On Tuesday night TechHub and Techcrunch hosted the Techcrunch Europe Summer Pitch battle.

The venue

TechHub was chosen as the setting for the battle – the recently launched space in central London offering office space and facilities to startups. It represented an optimal scenario for the event.

The contestants

In excess of 35 different startups entered the field to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges coming from Eden Ventures (Ben Tompkins and Katy Turner), Neu Haus Partners (Paul Jozefak) and Moonfruit.com (Wendy Tan White), alongside angel investor Eileen Burbidge. The startups were requested to go through three consecutive rounds: an initial screening based on a written one-line description of their idea, a one minute slide-less pitch and a three minutes aided pitch, before getting to the final podium. Even though the scene was dominated by anglo-american companies, several continental European (and beyond) startups were present to pitch their ideas.

The battle

Around 30 startups pitched their one-minute introduction to the judges and the spectators. The process was a bit hectic, with the twitter feed being overwhelmed by tweets trying to understand the spelling of the startup names.

Only nine startups made it to the slideshow round, where the judges decided for the following podium:

1) Calaboard: presented by Francesco Masia, it promises to enrich video-conferencing by allowing “in-the-air” drawing with your finger – your counterpart will actually see the drawing appear on the conference window.

2) Duedil: complements Linkedin profiles by allowing users to post complete reviews and feedbacks, allowing professionals to build reputation and clients to make better decisions over the professional figure to hire.

3) Geomium: bringing together social and location services, Geomium creates a recommendation engine for things to do in your neighborhood – friends can see what each of them is doing, propose what to do, chat and meet.

The remaining 6 final presenters were:

- ProspectVision: improve the conversion rate of visitors to your website, turning them into sales leads

- Me-Stars: online gaming network, where the user can actually put his face in the game, thanks to a face recognition and digitalization service

- Gourmetorigins: a service to get information about the regional origins of gourmet food, including the possibility to get in touch with the local producers and the local roots of food culture

- CrowdScanner: ever wondered who is attending the same event you are in? CrowdScanner is a mobile app that allows the user to “ask a question” to the crowd, favoring new encounters and easier networking, based on personal interests.

- MindQuilt: Mindquilt is “an enterprise knowledge management platform with intelligent question and answer matchmaking and gaming achievement dynamics”.

- Oneleep: “a shortcut to hard-to-access influentials: the decision-makers, employers, investors, buyers and experts – “Shakers””.

Special mention to the second Italian team pitching, for the first time on the European scene: Fubles.

You can also find the complete list of startups in this other great recap.

The bottom line

Social-geo-location-community are the buzz-words that are closest to the hearts of the entrepreneurs pitching at the event. Many of the startups tried to answer a social question by implementing a location- or community-based layer around (or on top of) their idea. It is notable, on the other hand, how the event winner Calaboard is not a project in the social or location space. Do the VCs see an excessive proliferation of location-based social services? Is the market getting tired of this sudden abundance? It is probably way to early to tell. Or is it?

TechCrunch Europe, aside from covering perfectly what happens in the always hotter EU startup space, is also fostering the community like very few people and organizations ever did. One of the best ways to do so is by throwing the best Startup conferences (and parties).

On April 20, next week, most of the people involved in startups and VC in Europe will be at Geek’n'Rolla, a conference Techcrunch Europe is hosting in London. 15 startups will be launching their product in front of 18 judges, and some of the most influential european entrepreneurs will give keynotes.

Here is the keynotes line-up:

Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe
“How to Dive Bomb The European Tech Scene In 5 minutes Flat”

Tommy Ahlers, founder of ZYB which was acquired by Vodafone for €31.5m
“Exit: The How, When And Why Of Exiting Your Startup”

Jason Trost, Smarkets
“Nobody told me: practical startup advice”

Pete Smith, Songkick
“Hiring And Recruiting In Startups”

Nigel Eccles, Fanduel.com
“Customer Development for startups”

Katy Turner and Andy Chung, Eden Ventures
“How not to pitch a VC”

Ewan MacLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review
“The disruptive opportunities for startups in mobile, and getting traction fast”

Nick Bell, Quick.TV
“How to manage PR when you’re a startup”

Lukasz Gadowski & Kolja Hebenstreit, Team Europe
“How to extend you startup to Germany”

Cedric Giorgi, Goojet
“Launching your service into the French Market”

Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks
“The trials of the US funding trail for European startups”

Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur
“Rebels With A Cause”

Mike Butcher says: “Not until GeeknRolla appeared last year have we seen such a comprehensive attempt to create a new business culture in London. A culture of open sharing of information about how people really do create the kinds of companies that become the next Google, Twitter or Facebook. Our speakers are ingrained in Europe’s technology startup culture, and are as good as any on the planet. In addition, the fact we are launching 15 new companies onto a public stage in one go shows how innovative the UK and the wider European technology scene is. We whittled down the entries from over 150 to this final 15 and I think the innovation will speak for itself on the day.”

Disclaimer: I write for TechCrunch Europe covering the italian startup scene.

Yesterday I attended TechCrunch London, an event put together by TechCrunch Europe.

I couldn’t live blog the event, as there was no working wi-fi. Other than that, I think the event was a success. The venue was very nice, the talks were inspiring and the startups who presented were very interesting.

You can find pics of the event on Facebook and Flickr (different sets).

These are the companies that launched yesterday.

Fiabee is a spanish company that presented an online backup solution that focuses on security and ease of use.

Notion Learning is an e-learning web application developed by two London-based students. They have some tough competition, but they had some fairly unique points. Keep an eye on them.

Audioboo is an audio microblogging platform, much like Twitter, but with audio. Posts are kept to at most three minutes long, though for most of us, that’s all we need.

Winner: Festbuzz provides crowsourced reviews about festivals (starting in the Edinburgh area). They’re making the traditional Festival word-of-mouth digital

Kohive is an online collaboration tool with a desktop-like interface. It has many applications and is going the freemium way (plus iphone app). The interesting part is they are building a platform for other developers, and thus have an app store.

Kyubid was a fun presentation. They are developing a new dating site based on bidding (but not with real money, put it away).

Aware Monitoring is, as the name suggests, a monitoring service. It’s SaaS based and it goes behind your login monitoring every component of your web application.

3rd: Social Safe is an application that lets you back up your Facebook friends, photos and profile to your computer. You can keep track of all your posts, and finally own your content.

Yoomoot facilitates mass online discussions which are focused and navigable. Yoomoot merges comments, wikis, forums, blogs and social bookmarks into one simple and flexible format.

En-twyn.com presented a complete high speed networking solution that enables you to connect your media devices and your environmental management devices to the same network running through the power sockets in the home. Think wi-fi and hdtv all around your place.

Mywidz.se is a mobile service that gives users worldwide the power to collect, share and create mobile widgets, independent of subscription, phone brand or nationality. Think an app store for every phone.

2nd: Mixcloud’s vision is to be the YouTube of radio with on-demand radio shows spanning music and talk and truing to make it make it more social, personalised and ‘democratic’.

After those pitches, and some other inspiring talks, the Seedcamp folks came along and we rocked it all night long with a very nice party and networking event.

(pics credits to BitchBuzz)

Here is the live video stream of the TechCrunch London event, brought to you by Hermione Way

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

Original TechCrunch post.

At 3:00pm GMT TechCrunch Europe will be hosting the TechCrunch London event, in partnership with Seedcamp.

I will try to live blog the event, profiling and reviewing the startups that will pitch.

I am Flying to London on Sept 23rd. This will be my schedule.

• Sept 21st – Sept 25th

Seedcamp Week 2009

• Wednesday Sept 23rd

Bootlaw September 09 – selling shares in a private company: the rules!
or
DrinkTank London September 09

• Thursday Sept 24th

London OpenCoffee Meetup
Techcrunch London +  Party

• Friday Sept 25th

MiniBar September Meetup

• Monday Sept 28th

Microsoft BizSpark Summit 2009 Invite code: 7BFBB5

• Tuesday Sept 29th

Networking and the City (Spicy Networking)

• Wednesday Sept 30th, Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd of October

Future of Web Applications

I have nothing else to add.

Let me know on twitter if you’ll attend any of these events and want to meet up!

Last week I attended the Europas award ceremony in London. The event was hosted by Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe, and I must say was really interesting.
I still haven’t had time to write my proper thoughts on it, but I will soon. In the meanwhile I’ll post what others think of the european startup scene after the event.

• Techcrunch Europas Awards: And the winner is..

on Nick Point

• The European startup scene is building stronger bonds

on Laurent Pierssens

• Highlights of TechCrunch’s Europas

on Computer Weekly

• The Europas: Winners, Losers & Wine

on Bitch Buzz

• TechCrunch Europas: Awards for everybody and a kicker for the next 12 months

on Inma Martinez

• TechCrunch hails European tech stars

on Smarta

• The Europas: The Winners Champagne

on Fhoke

• Techcrunch europas rawked!

on Random Mel

• TechCrunch Europas: Optimisim & Creative Destruction Alive and Well

on Dimen Designs

• and the official winners post from TechCrunch Europe.

At the beginning of the month, TechCrunch Europe announced The Europas, an event that “will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe.”

Today voting opens, you can choose for each category the 5 finalists that will then compete to get the award.
These are the categories:

• Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)
• Best Design
• Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
• Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)
• Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)
• Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)
• Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)
• Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)
• Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)
• Best Mobile Application (EMEA)
• Best Startup Founder(s)
• Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)
• Best Investor Personality (EMEA)
• Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Vote for your favorite startup!
The awards ceremony will take place in London from 6pm Thursday, July 9, at Delfina and will have a calvalcade of tech stars attending from the tech scene, including, amongst others:

• Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo
• Stefan Glaenzer, co-founder of Last.FM
• Sarah Lacy, author & TechCrunch editor
• Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes.

I will be in London for the event, please contact me if you plan on attending and would like to meet.

Be sure to buy your tickets.

Here is a summary of the most important upcoming events in Europe.
We will try to cover as much of them as possibile.

• April 20th: Mini Seedcamp London.

http://seedcamp.com/pages/london09


• April 21st: Geek’n'Rolla London.

http://www.amiando.com/geeknrolla.html


• April 24th: Nonic Bilbao.

http://nonickconference.com/


• April 28th: Amazon Web Services Startup-Tour London.

http://aws.amazon.com/startupproject/


• April 28th-30th: Internet World London.

http://www.internetworld.co.uk/


• April 29th: Working Capital Camp Catania.

http://www.workingcapitalcamp.com/catania


• May 5th: Next09 Hamburg.

http://www.next-conference.com/next09/


• May 19th – 20th: European Venture Market Berlin.

http://www.europeanventuremarket.com/


• May 22nd: TechGarage Rome.

http://www.techgarage.eu/


• May 27th: TechCrunch Nordic Talk Stockholm.

http://www.amiando.com/tcstockholm.html


• June 23rd: Fuel09 London.

http://events.carsonified.com/fuel/2009/london/

“Are you crazy?” “Are you starting your blog with a post linking to competitors?” That’s the first question that someone may ask me after reading this post.
Well, the main goal is to help startups, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts providing news, interviews, articles and other resources. I can only be glad there are such sites around already doing this job.
In the past few years I have seen some great companies launch in Europe but no one ever had the kind of media exposure that valley’s startups get, and I think we have to (and we can) change that.
Here is a list of the best blogs and sites that currently cover european startups, I read them every day and I think everyone should.

• Techcrunch Europe

You all know Techcrunch, the most important startup blog in the world, founded and edited by Michael Arrington. This is the continent-specific blog dedicated to europe, it is edited by Mike Butcher. They cover startups and organize  major entrepreneurship events around Europe.

• Techcrunch France (French)

Techcrunch France was founded in 2006 for the fracophone community according to technorati it soon grew to be one of the most influential blogs in France.

• Arctic Startup

ArcticStartup is one of my favorite blogs, it covers all the startups in the scandinavian countries. It was founded by Ville Vesterinen, Antti Vilpponen, Miikka Kukkosuo and Karri Saarinen. If you live in any of the nordic countries this blog should be a daily read.

• The Next Web

TheNextWeb was started in 2006 by the founders of The Next Web conference (which will be held again this year in Amsterdam starting April 15). They cover “everything that influences the future of the Web, in any way“.

• Dutch Cowboys (Dutch)

Too bad I can’t read dutch, because this blog looks interesting and the dutch startup scene is one of the most active around Europe. There are also German Cowboys and Belgian Cowboys.

• Loogic (Spanish, Italian, English)

Loogic is the most influential web2.0 blog in Spain, it is available in spanish, italian and english.

• theStartup

This one, of course. We are aiming high, and we’d like to make it to the top, providing great and useful content every day!

Please feel free to add some others I forgot in the comments, and I’ll update the post.