TheStartup.eu

As you could see from yesterday’s post, there has been a Startup Competition going on at LeWeb, in Paris. Mike Butcher, from TechCrunch Europe and the French Minister of Internet just announced the winners of the competition.

Here are the companies that got to pitch in front of more than 2000 attendees:

• 1st: Stribe


This is one of the services I was looking forward to. It’s one of the first very useful ones, enabling you to create a social network platform on top of your website very easily.
In their own words: “Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website”

• 2nd: TigerLily


This one was an unexpected surprise, it’s a set of facebook applications to help you manage your pages and make them more interactive. Presentation was a bit boring, slides where cool and product sounds good. In their own words: “Tigerlily is a set of Facebook apps for marketers who want to get more from Facebook pages.”

• 3rd: CloudSplit


In their own words: “Real-time spending insight, real-time cost control.”
CloudSplit is a very cool product, targeting a real business problem. It’s a very comprehensive tool to monitor your cloud spending and see how much each application is costing you, and reduce your overall costs.

There were some very cool companies presenting this year at LeWeb and the choice was very hard for the judges. Please take a time to check the others companies that presented too!

The third batch of startups presenting at LeWeb:

• Kukunu
• Kukunu is a new travel startup, focused on helping you find the best places. They are targeting non tech-savvy users, and obviously has all the now mandatory social features. Monetization will be through commissions.
• Sports Predictions
• Sports Predictions’ product, Get In, provides the user with free scientific premier league recommendation. They claim to have a 50-70% success rate.
• FitnessKeeper, Inc.
• FitnessKeeper is the company behind RunKeeper, the awesome iPhone application that tracks all your running experiences. They are announcing a new and improved iPhone application and a web platform where you can compare to peers with the usual social features. They are announcing also a $400k outside financing round.
• Liqpay
• Liqpay is a new startup in the mobile payment space. They have the concept that a mobile phone number can be a unique payment ID. To use the service you don’t need to sign up, register or have an account. It’s very easy to use. They are also launching a KILLcoin.org initiative.

Here is the second bunch of startups presenting at LeWeb.

• CloudSplit
• In their own words: “Real-time spending insight, real-time cost control.”
• CloudSplit is a very cool product, targeting a real business problem. It’s a very comprehensive tool to monitor your cloud spending and see how much each application is costing you, and reduce your overall costs.
• Sokoz
• Sokoz is a new type of auction-based website. They played a cool video and then went over time.

• Storific
• Storific is a set of tool for stores to manage their real time communication, on Twitter Facebook and of course Storific. They also offer cool tools for retails stores to help them get online with their tools.
• Shutl
• I can finally unveil this, after having signed an NDA. Shutl is trying to disrupt the shipping industry. Since ecommerce was born, the shipping methods are still the same, no changes, no innovation. Tom Allason, Shutl CEO, is changing that with a new web-service. In their own words: “Real-time delivery for the real-time web”. Shutl offers instant delivery (90 mins) in London or Convenient Delivery in a 1h time slot 24/7.

I’m at LeWeb in the Startup Competition room.

This has been the first batch of presentations :

• FriendBinder

Friendbinder is another social aggregator, too bad I didn’t arrive in time to hear their pitch as I wanted to understand what is setting them apart from all the other webapps that let you keep all your friends in one place. In their own words: “FriendBinder brings together your friends from different social networks. It lets you keep track of all your friends in one place, saving you time and lets you post updates and replies.”

• Stribe

This is one of the services I was looking forward to. It’s one of the first very useful ones, enabling you to create a social network platform on top of your website very easily.
In their own words: “Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website”

• Tigerlily

This one an unexpected surprise, it’s a set of facebook applications to help you manage your pages and make them more interactive. Presentation was a bit boring, slides where cool and product sounds good. In their own words: “Tigerlily is a set of Facebook apps for marketers who want to get more from Facebook pages.”

• Task.ly

Task.ly is trying to re-invent task management applications, the product looks very cool. Heavy bashing of all other to do apps such as remember the milk and things.

If you already know what SeedCamp is and can’t wait to apply, please do so right here.

Seedcamp Week will be held from 21^st to 25^th September at UCL in central London. It is a weeklong programme that connects 20 early stage web tech startups with over 400 highly experienced and sought after entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, product and developer experts.  Along with current board members Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni, the chosen teams will also have access to Seedcamp’s recently appointed board members who have been selected for their broad range of entrepreneurial experience and international background in order to help Seedcamp deliver its mission to build a world-class, sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Just to name a few:

• Fred Destin, partner at Atlas Ventures
• Charles Grimsdale, co-founder of Eden Ventures
• Alex Hoye, co-founder of GoIndustry plc
• Christoph Maire, Head of Maps & Explore Unit, Nokia Services
• Dave McClure, Founders Fund
• Richard Moross, founder and CEO, Moo.com

The week will include interactive panel discussions, master classes and several informal 1:1 sessions. Teams will gain invaluable insight and a solid foundation to help kick-start a viable business in Europe today.

“The beauty of Seedcamp is that a start-up can fill his or her Rolodex in one day with quality business contacts that it would normally take five years to build.  We want to help entrepreneurs experience the whole rainbow, not just the pot of gold at the end.” Reshma Sohoni said.

At the end of the week Seedcamp will invest up to €50K each in 5 teams for a small equity stake (5%-10%). That’s enough money to move to London for 3 months and start building the product and the company. It’s not just work: weekly dinners, topical lunches, conferences, and continued mentorship, culminating in further Demo and Investor Days will make the stay invaluable as well as unforgettable. A trip to the Valley is also planned.

You can check the highlights of the 2007/2008 editions and follow Seedcamp on Twitter. If you missed the application link, here it is.

There we go.. first post! I just want to share with you why I’m starting this blog (and why I think you should read it).

Being very passionate about entrepreneurship and startups, and noticing the lack of information about the european startup scene I would like to fill a hole, while trying to have as much fun as possible and learn a lot from the great people this community is made of. I know there are a lot of other blogs and websites that write about this subject but I feel that currently every blog focuses on a specific country or area, or covers more than european startups. I just think there is a need for a pan-european blog, covering and giving the needed media exposure to european startups, entrepreneurs and events.

I’ll cover pretty much all the topics that relate to startups: entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, M&A, venture capital, but you are likely to see tech news too. My hope is to cover all the major european conferences and events, where entrepreneurs can share their wisdom and most importantly announce great new companies and products.

As you may have guessed I’m not a native english speaker so please forgive my errors, I’ll try to check them but I can’t guarantee error-free posts. If you would like to contribute or have any other suggestion, I’ll be glad to hear from you at the following address: contact @t thestartup d0t eu. I hope you’ll join me in this adventure.