We are not born outstanding speakers. Practice is the only way to excellence in public speaking, but the truth is that many of us think it’s as easy as ABC and we normally spend just one night preparing before our presentations. If you believe this is enough, just think about these numbers: Jill Bolte Taylor, an American neuroanatomist and author, rehearsed her TED Talk “Stroke of Insight” about 200 times before going on stage, which resulted in 26 M views of her speech. Sounds not as effortless as it looks, right?

After organizing the Seedstars World Competition for 7 years in a row, we had a chance to hear many great startup pitches that converted in investments as high as 500,000 USD. In this article, we present you last year competition’s pitches which brought participating startups into the top 12 finalists from 80+ emerging market countries.

Edutech

01. Federico Hernandez

Blended, a communication platform for schools that brings all education services together, creating a single unified place to access student information.

02. Faisal Almenary

YNMO, the first Arabic/English digital solution that aims to improve the quality of care and educational services for individuals with disabilities by allowing service providers such as schools, centres & clinics to design and monitor individualized treatment plans.

Agritech

03. Alimatu Bawah

Cowtribe, a solution that helps farmers vaccinate their animals and prevent stock loss.

Healthtech

04. Alexandros Poulias

Doctor Online, a platform that provides remote access to doctors via chat or video conference through any device for the insurance industry.

Real Estate

05. Siddiq Farid

Smart Crowd, a real estate investment platform that allows people to build a real-estate portfolio by acquiring fractional assets.

Fintech

06. Olivia Zank

BeneFactors, a factoring company providing tailored working capital solutions to firms in Rwanda.

07. Sully Siucho

Rebajatuscuentas.com, a financial advisor that helps people make better mortgage loan decisions in Peru, Mexico, and Colombia.

Lifestyle

08. Susanna Ingalls

Urban Point, a solution that leverages telco assets and distribution channels to increase customer loyalty through mobile-based incentives from businesses.

Insurtech

09. Ryan Kerr

Queplan.cl, an online platform that allows people to compare, apply for and be informed about the most cost-efficient health coverage options from insurance companies.

10. Adelaide Odhiambo

Bluewave, an insurance startup in Kenya that is creating innovative mass market, micro insurance products accessible via mobile devices.

Mobility

11. Jay Kong

Joonak, a leading delivery & e-commerce solutions provider in Cambodia.

Surveillance

12. Tanay Dixit

Wobot helps companies make sense of their business data using a layer of artificial intelligence (AI) that is taught to do surveillance on behalf of the human eye.

Interesting facts about public speaking

• Adding facts and figures to a presentation increases audience retention by 20%;
• If a presenter does all the talking without giving the audience an opportunity to participate, then audience engagement drops by 14%;
• The average audience attention span is only 8 to 10 minutes.