7 days after Le Web – a review

by Martin Pansy

7 days have passed since we first showcased Noki – the doorlock of the future (www.noki.io) at the Le Web conference in Paris. As participants of the startup competitition we had the chance to exhibit in the Startup Lounge to thousands of visitors.

Le Web

Martin and Thomas pitched Noki at Le Web.

The preparation

Because it was Noki’s premiere at an event we also had to organize a lot of stuff in advance. We needed a transportable showcase door to demo Noki, branded shirts, flyers and giveaways for visitors. After our bags were packed, it was quite an effort to get them over to Paris.

The exhibition

But the effort paid off. Thanks to our nice demo door and early prototypes we had something to show to our guests at the booth. People are definitely more interested in things they can see and feel, thus we had lots of visitors passing by and had hundreds of chances to learn how to best explain Noki to potential customers (it all starts with “no key”…)

Our booth at the Le Web conference

Our booth at the Le Web conference

The pitch

And the exercise was key to our pitch. Although there were some minor technical issues during the presentation we did fine in general. Having all these visitors in the days before the pitch helped to anticipate the questions that were also raised by the jury during the Q&A session.


(Direct link to the pitch video)

The last 7 days

The pitch itself paid off as well. Right after our pitch we were already approached with several partnership opportunities. Also the media has picked up our story and we’ve seen great coverage on international media (Euronews), German (Computerbild.de) and Austrian (derstandard.at) news sites.

What’s next

We will work hard to bring Noki to market during the next months. There are still several challenges for us to master until we can see Noki’s in shelves but the awesome feedback at Le Web gives lots of motivation to overcome them. At the moment we are getting prepared for our crowdfunding campaign and you can sign up here to stay tuned on our progress.

Finally we would like to thank our hosts at Le Web, especially to Rodrigo Barros who hosted the startup competition, and all other 20 participants to make it such a special experience. You rock!