Euro startups plugged at Plugg
Mike Butcher
11 comments »
This week there was a new conference on the Web 2.0 block in Europe. Plugg saw investors and startups from across Europe come together to discuss the market and some 20 startups pitched their companies at the event, attended by about 300 people. Although much smaller than Le Web 3 in Paris (which gets about 1,500 attendees), Plugg had the makings of a more intimate atmosphere amongst European startups and being in Brussels meant it was easy to get to from London as well as plenty of other continental European cities.
So the heads-up on the startups: The winner of the start-ups rally was Viewdle, while Zilok got the best ratings from the audience.
Viewdle is a digital media platform for indexing, searching & monetizing video assets. One of it’s key USPs is that it uses facial recognition to index the video, frame-by-frame, to create a real-time index of on-screen appearances. Viewdle was a Crunchies finalist and presented at TechCrunch40.
Zilok is a service which allows you to rent anything online. Yes, the idea is not brand new, but this is a French startup which launched in November last year and is also available in the US. Think eBay for renting your stuff. TechCrunch reviewed it in more detail here.
The rest of the twenty startups who pitched are here.
More start-ups (24!) at The Next Web Conference in just 12 days in Amsterdam.
My favourite is still le web 3
Great some fresh airs…
@ 2. Michael –> it’s not a competition
I love Le Web 3 too, I just think Europe needs an event like Plugg next to it and I seem to be far from alone in this. Things are brewing in the EU, and our events all help the startups with the most potential raise more awareness towards early adopters and investors.
Congratulations, Robin. So happy to hear that Plugg was a success. Wish I could have been there; looking forward to hearing all about it from Dave.
It’s good to see the web community get toghether in Brussels and other places in Europe. There is still a big difference between running a web2.0 company in the US versus running it in Europe. US companies have more access to VC for one
And having more events in Europe raises awareness for all sorts of European companies that are trying to change the world…
I couldn’t make it this year but you can count me in for Plugg 2009!
i will stand with web 2.0
Thanks Robin and the whole Plugg organization team! Congratulations to http://www.zilok.com for the audience award, for a community driven startup, the people’s award is the award of choice!
As the GM of Zilok in the US, I am delighted of this award and would like to thank the whole Plugg team who did a tremendous job organizing the event, and thanks Mike for the post
Also, best of luck to Viewdle! On the information side, Zilok was indeed first launched in France, and is now operating with offices in four countries. Zilok United States is a member of the American Rental Association, with offices located in San Francisco.
More about us at http://www.zilok.com
It was nice meeting you in person, Mike, in the “charging corner”. I did live blogging during the event, for some 9 hours, so please check out the archive at http://www.cyberculture.ro/blog/?p=1568 .
Anyway, I was excited to see so many fresh initiatives in Europe in the Web 2.0 world and I can’t wait to see how the two winners will evolve further.
Good to see us EU startups getting more momentum. Seems like things are slowing down in the USA and accelerating here.