Tech23 finalists announced

After months of reviewing applications the organisers of the Tech23 conference have announced their finalists.

Tech 23, which will take place on Thursday, 19th August, 2010, in Sydney, Australia is a TechCrunch 50 style event highlighting the best of Australian tech startups

The event gets its name as it has 23 young Australian ICT companies pitching to a panel of industry leaders and investors.

Those 23 companies cover a wide range of areas including: assistive technology for the disabled, brain health diagnostics, robotics, energy management software, collaborative ebook reading software and spacecraft control software.

Below is a list of the companies.  You can find out more about what they do by clicking  HERE (the  click on the “The 23” link at the top)

• Aviator Controls
• biNu Pty Ltd
• BrainGauge
• BuildingIQ
• Ceebron
• Cocoon Data
• Controlabill
• EventZero
• iCetana
• Marathon Robotics
• Neural Diagnostics
• Ocular Robotics
• Platform46
• Portable
• Punchcard
• ReadCloud
• Saber Astronautics
• Scalify
• Scanalyse
• Solar-Gem
• Solvexia
• Taggle Systems
• VastPark  

Rachel Slattery, Director of SlatteryIT – the organisers behind Tech23 – said that some of the 23 companies are commercialising technology developed in Australian R&D organisations such as CSIRO (BuildingIQ), NICTA (BrainGauge), University of Sydney (Aviator Controls) and Curtin University (iCentana).

“As we discovered with Tech23 2009, when you put this many exciting technologies into a room with experienced entrepreneurs, investors and industry leaders, great things are bound to happen!”

Tech23’s industry leaders include entrepreneur/investor Roger Allen; past CIO of Qantas and Telstra Fiona Balfour; Chris Beare of Radiata fame; Scott Farquhar, co-founder & CEO, Atlassian who just received over $60million from US VC, Accel Partners; Martin Hosking, Chairman of Aconex and one of the founders of Looksmart; Ryan Junee, who recently sold his company Omnisio to Google; Deepak Natarajan, Managing Director, Intel Capital; Anthony Pascoe, CEO, Lend Lease Ventures and Emmanuel Rodriguez, Government CIO, NSW Department of Services, Technology and Administration.

The companies selected will compete for $150,000 in prizes from Industry & Investment NSW, as well as a host of supporter prizes.

Looking through the list it’s great to see a great mix of new and familiar faces and projects. It’s also great to see some big names from the investment space in Australia, e.g. Ramin Marzbani and Mike Zimmerman proving they can get their hands dirty.

I have some personal favourites (I won’t say who as there are too many people I know in the list!) but it will be great to sit down for a day and be amazed by the up and coming tech companies Australia is producing.

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