Le Web, a key event for Europe’s traveling circus of startup communities, ran a pitch competition alongside the main track again this year. It attracted 30 companies from Europe, and a few from the US, across a wide range of sectors and this year was handled by Europe-wide early-stage investor SeedCamp. Most of the startups were quite strong, although a few did make me wonder why they weren’t replaced with others - in particular, I would have loved to have seen some obvious startups from the UK or Ireland, neither of which was represented.
So the winner of the event was Viewdle, which won the “Gold”, followed by Webnode (Silver) and Zoover (Bronze). Silentale was winner of the “People’s Choice” award.
Viewdle started in 2006 out of Ukraine. It has an interesting history - it’s ex-military university laboratory project into facial recognition which has morphed into a startup looking at recognising faces in online video. They hope to sell the tools such as API licenses (and have one client already). The demo was impressive. (Crunchbase)
Viewdle launched at TechCrunch 40 in 2007 and was also the winner at the Plugg European Web 2.0 conference.
It won an unspecified amount of funding from Anthem Venture Partners and Elevation Partners earlier this year. As part of the deal, Viewdle will partner up with ROO, another KIT portfolio company focused on IPTV broadcasting. lt’s available as Facebook application.
There were 30 companies in the competition, there were, in alphabetical order:
2Win-Solutions - FRANCE
3scale networks S. L. - SPAIN [TC50 Demopit]
Apture - USA
Box.net, Inc. - USA
Brozengo SA - FRANCE
Charge Ventures - Malta
Cmune - CHINA
ConTrust - ISRAEL
DoctorSIM - SPAIN
Edicy - ESTONIA
Haploid - FRANCE
IZI-collecte - FRANCE
Kaltura - USA
MyID.is Certified - FRANCE
Nimbuzz - NETHERLANDS [Reviewed]
Popego Inc. - USA
Producteev Inc. - USA
Publing - FRANCE
Radionomy - BELGIUM [Reviewed]
Samedi GmbH - GERMANY
ShoutEm Ltd. - CROATIA
Silentale SAS - FRANCE
SquareClock - FRANCE [Reviewed]
Tellmewhere - FRANCE
Trendiction - LUXEMBURG
Viewdle, Inc - UKRAINE [Reviewed]
Westcom, s.r.o. - CZECH REPUBLIC
Zavedenia.com - BULGARIA
Zipipop Ltd (Zipiko) - FINLAND
Zoover Holiday Reviews - NETHERLANDS
Unfortunately that there was ZERO Internet access during any of the competition on the first day of Le Web (technical issues), which presented a serious challenge for the start-ups, but perhaps also provided a test of their adaptability. At least that’s one way of looking at it…
The judges selected three top companies, based on the total scores from the panels. They were judged based on a 7 minute pitch on stage. (The companies were ranked on a overall scale of 1 - 5 … with 5 being the highest (most positive) score. The top three companies won Sun servers from Sun Microsystems’ Start-up Essentials program). It’s always interesting to see how these things are run, so for your benefit, here is the criteria on which these pitches were run:
• Physical presentation - if they use Powerpoint, they’ll be told to show NO MORE than 5-7 slides. They will be judged partly on whether they follow that.
• A demo - all companies are told to show a demo. If they can’t (like product still in too early prototype) they must be prepared to explain why
• Business model - do they have one and do they explain it clearly?
• Market opportunity - does the business they propose have a viable market and are they positioned well for it?
• The team - who’s on it and are they qualified?
• Presentation skills - do they think on their feet? If the demo fails, how do they handle it? Are they articulate, good presenters?
There was also a “People’s Choice” winner voted for by the audience scored each company on a scale of 1 to 5. PowerVote’s database crunched the numbers and gave us the top winner by day’s end.
There’s no physical prize for the People’s Choice winner, nor does that company present on the main stage.
There were a total of 19 judges:
Axel Schmiegelow, Sevenload
Pascal Thomas, Orange
Philippe Collombel, PartechVC
Laurent Chiozzotto, Sun
Gary Shainberg, British Telecom
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Price Minister
Marc Samwer, European Founder Fund
David Hornik, August Capital
Freddy Mini, Netvibes
Ola Ahlvahrsson, Result
Robert Scoble, FastCompany.TV
Julien Codorniou, Microsoft
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK
Martin Varsavsky, FON
Megan Smith, Google
Olivier Creiche, SixApart
Don Dodge, Microsoft
Greg Marsh, Index Ventures
Andreas Schlenker, PartechVC
See all
Post
Viewdle neeeds designers…
Totally!!
@Juan I second that!
But what an awesome tool. It’s been in cameras for a little while, but great to have it online now.
Hello,
Congrats to the Viewdle Team!!!!
Quick correction though: ROO no longer exists. It was re-branded/renamed to KIT digital (changed stock ticker to KITD).
We are very proactive about rolling out the KIT digital brand so the change in your text (and the Crunchbase url) would be much appreciated
Thanks!!!
No Italian startups…damn.
Well yes, actually it seems like the web does not even exist into our country. But I suspect this is just because italian startups are totally “disconnected”. Moreover, no VC = no real innovation… sad but true.
I could watch from distance the presentation and products of three finalists. After that I was saying Viewdle will make the difference, I wasn’t surpirse at all, they really well-worth it. Congrats. We were at Techcrunch50, and honestly I have to admit that I agree more on this winner then TechCrunch50 winner….that’s my personal thought..
Yes, true, we will give out Viewdle face-rec API !
There are tons of apps/features you can build with it.
@Juan, and yes, we need a designer
Sad to spoil the happy feeling…but here is some criticism..I hope constructive for the organizers, although we can’re really hide our dissapointment…
1) Total detachtment from the VCs in the panels and Startups presenting in the competition… Fred Wilson (can’t remember his company) complained about not having access to enough good startups to put in his 30 million yearly…. Ironically there were 30 startups presenting next door and he knew nothing about them….nor did any of the VCs really care about finding our about them…
2) Voting systems was disastrous. Peoples choice award only worked for the last 24 companies, but non existent for the 1st 6…(it wasn’t properly explained)
3) Judges did not show up for two of the major sets (divided into 6 companies)…and it is obviously not the same to have a panel with Scobble and 3 VCs, than one with 4 Bloggers (No offence to bloggers, but we’re here for a specific reason…Money and Connections….!
4) Please profile and group companies accordingly. Don’t include a company with Military based technology from Kiev, with one with great idea but limited cash, and with one with 25 MIllion funding. Doesn’t make sense.
5) Voting was grouped in panels of 6. 1 mediocre company in one panel got more votes than 1 great company in anohter, simply because judges we comparing 1 vs the remaning 5…not the global 30.
6) If you invite 30 startups to LeWeb, PLEASE really INVITE them, don’t make them PAY half the price of 1,500 Eur!! Ironically VC speakers DO NOT PAY (At least not all)…but cash hungry startups looking for a chance to find cash have to SPEND cash….What kind of a message are we sending to VCs??
7) Tech…this is general, but projector was late for mobile demos, internet NON EXISTENT throughout BOTH days, Organization in General for the startup competition was really bad..
This is a whining post, but everything in it is completely TRUE. Please ask any of the 30 Startups how they feel things were handled…
Honestly, It feels like Le Web looked for a way to Sell 60 additional tickets and decided to come up with the “competition”.
Judges and Panel we’re not compromised at all…showing up late, or not even showing..
Anyway…my true hope is that this is taken into account, and next year, people think twice about taking up this “invitation”….
You’ve been advised.
Sad.
Cheers…
I can only second that.
All the three selected “startups” were no real startups at all.
One got 25 million funding, the over one was a 10 person company which exists already 5 years, the travel site is just a clone op tripadvisor and also already exists for over 2 years. Nothing new, nothing innovative, really.
But as a jury member pointed out, one of the key points to select the 3 finalists was profitabilty. Yes, sure. These are success stories, no startups. How can we other startups be profitable if we just started? That doesn’t work. I thought the main criteria would be innovative new things, and not recylcing old concepts again (website building, community site etc..).
If you make up rules (like at most 5-7 slides, must say why you are qualified, etc…), why not stick to these and punish those breaknig the rules? Also that you required a live demo, and that the internet did never work was a joke.
OMG, I can’t imagine an internet conference without internet access for the whole first day!!! Oh, wait, I remember, that was what happened at Techcrunch50 this year. Did you guys actually forget?
My take on LeWeb
Contest:
Judges were late or randomly picked from sposor companies, (some with no real capability of judging the startups), moderators were bad and not engaging, statrtups indeed were not grouped well, very few people participated in voting.
as for the conference:
there was limited food!!! NO INTERNET, and I actually had no internet during both the days.
it was VERY COLD there.
VCs were not really interested in what was going on, and had very low representation.
there were SELLERS no BUYERS.
it was EXPENSIVE.
Only good thing was the Finish Sauna.
I will not go there next year, nor recommend it to others.
@observer Glad you liked our sauna! We thought some additional heat would be good;-)