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HFTP is gearing up for the 10th Annual Entrepreneur 20X (E20X) hospitality technology start-up pitch competition taking place during HITEC 2025 in Indianapolis. To commemorate this notable year, the event will start off with a special speaker Jonathon Rojas, who pitched his messaging solution Whistle at the first-ever E20X in 2015 in Austin, Texas. Rojas with his co-founder Chris Hovanessian won the Judges' Choice award that year and later in June 2022, Whistle was acquired by Cloudbeds where Rojas is the Global Director of Customer Growth.
With a history of showcasing cutting-edge solutions, this year's event promises to unveil a new wave of disruptors set to shape the future of hospitality technology. The upcoming E20X event is expected to be a melting pot of creativity and innovation, propelling the industry into a new era of growth and transformation. To help prep for this year's event, get to know last year's E20X North America winners. And stay-tuned for an announcement of the 2025 competitors, coming soon.
When Susan Springsteen, president and co-founder of H2O Connected, took to the stage to deliver her four-minute pitch, she got straight to the point: "Let's talk about how to make money with toilets."
Springsteen was at the E20X North America 2024 competition, co-located with the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®) in Charlotte, N.C., to represent her company's innovative business solution for hotels. She pitched alongside representatives from seven other hospitality technology startups and ultimately secured the People's Choice Award, a distinction earned by popular vote among the audience.
"The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] states 20 percent of the 300 million tank toilets in the United States are wasting 50 gallons of water a day at any one time," Springsteen declared, "and we don't want any of those to be your toilets."
H20 Connected offers a wireless device called The LeakAlertor Wireless PRO, which comes with a smart water height sensor that can monitor water usage and detect issues with tank toilets including a faulty fill valve, leaky flapper, inefficient flush volumes, running toilets and overflows. The device sends communications to a proprietary gateway that specifies a diagnosis, location, severity (down to a fraction of a gallon), and cost, both in gallons and dollars — a significant metric for hotels, given the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI) 12th Revised Edition now includes water usage as a monitoring requirement.
Springsteen referenced results of one property using their services: "88 percent of their toilets had at least one water-wasting issue which, without [our device], would have added $15,000 to their annual water bill.
"In addition to boosting profits, we are also helping you save the planet. You save water, you lower the burden on the electrical grid, and [you] maximize the guest experience — because your guests aren't annoyed by a loud or malfunctioning toilet."
Folio — the startup that secured the competition's grand prize, the Judges' Choice Award — is also in the business of adding to a hotel's financial bottom-line.
Folio offers a modern procurement software built to help hotel operators browse, order and pay suppliers with ease.
"The average full-service hotel has hundreds of suppliers and people are ordering multiple times a day to restock," explained Folio's CEO and co-founder Kate Adamson during her pitch at E20X. "When there's so much stuff, there's also a ton of work to manage all that stuff."
By reducing operating costs by buying from approved vendors, providing price comparisons, documenting real-time spend visibility, and promoting budget enforcement, Folio helps back offices operate more efficiently and is scalable to any size property.
Folio offers two products: an ordering platform and an accounts payable (AP) solution. The ordering platform creates a custom, mobile-optimized store, with all the bells and whistles of a procurement platform. It links up all the suppliers, honors existing contract pricing, and according to Adamson, is as easy to use as Amazon. The AP solution digitizes invoices and spend history all in one place, from rooms to the restaurant.
"One of our general managers said that accounting is like laundry, it never seems to end," Adamson quipped. "We can make it end."
The E20X 2024 award-winning startups have set the stage for an exciting future in hospitality technology. As HFTP prepares for E20X 2025, the industry awaits a new wave of disruptors that will shape the future of hospitality technology. These startups' success and groundbreaking technologies exemplify the potential for revolutionary advancements in the hospitality industry.