The Europas, the inaugural TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 for European and EMEA tech companies, were held last night, Thursday July 9, 2009 in London. Check out our live blog from the event and subsequent coverage in video, pictures and posts. For these inaugural awards, over 400 entrants were voted on by the industry and the results merged with those from 19 expert advisors from across Europe. Here are the winners, highly commended and finalists in each category. Congratulations to all!
A huge thanks to our sponsors for supporting this inaugural event: Thanks to the UKTI for sponsoring the pitches; Viadeo for sponsoring the Best Design category; Bootlaw for sponsoring Best Bootstrapped Startup; Quick.tv for sponsoring Best European Investor; Zendesk for sponsoring Best New Startup; Moonfruit for sponsoring Best Social Innovation; Latitude and Parklane Champagne for the Awards Prizes; oneDrum for sponsoring the drinks party and Mixcloud for sponsoring the DJ.
Here are the winners and finalists in each category (see the category links for more information on each company):
The Europas Shortlist: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)
Winner: Spotify
Highly Commended: Amiando
Finalists:
Babbel
Dopplr
Jimdo
The Europas Shortlist: Best Design
Winner: Songkick
Highly Commended: Babbel
Finalists:
IRL Connect
Spotify
Wonga
The Europas Shortlist: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
Winner: Soup.io
Highly Commended: Doodle
Finalists:
BookingBug
Mixcloud
Struq
The Europas Shortlist: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)
Winner: Mendeley
Joint Highly Commended: Amazee, School of Everything
Finalists:
Aleveo
Decisions For Heroes
The Europas Shortlist: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)
Winner: Huddle
Highly Commended: Zendesk
Finalists:
BlueKiwi
FreeAgent Central
VideoPlaza
The Europas Shortlist: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)
Winner: Alertme
Highly Commended: Amee
Finalists:
Dopplr
RouteRank
SpeedSell
The Europas Shortlist: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)
Winner: Poken
Highly Commended: My Name Is E
Finalists:
Fon
INQ Mobile
Modu
The Europas Shortlist: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)
Winner: SoundCloud
Highly Commended: eRepublik
Finalists:
Moshi Monsters
Playfish
WeeWorld
The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)
Winner: Nimbuzz
Highly Commended: Goojet
Finalists:
Aka-aki
Bambuser
GetJar
The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)
Winner: Spinvox
Highly Commended: Tweetdeck Mobile
Finalists:
eBuddy
Fring
MobyPicture
Shozu
The Europas Shortlist: Best Startup Founder(s)
Winners: Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon, for Spotify
Highly Commended: Alastair Mitchell, Andy McLoughlin, for Huddle.net
Finalists:
Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, jointly, Soundcloud
Felix Haas, Armin Bauer, Markus Eichinger, Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Baerhold, Marc Bernegger, for Amiando
Richard Jones, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, for Last.FM
Richard Moross, Moo
The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)
Winner: TAG – The Accelerator Group
Highly Commended: Index Ventures
Finalists:
Atlas Venture
Eden Ventures
European Founders Fund
The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)
Winner: Yossi Vardi, Angel
Highly Commended: Fred Destin, Atlas Venture
Finalists:
Morten Lund
Robin Klein, TAG
Saul Klein, Seedcamp/Index Ventures
The Europas Shortlist: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009
Winner: Spotify
Highly Commended: TweetDeck
Finalists:
SoundCloud
Stupeflix
Tweetmeme
The Europas Grand Prix
Decided by Judges vote only
Winner: Spotify
(While you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed).
Three things surprise me:
Spotify rocks, but seriously… that many awards?
The nominees in ‘Best Design’ aren’t designed all that well. IRL Connect? What?
Poken? Come on. Have you even tried the service? Fon would have been a better winner.
Best Design was a weak category tbh. In my mind design is either great UI or great creativity.
Songkick is ‘OK’ but other than that it is THE category where Europe gets dicked on by US companies.
I love Spotify, but Best Design Shortlist ? Really ? Bit of a joke but I guess it’s there partly because the original voting was poorly done (no links, just list of companies) and people voted them in because they were the hot company they’d heard of.
Strange that Spotify only received 4 awards. They are by far the best company in Europe right now. They will change the complete music business.
Where are the results of the pitch competition??
they will also come dude
Congratulations to Alertme on a well deserved award.
congrats to all of u dear
The results are sketchy, to say the least, but tell me, did Arrington get spit in the face again?
Congrats to everyone, and thanks again to Mike, Petra and Rassami for putting up a great event.
Thanks people hope you enjoyed the event
Thank you Mike, it was great fun…you should do it next year
Congratulations every one on winning. And congratulations Spotify; you pretty well deserved the awards!!
Congrats to all of you! We will watch it
congrats to u too TOm
Come on!!! This shows how clueless you guys are in the Israeli Start Up scene. Giving Yossi Vardi the Best Personality award is the most miserable choice you could have made.
Yossi Vardi is smart and has a great sense of humor which helped him to become a good presenter. Yossi is the world’s best in creating for himself a great brand while having very little behind it. Check his investments and see his success rate – not as high as many other investors and angels that are by far more modest than he is.
Yossi is a bully that has managed to create a huge animosity against him in the Israeli startup scene. He is feared as you can never know when and why he becomes your vicious and vindictive enemy. People that know him stay away from him as far as they can. He is on non-speaking terms with many founders, CEOs of companies he has invested in, VC partners and other executives that innocently said something or were associated with someone that he doesn’t like.
He is extremely greedy. Just check with the founders of the companies he’s invested in. He has managed to position himself as the good old uncle that is looking for the next team of young kids with a great idea. He then invests in the company for an outrageous share. He does very little for his companies. He is known to chase the last few dollars that are left in the companies that he is invested in and unfortunately are shutting down. Those dollars are planned as severance pay for the few employees that hanged in with the company until the bitter end. Yossi would call company dozens of times in the last days trying to scrape these few dollars and get them back.
He positions himself as a man of integrity and honesty. Unfortunately too many stories prove the exact opposite.
Yossi is constantly looking for respect and admiration. He arranges all sorts of conventions and conferences whose sole purpose is to enhance his own brand. Every year he takes a bunch of young Israeli entrepreneurs or CEOs of very small startups to a tour in the Silicon Valley to “meet industry leaders”. Each participant gets to talk about his or her startup for two minutes. The industry leaders get to hear 20 such speeches within less than an hour. These poor young CEOs pay almost $5000 for the voyage that cynically gives value only to Yossi’s brand.
The grotesque thing is that he is now more associated with ICQ than the founders themselves. It was their idea that gave him the fame and glory but he’s managed to become known as “the ICQ founder”. His investment track record is pretty bad and yet he is known as the “Internet Guru”. Did I say that he was the best in creating for himself a strong brand with very little behind it?
What a miserable choice….