We are thrilled to share with you that Beamr has won the Seagate Lyve Innovator of the Year competition!

The competition was organized by Seagate Lyve Innovation Labs, which is a collaboration platform that Seagate utilizes to work with entrepreneurs, startup companies and enterprises to create joint solutions based on the flow of data. Lyve Labs currently operates exclusively in Israel, and plans to open additional Labs around the world in the future. Lyve Labs and its partners explore industry challenges, and work together to develop simple, secure, and efficient ways to move and optimize data. 

Optimize data? Well, that’s exactly what we do here at Beamr  – optimizing images and videos, by reducing their size as much as possible while retaining full quality. So when we heard that Lyve Labs is holding a competition, seeking the most innovative company in this field – we immediately seized this opportunity and registered!

After an initial screening process of several dozen candidate companies, we were informed that Beamr made it to the finals, where 8 companies were selected to pitch their technology in front of senior Seagate executives. 

From the start, it was clear that Lyve Labs is putting on a highly professional event: First, we were asked to prepare slides for a 3-minute company pitch, and invited to a preparation session with Dana Ashkenazi, a senior consultant on innovation, leadership and pitching. Dana gave a one hour presentation to all companies about how to structure a 3 minute pitch, from opening with a bang to closing with a smile, including some very useful tips on slide content and design. Then, each company got a private 20 minute session with Dana and with Ruti Arazi, who handles business development at the Seagate Israel Innovation Center. In this session we went over our draft pitch, and got some useful suggestions for improvement. We were also asked to prepare a 30-second “informal” video to introduce ourselves and the company.

A week before the actual event, we were invited to record our 3-minute pitches at Ynet Studios in Israel. Ynet is Israel’s leading online news portal, owned by Israel’s largest newspaper, and they operate professional studios that broadcast live TV news programs daily. It was a real treat to record our pitch in these studios, with top-of-the-line cameras, lighting, and even a teleprompter – so memorizing our pitch was unnecessary…

On Monday November 15th we gathered again in the same studios for the live event. 6 top Seagate executives joined us via Zoom: Jeff Fochtman, Seagate SVP of Marketing; BS Teh, Seagate EVP of Global Sales & Sales Operations; KF Chong, Seagate SVP of Global Operations; Ravi Naik, Seagate CIO & SVP of Storage Services; Shanye Hudson, Seagate SVP of Investor Relations and Treasury; and Patricia Frost, Seagate SVP & Chief of HR. Their role was to evaluate the pitches, ask follow-on questions, and assess the innovation of each company.

For each company , the judges first saw the 30-second “informal” video, then watched the 3-minute pre-recorded pitch presentation, and immediately after had 5 minutes to ask live questions.  Since Beamr was first to present, I didn’t quite know what was coming, and obviously didn’t see the questions ahead of time. But the Q&A session went pretty well, the 5 minutes passed quickly, and then I went back to the “green room” to watch the pitches and Q&A sessions of the other companies. I must say that all of them were well-prepared, presented their case quite clearly, and bravely handled all questions thrown at them by the judges. I guess that’s the nature of entrepreneurs… 

After all the presentations and Q&A sessions were completed, the judges took 15 minutes to consult, and finally we all gathered in the studio, shoulder to shoulder. The atmosphere was very tense, and the organizers told us that they have no idea who is the winner – they would get notified by the judges at the last minute. Don’t be fooled by the smiles you see in this picture – we were really anxious to hear the judges’ decision at this point…

Finally, they announced the winner – Beamr!!! I was very excited, and stepped up to receive a trophy and an oversized cheque to the amount of $10,000. All the others cheered and shook my hand, and I felt very proud that Beamr was the winner!

Right on the heels of the Emmy ceremony that took place earlier this month, and our 50th patent awarded in July, it feels like Beamr is on a roll… I am very proud of the recognition we have recently received: The 50 patents recognizing our IP, the Technology and Engineering Emmy® award recognizing our contribution to the TV industry, and the Seagate Lyve Innovator of the Year 2021 award recognizing the innovative nature of our technology.  And I am very proud of the Beamr team for developing this amazing technology!

Below you can watch the video of Beamr’s appearance in the competition.

Pictures Credit: Shani Sadicario https://www.shanicario.co.il/


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