The Top 10 Up And Coming European Startups This Year

By Joel on October 24, 2012

The major up and coming startup companies in Europe will be the driving force supporting the region’s financial upturn.
Within the walls of these companies, innovation is moving, changing, mixing, and creating some of the top startup companies now and of the future. Some articulate that European investor’s do not have enough courage, while others feel that entrepreneurs may not be daring enough. Whether this is true or not, is of no importance. The point is that startups throughout Europe are overflowing with unique ideas and creativity.

Europe’s Top 10 Most Promising Startups

1. Soundcloud – Berlin, Germany

Founded in 2007 by Alex Ljung, Soundcloud is a sound-platform that permits anyone to grab, create, and share sounds throughout the web, somewhat like YouTube but strictly focusing on sound. With more than 8 million users, they broadcast their partnership with Song Kick & Foursquare, winning the media and audio classification of the telegraph-start-up 100 prize. This year of 2012 is said to be an even bigger year for the company.

2. Tradeshift – Copenhagen, Denmark

Tradeshift was Founded in 2009, and introduced in 2010 by Christian Lanng, Mikkel Hippe Brun and Gert Sylvest.
Their trade is an online invoicing feature for businesses to construct a conglomeration of partners on the Internet for sharing invoices. This company has experienced a speedy rise lately as Tradeshift was able to raise $7 million and announced collaborations with both the Italian and French governments in 2011. This year is only getting better for these creative Danes.

3. iZettle – Stockholm, Sweden

iZettle, which is founded by Magnus Nilsson & Jacob De Geer allows anyone to make card payments anyplace, anytime, anywhere with the use of an iPhone-app and mini-chip card-reader that can be linked to a phone. Founded in 2010 in beta form, the company has successfully raised €11.2 million.
What an awesome idea, this could be the hottest thing out of Sweden since IKEA & Skype.

4. LikeOurselves – London, UK

Started by Pardeep Kullar & Steve Lai, This Web and mobile app assists individuals to find people with similar interests while they are out on the town. Users can choose the kind of individuals they would prefer to meet in various categories like hobbies, spontaneous dates, and students. Anything that brings the right people closer must be good right? Join LikeOurselves today.

5. House Trip – Lisbon, Portugal

House Trip was introduced in 2010 by Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen. It is an apartment hunting Internet website were any person can reserve a villa or apartment, and property-owners can also place their accommodations on the site. They have recently expanded beyond London, Berlin, and Paris, making their way around the whole of Europe and a growing number of countries around the globe, with nearly 60,000 properties listed.
With more than 500,000 nights reserved thus far, they have developed from a staff of 20 to 70 full-time staffers.

6. Radionomy – Brussels, Belgium

Radionomy permits individuals to develop and listen-to radio stations on the web gratis, while sharing a tailored radio-show complete with jingles, music programming, and commercials, with bespoke pod casts and reports to share with friends, family, and strangers around the world community. The company has expanded quickly in 2011 since its creation by Van Kan Cedric, Baudechon Yves, Alexandre Saboudijan and Bindets Gilles back in 2008.
Radionomy has the ability to stream 30 million-hours of online radio per month. Presently, they are securing financing of about $15 million with the assistance of a French investment bank.

7. 6wunderkinder – Berlin, Germany

This German start-up is a multi-platform efficiency solutions company for businesses, groups, and individuals. Founded by Serial Entrepreneur Christian Reber. The company’s main product Wunderlist task-management software, has one million users. They raised $4.2 million in support from Atomico, an investment firm from the entrepreneurs of Skype, one of the largest web-based communication companies in the world. Nearly 40% of their users are in the United States.

8. Fon – Madrid, Spain

Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Fon is determined to supply free wifi across the globe. When someone signs up with Fon, they agree to safely share a small amount of their wifi-bandwidth with Fon. The company has 4 million users and 7 million hotspots. They have managed to raise €10 million in backing and obtained various large partnerships like Belgium’s biggest telecommunications business, Belgacom.

9. Shutl – London, UK

Shutl founder Tom Allason wants to offer delivery times for online orders to as little as 90 minutes. Basically, Shutl will propose its service, which combines capability across local-courier businesses into one web-service for retailers.

10. Storific – Paris, France

Many feel that this start-up has the possibility to modify the job of waiters-inside restaurants completely. To make dining-out more convenient, users with Storific’s mobile-app can check the menu-card of the restaurant they are in and place their orders whenever they choose without waiting for staff to come to see them and take their order. Storific states that the app substantially adds to the amount of orders created-by one table and therefore a positive influence on the restaurant’s revenue. I think Storific’s founder Michael Cohen is on to something here.