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It was a grueling day of pitches stretching from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening but when the dust settled on the first Tech23, some new startup stars had emerged from the Australian tech scene. Nearly 50 technology businesses converged in Surry Hills Tuesday to showcase the nation’s technology innovations before an audience that included successful tech entrepreneurs, VC and angel investors and some of the nations most seasoned consultants and tech service providers. Organized by Rachel Slattery’s events and PR company Slattery IT, the event ran in a TechCrunch50 style format with expert panelists evaluating the 4 minute pitches of companies in six categories which included “Consumer Web”, “Meeting the Needs of the Enterprise”, “Mobile Communications”, “Green Clean and Inbetween”, “Digital Media” and “SaaS/In the Cloud”. Although the event’s winners have not yet been announced, a cursory look at the day’s Twitter feed and who was swamped with business cards after their speech gives some pretty clear insight into the audience favorites.

Over at the ANZA Tech blog, Viki Forrest picked a candidate from each category that she thought was best, naming QMcodes, Posse, Red Lizard Software, Heard System, We Are Hunted and Simmersion as tops. Posse is no stranger around the Australian investment scene, which was best showcased when co-founder Rebekah Campbell was asked what she was looking for from the event and said that when they originally applied it was funding, but in the few months since that’s not so much the case. Posse presented at the selective Innovation Bay a few months ago and walked away with success. Melbourne-based startup QMcodes used the opportunity to announce a new forward-facing brand they would be operating under known as Link.Me. Heard had a high entertainment factor with CEO Ed Catherwood aiming what looked like a red dust buster at Rachel Slattery. The startup’s light hearted presentation of a sonogram system for cattle and horses shone amongst of a group of convoluted green technology pitches.

But much of the day’s excitement centered around Brisbane startup We Are Hunted, who presented a well crafted presentation made up of hand-drawn images. We Are Hunted uses a proprietary algorithm of blogs, social networking sites and more to calculate the top song being searched for across the web. The sites revenue comes not only from selling songs via itunes, amazon and InSound, but in selling the data gathered in the process of figuring out what songs are being buzzed about. The public view of the site is elegant and uncluttered and hides all the complex research that likely goes into creating what appears on there. On a personal note, it reminds me of a far neater and easier-to-navigate version of HypeMachine.

The event wasn’t without a few hard lessons in presentation and a few rough grillings from the panel, but some the key take aways from myself and others around the blogosphere:

• If your product is requiring the audience to change their behavior in order to use it, you must figure out how you are going to get them to do this and if they are truly willing to. This question was presented to Desktop360 who offer a rotating, web interactive desktop background.

• What is the life of your product? How long is this technology or trend going to exist?

• Investors don’t just invest in technology, they invest in the team of people behind it. We talked about this fact in a previous blog when it was revealed in the Wholesale Investor magazine survey that the team behind a company was one of the top factors investors looked at when it came to an investment. It’s good to include some of your team’s past successes and accomplishments and to present yourselves as reliable people, not just people presenting a reliable product.

• From the mouth of Pollenizer’s Phile Morle, don’t put so many industry terms and jargon into your presentation that it makes it hard to quickly recognize what the product your offering is and what the value is. Pollenizer helped coach at least two of the day’s presenters and have a wealth of experience in getting a complicated message across.

• Pitching is about dealing with people and selling. It doesn’t matter how great your product is if you can’t stand up, look people in the eyes and explain and sell your product. If you can’t do this, get coaching. If you’re incorrigible, consider hiring someone who can sell and pitch for you. The Green, Clean and Inbetween panel became hard to watch at times simply due to a lack of basic presentation skills.

You can read some of the other wrapups here and here. And view the pitched for Angusta, Hiive, Personal Audio and Myzerr below.

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