Smiling Through Hard Times, First Demo Europe Saw A Talent Parade

At the end of each pitch, the judges gave every contesting company a good grilling to plumb the depths of their strategic planning. There were also similar sessions for companies in their pre-startup alpha phase. But in both cases, the products was more of a mashup of ideas rather than truly innovative, disruptive technologies that would set the world on fire.

Small beginnings…

After two days of pitching and bitching, the 90-second AlphaPitch winners were selected by Lars Buch, CEO of the Copenhagen StartupBootCamp. The winners all get an immediate opportunity to pitch at the next BootCamp selection event in Berlin in July for a chance to win mentorship through their early developmental stages.

The European Boot Camp has already attracted 500 applications. These will be whittled down to 20 for the actual event where the AlphaPitch victors will compete to reach the final 10 that win mentor assistance.

The selected projects were:

RuTuner.fm – the first VoIP social network with voice-based media services. At the moment, only serving Russia, RuTuner.fm works using voice messages and can be used  through a toll-free number when a connection to the internet is not available.

Realtime Board – a digital whiteboard allowing users to collaborate freely and visually about business processes or everyday life. It can be used to draw, create sticky notes, write text or upload PDF files – even from Google Drive. All changes are displayed and saved in real time for every participant.

WeStudy.In – an educational counselling portal for students studying, or considering studies, overseas focusing on paid-for services for students and young researchers from Russia and CIS. Among the services are counselling and advice on all areas of overseas studies: educational programme searches, scholarships and internships, or accommodation and social advice.

Amplifr – a publishing platform for musicians, artists and media people (sports, TV celebrities, actors, politicians). Helps users to create and manage their website, newsletter, social media (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter) and other profile media (SoundCloud, YouTube).

A special cloud grant award from Microsoft of $60,000 (£40,000) worth of Windows resources and hosting was presented to HowToSpend (aka Kudapotratil) – a personal finance planner which shows how to repay loans while achieving financial and personal goals. Balancing debt repayment against satisfying needs for holidays, car purchases and other incidentals.

Greater things

But the top Demo God Award was won by the GroupVisor Networking Management Platform – this service helps business professionals to combat the difficulties of maintaining relationships with a growing network of contacts and to make profitable use of them.

This social CRM application creates a sales channel between a company’s employees and their customers. The Demo God Award recognises the merits of the winning company and GroupVisor has been invited to be showcased at the principal Demo meeting in Silicon Valley.

The debut of the company at Demo is quite likely as the “European” company has already followed so many other start-ups and moved its head office to California… probably to find friendlier VCs for its next stage of investment.

Perhaps the next Demo Europe could address how we can keep start-ups from deserting to the Valley and boosting the US economy rather than Europe’s. Sorry, forgot Demo is a Silicon Valley institution – which  is why we were treated to a an arms across the sea (no, not nuclear arms) presentation from the US Ambassador to the Russian Federation Michael McFaul.

In over 20 years of Demo in the US start-up technologies such as Netscape Navigator, Java, Skype Mobile, Palm Computing, and Salesforce.com have been winners. This was Demo Europe’s first year so who knows what will be there to be discovered in the next two decades.