In the context of Don Dodge’s recent blog on Paul Graham and YCombinator, I wanted to highlight a similar initiative here in Europe called SeedCamp. Inspired by YCombinator and the OpenCoffeeClub, Seedcamp will be a week long event in London, September 3-7, for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts. The mission of Seedcamp is to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in Europe by providing the money, mentoring and media to help propel forward great ideas. At the end of the week, Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% stake in each of final five teams and provide ongoing mentorship and support for three months in preparation for the companies’ formal rounds of financing. The list of companies participating in Seedcamp has been detailed on the Financial Times’ TechBlog. There are many leading entrepreneurs, VCs and advisors contributing to Seedcamp. Microsoft’s UK team will be there too – offering mentoring and advice on how to leverage the Microsoft platform and Windows Live APIs in order to build best of breed, next generation businesses. Lars Lindstedt from the UK Emerging Business Team will be participating as well – providing advice on the “Working with Corporates” panel. I’ll be there heckling from the crowd! ;-) Coull.tv is a UK-based company offering online content owners a customized managed online interactive video distribution platform. Coull enables video content owners to monetize online videos by providing technology that identifies objects within the video, linking these objects to contextual advertising and/or ecommerce opportunities. The customizable video player can be embedded within social networks and blogs, retaining the interactivity and branding. Perfect for monetising video footage or creating targeted campaigns. A great example of this is the work Coull did with the premium lingerie maker Agent Provocateur in a series of online films entitled “The Four Dreams of Miss X”. Featuring Kate Moss in her first acting role, the campaign combines the impact of viral marketing with the use of interactive e-commerce applications (supplied by Coull and built on the Microsoft platform) to deliver video footage that entertains and entices people while also providing customers with the opportunity to purchase desired products. For more insight into Coull’s products or the Agent Provocateur campaign, read this Microsoft Customer Case study! And a side note – Coull were recently voted as a seriously hot company in our 2007 StartupZone Showcase. Many people think of Microsoft as a technology company. Yes, we do technology. Microsoft is also a very expansive and efficient sales and marketing company. I was recently reminded of this by an astounding comment made by Oliver Gajek, Sales and Marketing Director of Brainloop: “Working with Microsoft cuts our sales cycle by 50 per cent. The Microsoft sales teams support us in helping our customers manage confidential documents across the enterprise.” The keys to achieving this co-marketing and sales partnership with Microsoft include (i) adding value above and beyond the Microsoft platform (Brainloop deliver best-in-class security across the life cycle of important documents that need to be protected from unauthorized access); (ii) addressing a particular customer segment or vertical (Brainloop have a sweet-spot within enterprises that require security, compliance and regulation e.g. telcos, legal firms – and Microsoft ourselves!); and (iii) pulling through the Microsoft platform with every sale (Brainloop solutions integrate seamlessly with Windows® Rights Management Services which helps drive sales of Windows Server 2003 as well as Office). Fifty percent: that is a significant reduction in effective cost of sale and it highlights the benefits of selling with Microsoft. This partnership remains to be fundamental part of Brainloop’s strategy in attracting customers and increasing profitability. Read more in this EBT Success Story. The success story also touches on the technology and platform acceleration Microsoft provided through direct access to our RMS product groups. But nothing grabs headlines quite like reduced sales cycles and increased profits! On 24 April 2007, Tridion – a leading global provider of Web Content Management (WCM) software solutions built on the .NET platform – announced agreement to be acquired by SDL International, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions for €69 million ($USD94m)! The transaction closed in mid-May and helps realise the value created by Tridion for their investors who included our friends at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. Based in the Netherlands and established in 1999, Tridion have long been a leader in the WCM business, and as recently as 2006 Tridion were recognised in the Red Herring Venture Market Top 100 (blogged here). Its core Web content management solution—XML-based Tridion R5—plays a key role in many Fortune 500 enterprises in the United States and Europe. The Tridion R5 platform is standardised on Microsoft® solutions, which have been at the heart of the company’s success. You can read more in this EBT Success Story. As I understand it, Tridion will continue to operate as a highly autonomous division of SDL, same strategy, same management team and organization etc. however they can now leverage a larger global footprint and accelerate plans for tackling broader solutions and markets. In recognition of the recent acquisition activity in the market, the Microsoft EBT are considering a study that will look at the relative exit values of technology start-ups. Does “betting on Microsoft equal winning”? Well, Tridion was a USD$94m ‘yes’! NetEconomy built a suite of highly valuable financial crime management and compliance solutions on the Microsoft platform and successfully exited via acquisition by Nasdaq-listed FiServ in March 2007. Impressed by the deal, I blogged on this here. The story behind the NetEconomy’s solution – how they built it and created such value – has finally been written up in the following EBT Success Story. Click through to learn more about how ERASE (Efficient Risk Analysis System Enhancement) grew into a scalable suite of solutions that are deployed from single installations as small as 10,000 accounts to monitoring millions of transactions daily for large global installations. Congratulations again to NetEconomy, FiServ Inc and Esprit Capital (UK). InnerWorkings are an Irish company (well, R&D in Ireland and HQ in Pleasanton, CA) with a unique set of ‘practice-based learning’ solutions that present real-world coding and application design techniques that provide true visibility into developer performance. Their goal is to transform the way software developers learn and are supported in the workplace, in addition to enabling the accurate measurement of developer capabilities throughout an organization. With the InnerWorkings DeveloperTM solution, when programmers complete tasks, a built-in code-judging engine gives a comprehensive evaluation that includes corrective feedback. Their solutions address one of the main concerns of enterprise customers today: no proven ways to assess developer performance or improve productivity. It also offers developers an appealing learning environment that is synchronized with their normal work methods. Innerworkings are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and hence they follow our technology rhythms closely and usually have courseware available around the beta2 timeframe. The USP is that all tasks are driven from Visual Studio and are set around real world scenarios. The system includes a real-time code judging engine, access to an online tutor (real-person Developer Resource – available 24/7 with an 8 hr SLA) and access to an online library of documentation through leading training media suppliers. Learn more about Innerworkings and their solutions in this EBT Success Story. 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 On June 4th in Brussels, Microsoft hosted our 4th Annual EMEA VC Summit. This year’s event drew over 200 people from the investment and innovation ecosystem in order to explore opportunities for partnership, insight and investment. The theme this year was “Small Companies, BIG Ideas!” and as such, we think that the 55 SME Innovation Exhibition partners were an especially valuable component of the day – a sentiment echoed by the feedback we received from the event. You can download a list of partners that joined us here: VC Summit & SME Day Exhibition Guide. Other highlights of the event included: Further content from the day including photos can be found at the event web site. http://www.smeday.eu/vcsummit/content/ Thanks to everyone who participated in a great day! At last year’s Microsoft Executive Partner Summit in Cannes, Q-go’s CEO Marcel Smit was inspired by a statement made by Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer. Steve was explaining the vision of enterprise search and enthused that someday a person could get an answer to simple, natural language queries like: “Who is the account executive for Michelin?”. Of course, getting the answer is not simple given the fractured nature of enterprise information stores, database, legacy systems, etc. But Marcel said: We can do that! And Q-go have since gone ahead to prove it too! Q-go are a fast-growing software company based in the Netherlands. Their core IP is a unique Natural Language Search technology. The next step was to integrate it with Microsoft’s enterprise server offerings. So Q-go worked with the UK Microsoft Technology Centre team (based in Reading, UK) to integrate their Natural Language Search technologies into Microsoft’s premier information storage and enterprise search platform Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and a human resources management application. Outcomes of the proof of concept proved 12 commonly asked questions such as “How many days holidays do I have?” or “What is John Smith’s mobile number?”. In the process of developing our partnership, Q-go have also switched their technology stack from Linux/Oracle to Windows/SQL (you can read more in this published MSPP Case Study). Their commitment and enthusiasm for working with Microsoft has been outstanding. In turn, we are doing as much as we can to keep them moving in terms of platform and sales. After all, our success depends on theirs too! We have been on the hunt for our most exciting early-stage partners. As a base, we leveraged Microsoft’s Empower for ISV program and worked with The Library House as well as our European subsidiaries to highlight partners that have the highest potential in terms of growth and market impact. More detail and background here. As a result of the search, I gives me great pleasure to highlight the European Top 25 HIPE Companies: - Agnitio (ES): innovative identity management solutions leveraging speaker biometric verification.
- Avoco Secure (UK): software solutions for digital asset protection and control of intellectual property.
- Comrange (UK): accelerated SaaS implementation and deployment environment for enterprise.
- Criteo (FR): real-time personalized recommendation solutions platform for e-tailers; Innovate!Europe award winner.
- Evidanza (DE): business intelligence solutions integrating ERP solutions including MS Dynamics.
- Excentive (FR): Enterprise Incentive Management solutions align company compensation plans with strategic goals.
- High-def Technologies (DE): creative technology-based, networked home solutions for the digital home.
- Illuminate Labs (SE): industry leading rendering technology with sophisticated baking functionality in one integrated toolset.
- Intrasense (FR): innovative suite of imaging solutions to allow review and analyse medical images; EU ICT Prize winner 2007.
- Jaczone (SE): integrated yet non-intrusive tools to support the implementation of software development best practices.
- MORS Software (FI): automated, intra-day, real-time, trading control for banks and corporate treasuries.
- Mydeo (UK): an online service delivering a safe and simple way to store and stream the videos you value.
- Otodio (UK): a solution enabling documents to be listened to with a massively improved user experience.
- Profimill Oy (FI): solutions to improve production performance, quality control and production management.
- Q-go (NL): natural language search for the enterprise to enable better customer relationships and internal enablement.
- Quantum Health (IE): web-based product suite targeting the fast-growing global Workplace Health market.
- 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.
- 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.
- VMScope (DE): solutions in the field of virtual microscopy that facilitate scenarios that light microscopy can’t cope with; EU ICT Prize winner 2007.
- Volutio (UK): an intelligent free service that works to organize your meetings, web and teleconferences using ubiquitous communications channels.
- WiseKey (CH): delivering online identity security and trust models through a unique distributed trust network worldwide.
- ZebTab (UK): user-focused desktop channel connecting brands and content with their focused consumers.
Note that the list is not a ranking. It is based on the information that we had at hand (focused on public information including funding, growth and media attention) and is drawn from the Empower partner base as it stood at March 2007. We took Empower as a snap-shot as many early stage companies utilise the Empower program to develop their solutions on the Microsoft platform. Disclaimers aside, these companies represent some great innovation and outstanding potential in the market. There is great diversity both in terms of industry sectors and countries: a great representation of the exciting and dynamic Microsoft partner base!
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Featured Startup

The company of the day is ShowNearby.com, based in Singapore. The company's mission is simple: to show you what's nearby. You will find below an interview with Douglas Gan, Founder of ShowNearby.com. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
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