STARTeurope

Silicon Valley is the global hub for all things tech, where the majority of startups and innovation is located, but the startup scene in Europe is booming and producing quality startups and game-changers with vision. We thought we should share some of them with you.

6Wunderkinder

6Wunderkinder was founded in 2010 in Berlin, Germany and aims to be the leader in the GTD space. Their main product is Wunderlist, a cross-platform (web, dekstop, mobile) free app that changes the way you manage your to-do lists. Wunderlist has more than 1M users globally —it hit the 1M milestone in just 275 days— and there have been 3.7 million to-do lists created. In November 2011 6Wunderkinder raised $4.2M from Atomico, the capital firm of Niklas Zennström (co-founder, Skype.)

Soundcloud

SoundCloud is the world’s leading social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and share them everywhere. Founded in 2007 by Swedes Alexander Ljung & Eric Wahlforss and based in Berlin–Mitte, Germany (the team though spans across London and San Francisco.) It all started because of Alexander and Eric’s frustration when they couldn’t easily send and receive large music files over the web. Soundcloud quickly evolved to the audio platform that is used by industry leaders and enables anyone to upload, record, promote and share their sounds and tracks across the internet, in a simple, accessible and feature-rich way.

Rovio

You probably know Angry Birds. The Finnish startup Rovio is the creator behind Angry Birds. In 2009, Rovio released Angry Birds, a casual puzzle game for touchscreen smartphones that became a worldwide phenomenon from 2010 onwards. From the huge sucess of Angry Birds as a casual mobile game, Rovio is quickly moving to a franchise of new business areas — broadcast media, merchandising, publishing and services. Recently they did also open the world’s first Angry Birds store and speaking downloads, Angry Birds has totalled more than 500M downloads worldwide.

PeerIndex

PeerIndex aims to be the standard for evaluating and understanding the social capital a person has built online. A web technology company that is mapping out the social web, due to the Internet’s authority shift PeerIndex wants to become the platform that identifies, ranks, and scores these authorities. It was founded in July 2009 by Azeem Azhar, Bill Emmott (they both worked at the Economist,) and Ditlev Schwanenflugel and is located in London, UK. PeerIndex also did win the Grand Prix in The 2011 Europas Awards.

Gidsy

Gidsy enables you to book and offer tours, local activities, workshops and other fun things to do organized by other people — in other words, it’s a marketplace for for authentic experiences and aims to change the way people explore. It’s very simple and works smoothly, you choose your location and then you search in the relevant category for your next big experience. Gidsy was founded in May 2011 and is located in Berlin, Germany. Recently raised $1.4M from a series of VC firms and angel investor Ashton Kutcher.

Do you think we forgot a startup that should have been included? Reach and like us over our Facebook page or follow @STARTeurope through Twitter. We’d like your input.

This guest post was written by Apostolos Papadopoulos, a skier, a geek, a professional amateur. Apostolos is currently a freshman in TU Wien for a BSc in Computer Science. According to LiFO, he was one of “The Influentials” for 2011 in Greece. Passionate for everything, especially all things www, tech & the outdoors. Hacking the geo social-graph is his favorite thing to do. Founder of 4sqwifi.

LeWeb is one of the biggest annual European tech events. It takes place every year around early December in Paris and its speakers and attendees are diverse; from European & non-European countries (totalling to 60 countries!) to Silicon Valley. I was very lucky and this year I managed to attend LeWeb — and earlier in October StartupWeek here in Vienna. So let’s take a look on what makes this event special and why one should go.

Before we jump right in, I think I should mention that LeWeb isn’t the only European web-and-startups conference. STARTeurope does a great job with STARTUP WEEK, also an annual conference taking place every Fall, here in Vienna. As said, I did attend it too, and it was great. So, don’t miss that either.

Paris

First of all the reasons is Paris itself. Yes, I know — technically it’s not a reason to attend a web-tech (pun not intended) conference, but Paris is beautiful and you have the chance to see it first-hand. Plus, there are many after-LeWeb parties not to mention the official one — which this year took place under the Pyramid inside the Louvre.

The Conference

LeWeb is big. I mean, really, it’s big. 3,000k+ people attended this year and it was spread across 3 conference buildings. One of the buildings hosted the LeWeb Startup Competition. 16 startups demoed to judges and attendees for 3 days, only in the last one, 3 finalists were chosen — both by judges + attendees and presented right after Sean Parker’s talk.

And for some the ‘big’ concept may sound not appealing because they think, they’ll be lost amongst the crowds, but let me disprove this. It is, indeed, big but not enough big to make you feel lost. Everyone is willing to chat so you’ll not be alone. Plus, there are meet-ups spread in the city in after-LeWeb hours. For example, I joined the foursquare one — in which Dennis Crowley, co-founder of foursquare joined too, and we all had a chat with him. That’s darn awesome.

Talks, Keynotes, Workshops

LeWeb has many themes under the core one, web & tech. This year’s theme was SoLoMo, an abbreviation for Social-Local-Mobile. You could hear many interesting interviews (some taken by MG Siegler & Alexia Tsotsis of TechCrunch), talks and keynotes. Topics ranged from pure-startups to business & business models to enterprise. In my opinion, the best interview was the one with Karl Lagerfeld, who explained and analyzed the how’s and why’s of his philosophy, how art needs tech and vice versa, and how he’s getting along with tech and his (many, because I’ve lost count) iPads, iPhones and iPods.

On the same note there not only talks but workshops, too. Provided by big brands (to name a few: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn) workshops are central point of a good LeWeb-experience. And they’re addressed to pretty much everyone whether you are a developer or business guy.

Fin

As, said, I was lucky enough to attend LeWeb. I probably wouldn’t do due to its restricting cost for me (€2,300 for a ticket) but I won a ticket from a The Next Web Facebook-competition. Anyhow, as far as I know you can still find much cheaper tickets — I don’t know how. Point is, and I’m closing this blog post with that phrase, if you can attend LeWeb, do so. It’s a great experience.

Introduction

In Summer 2011, STARTeurope, STARTmunich and BambooVentures sat down together in Munich to kick off Start up Live Munich #1.  And this time we decided to focus on sustainable business ideas for the first time.

With the great support of Bosch, Weitnauer and Autodesk and the possibility to host the event at the awesome Steel Case Creative Hall of the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship, the efforts of the organization team were rewarded. The date of the event was set to the 09. – 11.12.2011.

The goal of the event was to help innovative and sustainable business ideas getting to the next level. The creative people who presented their ideas were looking for a team, improvement of their idea, design of the corresponding business model or money to implement them. Therefore Startup Live Munich #1 provided the general framework.

Friday

On Friday, 9th December, the participants gathered in the late afternoon at Strascheg Center for Entrepeurship. Many arrived by train and some even flew in from Greece! Immediately, ideas were shared with each other and first discussions came up while eating cake and drinking coffee. Shortly after 17 o’ clock the pitches started and 8 ideas were presented. The ideas ranged from education in sustainability to software for energy efficient buildings and it was really  great to see people of so many different backgrounds working and bonding together right away.
Shortly after the presentations the teambuilding started, where the needs of ideas were matched with the skills of the participants that didn’t present an idea. In doing so, teams were formed that went to assigned group working places to start working. The goals for the weekend were defined by each team individually.

Then, STARTeurope’s creative brain Artur Lapinsch delivered  a very motivating presentation and the teams started to work. Some worked on their marketing & sales concepts; others implemented/constructed a prototype or discussed customer segments.

Saturday

The main task for the following day was: getting things done!

Around lunch time, the mentors arrived. (Serial) Entrepreneurs, clean tech experts, investors, and business angels came to support the venture teams with their experience. The mentors were introduced and then went to the group working spaces of the teams, listened to their plans, gave feedback, pointed out critical issues and suggested possible solutions. Usually, after one hour the mentors switched to the next team in order to get in touch with many different ideas. The feedback gave the participants essential insights on their business ideas. Afterwards most mentors stayed longer then planned to discuss further business ideas in a loose atmosphere.
After the mentors were gone, the venture teams refreshed themselves with excellent food & beverages and then tried to work the feedback of the mentors into their business ideas. Again, although the long night of the day before, many teams stayed till late night and worked on their ideas.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, Can Ertugrul prepared the participants with a great pitch training for the presentations in the evening. The last day was fully dedicated to the final presentations. Based on these presentations the jury consisting of Monika Nickl (VP @ Mummert & Company), Alexander Rietz (Business Manager Dii @Siemens AG), Marius Starke (Consultant @ Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, Andreas Unseld (Investment Manager @ UnternehmerTum Fund) and Michael Streich (CEO @ BambooVentures) awarded prizes in different categories.

The winners were (in no specific order):

• One month of free co-working space @ Combinat56: Sustainaville, an electronic game for children getting environmental and sustainable education
• A one day workshop with the communication agency CAMAO AG: Sayari, a web-based community that shares advice on how little things can change the world
• A one day beauty talk with BambooVentures: Small Things, an advisor you wear around your wrist that watches, learns and guides you to live more sustainable

Afterwards, we ended the event with networking, pizza and some beer to celebrate the great improvements and developments of the ideas over the weekend. During the closing, the people exchanged cards and made further plans for cooperation, mentoring or financing.

If you want to see how the event went, check out our photo album on facebook and show us some love!

We also want to thank all the partners who made Startup Live Munich #1  possible once again:

Hosts

Partner

Media partner

Startup Live Porto #2 will be postponed to 2012 due to problems with the venue. Our team of motivated volunteers won’t give up and we are working to bring Startup Live again to Porto, making this the best event ever against complaining and economizing discussions. If you registered with an idea, you will have time to improve it and accelerate it next year. The challenge continues and we will certainly make it rock! If you have any questions please do not hesitate to write to raquel.almeida@startuplive.in

The journey: 4 months, 35 organizations and companies. 23 mentors and one team of 10 young entrepreneurial minds working for one vision called Startup Live Athens #1.

First days of November and while the Greek government is changing and media talk about the Greek crisis, somewhere in Athens, we witnessed a different view on what is happening during a crisis – We saw people working together, putting ideas into action and to draw a different picture than the one in the media.

We started with our pitch training ion Friday morning, in relaxed atmosphere at a coworking space in Athens. 29 pitchers were about to take the stage. On Saturday morning the number went down to 14. Teams merged in order to support stronger concept and to push them forward.

Saturday morning started with some gaming in order to get in the right mood and to keep the focus while the sun was shining over the Acropolis, which we were seeing from the Hellenic American Union.

Important ingredients to keep people focused and content are food, coffee, sweets…some beer and most important people to work with and to share the passion.

Sunday was focused on the pitches themselves. Before presenting to the audience mentors Tasos Pagakis, Head of Communication Ericsson Hellas and Katerina Kanelidou, Founder of Creative Empowerment, inspired our aspiring entrepreneurs with short talks.

The result: Over 100 people gathering for 54 hours working on 14 ideas put into action and presented as final pitches.

Winning teams and awards

• 1. Missum (John Pagonis)
  Award: Communication strategy by The Newtons
• 2. SouceLair
  Award: Business Coaching by Creative Empowerment
• 3. Yello Cities
  Award: Digital Communication- social media consultancy services by We are Social Media

The message: Make it happen!
Entrepreneurship is about teams making ideas happen. It is a journey of learning, creating, improving and growing. What we tend to forget is that businesses are created by people with a vision. This is how it starts.

If you’re thinking about becoming entrepreneurs or you already have a business and you want to learn to run it better, then you must apply for School for Startups Romania (S4S), a programme for young entrepreneurs which follows the British model. The programme combines teaching some basic business theoretical concepts with very many practical examples and case studies.

School for Startups was created in 2008, at Doug Richard’s initiative, well-known as a „serial entrepreneur” and angel investor. The programme is the leader of the British training providers in the field of business for entrepreneurs. From the beginning of this year, School for Startups has opened its gates also for the Romanian entrepreneurs, together with Post-Privatization Foundation. The programme involves one year’s training, counselling and guidance for the young entrepreneurs all over the country.

What this programme suppose? 12 offline events, in Bucharest, Cluj and Timisoara, two main mentors: Doug Richard and Marius Ghenea, international experts and speakers, specialists in marketing and communication, such as Alexandra Samuel, Andrew Davis and Dan Sordegren, 4 sessions of online mentorship, 6 filmed broadcast, free access to the LivePlan application, the presence of foreign investors, permanent consultancy for all business plans.

By means of this project, the participants will be able to present their business plans in front of some European investors, who will come to Romania in order to choose the best start-ups in which to invest.

The School for Startups is not like any other school or programme in the world. Is not about classrooms. Is not about studying. School for Startups use a unique form of teaching called the Socratic Method which applies the key principles immediately to your idea or business. You are working on your business or business idea.

So, if you are thinking about starting a business or if you have a small business and you want to become a fast growing, highly successful entrepreneur; then we recommend you go on the web-site http://schoolforstartups.ro/ and find out more.

Key facts

• Date: Sep 2nd to Sep 4th 2011
• Place: Hafnersee/Carinthia, Bled/Slovenia
• Participants: 30
• Guests: 10
• Mentors: 5
• Experts: 5
• Idea pitches: 11
  
• End presentations: 10
• Nationalities: 3
  

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, backend.
Among the mentors:

Expert Rated

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

On the experts panel of STARTup Live Karawanks #1 were

Aloha!

A heatwave is burning down Vienna and with temperatures of 37°C and no air conditioner in the office work becomes impossible. Thus, our team is working from cool bars, at home or from the pool. Although we still work hard, there’s a bit of summer feeling in the air and this is why I decided that this week’s Mashup won’t be about work. You should read it and afterwards go out to enjoy these last days of summer. Go for a swim, meet up with friends and leave your smartphone at home to make sure you won’t check any emails. Let life wash away your thoughts about work for at least one day. Relax, recharge your batteries and have fun!