On Thursday, April 6, the New Jersey Tech Council held its 20th annual Venture Conference at the Panasonic building in Newark, NJ. The conference was created to feature the most promising startups and emerging businesses from across the region. NJTC split the event into four parts and included a keynote chat, networking opportunities, a funding panel, and a startup pitch competition where Vydia took home the highly coveted award: Company Most Likely to Succeed.
The event opened up with an enlightening keynote chat between Chieh Huang, the CEO of Boxed Wholesale, and Nihal Mehta, the Founding General Partner of Eniac Venture. Mehta asked Huang about how Boxed started, scaled and continues to develop at such a fast-growing pace. Huang went into detail about how investing into his employees has been a key attribute to his company’s success and encouraged his audience to do the same. Similar to Boxed, Vydia places substantial emphasis on employee satisfaction and has been recognized for these efforts by being named to NJBIZ’s Best Places to Work in New Jersey 2017.
The pitch competition was the cornerstone of the conference as over 500 entrepreneurs, developers, investors, venture capitalists, lenders and other financing groups watched 44 startups who had been selected to pitch to a panel of judges. Representing Vydia, CTO Ken Leland spoke about how the cash efficient company has quickly scaled to over 135K users worldwide and has solidified relationships with companies like Vevo, YouTube, and Facebook. Leland noted that Vydia continues to capitalize on the momentum created, pulling ahead as a thought leader in video technology.
After several rounds of questioning, the judges selected and presented awards to a select number of winners during the reception at the end of the event. In addition to Vydia taking the gold for the ‘Company Most Likely to Succeed’ other winners included: Social Ladder (Best Management Team), Gatekeeper (Investors’ Choice), Cinematcher (Best Early Stage Company), and RistCall (Best Health Tech Award).
The New Jersey Tech Council is a private, nonprofit membership organization that supports the state’s growing technology, innovation, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. NJTC celebrates its 20th Anniversary as it continues to nurture and expand New Jersey’s growing tech community by providing business development, education, networking, and recognition opportunities.