Startups are springing up everywhere in Europe at an increasing rate. With the beginning of the new year upon us, we’re taking a look at larger European countries and coming up with a list of five startups in each country to look out for in 2013.
We started with France, and have now moved on to look at Germany; it’s been hard to narrow this list down to just five in both cases. With this in mind, we decided to go with five promising German startups from different sectors, and both big and small. They all have something special to add to the web experience in 2013.
Kreditech – A Hamburg-based startup providing real-time scoring technology that applies big data analysis to thousands of data points in credit applications over individuals (Update – March 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link). Kreditech was founded in 2012 and announced in December that it has now raised $4 million in total. The promising startup operates offices in Hamburg, Warsaw, Barcelona and Kharkov and is planning the European launch for its B2B product “Scoring as a Service” in 2014. By the way, check out their current job listing on our Job Board.
HitFox Group – This game distribution company builder, headquartered in Berlin, just announced its international expansion and rapid growth in revenue and market reach (Update – March 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link). Only weeks after entering Asia Pacific with an office in Seoul, Korea, the young company recently extended its local presence to San Francisco and Paris. The HitFox Group is focused on building and acquiring synergetic businesses in the fields of game distribution and user acquisition. Its portfolio companies include ad2games, AppLift and Game Finder (Update – March 2023: The startups seem to be no longer in business under these websites, and we therefore deactivated the original links).
twago – The Berlin-based startup in the “cloud working” space recently completed its Series A funding round of $3 million last June, and also recently expanded into other relevant markets like France. twago acquires jobs and projects from companies, as well as small- and medium-sized clients on its platform globally. Clients have access to more than 168,000 freelancers and agencies from 177 countries. twago.com is available in German, French, English, Spanish and Italian. The startup just won the German Startup Award in the category ‘Best Web App’.
smarchive – One of the first intelligent document filing systems received a seven-figure investment last November from T-Venture, CHECK24 and some business angels. The Munich-based startup, which describes itself as the smart ring binder for the Digital Age, was founded in 2011. Its software, which is currently in the closed beta phase, will be made available to the general public in the first quarter of 2013. We’re excited!
YieldKit – The Hamburg-based competitor of VigLink and Skimlinks closed a Series A round with Tim Schumachers (Sedo’s founder) and HackFwd last November. The funds from this round will be used for the acceleration of new innovative product releases, as well as to strengthen market leadership in German speaking countries and the international roll-out. YieldKit, which was launched in 2011, provides solutions for turning any product mention on content sites into a monetization opportunity.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!
