Europe’s best tech start-ups: Europas shortlist published

9 Jan 2013

The shortlist of nominees for the forthcoming Europas start-up awards in Berlin on 22 January has been revealed and more than 1,000 nominees have been put through the judging process.

The nominees were judged by venture capitalists from firms like Kleiner Perkins, Accel and Google Ventures, as well as founders like Bebo’s Michael Birch, Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, not to mention journalists from various tech news sites across Europe. The full shortlist is here.

In addition to the judging process, some 147,321 public votes were logged for the People’s Choice category of the Europas.

The awards, co-organised by the Dublin Web Summit team and TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher, will also feature a regional component seeking the best start-up in a particular region or country, including Ireland, the UK, the Nordics, Germany, Russia, MENA and others.

Irish start-ups included in the shortlist are: Artfetch, Buzzoo, Converser, CurrencyFair, Datahug, Episensor, Examtime, Farmflo, Newswhip, Srve and YouShipped.

Quality start-up surge

“Europe has never seen so much tech start-up activity,” co-organiser and chief adjudicator Butcher said.

“There’s been a huge surge in the quality and quantity of start-ups across Europe, spurred by both the fantastic new platforms available allowing even a teenager to create a start-up from his bedroom.

“Even as Europe goes through tough economic times, we’re seeing a cultural shift towards entrepreneurship amongst the new generation. We’re also seeing more companies like SoundCloud, Hailo, Supercell and others follow in the footsteps of Skype and, lately, Wooga and Spotify as European start-ups with global ambitions,” Butcher said.

Berlin image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com