Mobalytics Prevails at TechCrunch Disrupt 2016
The Battlefield has now been cleared, and the winner is… Mobalytics.
At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, which took place Monday to Wednesday at Pier 48, the winner of the tech showcase of the year is a gaming analytics platform that brings personal improvement to the world of competitive electronic sports games. Mobalytics was one of six finalists that participated in TechCrunch Battlefield, where they demoed their products and were grilled by leading VCs in front of the conference’s 4,000 attendees.
Disrupt Cup | Credit: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Battlefield started with 23 startups from around the globe — from Austin to Brooklyn, from Hong Kong to Beirut. Although some contestants already raised venture funding, others had been walking the conference floor in a perennially hopeful search for capital. The 23 companies, which operate in a wide range of industry sectors, were selected from more than 920 startups that applied to present on the coveted Disrupt SF stage. Of the presenting companies, only one could take home the final prize of $50,000.
After several rounds of intense competition, BlazingDB, Carbon Health, EverlyWell, Mobalytics, Sqreen, and UnifyID came out on top, making it to the final round. At the end, Mobalytics, the analytics platform that helps eSports gamers to improve their performance, finally snatched the Disrupt Cup.
Mobalytics takes advantage of the half-billion-dollar competitive gaming market.
The company uses a proprietary “Gamer Performance Index” (GPI) that crunches data points gathered from APIs of gaming titles. It then returns a visual map that provides insights into players’ performance metrics, including data about specific elements of their game-playing, from survivability and vision power to aggression level.
Mobalytics Platform | Credit: mobalyticshq.com
In the last decade, eSports gaming, once mere entertainment, has grown into a full-blown career for some people. In fact, the University of California-Irvine just this week became the first public university to launch a dedicated eSports building to help students cultivate their talents for actual collegiate eSports teams that compete both at home and abroad.
Mobalytics founders Bogdan Suchyk and Amine Issa are both avid gamers and firm believers in eSport gaming as a competitive sport category. Their idea was to bring the same rigor applied in professional athletic training to the coaching of eSports players.
The Battlefield runner-up was UnifyID, which aims to be the login of all logins. Hailing from Stanford’s accelerator program StartX, UnifyID was cofounded in 2015 by John Whaley and Kurt Somerville, who wanted to create a fix for the multiple weaknesses of conventional log-in systems. Unlike common password approaches that expect people to reveal their “secrets” via security questions, UnifyID uses an “implicit authentication” technique that builds a unique profile for each individual using personalized details related to their devices, digital habits, and various other signifiers gathered by UnifyID’s machine learning technology. At TechCrunch Disrupt, the startup launched the beta of its first product, which is a Chrome browser extension with an iOS mobile app that allows users to log in to all of their accounts using a single ID.
EverlyWell Kit | Credit: everlywell.com
EverlyWell, one of the four other contestants, was founded by Julia Cheek in 2015 in Austin, Texas. The company provides at-home lab tests for a variety of health issues, including cardiovascular, metabolism, food sensitivity, inflammation, and women’s fertility. Working in partnership with laboratories, EverlyWell allows customers to order lab test kits delivered to their homes, each with instructions about how to collect specific bio samples. Unlike such services as Theranos and 23andMe, which use proprietary diagnostic techniques and testing mechanisms, EverlyWell leverages established clinical tests widely used by physicians and labs. The company has raised $500,000 in early-stage funding.
Carbon Health, another finalist, also aims to disrupt the healthcare market. It offers a comprehensive healthcare platform that manages patient-physician communications, health records documentation, medical bill payment, and other activities related to doctors’ visits. The company was founded in 2015 by Eren Balim, Udemy’s co-founder and chairman, and Greg Burrell, a former clinical medicine professor. According to TechCrunch, Carbon Health will be starting a primary care pilot practice in San Francisco and plans to enroll outside healthcare practitioners in early 2017. The Carbon Health app will be free for patients and doctors; its revenue will derive from taking a seven-percent cut from all billing transactions processed through the company’s system.
Past Startup Battlefield winners and alums have gone on to raise tens of millions in funding, and some have been acquired or gone public. It clearly provides an effective launching pad for startups impressive (or lucky) enough to make it to the main stage. Now it’s up to participating companies to keep themselves in orbit.
