The seventh station of the #believeinyourself challenge has been completed: The nominees from the “Social Impact, Learning & Knowledge” category presented themselves in the Postgarage in Dornbirn and pitched for one of the coveted final places in Austria’s largest start-up competition from Erste Bank and Sparkasse, the Business chamber start-up service and trending topics. After the presentations of the 5 startups in the category, the jury knew: The winner is called mySproggy.
The Viennese startup of the couple Julia and Dominik Monghy is a family startup in two senses. Because the parents of two children are developing an app in which other young parents can get all the important educational information about the first six years of their offspring. The Monghys are supported in terms of content by educators, speech therapists and psychologists. Interested parties can currently pre-register for the app, which is due to launch soon.
“We feel confirmed”
mySproggy (“Sproggy” is English for offspring) is thus in the final of the #believeinyourself challenge. “It was a lot of excitement after a long journey, with a lot of preparation in the car. There were really a lot of cool ideas, and we wish that every team can change something,” said the startup couple in a first statement. “We didn’t expect to win and that’s why we’re all the happier. We feel confirmed that there is a need for our service.” Many thousands of pre-registrations for the soon-to-be-launched app could have already been collected.
mySproggy will now pitch for the title “Startup of the Year” at the final of the #believeinyourself Challenge on May 24th. The startups REEDuce, Worm Systems, Shopstory, Goldblatt, Holloid and Oktav have already qualified for the final. mySproggy was able to assert itself against the startups Fingu, Savvy, Empovver and SocialCard on the pitch day, which was attended by top-class speakers – Ohana unfortunately canceled the pitch at short notice (all information about the startups that took part here).
#believeinyourself Challenge: Register now for the grand finale in Vienna for free!
“Great impact potential”
“The startup has very good market potential in combination with great potential for impact. Equipping young parents with relevant knowledge can have a big impact, helping families who are not part of a large support network,” he said Carmencita Nader, for social banking at the Erste Bank responsible for the jury’s decision.
Next to Nader sat Snezana Arsic, start-up consultant at the Vorarlberg Chamber of Commerce, Udo Filzmaier, CEO of FT AG, as well René Krall, head of KMU der Dornbirner Sparkasse, on the jury. While the jury was in session, Martin Nigsch from Feld.ai also gave his keynote insights into reasons in Vorarlberg and the importance of new AI tools such as ChatGPT for the startup industry.
In addition to the ticket for the final of the #believeinyourself challenge, mySproggy received prize money of 1,000 euros from Erste Bank and Sparkasse as well as 2 annual licenses for wîse up, the digital training and further education platform of the Austrian Chambers of Commerce. wîse up offers more than 15,000 innovative learning content in the form of videos, interactive formats, texts and webinars that are suitable for EPU, startups, SMEs and corporates.
All further information on the #believeinyourself Challenge 2023 can be found here.
The pictures of the pitch:
All photos © Dornbirner Sparkasse Bank AG
