A company with an interactively focused digital signage platform was the best of the bunch at this afternoon’s Showstoppers Launch.it competition at CES. Enplug CEO Nanxi Liu was the first of 11 entrepreneurs who gave a 5 minute presentation telling why they should be funded, and then took 3 minutes of questions from a panel of angel investors. At the end, the panel voted LA-based Enplug the winner.
Second and third place went to Israeli companies – VocalZoom and SwitchBee respectively. VocalZoom demoed core noise cancelling technology that’s built around a laser sensor that reads speech off of facial skin vibrations. SwitchBee is a home automation platform built around a proprietary hub and easily-installed light switches.
Enplug offers a platform that allows anyone with a Mac or Windows machine to turn any digital display into interactive digital signage. It was a surprising pick, in a sense: with $3.7 million in angel financing already in the bank and a major display maker – ViewSonic – bundling it with their products, it’s really a bit beyond the angel stage that the competition was targeting. But it also has customers and revenue, which makes it an attractive play.
Other contenders included a noise cancelling earplug from Hush, base IoT technology developed by Carbon Origins, a wrist band from Sunfriend that tracks sun exposure, the Lert.ly personal safety monitor designed for the elderly, a baseball bat swing analyser by Diamond Kinetics, a wristband that holds your password information from Everykey, whole-house mood lighting from LumFi and Smart Wheels, a tiny cross between a skateboard and a Segway.
All are exhibiting at Eureka Park, a growing pavilion of early stage companies and entrepreneurs at CES.