We’re less than two weeks away from Plugg, the European startup conference organized by our writer from across the pond, Robin Wauters, and it promises to be a great event with a host of knowledgeable speakers and a startup competition that will feature some of Europe’s most promising web and mobile startups on the main stage (see below for details).
If you’d like to join the array of seasoned European entrepreneurs and investors at Plugg, which will take place on March 12 in Brussels (Belgium), you can register for the event with the following code which will knock 15% off the €450 list price: plugg09-media-techcrunch. To use the code, head to this registration page hosted by Amiando and enter the promotional code at the bottom.
Speaking at the event are some of Europe’s most prolific industry pundits, each specializing in a specific area which they’ll highlight in a keynote or panel. Among the speakers are: our own Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist), Bart Decrem (Tapulous), Anil Hansjee (Google), Dries Buytaert (Drupal, Acquia), Inmaculada Martinez (Stradbroke Advisors), Lisa Sounio (Dopplr), Fred Destin (Atlas Ventures), and more.
Last week Plugg announced the 20 finalists, selected out of a batch of 133 companies who registered their profiles for the event’s startup competition. Here’s the run-down of the list of startups, who will each be pitching the audience and a professional jury on stage at the conference (in alphabetical order):
ApSynth / Calcul Plus (France)
“ApSynth provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) to build Rich Internet Application available on demand in the ApSynth’s marketplace.”
BeeBole (Belgium)
“Imagine business apps built like personalized start pages. SMBs and freelancers now have their own business web portal.”
Bubok (Spain)
“We are an online on-demand publishing company. Customers can publish and sell their work for free and worldwide, both paper and e-books.”
Burt (Sweden)
“Our software help ad agencies to better understand and leverage technology to create more entertaining, clever and efficient campaigns.”
ContextIn (Israel)
“ContextIn is offering a unique semantic technologies, improving the performance of online display advertising.”
Desktop Reporting (Belgium)
“Desktop Reporting brings Google Analytics to the desktop, with a host of features that help you understand how your web site is performing.”
“CannyBill is a web based invoicing and billing solution for businesses and web designers.”
Hammerkit (Finland)
“We are the IKEA of the web, following an assemble-it-yourself model & delivering dynamic unique web services with plug & play simplicity.”
iOpus / AlertFox (Germany)
“An in-depth monitoring service for Web 2.0 & SaaS web applications (100% AJAX, Flash, Silverlight Support)”
Jinni (Israel)
“Jinni is the first semantic discovery engine for movies and TV shows, with search and recommendations from the Movie Genome in a visual UI.”
Mendeley (UK)
“Free academic software to manage & share research papers and a network to discover research trends and like-minded researchers.”
Myngle (The Netherlands)
“Myngle changes one of the most traditional industries, by bringing traditional language education to the online mass market.”
Nulaz (The Netherlands)
“See where your friends are, share locations and view local info. Nulaz tells you what’s happening!”
Plista (Germany)
“We personalize your Internet experience by helping you to find and share content that’s relevant to you and hence save you time and money.”
SenseBoard (Sweden)
“Be like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Move around objects on the screen or even type with your bare hands”
Silentale (France)
“With Silentale, store all your personal conversations in one place and access them from anywhere. Time travel through your message history.”
Snagsta (UK)
“A Recommendation site. Make lists of favourite things. Share them with friends. Discover new stuff in the lists of people similar to you.”
SofaTutor (Germany)
“People study late for exams-often too late to get help. sofatutor offers video answers to any School & College topic.”
“Tailgate transforms everything (banners, video, widget, microsites, etc) into e-commerce and distributes any website functionality anywhere”
VinoGusto (Belgium)
“Wine guide and social network. Based on user reviews, it helps to find the right wine and selling point.”
since when Israel is a part of Europe?
Thanks for the comment brent. We’ve made the decision to include Israeli startups together with our partners and jury members.
If it’s good enough for the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s good enough for us
http://www.euro...tory/by-country
Israel is considering full membership in EU and on basis Jews were European and they created Israel as their homeland but consideration majority of them were from Europe.
Disapointing list of finalists…
SenseBoard sounds interesting///
@Marcos, thanks for the comment. It’s really to early to judge the finalists now, and I think the overall quality of all the startups that entered the competition exceeded that of last year, as did the jury members who rated the startups on both occasions.
Senseboard allows you to type “with your bare hands”?
Wow – all these years I’ve typing with my feet!
@Marcos Would you please be so kind to explain what you think is dissapointing about this year’s entries? From what point are you judging?
Cheers,
Martijn
Bubok sounds like something i’d invest in. A true open (and free) publishing platform with built in purchasing would be awesome.
I’ll be there.
Beirut used to be the Paris of the middle east & Israel is near Beirut, so it makes sense that israel is part of Europe, right?
If AlertFox can really monitor Flash applets, that would be interesting…
Interesting, diverse list…
Guys, I am not a native speaker, could you clarify, it this correct for Burt
“Our software help ad agencies to better …”
Should not it be like
“Our software helpS ad agencies to better …”
?
Excellent to see fellow Finns HammerKit up there. It’s about time they were out in the world presenting their kit. All the best to them.
Thanks Kristoffer. We appreciate the support!
Disapointing list
Disappointing list of finalists…
The rules at Plugg.eu state that you must prove any links to Europe if you want your company registered (like headquarters, European founder etc.), so I guess Israel is elligible. Too bad we can’t test all the services, since most of them are closed, in closed beta or in invitation-based beta.
So, on stage, there will be a lot of promises.
I would like to have the list of all the registered companies, but I guess it’s confidential.