Google Demo Day is a chance for top startups from across the country to get in front of high level investors.
And a company based right here in the Motor City took home the coveted Game Changer Award at this year’s competition, also securing tens of thousands of dollars in funding.
Waymark is an art and tech company that’s focused on creating smart marketing tools and its latest product is poised to make waves in the advertising industry. It's called "Movement" and it automatically makes advertisements in a matter of seconds using just the phone number of your business.
"Wait about 10 seconds and then Movement will make video commercials for your business and you can watch them right there on your phone, you can make some changes and you can start advertising," said Waymark CEO Nathan Labenz, who stopped by Broadcast house this morning.
Labenz says Movement does a lot in that short 10 seconds, looking up the business on all of the big sites and pulling information.
"We create a content library with everything we know about the business and then use that to create the advertisement," said Labenz.
The end result? A snappy video that highlights the best parts of your company.
"We've hired a couple people who have got background in producing trailers for Hollywood movies, so there's really nothing where you need to pack a punch in more than a two hour movie down to 60 seconds and we kind of think of telling a story of a business in a very similar way," he said.
At Detroit Demo Day hosted by Grand Circus in March, Waymark was selected as one of three nominees for Google Demo Day 2017. After putting together an application and a video, Waymark got the news.
"We were fortunate to be selected to go out and represent Detroit in San Francisco," said Labenz.
Not only did they just represent, they also brought home the Game Changer Award determined by popular vote. Tech Square Ventures also gave Waymark $50,000 in funding.
As for what's next for this success story from the Motor City, Labenz says the plan is to keep improving Movement.
"The next... couple years is going to be about building out this product making sure we can tell stories effectively for all different kinds of small businesses and there's definitely still a lot of work to do," he said.
