Kickstart Ventures investee wins Echelon 2013 competition

MANILA, Philippines - My Legal Whiz (MLW), an app which attempts to revolutionize how legal research is done, won the Echelon 2013 Satellite Philippines pitching competition together with Duets, a sing-along app that creates a new experience of collaborative karaoke. 

This gives MLW founders Dexter Feliciano and Katrina Chua and Duets founder Ben Wintle an opportunity to showcase their work to both local and regional investors at Echelon’s Startup Marketplace in Singapore this June.

MLW is one of the six investees of Kickstart Ventures Inc. which made it to the Final 10 of Echelon 2013 Philippine leg. The others are Apptivate, Lifebit, Tripid, Workinspire, and ZAP. 

“This is professional legal research on the go. We envision a Web and mobile resource for legal research which is available anytime, anywhere. While there are other products currently available in print, on CD or on the web, My Legal Whiz uniquely curates, annotates and organizes the content so users need not swim through thousands of entries to find the few genuinely pertinent rulings, cases or doctrines,” said  Feliciano, a graduate of DLSU-FEU, Masters in Business Administration-Juris Doctor (MBA-JD) Program.

MLW uses cloud computing to store all pertinent information which can be accessed through PCs or mobile phones. Chua, another graduate of DLSU-FEU, Masters in Business Administration-Juris Doctor (MBA-JD) Program, explains how cloud computing not only improves accessibility for users, it also broadens the market reach.

“My Legal Whiz is a platform, with which we are creating proof of concept in the Philippines. With market validation, we can expand to relevant overseas markets, partnering to get pertinent content, starting with jurisprudence with cross-border value, such as taxation, trade, and commercial transactions,” she said.

Minette Navarrete, president of Kickstart which is a subsidiary of Globe Telecom, expressed pride for having its incubatees pass Echelon’s strict standards. 

“We are particularly proud of My Legal Whiz’s win, and the opportunity to represent the Philippines in Echelon’s Startup Market. All the Kickstars and Garageheads have worked hard to develop their products and business models over the past months. Our partners and mentors have poured time and energy into coaching the teams,” she said.

Kickstart takes a systems approach that is predicated on people’s actions as much as it is on slick presentations or money or technology. And while the company cannot say that participating in the program, or any incubator’s for that matter, guarantees success, Navarrete said they are convinced that Kickstart is helping startup founders get a better shot at making it.

Earlier, Echelon conducted Satellite competitions in different Asian countries which aside from the Philippines, included Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in preparation for Echelon 2013 in June. Echelon 2013 is Asia’s premier technology and business event mostly attended by investors, entrepreneurs, and highly regarded startups.

Through the Satellite events, local tech startups were encouraged to look into the regional markets as they get a chance to be recognized by international investors, corporations, and other stakeholders through the exhibitions and pitching sessions that utilize Internet and mobile technology.