Massachusetts company wins $1M competition

SAN FRANCISCO » From South Africa, Finland, Indonesia and more, 28 startups from 27 countries congregated in San Francisco in the Startup World Cup final on Friday in hopes of winning $1 million.

The annual competition to select the best startup outside of the Silicon Valley bubble finished in downtown San Francisco when startup founders made their presentations to a panel of six venture capitalist judges in two minutes. The winner was Leuko Labs, a startup from Cambridge, Massachusetts, which developed a non-invasive white blood cell level monitor for home-based screening to detection possible infection in chemotherapy patients.

In the United States, there were regionals on the East and West coasts. Representing the West Coast was Berkeley-based startup Nodexus, a biotechnology company that seeks to commercialize a microfluidic platform which can deliver live single cells for applications, including gene editing and drug development.

All 28 startups competing in the event won a regional competition. The total number of startups that applied for this year’s Startup World Cup was almost 20,000, according to Annis Uzzaman, co-founder of the San Josebased Fenox Venture Capital.

Fenox Venture Capital started the Startup World Cup last year.

“We saw more participation than ever from people around the world,” Uzzaman said. “The Startup World Cup brought together startups, VCs and corporate investors from every continent for a cross-learning experience, and type of Silicon Valley event that will foster innovation in the U.S. and globally. Perhaps the real beauty of the Startup World Cup is that everyone had something to learn and like.”

Other finalists offered startup ideas that ranged from an app connecting Brazilian truck drivers to available delivery jobs, a Northern Irish wearable which helps with weight loss to a Japanese robot which folds laundry.