At the recent EMEA VC Summit (recap here) we featured 20 high-potential companies seeking funding in the Microsoft StartupZone Showcase. The format was your generic pitch-camp (7 mins pitch, 3mins Q&A) with the aim of presenting a selection of our most exciting European partners to the VCs who were present as well as give partners looking for funding the opportunity to pitch. In the end, the audience voted - results below.
The 20 StartupZone Showcase companies that presented were:
- Comrange (UK): accelerated SaaS implementation and deployment environment for enterprises.
- Coull.tv (UK): community web site where users can search, share, comment, vote and interact with video content online.
- Criteo (FR): real-time personalized recommendation solutions platform for e- tailers; Innovate!Europe award winner; blogged by EBT here.
- Evidanza (DE): business intelligence solutions integrating ERP solutions including MS Dynamics.
- Excentive (FR): Enterprise Incentive Management solutions align company compensation plans with strategic goals; blogged by EBT here.
- Ganesh (UK): innovative and compelling, SIM-based, value-added services for the mobile industry.
- High-def Technologies (DE): creative technology-based, networked home solutions for the digital home.
- Intrasense (FR): innovative suite of imaging solutions to allow review and analyse medical images; .
- Metaio (DE): leading provider of Augmented Reality (AR) solutions that superimpose virtual 3D-information into the real environment at real-time; blogged by EBT here.
- Newsgator (US/NL): RSS aggregation products and social media tools to help improve the way individuals and businesses find information and communicate; blogged by EBT here.
- Otodio (UK): enabling publications and corporate documents to be listened to with a massively improved user experience.
- SafeWhere (DK): authorization and access control products for Service Oriented Infrastructures and providers of SaaS.
- Seanodes (FR): solutions that extending the principles of commoditized distributed open systems to the world of data storage.
- syncing.net (DE): Peer-to-peer solutions for small companies to synch Microsoft Outlook data between multiple computers.
- TimeBI (PT): creators of time2me, a free traffic and location sharing network on the Web and for mobile devices.
- tellmewhere.com (FR): user-friendly community to create, browse and share information about places through online collaboration.
- TreeMetrics (IE): delivering solutions that drive better information and decision making systems within the “Wood Supply Chain”.
- Visor (IE): online accounting solutions to help accountants move their practices online.
- Volutio (UK): delivering ikordo, an intelligent free service that works to organize your meetings, web and teleconferences using ubiquitous communications channels.
- ZebTab (UK): user-focused desktop channel connecting brands and content with their target consumers.
We asked the audience of the Showcase (largely VCs) to rate the quality of the companies they saw.
After collating the results, we are proud to announce that Metaio (German augmented reality company) came out as clear leader with Treemetrics (Irish forestry/biomass optimisation company) coming runner-up.
Two companies deserving notable mention for high ratings are Volutio (British start-up who launched their ikordo online meeting resolver on the day!) and Criteo (French online recommendation platform provider).
Four great companies from diverse sectors there!
Feedback from the Showcase has been great, with the emphasis on the opportunities it has created. Fingers crossed that some deals come of it. Watch this space
