Unicorn Battle uses buzzwords to measure a startup's 'unicornibility'

When startup founders pitch at a TechCrunch event, they usually don't just get on-stage and starting shouting out buzzwords.

Today, however, one of the teams at the Disrupt Berlin hackathon really did begin their presentation by rattling off words and phrases like "Internet of Things!" and "bitcoin!!" As they did, a unicorn puppet would pop up on their screen and shout "fuah!"

Turns out they were showing off a project called Unicorn Battle. It's a web app that can listen to a startup pitch and award points every time the presenter uses popular words and phrases. So if you're running a pitch competition, you can use it to determine which presentation had the highest density of buzzwords (or, as the Unicorn Battle team puts it, which startup has the most "unicornibility").

Unicorn Battle was built by Marian Moldovan, Nieves Ábalos Serrano, Lucas Menéndez and Carlos Muñoz-Romero — a team from Madrid. Backstage, Moldovan and Muñoz-Romero explained that they'd gotten the idea after a finding a unicorn puppet while exploring Berlin. (As you can see in the video below, the puppet is pretty cute.)

The team actually participated in last year's Disrupt London hackathon, where they created chatbot for refugees. Moldovan said that was a rewarding experience, but they realized that when building that kind of product aimed at social impact, "We aren't creating any real value if we don't follow up on the idea."

So this year, they decided to do something a little different.