Public voting in the The Europas, the tech startup awards from TechCrunch Europe, will close today, Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST). So best get your vote out now. This public vote will be mixed with voting from our advisory board of European tech luminaries to produce the final shortlist. The awards will take place on July 9 next Thursday, with over 300 people attending from all over the European tech scene. There is more information about the awards here. You can also 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; 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: 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.

The wave of investments in “realtime” is continuing with today’s announcement from Cognitive Match that it has raised Series A investment from Dawn Capital. Terms were undisclosed but it’s understood the figure was in the £1m+ ballpark, in tranches. The UK company applies artificial intelligence, learning mathematics, psychology and semantic technologies to match content to individuals in, you guessed it, realtime. This content can be product, offers, editorial or advertising of course, making it a very interesting prospect for an outfit like Twitter.

The company will use the investment to accelerate development and build clients for the product. Chad Raube, Investment Partner at Dawn Capital, will join Cognitive Match’s Board of Directors.

Founder CEO Alex Kelleher previously co-founded leading analytics and data mining company Touch Clarity (which sold in 2007 to Omniture), and prior to that was Founder CEO of London-based web agency Vivid Edge (sold in 2000 to Framfab). He thinks that “with the ever increasing volume of data generated by the activity of individuals online, there is an incredible opportunity to make the internet more relevant and more responsive.”

Esther Dyson, an advisor to the company, says “Cognitive Match automates what a person could do with unlimited time and attention, and allows best possible use of scarce online real estate”.

Haakon Overli, Managing Partner of Dawn Capital told me Cognitive Match uses similar mathematics to Wonga (which Dawn also invested in last year alongside Balderton et al in early May). The technology will enable website owners to to make a something he calls a “3.0 statement” such as: “We believe this is what you are looking for” - as opposed to the more 2.0 statement “People who bought this also bought that” which is somewhat passe these days.

Of course Cognitive is not the only player in this field right now. Silicon Valley Angel Ron Conway and New York-based VC Fred Wilson are both heavy proponents and investors in realtime startups, so expect many more such deals.

UK real estate startup Zoopla has confirmed that it is in advanced talks to purchase the PropertyFinder Group, which was put up for sale recently by joint owners REA Group and News International. My sources say the deal is all but done at a price of £1.5m. A potential management buyout appears to no longer be in the running.

It’s a far cry from 2005 when News Corp and Australian property group REA bought Propertyfinder for £14 million. It was later joined by UKPropertyShop and HotProperty.co.uk for £5.6 million. REA alone has now written off around AUS$61 million.

Zoopla commented on the record to TechCrunch Europe: “We can confirm that Zoopla.co.uk is currently looking at purchasing the PropertyFinder Group. We have a great deal of respect for the business and the brands that have been built within this group and will have further comments on our plans over the coming weeks.”

Zoopla has been playing a canny hand, using user-generated data to provide accurate house price estimates and building a lot of data-driven services. It took a Series B funding round at the beginning of this year from Atlas Venture and Octopus Ventures.

On June 26, REA Group and News International announced the “potential sale” of all or part of their jointly owned UK online business, which runs the Propertyfinder, Hotproperty and UK Propertyshop websites.

Propertyfinder‘s CEO - Gillian Kent, the former MSN UK head who joined in January ‘08 - had previously been leading an attempt at a management buy-out from joint owners News International and REA Group, but I understand that deal is no longer on the table. REA is retrenching back to Australia while News Corp is going through something of an anti-online rampage right now. News Int also has a stake in the free property listings site Globrix.

Propertyfinder is understood to have 2.3 million unique visitors and falls between FindAProperty and Primelocation according to comScore.

Back in December last year the UK government announced it would back the creation of a “£1bn venture fund” to invest in startups. At the time it sounded rather far-fetched. However, yesterday it was confirmed that this would indeed be going ahead, along the lines proposed by the NESTA, the National Endowment for Society, Technology and the arts.

The fund is broadly aimed at startups, but it’s likely to concentrate around science and technology, since its specifically aiming at “innovative, fast-growth companies” - and these don’t tend to be companies created to sell socks online. Thus, the fund is expected to focus on clean technology, bioscience, digital technology and advanced manufacturing. According to government figures there are 1,093 venture capital backed tech companies in the UK employing more than 40,000 highly skilled workers. That’s relatively small, however venture capital backed companies significantly out perform other companies and and 69% of these venture backed companies introduced entirely new products or services into the market.

The UK Innovation Investment Fund, as it’s called - announced by by Lord Mandelson, First Secretary of State at the London Stock Exchange yesterday - will invest £150m, to be matched by private sector backers. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that the fund could be higher, up to £1bn, if enough private investment is forthcoming - I think we can safely say that’s very much up for debate in this current climate. This notional £1 billion figure comes from a 10 year window for the fund.

Lord Drayson said £100 million of the £150 million will come from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, with the remainder being put up by the Department of Health and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The fund will invest on an equal basis in a process known as known as “pari-passu”. The fund will be regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

A government-appointed manager will run this “fund of funds” and - according to the statement - hopes to make its first investment by the end of the year - so they had better get cracking.

Part of this initial £150 million will come from £750 million strategic investment fund the government announced in April to provide financial support to high-tech companies. That announcement sparked a wave of debate on TechCrunch Europe, with an open letter from Angel investor Robin Klein and two further responses.

Accordingly, this latest move was broadly welcomed by the private equity and venture capital industry which, largely in the form of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, has been lobbying the government over this issue for the last two years, along with the European Investment Fund and others.

The government says say this “Fund of Funds” structure turned out to be most attractive to institutional investors because it creates a portfolio approach that spreads the investment risk across a number of different technology fund management teams and enables the Government to back private sector innovation without distorting or competing with existing fund managers. It’s also designed to complement existing public sector interventions such as Enterprise Capital Funds, RDA European Development VC Funds as well as tax measures (though I don’t see much new initiatives on the latter of these).

However, this initiative really isn’t all that new.

It looks very much like the previous UK High Technology Fund structure that was announced in 1998. This was a £125 million “fund of funds” which invested in a number of specialised technology VC funds such as Advent, Amadeus, MTI and Scottish Equity Partners. Back then the Government provided a cornerstone investment of £20 million which the funds were able to leverage with an additional £105 million from the European Investment Fund, UK pension funds and a French bank.

So overall, the questions are this.

Is this the best way to fund good start-ups? We still haven’t seen any movement on the UK government on capital gains tax, an area which tended to provide a great pool of seed funding before it was destroyed a couple of years ago. The issue I hear from startups time and time again is that it’s pretty cheap to build a beta, but getting seed funding to do this is tough.

And why has the government not used the tax system to stimulate innovation? In France, a recent new law brought in by President Sarkozy to allow private individuals to invest in startups has proved a rip-roaring success. It even allows them to spend 25% of their allocation in other EU countries. Talking to entrepreneurs and startups in Berlin recently, the chatter even suggested that the Germans may copy this French law. Where would that leave the UK? Right now it leaves startups stumbling back into the much higher barrier to entry VC eco-system.

And which VCs will get access to this fund of funds? Will they be the “good” ones that have consistently picked big global / European plays like Skype, SeatWave, Wonga and the like?

What happens if this fund is distributed to VCs that are actually using it to prop up a failing business model? The ones which, left to market forces and the changing role of VC, would have withered and died?

Let’s take a look at who did the bulk of the lobbying. The BVCA’s committee to lobby the government on this issue consisted of the following:

Richard Anton
Alan Bristow
Mark Caroe
Rob Carroll
Andrew Carruthers
Mike Chalfen
Stuart Chapman
Simon Clark
Anthony Clarke
Russ Cummings
Stephen Edwards
Nigel Grierson
Tim Haines
Barrie Hensby
David Hunter
Graham O’Keefe
Gary Le Suer
Bruce Macfarlane
Mary Monfries
Philip Newborough
Patrick Reeve
Ernie Richardson
Simon Walker
Rob Young

Unfortunately it’s not disclosed which venture firms these people were with - though perhaps readers can help me to identify their companies. Update: He’s what we have so far:

Andrew Carruthers - Spark
Anthony Clarke - BBAA/LBS
Russ Cummings - Imperial Innovations
David Hunter - NESTA
Patrick Reeve - Albion Ventures
Ernie Richardson - MTI
Simon Walker - BVCA

So, there we have it. No tax loosening from the government, but instead a system to prop up the VC industry. Hopefully it will work and feed through into innovation and entrepreneurs. Fingers crossed.

I’m delighted to announce the members of The Europas Awards Advisory Board. As you can see there is an enormous wealth of talent here - these are people who know the pan-European tech and startup scene like few others.

Over the next few days, until the Wednesday deadline for public voting, our Advisory Board will also be looking at the nominations and selecting their winners for the Europas. After which, their picks will be aggregated with the public vote. And of course it goes without saying that they won’t be able to vote for any company (or person for that matter) in which they have any kind interest.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes here at TechCrunch Europe HQ we can see just how much and how often everyone is voting in these awards (thanks to PollDaddy for some awesome tech) and, well, let me just say it’s A LOT. It’s great to see such passion out there amongst tech startups, so come on everyone, keep voting.

In addition we have some more news: New UK startup OneDrum (which literally just launched) will be sponsoring the refreshments at The Europas Awards party. Latitude and Park Lane Champagne are the awards prize sponsors. And Mixcloud is going to supply a some banging DJs for the after party.

Plus, Techfluff.tv/ Newspepper will be streaming the event live.

Here are the CrunchBase entries for our Advisory Board:

Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages. But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they’ve appealed the verdict and could probably do so for the next few years. Which means that in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube. Seems reasonable. It’s not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything.

OK, the VideoBay site currently doesn’t have much - a big logo, a search box which doesn’t yield much and some explanation:

To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the

However, they’ve “decided to give everyone a sneak peak” but it didn’t work for this particular browser. A supposed sneak peak at thevideobay.org/20/ didn’t work either. In fact it appears the site is riddled with 401 errors, so it’s not an auspicious start. Update: Those who want to try out need a web browser that supports the HTML 5 tags such as the latest Firefox Beta or Safari 4.

According to TorrentFreak. The Pirate guys say there is still a lot of work to do behind the scenes - the encoder is not finished yet and the design is also a work in progress. And they’re not in a hurry, their window is “in, like, a year or five.”

So what’s the big idea? Well in common with their stated views the idea is to host and allow users to share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations, in true Pirate Bay-style. Hello, YouTube, hear that?

They actually announced this idea two years ago, but I daresay most thought they’d never pull the trigger on this particular cannon.

Dutch mobile startup Nimbuzz is to be preinstalled by O2 Germany, initially on the Toshiba TG01 handset. The application can be set to be “always on”. It’s significant that a Tier 1 global operator has chosen to do this, though terms of the deal were not disclosed. We’ll check if Nimbuzz is paying O2 to go on the handset or if O2 is paying Nimbuzz for the app.

StudiVZ, Germany’s most popular social network, is pre-integrated into the app. Nimbuzz is the application that allows mobile chat with the largest German speaking social network StudiVZ (15 million users).

Nimbuzz claims 900,000+ sign-ups per month and now operates in 200 countries. It recently partnered with Voxbone to allow users make voice calls without 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity to their contacts over IM and VOIP services, including Skype, by sensing when the handset is out of Wi-Fi or 3G range.

iPhone will still have to wait for the 3.0 release of the app.

Here’s a video of how it works on the handset.

We have now opened voting in The Europas, the tech innovation awards honouring the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. On July 9, TechCrunch Europe will hold the first Europe-wide tech awards ceremony in London, for 300 people: you can get a ticket here. There is more information about the awards here.

Voting will close on Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm. Go vote now!

You can now vote for the nominated companies and personalities from the industry. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in each category. You’ll notice that the lists of nominees is long, but we wanted plenty of companies and people to be recognised in this initial round. There is one category that can’t be voted on which is “Best Overall” - this will be decided upon following the public vote and consultation with The Europas Advisory Board.

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

Award categories (A list of nominees is below)

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Design

The Europas: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

The Europas: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

The Europas: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

The Europas: Best Startup Founder(s)

The Europas: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

The Europas: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

The Europas: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

THE NOMINEES

The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

3scale
ActionBase
Allyve
Adjug
Allyve
Amazee
Amiando
Babbel
Badoo
Blip.pl
Busuu
coComment

Diary.com

Dopplr
eBuddy
Funambol
HammerKit
Hiogi
Hobnox
Hubdub
imedo
Jagex
Jimdo
Jinni
Kublax
Kyte
Locr
LouderVoice
Mekanist.net
Metaversum
Mister-wong
MoFuse
MyDeco
Myfab
Myngle
Nasza Klasa
Nestoria
Netlog
Openfilm
Oxynade
Passpack
Plista
Polar Rose
PutPlace
Radionomy
Restox
Sclipo
Seatwave
ShoutEm
Sidewinder
Silobreaker
Smule
sobees
Songkick
Spotify
Squareclock
Stardoll
studiVZ
Stupeflix
Tarpipe
Tipped
Toksta
Topify
Tripsay
TripWolf
Trueknowledge
TrustedPlaces
Tupalo
TVtrip
Tweetmeme
Twenga
Twidox
Twingly
Txtr
Unlike
Viewdle
Wakoopa
Watzatsong
Webjam
Webnode
Wonga
Xing
Yoose
Zanox
Zemanta
Zoopla

The Europas: Best Design

Babbel
Hubdub
IRL Connect
Jimdo
Pasaj
Songkick
Spotify
Tweetmeme
Webjam
Wonga

The Europas: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

Asgoodas.nu
AskMarkets
BaseKit
Billmonitor
BookingBug
Boxed Ice / Server Density
Busuu
Clear Applications
Crowdstorm
Devunity
Doctr
Doodle
Gigulate
Kvittar
learn10
LovelyCharts
Mixcloud
Mollom
myfi
Myfolia
Paperc.de
ParkAtMyHouse
Peeralism
Prezi
ReceiptFarm
SimilarWeb
Scred
Soup.io
Storytlr
Studdex
Struq
Vooch
VouChaCha
Wosiak
Woobius
Yiid
Zookel

The Europas: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

Aleveo
Amazee
Decisions For Heroes
Dopplr
Mendeley
NewsCred
Peuplade
School of Everything
UnLtdWorld
Worldeka

The Europas: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

Adconion
blueKiwi
BusinessITonline
Cereproc
Coclarity
Corebridge
FreeAgent Central
Garlik
Huddle
Knowledgeplaza.be
MirriAd
Mtivity
Mydeo
MyID.is
OpenX
PeoplePerHour
Proofhq
Programeter
Skimlinks
Smarta
Sosius
Tactilecrm
TrampolineSystems
Viapost
VideoPlaza
Woobius
Youcalc
Yuuguu
Zenbe
Zendesk

The Europas: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

Alertme
Amee
Arduino
Dopplr
Elaphe.si
Intamac
Pachube
RiverSimple
RouteRank
SpeedSell (for recycling)

The Europas: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

AlertMe
Poken
En-Twyn
Fon
INQ Mobile
Modu
My Name Is E

The Europas: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

7digital
Blinkbox
Bragster
Coull
eRepublik
floobs
GameDuell
Gigulate
Ipadio
Joost
King.com
MiniClip
Moshi Monsters
Muxlim
MuzuTV
Playfire
Playfish
Quick.tv
Qype
Sellaband
Sevenload
Skinkers
Slicethepie
Songkick
SoundCloud
WatZatSong
Wuala
We7
WeeWorld
Zattoo

The Europas: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

A2dm
Aka-aki
Apisphere
Aradiom
Audioboo
Babajob
Bambuser
Belysio
Biggu
Biolocate
Blummi
Blyk
DeviceAnywhere
Dial2do
DialPlus
Fortumo
Fruugo
Funambol
Futurlink
GetJar
Goojet
HulloMail
Instinctiv
Joikusoft
Keynetik
Kimia
Kimiasol
Kooaba
Locamatrix
Mapmytracks
Mippin
Mob4Hire
mobanode
Mobiluck
Mobintech
MoFuse
Mojiva
My6Sense
MyBooo
NAVX
Nimbuzz
Orbster
Palringo
PhoneTopp
Playsoft
Popcatcher
PushupFu / GymFu
Smaato
Rebtel
Realeyes 3D
Secufone
Skout
Smule
Solaiemes
Soocial
Streamezzo
Taptu
tauyou
Tellmewhere
Toro
Truphone
Unkasoft
Unkasoft
Viamobility
ViiF
Vuclip
Xumii
Youlynx
Zensify
Zipiko

The Europas: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

Aka-Aki
Bambuser
Cellity
eBuddy
Flirtomatic
Fring
Locle
MaxRoam
Mippin
MobyPicture
MoMail
Palringo
Rummble
Shozu
Spinvox
Spoonfed Radar
Tweetdeck Mobile
Zipiko

The Europas: Best Startup Founder(s)

Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin, jointly, Huddle.net
Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, jointly, Soundcloud
Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks
Andrew Scott, Rummble
Brent Hoberman, Mydeco
Caglar Erol, Cember.net (The “LinkedIn” for Turkey)
Cary Marsh, Mydeo
Charles Armstrong, TrampolineSystems
Daniel Ek / Martin Lorentzon, Spotify
Errol Damelin, Wonga
Felix Haas, Armin Bauer, Markus Eichinger, Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Baerhold, Marc Bernegger, for Amiando
Ian Hogarth, Ian Hogarth, Pete Smith, Michelle You, (Jointly), Songkick
Joe Cohen, Seatwave
Joe Drumgoole, Putplace.com
Kristian Segerstrale, Playfish
Maria Sipka, Linqia
Martha Lane Fox, Luckyvoice
Martin Källström, Björn Milton and Niclas Wiström, Twingly
Matt Jones / Mat Biddolph, Dopplr
Michael Acton Smith, Moshi Monsters
Peter Ward / Jerome Touze, Wayn.com
Rachel Armitage, Alistair Hann, jointly, Zoombu
Richard Jones, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, jointly for Last.FM
Richard Moross, Moo.com
Sarah McVittie, Texperts
Shaa Wasmund, Smarta
Sophie Cox, Worldeka
Stefan Uhrenbacher, Qype
Toon Coppens, Netlog
Wendy White, Moonfruit
William Tunstall-Pedoe, Trueknowledge

The Europas: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

360 Capital Partners
Accel Partners
Advent
AGF PE (France)
Alven Capital
Amadeus Capital
Atlas Ventures
Balderton
Covestor
Creandum
Creatum
Dpixel
DFJ Espirit
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
EarlyBird
Eden Ventures
European Founders Fund
Fidelity Ventures
Holtzbrinck Ventures
Index Ventures
Intel Capital
Kennet Partners
Mangrove
Neuhaus Partners
Northzone
Octopus Ventures
Oxford Capital Partners
Partech
Pentech Ventures
Seraphim Capital
Seventure
Sofinnova
Spark Ventures
Star Ventures
TAG - The Accelerator Group
Wellington Partners

The Europas: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

Alex Hoye, Angel
Andreas Schlenker, Partech International
Angel Gambino, Angel
Charles Grimsdale, Edenventures
Christoph Janz, Angel
Christophe Maire, Angel
Fred Destin, Atlas Venture
Gianluca Dettori, Dpixel
Guillaume Lautour, AGF PE
Lukasz Gadowski, Team Europe
Mattias Ljungman, Atomico
Morten Lund
Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Espirit
Nicolas Celier, Alven Capital
Olivier Sichel, Sofinnova
Patrick Coquet CEO, Cap Digital
Paul Fisher, Advent Ventures
Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners
Philippe Colombel, Partech
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
Roberto Bonanzinga, Balderton
Robin Klein, TAG
Sandy Mckinnon, Pentech ventures
Saul Klein, Seedcamp/Index Ventures
Simon Levene, Accel
Sitar Teli, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners
Alex Straub, Straub Ventures
Will Dawson, Amadeus Capital
William Reeve, Angel
Yossi Vardi, Angel

The Europas: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Aroxo
Habit Industries
Kontoblick.de
OneDrum
Plista
Polar Rose
ShoutEm
Smarta
SofaTutor
Songkick
SoundCloud
Spoonfed
Spotify
Squareclock
Stupeflix
Topify
TrueKnowledge
TweetDeck
Tweetmeme
Wonga
Yoose

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. You vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category.

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

Read More

Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the final five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

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Please vote after the jump>>>

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the final five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

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Please vote after the jump>>>

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the final five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

And while you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed.

Please vote after the jump>>>

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Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the final five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).

Get your ticket today to the The Europas Awards

Please Note: Suspicious voting patterns, use of proxies, or spamming will result in all votes from those IPs being removed. Judges decision on the winners is final. Votes will only be accepted from uk.techcrunch.com. Thanks to Polldaddy for this voting mechanism.

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Please vote after the jump>>>

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So what do we know now? MySpace is planning to lay off 300 of its 450 non-U.S. employees, or two thirds of international staff. In the absence of any official statement to contrary, international managing director Travis Katz remains in his position.

The company will “close at least 4 of its offices outside the United States,” with London, Berlin, and Sydney becoming the primary regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. [Update: We're now hearing everyone in the UK MySpace office has been offered voluntary redundancy, though it's not yet clear to which seniority level that applies]

The 10 offices which look to be ready to be cut under the “formal proposal” to restructure are: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China and Japan will be untouched. [Update: Our sources say the Canadian office closes this Friday, we'll check this].

But according to news coming in from other parts of Europe, some offices are not hanging around to be “restructured”. France is almost certainly going to go, from what we’ve been told, and already at least one Russian news blog is reporting that the Russian office of MySpace will “cease its activities” on Jun 30 - at least according to Andrei Mironov, director of Legal Affairs for MySpace there.

In fact, the MySpace Russian branch was opened only last year, despite the fact that it had a relatively modest (in Russia) 350,000 registered users - although country manager Alexander Turkot planned to take that (how exactly?) to 1.3-1.5 million. MySpace Russia was reportedly turning over $5-6 million in revenues.

So the decision to focus on London and Berlin in Europe rather betrays the failure of MySpace’s strategy in other parts of Europe. Questions will be asked as to why - if MySpace was doing as badly against Facebook as we knew it was - did MySpace in Europe so often put on free concerts for their users? What this helping them build traffic?

OK, I’ll have to admit I was one of those who enjoyed the February MySpace concert in Barcelona (Travis Katz and Chris de Wolfe are pictured above), which coincided with de Wolfe’s appearance at 3GSM in the city. Hey, I’m no stick in the mud, and I like a good concert as much as anyone. And Internet companies that work hard deserve to kick back and have fun, right? But given what we know now, was this really the best use of MySpace’s time and money?

Then there was the recent Lilly Allen concert in London (no, I didn’t go) - a star broken on MySpace but now with 123,361 fans on Facebook as well, so we’re not talking about brand loyalty here.

I have a request into MySpace in London asking for information on the concerts they held around Europe in the past year, which hopefully they can come up with.

I guess I may not get an invite to any others, but then again perhaps MySpace would do well to get back to doing what it promised to do last year: namely be a better social platform. It did some laudable work with developers in the UK and around Europe, promoting OpenSocial, for that we can thank them. But somewhere along the line that fell by the wayside. Perhaps MySpace partied too hard?

This is breaking now - we just got this official letter to the MySpace staff from one of our sources at MySpace in Europe. The official release follows, but here’s the gist: MySpace will be cutting 300 international staff and closing at least 4 offices outside the US, with those in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain coming under specific review. Owen Van Natta admits to trying to grow the company’s European operations too fast, and says that London, Berlin, and Sydney offices will become hubs for the company’s regional activities.  MySpace’ Japanese and Chinese operations will be unaffected. Here’s the full email:

From: Owen Van Natta
Subject: IMPORTANT: PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL RESTRUCTURE
Importance: High

Everyone,

Last week we made a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic structure in order to create a leaner, more nimble organization. Today, we are announcing the next step in our overall restructuring effort - a proposal to streamline our operations abroad.

Unlike our recent domestic restructuring announcement, what we are announcing today is a formal proposal we intend to implement, rather than an executed plan. As required by laws in countries where we operate, we will not implement the plan until we have consulted with potentially affected employees. As a result, even though the plan we are proposing today would apply to all international divisions of the company, a finalized international restructuring will be put into action over a period of days.

Similar to our domestic restructuring, our international plan is designed to rein in growth in staff and expenses that we cannot sustain. Our proposal would reduce MySpace’s international staff from 450 employees to approximately 150 employees and close at least 4 of our offices outside the United States.

Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace’s joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan.

We are focusing on London, Berlin, and Sydney for two very simple reasons: (1) these are markets where we have a lot of MySpace users as well as the resources to allow us to compete effectively and (2) these are major international commerce centers where a robust MySpace presence can help our company develop new and innovative business partnerships.

As with the domestic changes we made last week, these proposed international reductions and eliminations will be extremely challenging – professionally and personally. These are difficult decisions and they are essential to our financial well-being and the re-establishment of our overall growth strategy.

Our goal to tap into as many international markets as possible drove us to create too many offices around the globe, and with them came inefficiencies. Under the new plan, we will refocus our efforts on regional business partnerships and integration in a smaller number of territories, while retaining a robust international presence. We remain steadfast in our commitment to reaching a global audience.

The last two weeks have been tough for everyone. The employees who leave us played an important role in the successes of MySpace in these international markets, and I thank them for their hard and dedicated work. The restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace. I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days.

Thank you,

Owen

——————

MYSPACE PROPOSES INTERNATIONAL RESTRUCTURING

Proposal Includes Plans for Office Consolidations and Staff Reductions

LOS ANGELES—June 23, 2009—MySpace today announced its intent to restructure its international operations and refocus personnel around a smaller number of territories, while retaining a robust global consumer presence.

The proposed restructuring plan, which is subject to consultation with international employees in some countries, would apply to all international divisions of the company, reducing MySpace’s international staff from 450 employees to approximately 150 employees and closing at least 4 of its offices outside the United States.

Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace’s joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan.

“With roughly half of MySpace’s total user base coming from outside the U.S., maintaining productive and efficient operations in our international markets is important to users worldwide and our immediate financial strength,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. “As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace’s staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today’s proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy.”

Well, there’s not a great deal to add to the MySpace implosion going on right now. We already know MySpace International managing director Travis Katz is going even though, somewhat bizarrely, MySpace is refusing to comment or make any kind of official statement at all. My own attempts to offer MySpace an opportunity to comment on our story last week have also been rebuffed. Update: Scratch that - our sources at MySpace now say that Katz will remain with MySpace and that “his role hasn’t changed,” however the company itself will still not respond to an on-the-record request for comment about Katz.

What we don’t know yet is how many of the 400 international employees will shortly be following. [Update: Again, scratch that - see our breaking story]

My own sources inside MySpace in Europe say that that several top managers have now flown into the cities were the European branches are based in order pull people into meetings and close down operations. These include the offices in France, Spain and Italy.

Katz oversaw 450 staff across MySpace and Fox Interactive Media properties, including about 40 in the UK. MySpace has already cut 420 jobs in the US, leaving 1,000 domestic staff.

Katz joined MySpace in early 2006 as Vice President International, taking a SVP and Managing Director title in October 2006. He was responsible for all non-US operations for MySpace, IGN and other Fox Interactive Media properties. He grew staff from 2 to more than 400 in a span of 2 years.