The first team up was Enable Labs, an Australian company that built
an app to help improve construction‑site safety. The app, called
Toolbox, makes sure workers have necessary certifications and keeps
track of equipment maintenance, among other features.
One out of every 10 construction workers in the U.S. is injured each
year, said Bruce Hara, the company’s managing director, which ends up
costing companies billions of dollars. With Toolbox, he said, many of
the accidents that cause injuries could be avoided. For instance, if
workers scan a crane and the generator it’s about to move, Toolbox
could alert them if the load exceeds the crane’s weight capacity.
Eventually, the company plans to use machine learning to predict when
accidents might happen, Hara said.
The judges questioned how realistic it was to think that Toolbox
could predict accidents. Hara said that was the goal, but acknowledged
that the system would need a lot of data from construction sites in
order to train its algorithm.
The second team, Recruitlive, also from Australia, created a talent
management system called EmployeeX. The system includes training,
payroll, and performance management, which owner Sukender Jain
estimates is a $14 billion market.
EmployeeX’s key feature is a chatbot named Rex, who remembers past
interactions and knows individual preferences, like the time of day
someone likes to travel. Rex makes it easy to find information and
saves people time, Jain said.
The judges mostly questioned the company’s business model. One judge
asked whether EmployeeX sat on top of existing HR systems or replaced
them. The goal is to replace them, Jain said. He expects to grow by
first targeting existing ServiceNow customers.
The last team up was SalesWon, a Virginia based ServiceNow partner
that recently developed CRM and CPQ software for ServiceNow’s
platform. The company is targeting existing ServiceNow customers that
don’t currently have a CRM system.
Many of these companies use spreadsheets to track sales, said
SalesWon CEO Jared Crowder. They generally don’t have a sophisticated
tool to generate customer quotes. At the other end of the market,
full‑featured CRM systems cost a lot and are too complicated for many
businesses to integrate. That’s where SalesWon has a large
opportunity, Crowder said.
The judges largely agreed. And after some deliberation and the
audience vote, they awarded SalesWon first prize: a $250,000 cash
investment from ServiceNow Ventures. Toolbox finished second, winning
$150,000; third‑place finisher Recruitlive took home $100,000. The
companies split $500,000 in sales and marketing support. Each of the
apps will be published in the ServiceNow Store or distributed via
ServiceNow’s OEM channel, giving these startups direct access to
ServiceNow’s customer base.