The Europas, the annual competition for the best in European tech, are due to be held in Berlin on January 22-23, 2013 and, as always, there are a number of entries from central and eastern Europe. Here they are.
Best Lightweight (less than 12 months and/or less than 100,000 euro in funding):
- Changers (one cofounder is from Kosovo) - Encourages energy conservation by offering virtual credit to users who save energy by using solar-powered device chargers. Users can then exchange credits for products.
- Substance - Poland - Allows users to transfer hand-drawn sketches into editable interactive models. Backed by HackFwd.
Best Advertising or Marketing Tech Startup:
- SocialBakers - Czech Republic - Provides online tools to aid companies in more effectively managing their social media accounts. Previously featured on GoalEurope here, here, and here.
Best Startup Founder/Co-Founder:
- TransferWise - Estonia - A service which allows customers to transfer money internationally for a very small fee. Also nominated for “Best Middleweight Startup (Less than 3 years and/or less than 2 million euro in funding)”.
Best Exit of 2012:
- Viewdle - Ukraine - Facial-recognition / augmented reality company purchased by Google (yet, not seen as the deal that left founders much equity as a result of previous dilutions).
The Best CEE Startup:
- Desktime - Latvia - Provides software for monitoring employee activity and sorts employees by level of productivity.
- Infogr.am - Latvia - Enables users to create interactive, shareable inforaphics and raphs. Also nominated under “Best Lightweight (Less than 12 months and/or less than 100,000 euro in funding)”, “Best Product Startup”, “Best Education Startup”, and “Best Social, Mobile, or Apps Startup.”
- NextStories - Czech Republic - A new kind of newspaper that automatically feeds a reader related stories from other sources as he/she finishes an article.
- TjobsRecruit - Romania - A recruiting service which offers an extensive network of possible employees (2 million). Also nominated for “Best Middleweight Startup (Less than 3 years and/or less than 2 million euro in funding)”.
- Toshl - Slovenia - A service for managing personal finances. Allows for entering budgets, creating interactive graphs, and exporting budgets to PDF, Google Docs, and Excel. Also nominated for “Best Commerce, Finance, or Payments Startup”.
- VetCloud - Serbia - New cloud-based software for veterinarians. Previously featured on this site here.
Best Russian Startup:
- AlterGeo - analog of Foursquare: it utilizes WiFi, WiMAX, GSM in place of GPS as a means of giving location and allows businesses to target ads by location. Also nominated for “Best Transport, Travel, or Environmental Startup”.
- Flocktory - SaaS which allows online businesses to create cross-platform, flexible ad campaigns and reward their customers for recommending products to others via social networks.
- iMall - Geared towards emerging markets, this site aggregates the inventories of major stores from across Europe and makes them available in a central, online location.
- Lectrio - A cloud-based service that allows for educational materials to be shared and courses to be planned.
- Oktogo - A hotel-reservation service. Has the largest online database of hotels in Russia.
- Ricotio - A service which offers shipping in Russia and CEE region, following the success of the business model (suppliers ship directly to the end users) in the US and China.
- Teamo - A dating site which uses a proprietary algorithm to match users with compatible partners (similar to Match / eHarmony). Also (strangely) nominated under “Best Middle East/North Africa Startup”.
- TracksFlow - A subscription-based music service.
- Zeptolab - Creator of mobile animated games “Cut the rope”, one of the most well known mobile games. Also nominated for “Best Gaming or Social Games Startup”.
- Zingaya - Allows users to call through a website without using a phone or downloading a client. Backed by Esther Dyson.
