Once in a while we like to point you to events that may be interesting to European tech entrepreneurs. We’re not necessarily endorsing them. Buyer beware and all that. We’re just saying you may want to check them out. We’ve added events where there will be a TechCrunch Europe writer attending, or those we are running. And please definitely put December 15 in your diary for “TechCrunch Europe’s ChristmasCrunch – It’s A Realtime Holiday!”
TechCrunch Europe threw a dedicated startup pitch event yesterday in London and – if we do say so ourself – it was a great success. We plan to do more of these kinds of events and, as I pointed out at the time, we will NEVER charge startups to pitch. They are selected by editorial, on merit only.
When Seedcamp, the rolling European startups programme, runs its week-long event in London we like to turn up and cover the startups pitching the mentors and judges during the week. Seedcamp is built around its network of mentors and tends to attract a lot of CEOs and VCs, so we hate to waste the opportunity. Thus, with their collusion, we’re piggy-backing alongside their week, running an afternoon event [tickets here] of our own (as we did last year), and throwing their official party [tickets here] to boot. We’re calling the event TechCrunch London.
We’ll be putting on an afternoon featuring pitches from early stage startups selected from the sector right now, alongside startups which have been tutored on the free pitch-training programme run by the UKTI, which we’ve been supporting for a while now (see below for details). We’re also featuring some great presentations by a bunch of speakers. It’ll be on 24th September in central London.
Our video streaming partner for The Europas Awards last night was Techfluff.tv, which also produces awesome corporate videos under the Newspepper brand, featuring the irrepressible Hermione Way. Here’s their take on the event:
The first part of our panel on “Where is Europe now?” featuring Sarah Lacy, Tariq Krim, Stefan Glaenzer, Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch.
The second part of the panel:
The third part of the panel:
Here’s a little impromptu moment after the awards. Thanks everyone!
And below are the official pictures from the event so far. Please go and add a tag with your name (e.g. “mikebutcher”) on the images on Flickr so we know how to title them. Images are available for non-commercial use (for instance you are welcome to add them to your blog post or company site in your coverage of the awards). If you require any photos in print quality, you can get them directly from our photographer Dirk Lindner.
BTW, you may recall the rather odd lady who tried and failed to present an award. Introduced as Susan Thompson from Nexus Ventures, she looked like she was having an asthma attack onstage before she was whisked off. However, she was actually comedian and former T4 presenter Olivia Lee filming a segment for her new show for Comedy Central. We thought it would be funny… well…. at least it was for the first minute or so!
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):
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
6:16 PM: The hordes descend! Champagne is flowing, the live stream is streaming, anticipation is high.
6:35 PM: Our roving reporter Mike Butcher has been Twitpiccing:
6:47 PM: Starting in one minute….
6:50 PM: So, here we go! We’re starting with a pitch competition featuring six startups from across Europe. Pitch sponsored by UKTI.
First pitch: Bernhard Niesner from busuu.com – an extremely European company (they’re Austrian based in Spain!)
(Not unlike Babbel) Busuu is an online language learning community, with interactive tests and the chance to practise your new skillz with native language speakers around the world. Currently have +130k users around the world. Feb 2009 started monetising the freemium model, currently the largest language learning site in Spain.
6:57 PM: Next up: Heikke Haldre from Fits.Me – This is some crazy sh…. Robots + fashion = online clothes shopping without fear of buying things that don’t fit you. It’s a virtual fitting room which helps people see what clothes will look like on their body shape. Raised €1.3m, developed the prototype for which a patent has been filed.
7:01 PM: Philipp Mohr from Comufy. Taking communications to the next level. This looks like something we could all do with – going further than just aggregation – it lets you hook all your comms into the Comufy platform and then set levels of permission and filters to make sure you either a) receive exactly what you want in the right context. Target markets: corporates, SMEs, individuals – so, everyone then! Web app and mobile client already available, public launch in September.
7:04 PM: Mark Fletcher from Pitchero. Mike distracted me, but as far as I can tell, this is a social networking community for football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket clubs, 40k members, freemium model in a £10m market in the UK and £35m in the US. Want to find the next heros of the sports.
7:11 PM: James (who’s just 18!) from GigLocator. Focused on making live music more accessible to all by tying into the leading social networks.
7:14 PM: Ravi Sharma of emarket.com – online exchange for the FMCG industry – >€1 trillion marketplace, due to the nature of the goods. Making it quick and easy for companies to trade – i.e. manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers. (This sounds like what the eprocurement/SCM movement of the early-to-mid 90s was trying to do.) Close to reaching target of 300 of the top companies in this industry as member. 9 September public launch, started trading 4 weeks ago, done £2.5m of trade in that time.
7:18 PM: Mike has an announcement: as of today, TechCrunch Europe launches the TechCrunch Europe Top 100 – a constantly updating index of the top 100 companies in the European tech scene – mobile, web, clean tech, gadgets and hardware. Tracking provided by YouNoodle, the people that power Crunchbase.com. Scores are based on verified facts, ranking can be improved by improving your company. Positive reinforcement FTW.
And so, on to the judging! Panellists: Tariq Krim, Sarah Lacy, Brent Hoberman, Michael Birch and Stefan Glaenzer.
My bad, it’s not the judging at all. The question is, where are we (i.e. the European tech startup scene) headed?
Stefan: Will be devoting the next few years to built a European hub to act as a base for launching global startups. What’s needed is education, money to school European startups in the way of global domination.
Tariq: When you’re in Europe you don’t really believe that you’re taken as seriously as you would be in San Francisco. But there is a network of European entrepreneurs thinking big, super smart people who understand how to engineer startups to scale.
Sarah: Telling us about the book she’s authoring at the moment, looking at startup activity in the emerging markets around the world. Looking at trends that are transforming economies. Her advice to European startups – don’t look to the US as usual, look to China, India, Africa. Rwanda, in a year, is going to be better connected than the US. A lot of bridges being built between emerging economies excludes the US.
Brent: One of the main frustrations is that today, one of the big determining factors of success is how good a company is at spanning Google’s search algorithm.
Michael: Getting booed (goodnaturedly) for suggesting that SF is better than the UK/Europe. Announcement: Michael and Brent’s new investment fund – comprised of people who have themselves founded successful startups – has gone live this week. They will go earlier stage than VCs, viewing themselves as a fund central to the ecosystem, working with VCs. Though they haven’t officially launched they have seen 250+ pitches to date, a clear indication that this sort of fund is needed.
Questions/comments from the floor:
How can we work well together in Europe given how diverse the market is?
Stefan: Citing Last.fm, international rollout in 12 languages in 8 weeks – which saw a pretty significant improvement to the uptake of Last.fm at the time. Looking at Oxford, Cambridge and other great tech universities, we do have a good chance. But we need to look at Asia, not all innovation will come out of Silicon Valley.
Sarah: If London wants to be more successful as a tech scene, don’t even call it Silicon anything – play to the city’s strengths.
Tariq: Traditionally most companies try to be good in their country of origin first before expanding globally. But starting with international expansion as your goals in mind is an interesting way we’re seeing a lot of startups go.
The Europas, the tech startup awards from TechCrunch Europe, will be streamed live from this post from 6pm tonight London time/GMT (10am SF, 1pm NYC). We’ll kick off with a startup pitch competition, followed by a panel of some of the leading lights in tech consisting of: our own Sarah Lacy, Jolicloud founder Tariq Krim, MyDeco’s Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch co-founder of Bebo. The actual announcement of The Europas winners will be from around 8.30pm GMT onwards. After that, well, a huge party. Over 300 people are attending from all over the European tech scene. Our streaming partner is TechFluff.tv. If you couldn’t get to the awards, if you’re somewhere in Europe working on your own startup, then tonight raise a glass, put the projector screen on in the bar and have your very own Europas awards with us. We salute you.
Get breaking news about the European tech startup scene by subscribing to our RSS and Twitter feeds.
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.
PITCH SPONSOR
UKTI
UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.
AWARD CATEGORY SPONSORS
Sponsor: Best Design Category
Viadeo
Founded in June 2004, Viadeo quickly established itself as the place to be for professional networking in Europe and beyond. Since then, with more than 8.5 million members (as of June 2009). Follow them on Twitter @viadeo. Viadeo is essential for those who want to:
• Increase their business opportunities (to discover new clients, staff and business partners)
• Enhance their visibility and their online reputation
• Manage and develop their network of professional contacts
Viadeo’s members consist of business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of businesses both start-up and well established. Each day Viadeo attracts more than 10,000 new members; 40,000 new connections are made and over one million profiles are viewed. Based in Paris (head office), Viadeo also has offices and teams in the UK (London), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), Italy (Milan), China (Beijing), India (New Delhi) and Mexico (Mexico City). The company employs 200 staff worldwide. www.viadeo.com
Sponsor: Best Bootstrapped Startup Category
Bootlaw
Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. Its brought to you by Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu the friendly lawyers at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com
Sponsor: Best Entertainment Application or Service
Skimbit
Skimbit helps website publishers monetise their content in ethical and user-friendly ways. We love the internet, and want good websites to be able to sustain themselves. Display advertising alone may not be enough, and can be intrusive to users, and affiliate marketing can be difficult to do well. We want to help publishers earn incremental revenues from their editorial and user-generated content in a way that doesn’t compromise editorial integrity or interfere with the user-experience and adds value to publishers. Our flagship product is Skimlinks which aggregates more than 7000 international merchants across 18 affiliate networks to make affiliate marketing easy, Skimbuzz is an innovative community builder aimed at forums, while Good.ly and skimthat work to monetise Twitter. Skimbit has recently been recognised by some of the major authorities in the affiliate marketing industry; with three gongs at the A4U Affiliate Marketing Awards 2009 for Innovative Publisher of the Year, Best New Entrant in Affiliate Marketing and Best Use of Technology within Affiliate Marketing, two trophies for Best New Business and Technological Innovation at the NMA Effectiveness Awards 2009, as well as runners-up awards in the Technology Genius and Best New Publisher categories at the US Linkshare Golden Link Awards 2009. Our CEO Alicia Navarro has also been shortlisted for the National Business Awards Entrepreneur of the Year 2009.
Sponsor: Best European Investor Category
Quick.tv
Quick.tv is a web-based ‘Video-as-a-Service’ platform, allowing the injection of dynamic and interactive features into online video clips. Aimed at business users, productions created through Quick.tv transform the viewer experience by prompting them to click on items within the video.
A full range of intuitive drag’n’drop tools include hotspots for e-commerce, real-time voting and graphs, RSS feeds for live data,
forms for viewers to apply for offers, hyperlinked text and image overlays, chapters for ease of navigation and more.
The end-to-end service delivers file transcoding and storage, player and play-out options and detailed analytics both on the video itself and the viewers’ use of the interactive features. It even has an editing tool to re-cut video clips online.
Templates and style sheets make the deployment of large numbers of interactive videos easy, leaving users free to monitor the increased monetisation and viewer engagement benefits the service has to offer.
Sponsor: Best New Startup, Summer 2008 – Summer 2009
Zendesk
Zendesk provides an integrated on-demand helpdesk – customer support portal solution based on the latest Web 2.0 technologies and design philosophies. The product has an elegant, minimalist design implemented in Ruby on Rails and provides seamless integration of the back-end helpdesk SaaS to a company’s online customer-facing web presence, including hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets. This is unusual, because most SaaS helpdesk solutions focus exclusively on the backend helpdesk and treat the Web as an afterthought. The system also leverages Web 2.0 ideas on the backend, such as tag based categorization throughout instead of the usual pre-defined drop down lists, RSS feeds for every customized view and a complete REST/JSON API for virtually every entity in the system.
Sponsor: Best in Social Innovation
Moonfruit
Moonfruit has been providing tools for people to build ‘Beautiful websites, simply.’ since 1999. To date 2.1m+ websites have been built by small businesses, communities, families, designers, crafters, freelancers and individuals who just want to express themselves. Moonfruit is passionate about creativity and simplifying technology for everyone. The Flash and Flex based platform provides our users with a unique drag and drop interface and ability to quickly design and customise their sites. The latest release of Moonfruit offers a free product with no ads as well as excellent premium packages for those who require extra bells and whistles e.g domains, shops and space. It also includes Moonfruit ‘People’ which supports businesses and communities who want to manage their customers or members more easily, plus social media integration with Facebook and Twitter. Moonfruit is part of Gandi Group which includes sister company Gandi.net, the ethical domain name registrar and virtual hosting provider.
Sponsor: Awards Prize
Latitude
Latitude is a leading digital marketing agency who deliver their expertise in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), social media, online display, affiliate marketing and conversion analytics to clients including Tesco Personal Finance, Bet 365 and The Independent. Our whole approach is built on performance. Our conversion analytics expertise ensures that, once visitors get to your site, they convert from prospects to customers. We are confident that we can demonstrate a significantly better ROI on marketing spend. In fact, we’re so confident that we offer many of our clients performance-based pricing, so you only spend money when you’re making money.
Sponsor: Awards Prize
Park Lane Champagne
Park Lane Champagne: bringing the ability to source single bottles of champagne, personalised as you like, through their new online site at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk . Check it out and if you like what you see, do blog about it and tell the World.
Sponsor: Drinks & Party
oneDrum
oneDrum is a free, lightweight desktop application that can turn any application into a rich, collaborative environment. The first release of oneDrum, available to the public from July 2009, is the only platform on the market that takes the compromise out of collaborating in Microsoft Office.
It enables:
* Simultaneous, multi-author document creation and editing in PowerPoint, Excel and Word
* Effective communication, coordination and control of change
* Secure, synchronised file sharing and version management.
oneDrum is headquartered in London, England and was founded by Jasper Westaway, CEO
Sponsor: DJ
Mixcloud
Mixcloud aims to be the YouTube of Radio. The company’s vision is to be the definitive platform online for on-demand radio shows – from music to talk and everything in between. Mixcloud describe themselves as re-thinking radio, building a platform that connects radio shows (or what they describe as Cloudcasts) to listeners much more effectively. The unit of value for Mixcloud is the show rather than the song or the station. Mixcloud provides radio content creators with a toolkit to host, promote and distribute their content across the web, solving the frustrations associated with file sharing services or the complications of Podcasts. For listeners, Mixcloud helps them filter the content easily to find what’s relevant to them – e.g. what’s popular or what their friends are listening to.
Preparations for The Europas – The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 – are coming together. I really hope you have July 9 booked in your diary, and you got your tickets and your hotel and flight booked (if needed). Remember also that you can check out, and book hotels through our hotel search partner HotelMap (which is a pretty cool rendering of hotels in London).
The Europas will be the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation, honouring the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe. The first tranche of tickets are now on sale.
Plenty of people want to nominate their company for the awards, so we’re going to tell you how. Here’s the order you need to follow:
1. Make sure your company is in CrunchBase, with all fields filled in, as well as key staff, like CEO etc. Don’t forget you logo and your picture! And make sure your address, and especially your country HQ/base are filled in. We are using CrunchBase as a basis for our research into potential nominees.
2. We’ll shortly release a list of companies in each of the 15 categories which you can vote on. We want you to vote on those, but in the comments on the posts those will appear on, you’ll also be able to give us feedback on the nominees, and make any additions if we’ve missed anyone. Europe is a big place, and there are a lot of companies to cover.
3. This is not essential, however, you can also email the TechCrunch Europe Editor, Mike Butcher, and nominate your company, or a person, in one of the 15 categories below. Please make begin the subject line with “Europas Nomination”.
4. Here are our categories again:
Best European Web Application Or Service
Best Design
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society)
Best Enterprise Startup
Best Cleantech/Environmental Startup
Best Hardware / Real World Gadget
Best Entertainment Application or Service
Best Mobile Startup
Best Mobile Application
Best Startup Founder
Best New Startup in 2008/9
Best European Investor of the Year (VC or Angel fund)
Best Investor Personality
Best Overall Winner
5. Here again is all the details you need on how all this will operate. Like I said, we will be releasing the list on nominees to vote on shortly. After that we will produce a list of the final nominees in each category – then all you need to do is come to the awards and find out who won (oh and party with the cream of Europe’s tech scene, of course).
The Awards Ceremony will take place in London from 6pm Thursday, July 9, at Delfina. It’s in one of London’s coolest parts of town with 300 places going for the attending audience. This is not a formal “black tie” event. It’s an event to celebrate! But we’ll be encouraging you to “dress to impress” and show off your startup somehow in a cool, fun way.
On the evening itself we will be joined by some of the great and good from the European startups scene. Check out who is coming already, and you will notice a number of familiar faces from the European startup and VC scene. Many will be handing out awards to the winners. Just a handful are below, and include:
Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo
Stefan Glaenzer, co-founder of Last.FM
Sarah Lacy, author & TechCrunch editor
Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes
Opportunity to Sponsor awards : Please contact Petra Johansson petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk for further details.
Press/Media enquiries:Please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami(at)rassami.com
Editorial/Awards/Programme: Editorial queries related to the awards, the programme and the pitch competition should be directed to Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch Europe.
Well people, it’s time. It’s time we really celebrated the tech scene in Europe with an awards event which we can really call our own. So TechCrunch Europe will, on July 9, hold the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation. “The Europas” – The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 – will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe. The first tranche of tickets are now on sale.
These awards will recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 – Summer 09), with the tech community invited to have a say in which finalists should be recognised. Leading lights of the the tech community will be invited to give away the awards to the winners, so you’ll have the opportunity to meet your tech heroes and heroines. The initial filtering will be done by referencing our database on European companies on CrunchBase (so make sure you are in it), then by public vote online, with the final Award winners to be determined based both on the popular votes received through website voting and by The Europas Advisory Board.
You’ll be able to vote shortly.
The Awards Ceremony will take place in London from 6pm Thursday, July 9, at Delfina. It’s in one of London’s coolest parts of town with 300 places going for the attending audience.
Award categories
Best European Web Application Or Service
Best Design
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society)
Best Enterprise Startup
Best Cleantech/Environmental Startup
Best Hardware / Real World Gadget
Best Entertainment Application or Service
Best Mobile Startup
Best Mobile Application
Best Startup Founder
Best New Startup in 2008/9
Best European Investor of the Year (VC or Angel fund)
Best Investor Personality
Best Overall Winner
Join the awards ceremony!
On the evening itself we will have a handful of opening speeches in the “GeeknRolla” format of quick-fire information. These will be followed by a short pitch competition of up and coming startups. To be considered for the pitch competition you need to email TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher, with a one side of A4 text-only pitch, and also include the URL of you company/project/startup etc on CrunchBase (you can add your company onto it if it is not already there). Include: The market “problem” you are solving with your startup, your solution, your competitors, your team, and what you’re looking for (Series A round, etc).
And finally… there will be a special announcement of the launch of a new innovation from Techcrunch Europe.
How it will work
1) You will be able to vote for one of the companies and products nominated which you believe most deserves industry recognition for achievements made in the past year. If you are a site, grab a badge to encourage your community to nominate you for a Europa. Badges will be released when voting starts.
2) The Europas Advisory Board will advise on which entrants should be selected to win from the highest scoring entrants.
3) Join the ceremony!
Following a short pitch event sponsored by UKTI at 6pm, the awards will commence at 8pm. There will be a DJ, an open bar and finger food.
Dress code
This is not a formal “black tie” event. It’s an event to celebrate! But we’ll be encouraging you to “dress to impress” and show off your startup somehow in a cool, fun way.
The Rules
All internet and mobile tech companies from the continent of Europe, the middle East and Africa are eligible for nomination. Nominees will be picked by TechCrunch Europe from our database of companies on CrunchBase, so make sure you have submitted your companies there. Certain awards have specified criteria (i.e. best unfunded start-up or best new start-up launched in 2008) but, otherwise, all companies and products are eligible for consideration based on their accomplishments made between Summer 2008 and Summer 2009. Companies may be nominated for multiple award categories, and companies may win multiple awards. There are no fees to nominate companies for consideration, and no fees to be a nominated company, and no fees to vote. Startups are defined as startup companies with less than three rounds of funding, under 3 and a half years old.
Everyone will be invited to vote on our resulting shortlist of the top companies in each category.
The Europas Advisory Board will advise on the selection of the top companies voted for per award category, winner and, only where appropriate, also advise on the selection of a ‘Highly Commended’ award finalists they wish to recognise.
Finalist companies will be most welcome to join us for the Award Ceremony. Acceptance speeches will be in 140 characters or less.
The Europas Advisory Board reserves the right to discard any and all votes that it reasonably determines to be fraudulent or submitted by bots or other computer-generated voting applications.
The award winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony to be held July 9, in London.
Tickets
The first tranche of tickets are now on sale. To attend the event, tickets will be £60. Attendee identification will be checked at the door. Due to strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are not refundable. Tickets are not transferable. In some cases we may be able to transfer names on tickets (if we’re asked nicely), this is at our complete discretion and the more people do this the more complicated an time consuming it can get (we are only a small team!). If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. If you show up at the event without a valid ticket, TechCrunch Europe reserves the right to charge the full ticket prive £60 plus £15 administration fee to allow access to the event subject to availability.
Sponsorship opportunities
Sponsors will be able to be creative with their sponsorship, with a pre-award video announcing the finalists and winners. Opportunities include sponsorship of individual award categories, sponsorship of the awards ceremony, after-party, drinks and more… Please contact Petra Johansson petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk for further details.
Press
If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the event, please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami(at)rassami.com
So far this year TechCrunch has run roundtable meetup events for startups in Barcelona, Paris, Prague and coming up we’ll be in Stockholm in 27 May, Berlin on 10 June and throwing a huge summer party in London on 9 July (come meet The Travelling Geeks). But next week will be TechCrunch Europe’s first day-long conference in London and it’s shaping up to be pretty cool. After-all, over 200 people are already coming and there are only a handful of tickets left. [UPDATE: NOW SOLD OUT - Only tickets to the evening party still available]
Geek ‘n Rolla – the day for European startups old and new to network, learn from each other, meet investors and party – will have a full day of speakers, startup pitches and will also have a dedicated exhibition area. Get your ticket today.
The event will be from 10am, all day at RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), 66, Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD. Map
Geek ’n Rolla is sponsored by Viadeo one of the largest professional social networks in the world, and supported by UK Trade and Investment, as well as NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. And not only will we be having a great day of fantastic content for tech startups, we are planning the mother of all evening networking parties at one of London’s premier venues, Cafe de Paris kindly sponsored by Winston & Strawn’s Bootlaw.
What’s there left to say? Just this. Are you Old School, or New School?
You see, people ask the question, what’s a real Geek ‘n Rolla? And I tell ‘em: We all like a bit of the good life. Some the money, or the fame.
But a real Geek’n Rolla – wants the lot.
Sponsors
We still have a few sponsorship opportunities and there will be a dedicated exhibition area available for companies to show off their products. If you are interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the event, please contact Petra Johansson on petra[at]twistedtree.co.uk
Viadeo
Founded in June 2004, Viadeo quickly established itself as the place to be for professional networking in Europe and beyond. Since then, with more than 7 million members (as of January 2009). Follow them on Twitter @viadeo. Viadeo is essential for those who want to:
• Increase their business opportunities (to discover new clients, staff and business partners)
• Enhance their visibility and their online reputation
• Manage and develop their network of professional contacts
Viadeo’s members consist of business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of businesses both start-up and well established. Each day Viadeo attracts more than 10,000 new members; 40,000 new connections are made and over one million profiles are viewed. Based in Paris (head office), Viadeo also has offices and teams in the UK (London), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), Italy (Milan), China (Beijing), India (New Delhi) and Mexico (Mexico City). The company employs 200 staff worldwide. www.viadeo.com
As part of their sponsorship Viadeo are delighted to offer all delegates the opportunity to be prominently featured around the venue. You are invited to create a profile at www.viadeo.com – the 10 most interesting profiles will be part of a rotating Viadeo display visible to all attending VCs, business angels, journalists & geeks for the duration of the conference. Additionally all delegates signing up to Viadeo prior to April 21 (with the email you used to register with amiando) will be given a 3 month free premium subscription in order to get your European networking kickstarted… To qualify for exposure at the event profiles must be completed by midnight on April 19th via the link/ URL above.
UKTI
UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business.
UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.
NESTA
NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. Its mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation. NESTA Investments has the largest portfolios of early-stage businesses in the country and is a leading authority on how to grow new ideas. We have strict investment criteria, and work with companies that have high potential for growth, are at seed or start-up stage, and have the potential to attract syndicated support. When we do invest, we aim to maximise our investment by assigning mentors, part-time managers or specialist support. We also stimulate imaginative solutions to pressing social issues and shape policy to help the UK meet its national innovation challenges.www.nesta.org.uk
After-party sponsor: Bootlaw
Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. Its brought to you by Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu the friendly lawyers at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com
School for Startups
Geek’n Rolla is also supported by School for Startups. The inspiration of serial entrepreneur and angel investor Doug Richard, School for Startups is the UK’s leading provider of business training for entrepreneurs. Anyone attending Geek’n Rolla may claim a 5% discount on all current School for Startups events – currently 2 in London and 2 in Scotland. Simply go to www.schoolforstartups.co.uk quoting the discount code TECHCRUNCH to qualify for this discount.
Astia wants to hear from you. The Silicon Valley organisation focused on funding women-led start-ups has launched a programme in the UK to help high-potential, high-growth startups across Europe find investors and mentors.
Astia’s US programme has run since 2003 with fundraising success upwards of 60%, raising more than $495m for presenting companies and had 11 exits, including two IPOs. The not-for-profit organisation has high expectations to match this success in Europe, and is putting the call out for women-led startups to tap in to its community of over 450 experts, serial entrepreneurs and CEOs in the Valley and Europe.
The London programme will kick off with the three-day Doing It Right event from 11-14 May; the deadline to apply for a place at the event is 22 April.
Astia’s advisory board includes a number of very strong and well-connected entrepreneurs, investors and advisors, including Microsoft’s Bindi Karia and Jane Houghton of the British Venture Capital Association.
TechCrunch Europe is hosting a couple of afternoon panel discussions at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and we’d love you to come along and join us for some great discussion and evening networking with mobile startups and the investment community.
In addition, I’m happy to announce that TechCrunchTalk Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona kicks off a series of TechCrunch events in Europe this Spring and Summer, all focused on bringing together and networking the European tech community. Outside of the below dates I will be attending ad-hoc European tech events and, following my speech at Le Web on Europe’s startup scene, I’m also available as a speaker on this subject.
This is really important: If you wish to be on the mailing list for information about all the up-coming events, sign up on our Amiando account here.
Regarding content and opportunities to be on the panels please contact the TechCrunch Europe Editor, Mike Butcher.
We have a few sponsorship opportunities and demo tables available for companies to show off their products. If you are interested in supporting the Barcelona event or any of the other forthcoming events, please email our event organiser Petra Johansson of TwistedTree.
If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the Barcelona event or any of the forth-coming events, please email Rassami Hok Ljungberg of rassami PR.
The up-coming TechCrunchTalk events are scheduled for:
19th February – Barcelona
25th February – Paris
19th March – Warsaw – Central European event for tech startups & VCs
21st April – London
27th May – Nordic and the Baltic states event in Stockholm
10th June – Berlin
TechCrunchTalk Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona
2009 promises to be the year many of the predictions made about the rise of mobile may start to come true. Startups in the space are poised to take advantage of affordable mobile Internet access and sophisticated handsets like the iPhone. The question is, can they do it? That’s what TechCrunchTalk in Barcelona will seek to tease out from the assembled entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists that back them.
Here’s the press release we just put out:
TechCrunch Europe will be hosting a TechCrunchTalk event in Barcelona on Thursday 19th of February, 3pm-6.30pm followed by drinks and networking in conjunction with the GSM Mobile World Congress.
Where: Hotel1898.com, La Rambla, 109 (Entrance on Pintor Fortuny) – 08002 – Barcelona. Tel +34 93 552 95 52. Fax: +34 93 552 95 50.
“TechCrunchTalk Barcelona” is aimed at bringing together the Mobile 2.0 startup and VC community to debate the next phase of the mobile startup world. It will feature two quick-fire panel discussions with the hottest entrepreneurs and investors selected for their leading views on the market, and with topics focused around a number of themes, including:
- What will be the mobile trends over the coming year?
- What are VC’s looking for?
- Can the power of the operators really be disrupted?
- What value can be created in the mobile world in difficult economic times?
The panel discussions will be followed by casual networking over drinks.
The event is sponsored by LiveCLIQ Inc.. Other sponsors slots are still available.
LiveCLIQ Inc. LiveCLIQ is a leading provider of 2-way, 3-screen Digital Media Streaming, able to stream network and user media on Mobile, Internet and TV platforms. The Company offers its hosted services to media properties, consumer brands and mobile carriers. LiveCLIQ’s user media site, www.livecliq.net, that enables people to stream live and recorded video from their mobile phones to public and community destinations on the web. LiveCLIQ’s Magellan interface provides a media overlay upon Google Earth in which geo-located media are displayed with user, title and tags enabling contextual media searches. The Company’s founders include product and business leaders from Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Netscape, Motorola and MobiTV. LiveCLIQ is based in San Francisco, California.
The events are organised by TwistedTree in association with rassami.
I have been attempting, usually in vain, to post the many relevant events for readers to keep track of. This is obviously a tricky task, given that there are an increasing number of these. However, I have managed to re-gain control of the old TechCrunch UK group on Upcoming. Now, event organisers who post their events to Upcoming will be able to add the group “TechCrunch UK & European Startup Events” to the event and it will appear under that group as well. Obviously I dare say one or two people will try to game this system, but as this is the kind of listing this industry needs if it is ever going to develop I’m happy to let the “crowd” decide what’s relevant or not (until such point I have to start weeding out the crap of course – I retain the ability to delete events, so trolls and spammers be warned). The feed won’t be published on TechCrunch Europe because we reserve the right to push events where TechCrunch is a specific media partner, or the event is really, really relevant to readers.
It’s worth pointing out that the fact that an event appears in this Upcoming group is not a sign of TechCrunch’s official backing – it’s just a sign someone wanted to promote it to the kind of audience TechCrunch has – developers, startups, entrepreneurs and venture financiers. The Upcoming feed is just a simple service for you. You can decide for yourself whether the events posted there (by just about anyone) are relevant or not. I have added the tagline “& European Startup Events” because although there are other European groups for things like “new media” or “social media”, none focus on startup businesses, which is our goal here at TechCrunch. And I think it will be helpful for all to see the kind of things going on across Western, Central and Eastern Europe as a whole.
I hope that people will use the group in the spirit in which it was created – to advance the development of startups across Europe.
Now, there other plenty of other sites where you can get good event information (although to be frank you will generally find they err towards events around training courses or online marketing, rather than business events for startups). That said, currently the most comprehensive is that offered by Chinwag, but there is also the listings from NMK and Bima. There are back-channel discussions about trying to produce a more comprehensive listing for the UK where competing events can be listed, but I gather those are ongoing.
Meanwhile, there are six upcoming events over the next week or so which are of particular interest to TechCrunch readers:
25 June The TechCrunch BBC Debate, London
This event is, alas, already full but you can read all about it here.
June 26th Techcrunch / TechLudd Mashup, Dublin
A TechCrunch meetup held in conjunction with TechLudd (the Irish startup networking event). Register here.
27 June SocialMedia Business School: How To Build Your Business
(Tickets) You can get a 20% discount if you use the code “londev”.
Location: The LEWIS Media Centere, Millbank, London
This is an interesting event where application developers will be taught how to turn their social app into a real business, not just a project. Nick Gonzales – former TechCrunch writer – is a keynote speaker. Here’s the blurb: “The purpose of the SocialMedia Business School session is to bring together industry experts to help guide you in building out your applications’ revenue model and preparing your business plan for financing and general planning. SocialMedia Networks, the social advertising network will bring together advertisers, leading developers and analytics gurus to help you build your business. You will learn about the resources available to you to make the most money from your applications, and using supporting materials provided by SocialMedia you’ll apply what you learn into an actual business plan that turns your apps into a sustainable business.”
June 28th TechCrunch Istanbul Meetup
TechCrunch and Webrazzi, Turkey’s leading Web 2.0 blog, are co-organising a Meetup, featuring demos from Turkey’s best and brightest startups.
July 1st TechCrunch Athens Meetup
Athens TechCrunch meetups co-organised Open Coffee Greece.
Once in a while we like to point you to events that may be interesting to European tech entrepreneurs. We’re not necessarily endorsing them. Buyer beware and all that. We’re just saying you may want to check them out. We’ve added events where there will be a TechCrunch Europe writer attending, or those we are running. And please definitely put December 15 in your diary for “TechCrunch Europe’s ChristmasCrunch – It’s A Realtime Holiday!”
TechCrunch Europe threw a dedicated startup pitch event yesterday in London and – if we do say so ourself – it was a great success. We plan to do more of these kinds of events and, as I pointed out at the time, we will NEVER charge startups to pitch. They are selected by editorial, on merit only. 
The winner of the pitch competition was 
6:16 PM: The hordes descend! Champagne is flowing, the 
UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.
Founded in June 2004, 
Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. Its brought to you by Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu the friendly lawyers at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to 
Park Lane Champagne: bringing the ability to source single bottles of champagne, personalised as you like, through their new online site at 
Mixcloud aims to be the YouTube of Radio. The company’s vision is to be the definitive platform online for on-demand radio shows – from music to talk and everything in between. Mixcloud describe themselves as re-thinking radio, building a platform that connects radio shows (or what they describe as Cloudcasts) to listeners much more effectively. The unit of value for Mixcloud is the show rather than the song or the station. Mixcloud provides radio content creators with a toolkit to host, promote and distribute their content across the web, solving the frustrations associated with file sharing services or the complications of Podcasts. For listeners, Mixcloud helps them filter the content easily to find what’s relevant to them – e.g. what’s popular or what their friends are listening to.
UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business.
Astia wants to hear from you. The Silicon Valley organisation focused on funding women-led start-ups has launched a programme in the UK to help high-potential, high-growth startups across Europe find investors and mentors.
TechCrunch Europe is hosting a couple of afternoon panel discussions at the upcoming 
LiveCLIQ is a leading provider of 2-way, 3-screen Digital Media Streaming, able to stream network and user media on Mobile, Internet and TV platforms. The Company offers its hosted services to media properties, consumer brands and mobile carriers. LiveCLIQ’s user media site, www.livecliq.net, that enables people to stream live and recorded video from their mobile phones to public and community destinations on the web. LiveCLIQ’s Magellan interface provides a media overlay upon Google Earth in which geo-located media are displayed with user, title and tags enabling contextual media searches. The Company’s founders include product and business leaders from Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Netscape, Motorola and MobiTV. LiveCLIQ is based in San Francisco, California.
I have been attempting, usually in vain, to post the many relevant events for readers to keep track of. This is obviously a tricky task, given that there are an increasing number of these. However, I have managed to re-gain control of the old 