On Tuesday 15th September, URW Lab was part of the jury for the finals of the PropTech Startup and Scaleup Europe Awards 2020. The event, which was taking place for the second time this year, is part of the annual Startup Europe Awards supported and promoted by the European Commission and the Finnova Foundation. The goal of this “Eurovision for startups” is to foster open innovation and collaboration between the different actors of the European ecosystem, through public-private partnerships to support entrepreneurs, especially in the field of real estate.

From 150 startups applicants, 10 were pre-selected by the semi-finals jury and got the chance to compete and pitch their company in the finals and in 4 minutes with 3 minutes Q&A. The grades attributed by the jury depended mostly on the startups’ social & sustainable impact, and technical & business innovation. Overall, energy efficiency and air quality were the most tackled issues by these startups.

After two hours of pitching and Q&A, Wondrwall (a packaged-solution to optimize solar electricity usage in residential buildings and adapted to residents’ habits) won the first prize, while Iwell (a cube battery to store solar electricity) and Breeze (an air quality data analysis tool using both sensors and a machine learning software) came in 2nd and 3rd places.

Congratulations to the winners! Hopefully we will meet again with some of these startups as we find direct applications for their tools in our assets.