in data centers, you could really tune it to try to inch out as much savings as possible," Sastri said.
