Miami facial recognition startup Kairos learned yesterday that they have been chosen for a Wall Street Journal Startup of the Year contest and documentary. Having spoken with CEO Brian Brackeen this week about their strategy, pipeline, revenue model and more, this should provide an excellent opportunity for them to showcase their products and most importantly strategically, their new API that will allow developers to make use of their technology in their own applications. The 2 markets they have chosen for product releases – time tracking and credit card transactions have tremendous potential and should drive dramatic levels of revenue, but the exponential impact of a channel strategy similar to telephony startup Twilio, should allow them to see even more significant growth.
The exposure should also allow this San Francisco to Miami transplant startup to close in rapidly on the funding they are seeking to staff and grow their business.
The contest will be a weekly online documentary video series at WSJ that will allow them to interact with a rockstar roster of mentors and viewers will be able to vote on the startups they like best. The teams will also receive mentoring from some serious rockstar entrepreneurs:
- Sir Richard Branson: Founder of Virgin Group
- Peter Diamandis: Chair and Founder, X Prize Foundation
- Steve Case: Chairman, Case Foundation; Chairman, Startup America; Co-Founder and Former CEO, AOL
- Jean Case: CEO and Co-Founder, Case Foundation
- Tory Burch: CEO and Designer Tory Burch LLC and Founder Tory Burch Foundation
- will.i.am: Founder, i.am.Angel; Co-Founding member, Black Eyed Peas
- Carly Fiorina: Chair, Good360; former Chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard
- Ray Kurzweil: Director of Engineering, Google
- Lynn Tilton: CEO, Patriarch Partners, LLC
- Scott Case: CEO, Startup America; Founding CTO, Priceline
- David Sacks: CEO and Founder, Yammer; Producer, “Thank You for Smoking”
- Dean Ornish: President and Founder, Preventative Medicine Research Institute
- Jeff Pulver: Co-Founder, Vonage; Chairman and Founder, Pulver.com
- Liz Lange: Founder & President, Liz Lange Maternity
- MC Hammer: Entertainer and entrepreneur
- Vivek Wadhwa: Vice President of Academics and Innovation, Singularity University
This is an impressive startup in South Florida and the team seems to be making all the right moves. Like any other new company, there will be significant growing pains as things advance, but right now the stars seem to be aligning for Kairos.
