Back
Five SOSV HAX startups shine at CES 2022
Back
SOSV Team
SOSV Team
January 12, 2022

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wrapped last week, and five companies from SOSV’s HAX portfolio came away with awards and press coverage that rocked “the most influential tech event in the world.”

HAX is a hands-on, pre-seed program for startups working to solve hard problems with hard tech. HAX companies range from consumer to industrial, and the former are no strangers to great outcomes at CES. This year was exceptional because four companies won coveted CES Innovation Awards and another got listed in The Wall Street Journal’s Best of CES. We checked in with the founders to find out how they crushed CES.

Labrador Systems

Image courtesy Labrador Systems

SOSV HAX (2019) alum Labrador Systems creates next generation assistive robots, which received much press at CES this year. Their Labrador Retriever robotic table made The Wall Street Journal’s Best of CES 2022 list. An article in The Verge touted Labrador’s ability to keep things “extremely simple — by building what are essentially self-driving shelves.” TechCrunch called Retriever “one of the best examples … of an American company purpose-building a robot to assist people.” And IEEE Spectrum published “Labrador Addresses Critical Need With Deceptively Simple Home Robot” which describes the product as “relatively affordable and realistically technologically achievable while also solving a clear and widespread need.”

Labrador co-founder and CEO Mike Dooley has this advice for startups wanting to make a splash at CES: “Talk to the press early. We started reaching out to the press back in October to line up embargoed press meetings starting before Thanksgiving. That helped us have coverage already in play before CES opened and really helped us practice our story and refine our materials to address their questions.”

Looking Glass Factory

Image courtesy Looking Glass Factory

Co-founders Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein launched Looking Glass with technology that brings the first system for creating 3D holograms to the consumer market. Another Look Glass Product, the 8K Gen2, is the world’s highest resolution light field display designed for presenting 3D content to larger groups. This year 8K Gen2 won the CES Innovation Award for Virtual & Augmented Reality.

Nailbot

Image courtesy Preemadonna

SOSV HAX (cohort 06) alum Preemadonna created Nailbot, a connected, at-home manicure device that instantly prints on nails any photo, emoji, image, or any self-created design in five seconds. Nailbot took home a 2022 CES Innovation Award for Home Appliances.

To make the most of CES, Preemadonna co-founder and CEO Pree Walia says it’s all about prep: “Make sure to apply to the CES Innovation Awards program beforethe start of CES. Plan ahead for digital communications around your CES product announcements. Make sure you have your press releases ready with photos and videos of your product. And reach out to reporters and partners during and after the show.”

The Last Gameboard

The Last Gameboard is a tabletop gaming system that bridges the tactile and interpersonal experience of physical games with the expansive connectivity of digital content and online communities. For its unrivaled touch technology, the SOSV HAX (2020) alum was awarded the 2022 CES Innovation Award for Gaming.

About maximizing startup exposure at CES, Gameboard co-founder and CEO Shail Mehta says: “The best advice I have for CES? Reach out to everyone, talk to everyone, make yourself visible. It’s easy to get lost in the masses if you don’t plan your presence.”

Cradlewise

Image courtesy Cradlewise

The Cradlewise smart crib spots the first signs of a waking infant, gently bounces automatically along with music to soothe the baby back to sleep, and even learns from the child’s sleep patterns. For predictive rocking technology that helps safeguard baby’s sleep, the SOSV HAX (2019) alum won the 2022 CES Innovation Award in the category of Smart Home.

For founders attending CES who are in the product development phase, Cradlewise co-founder and CEO Radhika Patil recommends: “Don’t be too worried to put a beta product out there. It will help you test the sentiment as many tech lovers, early adopters, and industry leaders visit the show — their feedback can be insightful.”

See you next year at CES!

Did you know?

unspun’s Weaving Machines Aim to Fix Apparel’s Waste and Carbon Problem

Funded with $57 million from DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and SOSV, among others, unspun aims to eliminate 1% of global carbon emissions

NotCo’s plant-based foods are on store shelves, but its AI engine “Giuseppe” is the real business

While it might look like a plant-based food company, NotCo is in the data and AI business—and aims to disrupt R&D in many industries that use animal and plant ingredients.

Smartex is Creating the Textile Factory of the Future

Gilberto Loureiro grew up inspecting fabrics in a Portuguese textile factory. With Smartex, he and co-founders Antonio Rocha and Paulo Ribeiro are eliminating textile defects—and their enormous cost both to manufacturers and the environment.

Novoloop Is Upcycling Your Future

Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have an uncanny talent for finding value where others see waste. Their plastics upcycling company, Novoloop, just raised an $21m Series A to prove it.

Upside Foods Serves Up a Sustainable Future

To find the future of food, you may have to look no further than Emeryville, CA, a small city by the San Francisco Bay, where Upside Foods has built a 53,000-square-foot production facility for cultivated meat, the first of its kind.

Sleeping Beauty

In a timeless dilemma for new parents, Radhika and her husband Bharath discovered early that their baby daughter was a fussy sleeper. The situation left them tired and frustrated; being effective at work became a challenge.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Entrepreneur

In December 2021 Prellis raised a $14.5 million Series B and has signed partnerships with pharmaceutical behemoths including Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi.

Chiu Chau Reboots a Robot into a Billion Dollar Business

It was 2016, and Chiu Chau was on the ropes. He had pitched nearly 150 venture capital firms. No one would invest. Everyone doubted the startup with the open-source laboratory robot.

RxAll’s Life-Saving Deep Tech for African Pharmacies

Adebayo (“Ade”) Alonge and Amy Kao, co-founders of RxAll had nvented a handheld scanner for detecting counterfeit prescription drugs—an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry that kills an estimated 1 million people annually globally and 100,000 in Africa.