Kiwi startup makes it to the big time with IBM

Wellington based startup, Eight Wire, will compete in the semi-finals of IBM's SmartCamp in San Francisco, along with nine other startups.

Along with five other New Zealand IT startups, Eight Wire was invited by IBM to participate in the SmartCamp competition that was held in Auckland on September 17.

After topping the pack, Eight Wire was then selected from 30 winners around the world to compete at the semi-finals in San Francisco, against just nine other startups.

Eight Wire is a data integration specialist based in New Zealand's capital city. The startup automates the thousands of hours of work required to move data between databases, files and the cloud.

IBM SmartCamp Auckland's judges said Eight Wire's solution has the potential to meet the data integration challenges experienced by nearly all businesses.

"It's a huge honour," says Jason Gleason, Eight Wire founder. "This gives us a massive platform to show the world what we can do, and having the backing of a brand like IBM behind us is great.

The SmartCamp semi-finals will be held in mid October 2015 at Launch Scale, an invite only Silicon Valley event where influential entrepreneurs and tech leaders teach founders how to scale their businesses.

All 10 semi-finalists will be invited back to San Francisco in March 2016 to exhibit in the IBM SmartCamp Pavilion at Launch Festival, the largest startup event in the world with more than 20,000 attendees.

By December 2015, the top three startups will be chosen to compete in the finals at the Launch Festival, where entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis along with IBM will decide the final winner and crown the IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year on stage.

The IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year will secure a spot in the Launch's three month incubator in Silicon Valley, which includes a $25k investment.