Winners of Inaugural Burning Heroes Awards Announced

San Francisco, CA: A venture capitalist judging panel has selected the winners of the Burning Hero Awards for best early stage startups for 2022.

This inaugural competition gathered the most promising startups selected by the community and world experts on its site. The competition jury included representatives of such VCs as 500 Global, AltaIR Capital, APX VC, Davidovs VC, Fort Ross Ventures, FPV GlobalI, I Am The FunD, MANGA VC, SOSV VC, Starta VC, and Techstars Berlin.

The best of the best

Inovat, United Kindom – Inovat is a digital VAT refund solution that allows travellers to save more than 20% in tax on shopping directly in their bank apps without the need to complete any paperwork or stand in airport queues.

Sensera, Philadelphia, PA – Sensera makes self-therapy a habit and helps people overcome tough situations in 10 minutes a day.

Clous, Berlin, Germany – Clous automates engineering processes with a combined set of algorithms and its own platform with over 100 engineers.

In total, more than 100 startups around the world took part in the competition. The winners were nominated in three categories – Market Fit, Innovations, and Product Design. Burning Heroes Awards was created by a community of founders – people who have already walked the path of launching startups and know exactly what is important for launching successful products. That is why our criteria and a clear two-tier evaluation structure helped to identify the really best.

All the winners

Market Fit 

Inovat – Inovat is a digital VAT refund solution that allows travellers to save more than 20% in tax on shopping directly in their bank apps without the need to complete any paperwork or stand in airport queues.

Sizze – Sizze is a no-code solution for building full-fledged native apps with no coding experience and publishing them directly to app marketplaces like App Store and Google Play.

Flexpa, Nairobi, Kenya – FlexPay is Africa’s first merchant-embedded saving-based purchase platform (“Save Now, Buy Later”), solving the unaffordability gap for the large underbanked African population while increasing sales and loyalty for merchants.

Product Design

Sensera – Sensera makes self-therapy a habit and helps people overcome tough situations in 10 minutes a day

Sizze – Sizze is a no-code solution for building full-fledged native apps with no coding experience and publishing them directly to app marketplaces like App Store and Google Play.

Geekclub, Florida, USA – Geek Club products are electronic construction sets for hobbyists of any age that give an alternative way to learn electronics by assembling printed circuit boards in a unique way.

Innovations 

Clous, Berlin, Germany – Clous automates engineering processes with a combined set of algorithms and its own platform with over 100 engineers

Maaps – B2b maps for emerging markets.Maaaps crowdsources building addresses and coordinates, layers search algorithms on top and wraps it into APIs that delivery companies call every time someone chooses their dinner, waits for a taxi or sends a parcel. 

Mishka AI, New York – Kids’ educational companion and content delivery platform in the shape of а traditional toy.

The competition was launched by the international Burning Heroes Founders Association. The community sees its mission as bringing together startup founders from all over the world to share experience and network in launching products that will change the world and drive the industry growth.