Solutions that leverage iBeacons, bitcoin, innovative slot content, artificial intelligence in poker and minigames in social gaming are to be showcased during GiGse's start-up competition that will see five companies pitching for the vote of the investors and of the 700-plus social and real-money gaming industry executives.Start-Up LaunchPad is part of the 14th Global iGaming Summit & Expo (GiGse), taking place in the Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, CA. GiGse is North America’s largest and most established event fully focused on regulated iGaming. With iGaming now live in three states, this year’s GiGse will be pivotal in analyzing the future of legal online gambling in the country in the context of the results of the recent launches, in particular those in New Jersey.
Slow opening of the US market to iGaming, coupled with the rise in social casino gaming, have given boost to the emergence of new business models, new products and new companies that GiGse, and the co-located Social Casino Summit, has been embracing for the last three years with its Start-Up LaunchPad and the Start-Up Zone on the Expofloor.
This year’s start-ups include NEFRF Corp., that uses user profiling and positioning to serve up relevant content to casino visitors, InAppFuel, that allows mobile developers to create minigames in no time, TouchSpin Gaming, with its innovative take on social multiplayer slot games, Neo Poker App, that uses Aritificial Intelligence to teach how to play poker at a very high level and Sportplayz, a bitcoin-powered sportsbook.
The start-ups will be quizzed by a panel of investors that includes Craig Abraham, Chief Financial Officer of Caesars Interactive Entertainment, and Gavin Teo, investors at Comcast Ventures and Sunny Dhillon, Principal at Signia Venture Partners, but the final say in selecting the winner will be given to the event’s audience.
"I look forward to seeing the innovative solutions that the 2014 GiGse start-ups will showcase. The intersection of real-money and social gaming is an area that has seen lots of interesting developments in the last two years, so it is no surprise that new ideas and new business models keep springing up.", said Gavin Teo from Comcast, one of the LaunchPad judges.