Snowflake Startup Challenge 2023: Meet the 10 Semi-Finalists
Spring has sprung—and with it comes a new crop of Snowflake Startup Challenge semi-finalists!
The 2023 submission pool was the largest to date—twice as many submissions as last year—with entries that spanned not just the globe but the breadth of the Snowflake platform. Our judges put a lot of careful consideration into selecting the top 10, and we offer our sincere thanks to every company that sent in an entry this year—we know how much hard work goes into these submissions, and we appreciate it.
This was the first year that startups had the chance to build with our Native Applications Framework (currently in private preview), and we were thrilled to see the number of entries that included a native app. Snowpark got a lot of love in this year’s Startup Challenge, too. Many of the semi-finalist apps use this developer framework, which allows them to work in the code they prefer and execute in Snowflake. All of the semi-finalists are great examples of products Powered by Snowflake.
Judging panel update: Welcome Brad Gerstner
We’re pleased to welcome Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter, to the 2023 Startup Challenge Grand Prize judging panel. Altimeter is a lifecycle technology investment firm that manages public and private portfolios. In his 25 years in tech, Brad has personally participated in more than 100 IPOs as a sponsor, anchor, and investor.
Brad will join the rest of our esteemed judges, including Benoit Dageville, Snowflake’s Co-Founder and President of Product; Denise Persson, Snowflake’s CMO; and Lynn Martin, NYSE Group’s President.
Remember, this year’s prize pool is richer than ever with Snowflake and NYSE working together to recognize startups building innovative apps on Snowflake. The top three finalists will have the opportunity to receive a share of up to $1 million in investment, as well as global marketing exposure from Snowflake, plus exclusive mentorship and visibility opportunities from NYSE.
Now that you’re up to date on the latest Startup Challenge news, it’s time to introduce this year’s semi-finalists!
Meet the 2023 Snowflake Startup Challenge semi-finalists
CorgiAI is an end-to-end suite of fraud detection and prevention solutions, including an analytics product to monitor and understand dispute and fraud metrics, an AI product which highlights transactions for merchants to follow up on, and an AI solution to recommend rules that can be implemented in payment provider platforms (such as Stripe, Shopify, and Adyen) to proactively reduce dispute and fraud rates.
DQLabs is an automated, modern data quality platform that delivers reliable and accurate data for better business outcomes. DQLabs automates business quality checks and resolution using a semantic layer to deliver “fit for purpose” data for consumption across reporting and analytics.
Goldfish Ads offers customers a Geograph: a collection of workflows, automation, third-party integrations, and data harmonization that enables audience planning, activation, and reporting by relying on location and time targeting. Goldfish Ads’ approach to location and time targeting enables it to deliver relevant and effective advertising without compromising privacy.
Honeydew is a shared source of truth for data teams living in Snowflake. Using Honeydew, data teams can support more data users without more engineers or compromising integrity. The Honeydew solution is a collaborative semantic layer. Data teams can organize analytics into manageable and reusable blocks of knowledge supporting every data flow; users can consume them via SQL, Tableau, Looker, Python, or dbt.
Mach5 Search for Snowflake is an ElasticSearch/OpenSearch API-compatible stack that allows users to seamlessly migrate their search applications from ElasticSearch and OpenSearch to Snowflake. Mach5 Search for Snowflake creates a fast path for users to modernize their search stacks, which underlie today’s large observability and cybersecurity applications.
Maxa automates financial and ERP insights. It transforms multiple financial and operational systems’ raw data into a common, friendly data model that people can understand. With Maxa, business teams go from manually managing core systems of record data to working with a single system of insights. Built using Snowflake’s Native Application Framework (currently in private preview), teams can install Maxa directly in their Snowflake accounts, without needing to move or copy data.
Omnata is a secure, extensible data integration layer native to Snowflake. Built using Snowflake’s Native Application Framework (currently in private preview), the Omnata app and plugins allow customers to quickly and easily ingest their SaaS data in Snowflake, enrich it, and activate it—all without leaving the platform or needing to trust a third party to access and handle their data.
Semantha is a semantic platform that offers out-of-the-box AI services for semantic processing of unstructured information like text and video. Semantha allows teams to search documents for relevant topics, compare content to easily identify differences in text, and evaluate documents based on their specifications.
Sled’s product, called Dot, facilitates data adoption and self-service for non-technical users. Dot is an intelligent virtual data assistance available in Slack that answers business data questions, retrieves definitions and relevant data assets, and assists with data modeling. Using large language models combined with data in Snowflake and documentation of processes and metrics, Dot gives business users the answers they need, allowing data teams to focus on deep work.
Truelty is an identity resolution application that allows customers to get a unified view of their customers directly in their Snowflake environments. Built using Snowflake’s Native Application Framework (currently in private preview), Truelty runs directly in the end-customer’s Snowflake account so they never need to ship data to a third party or go through a complex data custody transfer process.
Next up: Making the pitch in Round 2
In Round 2 of the Snowflake Startup Challenge, each semi-finalist will submit an investor pitch video and have an interview with the judges to discuss its entry, the product and business strategy, its leadership team, and how the company would use an investment.
Based on this information, the judges will select three finalists, to be announced in May. The three finalists will make their pitch during the Finale at this year’s Snowflake Summit, and the judging panel will deliberate live before naming the 2023 Grand Prize winner. Register for Snowflake Summit now to make sure you’re in the room when it happens, and to experience all of the data-intensive sessions, discussions, expert Q&As, and hands-on labs that make Summit this summer’s can’t-miss event.
Congratulations to all of our semi-finalists, and best of luck in the next round!
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