STARTeurope

The scene in Vienna has changed over the last two years – peergroups, Steakups, incubators, us, Sektor5, media, funds… Blimey, it’s all coming along quite well! Every year it seems a Viennese startup wins Seedcamp. We have some of the biggest and baddest (in a good sense) VC’s investing in Austrian startups. This lill town is letting go of it’s crappy bureaucratic shackles and beginning to work it from the right direction: startups helping each other.

Saturday morning we were joined by Can who gave a presentation on the biz model canvas and after that by Andreas Klinger giving a talk about what he has learned in the last few years of building garmz.com. Check out the presentation here! It’s a good one.

Also, Jamila and Linda from mFarm, a mobile startup from Kenya visited us and told us what they have been doing since winning IPO48 in Nairobi in 2010.

The founders talk which took place on Saturday evening was full. We had three awesome people to pepper with questions, telling us their real war-stories. Bruno Haid (founder & CEO work.io, founder of System ONE), Alexander Kirk ( cofounded netvibes and now working on his own projects) and Chris Clay (CEO and cofounder of soup.me). Awesome knowledge to be gained from simply daring to ask more personal questions. How does private life and startup life work? Hehe yeah I still wonder that

Prizes

Mentor Driven

During the weekend, mentors and experts came by and supported the teams – founders, serial entrepreneurs, experts in marketing, biz modeling, public funding and grants, sales and law, investments, design, backend architecture, social media marketing and many more.

Among the mentors:

Expert Rated

The guys that decide on which team wins the weekend is always a mix of different disciplines.

Two of the original experts couldn’t make it due to missing flights and disease. Stefan and Marius joined the panel instead – Stefan actually cancelled a flight to come join the panel. Wow! Thanks!

On the experts panel of STARTup Live Vienna #5 were

Companies and Ideas

Winner of the best STARTup Award

• Name: Roof Node
• Pitcher: Franz Böhm
• Tagline: Rural Broadband
• Description:

  Roofnode is a wireless broadband technology. Wireless station on customer’s rooftop. High-performance, robust and secure wireless mesh network for internet, telephone and television services in rural areas.

  Getting to the event Franz had a patent, idea and prototype. What he totally lacked was biz and design. This was supplied. During the mentoring rounds he proved time and time again how he was able to adapt. Respect. He also won the respect of the panel of judges!

  Congratulations! Enjoy STARTUP WEEK 2011!

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Winner of the best new venture

City Pulse

• Pitchers:
  Michael Rottman
  Daniel Horak
  Benjamin Bachhuber
  Alexander Quast
• Description:

  Using location services and aggregating checkins et al they will make you able to see where the hot stuff in town is going on. NO, not like foursquare does (I KNEW you’d ask that, so did we!). Network is there, designers, techies, the team is set to go.

  We were really happy to welcome these campers into Sektor5 for two months! Congrats!

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Winner of the crowd’s choice

• Name: Finderly
• Pitcher: Katharina Klausberger
• Description:

  By connecting you with experts, department stores and geeks as well as your friends these guys intend to make it easier for you to find products which suit you. We’ve followed this team over the last year (they approached us as they had the idea) and they have made immense and fast progress. Respect.

  The crowd’s favorite is chosen via SMS-voting and the team (very fitting) for a new multi-function printer by Konica Minolta! Yay you!

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Winner of the medias darling award

• Name: Teenage Rockstar
• Pitcher: Christof Straub
• Description:

  These guys have been around for about two years. Born out of passion for music and the realization that his daughter didn’t really have a good place to show their talents Christof launched TRS. All content is screened by him and his guys’n'gals and they have achieved their goal of building and helping the young musical geniuses of Austria. And you know what? They used ~no friggin social media. What does it say in your own marketing plan? Oh, facebook group? HA!

  The presentation shown on Sunday was great – the progress working on social media integration in their service was too. Hope to see it launched in two weeks.

  The fit with the price is almost too good to be true – €30k in marketing budget to work with young enterprises!

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Newsletter Platform

• Pitcher: David Lehner
• Description:

  There are a gazillion newsletters for every lill thing out there. Many suck, a few are good. How can you keep track of the best ones?

  The team is developing a platform for managing, rating and suggesting newsletters suitable to your needs.

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• Name: Cakadoo
• Pitchers:
  Alexander Preuss
  Christoph Haselmann
  Thomas Dori
• Description:

  A microjob platform focusing on serving businesses. The project is technically far along but over the weekend learnt a lot from lawyers, bizzies and veterans in their space. One of the biggest teams to work with us so far!

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World Taxi

• Pitcher: Filip Boskovic
• Description:

  This gang of two set out to change how taxi drivers pick up guests and to help their customers communicate where they are going. To be able to use the service abroad, they intend to work heavily with SMS and offline maps.

  Looking at the developments of Uber, http://www.uber.com/learn, we know that there is a very valid although dangerous market here. You don’t wanna mess with the cabby union

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Lingibli

• Pitcher: Milan Schnorrer
• Description:

  In three simple steps, which take no more than 5 minutes of your time, you will start learning a foreign language.

  The team came together a few weeks before the event, but realized they kinda needed a designer. Supplied. The new slide deck and app sketches look amazing. Looking forward to seeing more from them!

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• Name: dreamaTV
• Pitcher: Manuel Gruber
• Description:

  This was the second time the gang attended STARTup Live Vienna. Since last time much has changed. The team of 8 has set out to give you, me and all other innovative people their own show. The experienced media producer team has developed a number of formats which they intend to spread via among other formats digital TV.

  At the end presentation they demoed their newest format “ Laber’s Lab ” which had been shot during the weekend. Oc these guys brought their own equipment including a 50″+ TV showing their stuff!

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• Name: Circus Offers
• Pitcher: Jorge Luis Rodriguez Morales
• Description:

  A promotion management tool which enables you to keep track of your facebook, groupon, twitter, dailydeal, meindeal+++++++++ promotions without the headache of visiting them all.

  The group was represented by one guy, but 3 others are working in other parts of the world, the furthest away being in Paraguay. They already have a pretty damn big customer called mmmmm nah I can’t say that!

  Sign up to be informed of their progress!

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Default Detection – D²

• Pitcher: Domagoj Dolinsek
• Description:

  The handling of documents, images, comments, tasks and recordings which you have to live with being an engineer at a construction site is idiotic.

  Domagoj who has experience in the field and know the problems personally set out to change this with a tablet app. It would integrate with the existing documentation and comms platforms but simplify the process – seeing to it that building projects do not succumb under their own weight in red tape.

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• Name: Tarif Agent
• Pitcher: Philipp Etzlinger
• Description:
  TarifAgent helps people to distinguish between the many options mobile carriers provide and find the best option for you, minimizing communication costs to the minimum by analyzing your personal (Smart-)Phone-usage.

  Philipp has joined us before, but this time we got really impressed with what happened. On Saturday they got the feedback that the process of getting your stuff optimized was too long. Took it to heart and reduced it from a month to 4 days. Backend, process, frontend. The update of the app will be launched soon!

  Well done guys!

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GetInspired

• Pitcher: Adam Okruhlica
• Description:

  We all know situations where we definitely need to be creative, but we simply can’t get to the right mood. Are you a writer who needs some inspiration to evolve a story? Or a designer who needs to come up with a fresh idea or spice up an existing one?

  Let the diversity of inspirers work on your hitch, or become one of them and inspire others. Simply submit your hitch, in a few words or images, lay back, and follow the mind-stream of the community. Once you feel inspired again, share out kudos to those who inspired you most. The more kudos you have, the more hitches you can have solved.

  Over the weekend the team put together the central parts of the system. Still lacking a kickass UI, but they’ll get there.

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Another Live is over, but we are happy to announce that the next event is taking place in Pristina in a few days, another couple of events are planned for Porto, Hungary and Germany. Requests are dropping in like crazy. At the end of the summer, we will be ready to handle them well enough to go forward with these hundreds of requests!

We intend to launch our stuff at STARTUP WEEK 2011 which we are organizing with Initial Factor and TechCrunch EU! Be prepared!

Thanks to our partners

Thanks to all our partners who made this possible. Supporting a crazy bunch like us cannot be easy Nah honestly, you rock. Without supporters such as these guys below, we wouldn’t have been able to reach 1800 people, help in the formation of over 20 startups and have such an impact in the Kosovar, Austrian or Portugese startup communities. Thanks.

And special thank you goes out to our friends Martin Seimen of planetm.at and Axel Blank of blanck.at for helping us with keeping the participants alive through the weekend. Also a great hugh to Stefan Dworak who shot us a ton of wonderful pictures.

Companies and Ideas

And now, please welcome the teams and their ideas!

Rico – WINNER of Best New Venture Award @ STARTup Live Vienna #4

• Pitcher:
  Michaela Gimpl
• Tagline:
  Simple help for spastically challenged children
• Description:
  By combining the three devices always needed by spastically paralyzed children into one, cutting prices and going modular – this system will be of great help for the customers and their families. As a winner of the Best New Venture award, Michaela and her team can now move into their new office at Sektor 5 – coworking spaces, in 1050, Vienna – just around the corner from STARTeurope HQ! Also, Michaela got a ticket for the Erste Bank Gründercamp by our partners at Erste Bank!
  People had tears in their eyes as the award was accepted. Wow.

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Warrantify – WINNER Best Startup Award of STARTup Live Vienna #4!

• Pitcher:
  Hari Tamvada
• Tagline:
  Product warranties. Simplified.
• Description:
  Warrantify.com is a global service platform for warranty management which will give easy access and digital storage for all consumer product warranty related data and services, a one stop shop for all product warranties. With the help of Warrantify we hope to release people from collecting paper receipts in order to be eligible to receive their consumer electronics support or warranties.

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clearKarma.org – WINNER of the Crowds Choice Award

• Pitcher:
  Sylvie Chin
• Tagline:
  Make safer choices
• Description:
  300 million people worldwide suffer from food allergies. Reading the small print on each product is just too difficult and too time consuming.
  
  
  
  clearKarma.org offers a mobile application and an information website. People with food allergies see, based on personal allergies immediately the impact of their buying decisions on their personal health. The magic lies in barcode scanning and checking against a community maintained, commented, database.
  
  
  
  As a winner of the Crowds Choice Award, Sylvie will head to the Founders Workshop – sponsored by Erste Bank!

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Scribando

• Pitcher:
  Albert Griesmayr
• Tagline:
  Making publishing social
• Description:
  Scribando provides a place, where books evolve through the power of community.

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Twingz

• Pitcher:
  Werner Weihs-Sedivy
• Tagline:
  Twitter of thingz
• Description:
  Things (e.g. electronic devices) are enriched with communication features. Users on the go can check back state and healthiness of devices that sit at home. Devices can actively pop up with urgent news (e.g. stove overheat, fridge getting warm, espresso needs decalcifying) – users are enabled to interact with devices via short text (twingz, twitter, facebook, SMS).
  User can also check on the go which supplies fits the printer or if the game console of interest can be connected to the home entertainment center.

  @marketers: enrich your social media campaigns on consumer electronics by devices that are enabled to communicate!”

  @starteurope: @mycoffemachine make me a cappucino please!
  @mycoffemachine: @starteurope seriously!? You haven’t decalc’d me for AGES! *grumble* coffe is ready in a min :/

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Playmakers Industries

• Pitcher:
  Philippe Greier
• Tagline:
  Change the world via games
• Description:
  Ok, change the world. Easy. Let’s just start another orga focused on this. Or… Make people do what they should be doing: play together!

  By smacking together startups, industry leaders and the great bureaucracies of the world in an environment where they have to let go of their tightly held assumptions – this gang wishes to change the world. Their plan is to create these environment together with the coworking spaces of the world – leading to the STOPeurope-game (yeah baby!!). Starting with a workshop on 3.11, at the Hub Vienna.

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MG

• Pitcher:
  Matjaz Gorjup
• Tagline:
  Efficiency is only part of the equation
• Description:
  With a number of years as a manager in larger corporations, Matjaz saw the need to make people feel that the effort they put into their work actually has an effect. Said and done – MG is a task management and delegation system which kicks ***. Simplified, reduced and optimized to take as small a part as possible on the side of the users. The missing puzzle piece is addressed by adding game mechanics to the equation.

  The team worked on the game system and visualizations during the weekend – now all they need to do is implement.

  By the by, game mech’s is the social web of the next decade according to Seth Priebatsch and Jesse Schell, among many others.

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DreamaTV

• Pitcher:
  Manuel Gruber
• Tagline:
  A channel for entrepreneurs and visionaries
• Description:
  Entrepreneurs and visionaries are blossoming – DreamaTV will be their channel and show. By equipping coworking spaces with access to the channel and curating the content which is generated, coworking spaces, entrepreneurs and the world gain in PR, publicity and visions. Aggregating all these grand changers and building a show of the greatest ideas of the month – DreamaTV will be a high quality producer of visionary, crowd-sourced material.

  They already have 2 customers, gained during the weekend! How’s that for bloody traction?

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Runtastic

• Pitcher:
  Florian Gschwandtner
• Tagline:
  Makes sport fantastic.
• Description:
  This was the third time that Runtastic entered the foray. As winners of STARTup Live Vienna #2, these guys now decided to implement a badge/achievement system into their sports-platform. All in one weekend. Said, and done. Wait for the next release! The whole team of 7 people travelled to Vienna for the weekend – was great to see them again! Awesome guys!

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TarifAgent

• Pitcher:
  Philipp Etzlinger
• Tagline:
  The comparison pays
• Description:
  This team decided to tackle the jungle of cell phone tarifs. Crazy – do you know how many different combos of prices and packages there are in Austria alone? 45k. Done, and done. Since 2008 they have mapped and enabled running evaluations of all providers in Austria – and on their platform they allow users to check what combo would be best for them. All in all, that has made out 1.8M different combos mapped since 2008.
  
  This weekend, they sketched and started developing an Android app to automate the comparison.

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Life Missions

• Pitcher:
  Benedikt Glatzl
• Tagline:
  Start playing, start living.
• Description:
  As we’ve already seen, many are going in the direction of games. The pitcher presented at the last STARTup Live Vienna too, and this time, they went on to prototype their vision. Working with designers and experts from the field of sports they made heaps of progress. By designing common goals as achievements in a game – people are motivated to actually take the next step – rising in level as a tennis player, cook, marathon runner or being a good guy/gal. The UI prototype looks friggin great, gonna see if we cannot get a screen of it.

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2-topf

• Pitcher:
  Christoph Bergthaler
• Tagline:
  traditional food – urban taste
• Description:
  Fresh food based on traditional recipes – available in several locations. The prototype of this restaurant chain to be is to be built close to a university in Vienna. By combining “Grandma” and “Zotter” – traditional food with urban trend – the opportunity will be addressed. Next steps: design concept, customer interviews and research, dish prototypes.

  Christopher Bergthaler is a chef since 10 years and worked with a team fro Austria and Germany on refining the concept. The pitch was something totally different than the presentation – which we love. Pivots ftw.

3TO – pharma and Success Time are still missing, but should pop up in here in a day or 2

What can one say. We had a blast. Teams were awesome and our feet still hurt from dancing at the afterparty. Who would have thought that Manu would be on par with Marius when it comes to shaking it! WOW!

The teams are now working on realizing their next milestones, until November 27, which is when the next STARTup Lounge takes place @ Sektor 5. During the afternoon, they get to show their shiz and if they have made it, they will have the opportunity to enter our mentoring program and get an office for a few months!

Us, we are receiving emails to go all over Europe!
What the hell should you do if one is called STARTeurope?
Well.
Go there.

laymakers industries @ business model canvas session

Saturday is taking off – time to take a quick look at what we have got so far.

We had 25 Ideas pitched – 12 of those turned into ideas. Game Mechanics, Web TV are some of the most popular topics amongst our teams.

Here are some impressions

The next STARTeurope event takes place this weekend, and will be quite interesting. Looking at the stats of the participants we can proudly say that Europe is in the house

During the pitchtraining and in personal talks with the registered pitchers, we got some insight into what is about to hit Vienna at the end of the week:

• Hardware
• Web 2.0
• Games
• Social entrepreneurship
• Social Web
• Mobile Apps
• Biochem
• Medicine
• Innovation Management
• …

Pitches

We are blown away by the amount of registered pitchers this time around – so much, that we even had to consider closing the doors for new ideas – but that would have been soooo not-STARTeurope’ean.

Out of the 95 registered participants, sofar 32 have registered as pitchers.

Geography

This time around we have participants from 12 nations, our best so far was 18, but this will have to do

Backgrounds

We have a slight overload on the biz side, as usual, but considering we have a techie among us who built stuff for MIR, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

Fem(Tech/Law/Design/Entrepreneurs)?

To summarize

Thinking back to the first event we threw, in June 2009, the pitches were rough, the people in-experienced and we didn’t have a clue about how much breakfast one should buy for 50 people. Most of the organizers pitched their own ideas and we were all nervous about how many participants would hear the call and stand up, grab the mic and use their 90 seconds. Time flies when you have fun…

Working for about 1.5 years now, touching the lives of over 1000 individuals from a horde of different nations – we constantly get the feedback that we are making a difference. We have seen the quality of pitches, projects and people rise with each event – and this one will follow the trend.

See you on Friday.