CoinAgenda’s Best Startup Winners: 3 Companies to Keep an Eye On

BitAngels has named the winners of its startup competition, which was held earlier this month at the CoinAgenda conference in Las Vegas:
Zebpay took home first prize for its easy mobile wallet, which is still in pre-launch mode. Blockchain recordkeeping service Factom took home second prize. Hardware security startup Rivetz took home third. Each of these projects was selected from a group of 20 semifinalists, each of whom pitched their ideas at CoinAgenda, which ran from October 7 – 9. This coming Sunday night at Money20/20, both Factom and Rivetz will present at the invite-only Coin Debut showcase.
‘We were blown away by the quality of the companies who presented,’ Michael Terpin, founder of CoinAgenda and co-founder of BitAngels, said in a release. ‘The VC panel was also quite impressed calling it one of the best selections of early-stage Bitcoin companies they’ve seen anywhere.’
That VC panel included Matt Roszak from Tally Capital, William Quigley from Clearstone Ventures, and Stephen Waterhouse from Pantera Capital.
The judges’ criteria for selecting winners was not made available, so instead let’s take a look at the three winners and try to determine what about each startup impressed the VCs.
Zebpay
Zebpay is building a super simple mobile wallet that essentially turns your phone number into your Bitcoin wallet address. This would be to Bitcoin what WhatsApp was to mobile messaging.
Zebpay itself is leveraging that instant messaging analogy, and the company says that users’ money will be secure while transaction confirmations will be instantaneous.