Who’s Who at the SXSW Accelerator Competition

Our second day of the SXSW Interactive circuit was spent at the SXSW Accelerator competition at the Startup Village. Now in its seventh year, the Accelerator allows startup interactive technology companies the opportunity to pitch their ambitious ideas and products to a panel of esteemed judges, all in front of a live audience.

Wearables.com was there to check out the emerging wearable tech trends. The finalists below pitched their products today for the Accelerator startup competition. By the end of the day, it will be whittled down to the top 3 who will be competing tomorrow for the Grand Prize in the Wearable tech category. After watching all the pitches, we have our hunches of who will make it to the next round.

FINALISTS

embr labs
Cambridge, MA

At embr labs, they’re goal is to help people regulate body temperature. Their product Wristify lets people make themselves comfortable by providing heating or cooling, anytime and anywhere. With the heat in Austin, we could see this working well.

Feetz
Chattanooga, TN

Feetz creates custom fit shoes. The product works by taking photos of your feet, works with you to design your shoes, and then 3D prints them with custom materials and delivers them to your door within 7 days. It’s an interesting concept, but we’d like to see how many options they will end up having.

FitBark
Kansas City, MO

FitBark is a wearable for your dog. It attaches to your dog’s collar and helps you better understand your dog’s health and behavior. They say the data helps veterinarians, animal pharmas, food and insurance companies better target or validate their products and services. We love this concept. With how much people love their pets, we can see this doing really well. Hopefully they’ll be successful and expand outside of dogs.

Moonlab
New York, NY

Moonlab’s product Softspot is a sensor system for clothing that integrates seamlessly into your everyday wear. They call it the first truly seamless wearable that integrates easily into any garment. It’s a really interesting technology and we’re excited to see how they develop.

SolePower
Pittsburgh, PA

SolePower’s product EnSoles turn you into your own power source. The custom shoe insoles fit in your shoes and use your movements to harvest energy to charge your mobile device with every step you take. We think this company has a lot of promise. The price point is a little high at $150, but hopefully as they develop that price point will go down.

Tinitell
Stockholm, Sweden

Tinitell is a wristphone and GPS-tracker for kids. It’s meant for kids as young as six to be worn while they are on their own playing or doing things where their parents might not be around. The product already has a lot of competitors in the market so it will be interesting to see how they compete.

Waverly Labs
New York, NY

Waverly Labs is developing a smart earpiece for the connected professional. Designed as a personal assistant, the earpiece links groups and teams that are working in a variety of locations and across countries. The coolest feature of the device is its universal language translation device. The battery life is a little disappointing and the fact that you have to wear both earpieces all day might be a deal breaker. Once they get an actual prototype, we think that might help them sell a few more people.

WiActs
Sunnyvale, CA

WiActs was kind of confusing. They apparently no longer have a wearable that goes with their technology, but they still competed in the category. It was a cool concept for credential authorization and we think they will do well for highly regulated industries.

Overall we think that SolePower, embr labs, and FitBark will make it to the next round. We’ll find out tomorrow how well our predictions were at the end of the day. Stay tuned for our coverage of the final presentations and the winner of the SXSW Accelerator.

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