Costvise at the Plug and Play Health Tech Pitch Session

On Friday, 21 August 2026, Costvise took the stage at the Plug and Play Health Tech Pitch Session. 40 selected founding teams, 89 investors, venture capital funds, and corporates from the international health tech ecosystem. And among them a young team from Lower Austria, asking a question that the health and social care sector should have answered long ago.

What this stage means

Plug and Play is one of the largest innovation and early stage platforms in the world, rooted in Silicon Valley and built on a network that connects startups, corporates, and capital. The Friday Pitch Sessions are not an open stage, they are a curated format. Whoever pitches there has been selected.

The health tech edition brings together teams from across the entire value chain, from diagnostics and biotech to digital care and steering solutions. Being part of that field is more than a date in the calendar for us. It shows that our topic is read as relevant far beyond the German speaking market.

The largest cost block is also the scarcest resource

In the health and social care sector, 70 to 80 percent of total costs are staff costs. At the same time, staff is the scarcest resource the sector has. Providers, facilities, and services of every size face the same situation. The factor that decides the economics is the one that is hardest to plan.

Despite this, central decisions are still made on the basis of fragmented systems, outdated requirements, and manual processes. Which qualifications will an organisation need three years from now? When does hiring beat leasing? Which site works out under which staffing ratio? These questions decide the economic future of an organisation, and they are usually answered in hindsight.

Our pitch

Liria Binaku, our Co-Founder and CEO, showed how Costvise closes this gap. As a decision intelligence platform, we connect staffing, capacity, and financial data across systems and translate it into forward looking foundations for management and financial leadership. The economic impact of a decision becomes visible before the decision is made.

That the approach holds is not a claim. In a real case study from practice, the underlying methodology identified around 229,000 euros in net savings potential, derived transparently from the applicable legal frameworks. In a regulated environment, that traceability is the decisive trust factor. A black box convinces neither a management board nor a regulator.

A problem that is understood across borders

Staff shortages and economic pressure in the health and social care sector are not an Austrian phenomenon. Pitching to an international audience makes visible how similar the starting position is in other markets. What differs are the regulations and funding logics. What stays the same is the question of how an organisation plans its largest cost block in a sustainable way.

Twelve months that changed a lot

A short look back is worth it. Admission to the aws First Incubator. The 8th SMARTUP scholarship of the city of St. Pölten. National finalist at Red Bull Basement Austria 2026. A presence at the Austrian Startup Pavilion at GITEX EUROPE 2026 in Berlin. And now a pitch session within the Plug and Play network.

For a company at this stage, that is an unusual density. We are not telling this to celebrate ourselves, but because it says something about the topic. A young team does not get these stages because of its age, but because the question it raises is overdue.

What we take away

We leave this session with a confirmation and a mandate. The confirmation is that the need is real, far beyond Austria. The mandate is to turn attention into impact. Because every week an organisation steers its largest cost block in hindsight instead of in advance costs money that is missing in care. And care is what this is ultimately about.