A Bristol-based start-up that engineers advanced materials for sound and noise management has won a prestigious pitching competition – with its co-founder singing part of his presentation to demonstrate the product’s effectiveness.
Metasonixx landed the Best Elevator Pitch at SETsquared Bristol’s acclaimed Tech-Xpo 2024 Showcase – a competition that is now in its 20th year. 
CEO Gianluca Memoli, pictured, centre, with the Metasonixx team and their SonoBlind product, explained to the gathering of more than 100 investors and business leaders how the company’s patented technology had re-engineered everyday materials into innovative products that can manage noise and ventilation in the built environment.
Metasonixx competed against seven other innovative tech firms representing a broad range of sectors – from machine learning and AI to health and wellbeing.
Metasonixx’s flagship product SonoBlind is a transparent and super-thin modular panel sold as desk separators or booths to open-plan offices worldwide, including to blue-chips firms such as Chevron and the Italian motorways.
The company is a spinout from the universities of Bristol and Sussex, with the academic collaborations underpinning its patents, including a device that allows acoustic messages to be delivered to a single moving person in a crowd.
Gianluca and co-founder Bruce Drinkwater joined SETsquared Bristol’s incubation programme in 2020 for coaching and support with business planning and fundraising.
Gianluca said: “At the last minute, I decided to sing part of my pitch and I won! It’s incredible to get this award and a great celebration of all the work we have done.
“We want to change the place where people spend most of the time, which is the office, and I’m talking about the hybrid office, as well as noise at home.
“In the days when my kids were around, I’d mount one of my panels to make sure I could have a zoom call.”
SETsquared Bristol entrepreneur-in-residence Rick Chapman said it had been a pleasure to support all the founders deliver pitches at this year’s Tech-Xpo.
“The line-up featured start-ups from our early and later stage programmes, and the standard was exceptionally high throughout,” he added.
“All of the companies should be very proud, and indeed Metasonixx, whose standout pitch captured the audience with a novel delivery – well done Gianluca!”
Metasonixx follows in the footsteps of successful Tech-Xpo winners, including Inclued.ai, which triumphed last year has since secured funding from Innovate UK’s Unlocking Potential: Build Award for its inclusive marketing AI tool.
2021’s winner Ferryx closed its first investment round shortly afterwards to tackle common gut problems while KETS Quantum Security, which won in 2020, has since raised £3.1m in a pre-series A investment.
Tech-Xpo 2024 was sponsored by Bristol-headquartered national law firm VWV and Burges Salmon and Future Finance, which supports UK financial service providers to adopt innovative ways of working.
VWV has now been the lead sponsor for 14 consecutive years, with the event this year staged in the University of Bristol’s iconic Goldney Hall, the location for the inaugural Tech-Xpo two decades ago.
VWV corporate partner and head of its technology sector, Nathan Guest, said Tech-Xpo 2024 had been another fantastic showcase for SETsquared Bristol and its companies as well as a celebration of the incubator’s many achievements over the past 20 years.
“Having worked so closely with the SETsquared Bristol team over most of those 20 years, our specialist tech and life science sector lawyers remain as committed as ever to supporting their fantastic start-ups,” he added.
“There are some real gems within the SETsquared venture base and I am very confident that the next 12 months will see many more positive investment and other commercial deal announcements.”
