ALISO VIEJO, Calif., June 6, 2018 – OCTANe, Orange County’s life sciences and technology accelerator, today announced continued growth of its signature forum, Technology Innovation Forum (TIF). The conference was attended by industry leaders, entrepreneurs and investors eager to learn about current investment trends and to see the latest innovations originating from Southern California’s technology hub.

TIF, the largest technology investment conference in Southern California, was inundated with over 800 attendees. The technology forum featured three keynote speeches, including What We Need for the Tech Ecosystem to Thrive led by Emile Haddad, CEO and Chairman of FivePoint, The Future of Work with Joe Kiani, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Masimo as well as INSoCal- Tech Investment in SoCal which included commentary from Leonard Lanzi, Executive Director of LAVA, Mike Krenn, President of San Diego Venture Group and David Meltzer, CEO of Sports 1 Marketing. INSoCal was announced prior to TIF as a collaborative partnership between accelerator groups throughout the Southern California ecosystem.

“We are thrilled with our record attendance and the positive feedback we received at TIF 2018, especially the engagement from investors,” said Bill Carpou, CEO of OCTANe. “The discussions facilitated regarding building a greater SoCal ecosystem through INSoCal and the ability to impact ongoing company development through our Growth Services platform were especially rewarding.”

TIF 2018 featured eight presentations by OCTANe’s Launchpad SBDC companies, showcasing new ideas and technology. These companies sought funding of $31 million and three of them raised capital during the conference.

The eight LaunchPad companies that presented at TIF included:

• ADWAY provides a digital on-car advertisement platform using projection devices to display ads on vehicles.
• GigaIO develops innovative high performance interconnect memory fabric solutions for computing clusters, with the objective of accelerating large scale workloads on-demand, utilizing industry standard technology.
• Moving Analytics presents Movn, a digital cardiac rehab and prevention program that is equivalent to center-based care, with 3 times higher adoption at one-fifth of the cost.
• Sapere is a hardware and software data platform utilizing wireless, cloud connected sensors to test and monitor target chemistry and qualities of wine.
• Sitch AI brings together geolocation and indoor geospatial awareness to monitor, locate, track and manage assets, security risks and awareness, and behavioral analytics.
• Skylift Global is improving the way firefighters combat wildfires by changing the way they get their supplies to the fire line by using drone technology.
• TallyGo provides a state-of-the-art, real-time navigation SDK that can be integrated into existing applications – for iOs, Android and web – with virtually no development effort.
• Water Pigeon enables water utilities and companies to collect and analyze timely and accurate usage data by deploying Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) capability without replacing water meters or building wireless networks.

SitchAI was named the winner of the LaunchPad SBDC award and will receive $100,000 worth of donated services.

OCTANe has also released dates for its 2019 signature events. TIF will be held May 13 – May 14, 2019 at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa, Ophthalmology Technology Summit (OTS) will follow on June 28, 2019 at the Fashion Island Hotel and Medical Technology Innovation Forum (MTIF) will be in Fall from October 28-29, 2019 at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa.

About OCTANe
OCTANe is building the SoCal of Tomorrow by connecting people, resources and capital to fuel technology growth in Southern California. Its members represent technology executive leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, venture capitalists, academicians, and strategic advisors, all working together to fuel innovation in the region. The organization has helped more than 800 companies via the LaunchPad™ SBDC accelerator. LaunchPad™ companies have received more than $2.1 billion in investment and equity exits. These investments have supported the creation of more than 8,200 new jobs. OCTANe annually welcomes more than 7,000 people to its signature events and programs. More than 2,000 business leaders throughout the region are OCTANe members. For more information, visit www.octaneoc.org.

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Media Contact:
Cara Parchment
cara@octaneoc.org
(949) 412-7671