Startup Ignite

Are you a European startup interested or coming to Web 2.0 Expo Europe? Read on…

Announcing Startup Ignite!

Are you a hot technology startup? Are you in Europe? Do you have a new announcement you want to share with the Web community? On the first night of Web 2.0 Expo Europe we will highlight six companies on the main stage, presented in front of an audience of industry peers, media and VCs. The format is simple, five minutes on stage and a maximum of 15 slides. No demos. Videos are allowed.

Date & Time: Tuesday, 21 Oktober, 17:15 – 18:00
Submissions Deadline: Friday, October 10
Submissions Form: Start Up Ignite Submission Form

Startup Ignite Presenters

• aka-aki

  aka-aki evolved from the founders diploma project at the University of the Arts Berlin. The aka-aki approach is to bring about the functions we know from internet communities into real life, where they're much more useful than in the virtual space. Because real life does not just take place in front of a computer, it's happening in the streets, on trains, at parties, in universities and in clubs. So aka-aki decided to enhance reality with functions we know from virtuality. That's not science fiction. At Startup Ignite the company will give an exclusive preview of the aka-aki iPhone app that is to be launched within the next weeks.

• Amazee

  Amazee is a more evolved social networking site designed to empower individuals and small groups to launch global initiatives. Amazee was built to channel activism and provides powerful tools to help project initiators organize, collaborate on, promote, and fund projects of any size with participants from anywhere around the world.

• iDesktop.tv

  iDesktop.tv is an amazing modern dynamic web application for searching, watching, organising and now, creating custom players for Youtube videos. With over 15 different player and playlist types and over 300 options to customise, users can produce professional unique video players that reflect the style and design of their website.

• plista

  plista is a user-centric personalization and recommendation network that works across multiple websites. It allows enhancing online experience by recommending more relevant content, products and advertising in real-time. It works as a widget, per API integration or browser plug-in where no site cooperation is needed. plista delivers on-site as well as cross-site recommendations. It allows the publishers to monetize websites, promote items and target customers individually.

• SoundCloud

  SoundCloud is a brand new audio platform that makes is simple for people to manage and collaborate on their music online. Music professionals use it daily to receive, send & distribute their tracks. Some call it email for music, some call it flickr for audio others just call it kick-ass.

• txtr.com

  txtr.com is a platform facilitating connected reading — it lets you follow what your friends read, enables you to send and receive interesting texts, and allows mobile access to your text collections. This might be your own private pile of books and news to read on a plane, or the documents your team has been working on and that you may need to access on the go. Wizpac Ltd., the company behind txtr, was founded in early 2008 by a group of serial entrepreneurs and book enthusiasts, including Andreas Steinhauser and Frank Rieger, who developed what is now Nokia Maps.

Startup Ignite Judges and Bios

A committee of esteemed industry judges will be reviewing submissions:

• Lukasz Gadowski, CEO of Team Europe Ventures Ltd In 2002 Lukasz Gadowski founded Spreadshirt.com (currently ~300 employees worldwide, backed by Accel Europe) and was the co-founder of the Social Network "StudiVZ" (sold to Holtzbrinck in 2007, today Germanies largest website). At the beginning of 2008 Gadowski moved from the Spreadshirt Board of Directors to the Supervisory Board, where he is now chairman.
  
  Lukasz is an active internet investor since 2006 and has a portfolio of over 60 internet companies across geographies and stages (for example imagekind.com, rapleaf.com, panfu.de, zlio.com, dawanda.de, amiando.com, imedo.de, toksta.com, apomio.de, epuls.pl, netzathleten.de). Since 2007 he was involved in the creation of numerous Internet companies, for example Brands4Friends.com, MisterSpex.com, Absolventa.com, Triphunter.com, Playnik.com as well as Kaeuferportal.de. For these ventures Oliver Jung (AdInvest, Zürich) is an important partner.
  
  In September 2008 Lukasz launched ‘Team Europe Ventures’ which combines his existing portfolio. Within the new entity he plans to scale and expand his activities – among other towards investments in later stages and more international focus.
  
  Lukasz was born in Poland and grew up in Germany. Today he lives in Berlin. For more information about Lukasz and Team Europe Ventures, please visit the web site www.teameurope.net.
• Christophe Maire, VP Nokia (founder of gate5 & Plazes) Christophe has more than 15 years entrepreneurial and investing track record in media- and mobile communications-related technology areas. He currently serves as Head of Social Media for Nokia Context Based Unit.
  
  In 2000, Christophe founded and headed gate5 AG, the Berlin-based pioneer in mobile mapping & community service before selling the company to Nokia in late 2006. He led the company through multiple phases of venture financing and in turn grew gate5 to Euro 18 Mio in sales.
  
  Before that, Christophe was Managing Director of Filmstudio Babelsberg FXcenter, one of Europe’s largest digital media production venture, raising equity from Bertelsmann, Vivendi and Deutsche Telekom ($100m tot. funding). He also initiated CyberCinema, the first European network of electronic cinema venues and co-founded 20/20 Vision, a Film production company focusing on feature films made in Europe and emerging countries. He started is career in Japan as innovations manager for Japanese group TOTO k.k in Tokyo. Maire is further involved in a number of internet ventures as co-founder, early stage investor and board member.
  
  Past and current engagements include, Studivz, Plazes, SoundCloud, StudentSN (Turkey), Toostep (India), Txtr, Playall, etc.. Christophe has spoken at conferences on entrepreneurship in Europe, mobile web and internet communities’ related topics.
  
  A Swiss citizen, he studied business & administration at the University of St. Gallen and Barcelona and attended executive education in NYU and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
• Brady Forrest, Web 2.0 Expo Europe conference co-chair & O’Reilly Radar. Brady is also Chair for the O'Reilly Where 2.0 and Emerging Technology (ETech) conferences.
  
  Additionally, he co-chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O'Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic).
  
  Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.
• Mike Butcher, Editor of TechCrunch UK & Ireland, part of the TechCrunch Network of blogs covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups.
  
  Mike has written for UK national newspapers including the The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and magazines including The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and The Industry Standard Europe and he has launched or re-launched several media web sites.
  
  In 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 Mike was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry the UK by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. He has appeared on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, commenting on technology and new media. In August 2008 TechCrunch UK was named the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine.

Special Startup Discount

For those start-ups that have not yet launched or received funding, we’re offering a dedicated 35% flat discount across all conference packages. Please email Janetti Chon at jchon@techweb.com with a request for a registration code. Please provide details on your company and growth stage.

Companies DO NOT have to be launching but company, product or project announcements MUST BE new. Words of advice: aim to present something that is interesting but also entertaining!