As the digital dust settled last Thursday evening, during the closing remarks of ESI Digital Winter Esports Insider Co-Founder and Managing Director Sam Cooke was joined by Patrick Mahoney, the Co-Founder of Nations Ventures, and Christian Christoefl, Investment Banking’s Vice President to announce the winner of The Clutch Digital.
In the end, biofeedback-tracking focus-enhancing platform FOCS was unveiled as the victor, joining the likes of Teams.gg, Gscience and Anzu.
FOCS entered, competed, and won under the name Interactive Productline, however, the company has since changed its since applying for the competition.
Esports Insider caught up with The Clutch Digital contestant and CEO of FOCS, Charlie Ohlen to hear about his experience of the competition, what the next steps are for FOCS, and his hopes for the future.
Esports Insider: With your win still fresh, how was your experience of the event?
Charlie Ohlen: ESI always hosts amazing events. Both in-person and now digitally. It was an overall blast being a part of it and the competition was awesome. I specifically loved the format which allowed lots of time for questions from the judges (something undervalued in pitch competitions typically).
ESI: What motivated you to apply to The Clutch and did/does it fit into any specific roadmap that you and your team have for the company?
CO: We attended ESI New York back in 2019 where I had the pleasure of meeting Sam Cooke among others. We’ve kept in touch since and in a catch-up call he recommended that we apply to The Clutch.
Being amongst others who work in or are eager to learn more about esports is always a blast and I think ESI is the perfect place to enable that atmosphere. Some people have reached out after seeing our pitch and win, and one of the judges scheduled a call this week already.
Outside of that, there’s mostly been an expansion of the network over LinkedIn which could someday lead to something great.
ESI: What are some next steps for FOCS? How can people stay tuned in to the progress of the company?
CO: “Well one thing that we perhaps didn’t manage to change in time for the event, but we’ve actually changed our company name to FOCS. We recently launched our new website www.focs.gg where you can read more about us in case you missed the pitch and also stay up to date with us.
The next immediate steps are of course catching up on the contacts made during the event. On the esports front, we want to meet with more teams in order to really finalise the product and adapt it to their feedback. Hardware production is moving along but as mentioned in the pitch, we still need funding in order to fully launch.
Outside of esports we’re currently working towards a focus training trial with one of the world’s leading car manufacturers & some European football clubs.
ESI: Any final thoughts you’d like to share?
CO: As I’ve already plugged our website I recommend heading over there to read up on us and our products. Feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn as well. Lastly, I and FOCS want to thank ESI for a great event and the judges for a great competition! Cheers!”
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