Seedcamp, the European startups programme a little (though not entirely) like YCombinator, has announced the winners of its year-long programme to find the best startups in Europe, finally judged over an intense week of mentoring by a long line of fellow European entrepreneurs.
Each startup has won €50,000 to develop their product, in return for Seedcamp taking a stake worth between 5-10% of the company. In each case the exact stake has not been released. Each winning team will spend the next three months in London working intensively on their startup. As we wrote earlier this week, overall the standard was strong this year and many of the VCs and CEOs I spoke to during this week have remarked on how much the quality of startups in Europe has improved, especially as reflected in this year’s Seedcamp vintage.
So the winning teams are:
[Update: I forgot to mention that it’s actually eight in total. Seedcamp already invested in Kwaga (see here) and Platogo (see here) via it’s mini-seedcamp days in Europe.
Boxed Ice (UK)
These guys are building a 37 Signals type business focused around making really easy to use Sys Admin products. The first product is for server monitoring www.serverdensity.com. Founder David Mytton is turns 22 years old today, started coding when he was 15 and he has already exited from two companies. He’s in his final year of a law degree at Birmingham University. That’s enthusiasm.
Brainient (Romania)
Another young guy, Emi Gal (23) this time from Bucharest, has produced his third business. Branientis technology that lets video publishers monetisie their content. Not unlike the The Rubicon Project which helps publishers make more money from their display advertising inventory by optimising their use of ad networks, with Branient, publishers can select the best performing advert for their video and annotate the video to have an affiliate network attached to it. Think Skimlinks but for video.
Codility (Poland)
Coming out of Warsaw, Codility is software and a service that lets you figure out which developers to hire by automating the scoring of the coding tests you would normally use to screen applicants for developer positions. Companies hiring developers h- will take you down to the ten that you need to interview. Customers in China and Hong Kong.
Erply (Estonia)
This is ERP for this generation of SMEs, which is probably quite different from the kind of SMEs that existed 10 or 15 years ago – which is when most ERP software was built. We’re talking 20 years olds making ERP for SMEs and startups technology companies which are built by other 20 year olds. Sure, that doesn’t change the rules of business but as we’re seen with how social media is changing internal enterprise knowledge management systems.. – well that’s how this is pitched. They already have 200 paying customers in four markets and are at break even. Admittedly it sounds on the face of it like a boring product, but it’s worth remembering that one of the biggest companies in Europe was SAP which largely defined the enterprise software space.
Patients Know Best (UK)
Coming out of Cambridge, these guys are trying to solve a massive problem in healthcare systems which is connecting patients to doctors and putting the patient in control. So far they are doing well – they’ve developed one for the first pieces of private sector web app software which is running inside firewall in the UK’s National Health Service, with the first implementation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. The CEO Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli is also a developer, alongside CTO Dawson King.
Talasim
Attempting to be the The Onion, or perhaps the “MTV for the Arab World” but online, what’s interesting about their opportunity is that the Arabic internet is 400 million people and it’s massively underserved for content tight now. Some 70% of the Middle East is under 30 years of age so it’s an incredibly huge, young market which is largely unexplored online – though given the censorship there it’s not unsurprising. Talasim has been going for two years and clearly understands its market. It currently syndicates content to newspapers, radio and TV with its comedy as a means of self expression – quite a big deal in that part of the world, shall we say.
Seedcamp will also be taking a bunch of teams which didn’t win the investment on their annual tour to the US, both the Valley and in New York. These are: Advertag, Fabrically (formerly World on a Hanger), Joobli, Pearl Systems and VouChaCha.
Great job on posting this so fast
Congrats to all the winners, and also to the other teams who made it in the 20 out of hundreds of applicants!
Congratulations to Emi! – a model citizen of the entrepreneurs Seedcamp is looking to surface.
Yes, model of how to do bad things and get away with it
)
Congratulations to all startups and especially for the Codility project from Poland. Fantastic job!
yep. Congrats Emi!
congratulations to ERPLY.com !
Nice to see Eastern European companies taking half of the winner spots, a great job!
For the winners, this is just the beginning – not an end
Keep innovating, learning, developing and changing. Don’t be afraid of mistakes.
It’s really great to see something cool is happening in Europe too. Congrats to the winners
Congratulations to Talasim from Jordan, and all other winners.
Congrats Talasim, you did a great Job
Congrats to Emi Gal! Romanians are so smart, I tell you
Congrats everyone – and to Joobili and World on a Hanger for getting onto the US tour, good luck!
Nice going Emi Gal but take care of your legal issues back in Romania. I hear something about forgery and tax evasion.
Radu, I had my companies audited 3 months ago and we’re doing just fine
.
For everybody else reading this comments, Radu’s a former employee who isn’t very happy we had to let him go.
No Emi Gal, that’s Cristi.
And thanks for admitting one of your forgeries.
You say here that you had to let him go, as in fire him.
Cristi also said he was unlawfully fired.
But guess what. Emi Gal reported at ITM Bucuresti that it was a mutual agreement. Big mistake.
Not to mention the payroll forgery. One way ticket to a criminal record.
Instead of being proud that a Romanian won at Seedcamp, I’m disgusted. Of all the smart people in Romania, a guy like Emi Gal.
It is Brainient. Not Branient. And yes, congrats dudes !
Congrats Emi Gal!
Romanians are going to take over the internet one of these days, I’m telling you!
They already took over the Internet…but in a bad way (hacking, phishing and what not)
…
Congrats to all winners!
nice work Emi, you made a good think for romania also!!
Congrats Codility! Great job guys!
Well done TechChuff!
I got to meet the team from Codility and Brainient, both really great products with good people. Best of luck!!!
Jon, we`re looking forward to meet you, too.
drop an e-mail to hello at brainient com
best regards!
Congratulations to all of those who participated, and to the winners of Seedcamp.
Well done! Now…..focus on getting the revenues in…
Greetings,
Bastian
“the Arabic internet is 400 million people and it’s massively underserved for content tight now.”
The entire population of the Arab League – which includes a few countries (Comoros, Djibouti, Somalia) where Arabic is not the predominant language – is estimated at anywhere from 300 to 340 million people. Even throwing in 30 million Arabic speakers in other countries, you do not have 400 million habitual Arabic speakers in the world, let alone 400 million Arabic-speaking Internet users. In fact, according to Wikipedia, there are only 280 native Arabic speakers in the world.
Furthermore, the four most populous Arabic-speaking countries (Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco: total population ~180 million) are developing countries with Internet penetration rates well below 50%.
Check your figures.
Because we “Talasim” ROCK!!!
Congratulations to all the teams!!
Congratulations everyone!!
They are impressive. Congrats to them! However, no startup at information security area was chosen. Does it betray that no impressive information security thoughts so far?
Good work David.
Exciting.
Seedcamp’s entry demands were so totally one sided. I’m surprised any decent startup submitted with them. If this is the definition of a VC.. forget it !
Congratulations to Talasim and to the other Copmanies =)
Congrats to everyone!
I am not surprised, but very happy to see that Patients Know Best was included in the list of winners. As a mentor I worked with them and actually 2 of the other winning businesses. I was incredibly impressed with the idea and the fact that they had managed to convince NHS to pilot the scheme.
I’ll definitely be watching as both as interested business person but also as a patient of the NHS.
We are so proud of Talasim !!
Congrats!
This looks more and more like Eurovision. Who cares about quality, lets vote for our country.
I am very dissapointed with quality, originality and broad usefullness of majority of winning projects. If that is best of the best, then Europe is in a big trouble.