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European Web startups pitch investorsPosted on Thu, Apr. 03, 2008
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By TOBY STERLINGAP Business WriterRelated Content
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Executives from a bevy of young European companies took the stage in Amsterdam Thursday, hoping to strike it big in what they anticipate will be a second Internet boom.Twenty-five startup companies paid $3,900 each for a chance to speak for five minutes or less to some 1,000 venture capitalists, journalists, bloggers and fellow entrepreneurs at "The Next Web." Similar conferences have been held for several years in the United States, but they are relatively new to Europe. Conference organizer Patrick de Laive said European entrepreneurs are hungry for capital and a chance to meet one another. "I hope that some of them will break through." Robert Goldberg, a partner at YL Ventures who traveled from San Francisco for the conference, said Europe lacks "early-stage" venture capital. "That's why we're here," he said. "There are incredible educational centers (in Europe) and unbelievable entrepreneurial spirit, but now there needs to be a little bit of energy and capital to be provided to foster that." Few of the companies at The Next Web conference appear revolutionary at first glance - but neither were search engines when Google appeared on the scene. Many offer more and easier ways to slice and share information online or by mobile phone. One of the most straightforward is Belgium's Zilok - a site where people can offer their belongings for rent instead of for sale. The company, which operates in France, the U.S. and most recently The Netherlands, is "becoming a phenomenon," said founder Gary Cige, not shy to promote his business. "Experts are saying that ... renting is going to become a major way of consumption in the future." He said the company had expected power tools to be its bread and butter, but strollers and professional-quality cameras turned out to be big hits. "One guy who happened to have a popcorn machine has rented it out six times and he's paid it off now - of course it's an unusual story, but we think we'll see more things like that happening," Cige said. One of the startups is a Swedish company called Twingly, a search engine for blogs that incorporates employs user ratings. It competes in a field that includes Google Inc. and other major players but sets itself apart with a paid service for newspapers. When a high-quality blog discusses a newspaper article, it pulls a selection of the commentary off the blog and sticks it on the newspaper's comment section with a link back to the blog. Bloggers like that because it increases traffic to their sites, and newspapers like Twingly because it helps them reach the younger, tech-savvy people who have been abandoning them in droves. "The major advantage for newspapers is that they can move their brands onto the social part of the web, and be a part of the blogosphere," said Chief Executive Martin Kallstrom. Newspapers in the Scandinavian countries, Spain and Portugal have adopted the service, and the largest Dutch daily, De Telegraaf, began using it this week.
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