Startups are springing up everywhere in Europe at an increasing rate. At the beginning of this year, we took a look at major European countrie s and tried to come up with a list of 5 startups for each country to look out for in 2014. We started with France, have moved on to Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland, the UK, The Netherlands and now it’s time for Germany.
As with all of the lists, it’s been hard to narrow this list down to just five. Despite this, we’ve decided to select five promising Dutch startups, each coming from different sectors. All of them entered the market within the last three years and each of the listed startups has something special to add to the web experience in 2014.
Trip.me – This promising startup from Berlin offers an easy way to connect directly with local tour providers in any country you wish to visit. Trip.me’s goal is to bring the best from every country together in one place so you can quickly and easily organise your trip. Trip.me was founded in 2013 by a handful of web-savvy world travellers. They had the idea that you should be able to buy a personalised tour directly from the person organising it. Why would you want to talk to a travel agent or middleman in an office thousands of miles from your destination, or take the same trip that countless others have taken? You want to talk to locals who have real inside information about the place you’re going to visit and an itinerary that is made specifically for you.
Twisper – Founded in 2012, Twisper is a ‘Smart Location Diary’ – or if you prefer the longer version, its a “locations-based bookmarking tool, social network and recommendations app for the sophisticated traveller”. Twisper guides you to cafes, bars, restaurants, hotels and shops that you will love, based on your favourites and social network. The Berlin-based startup wants to inspire you to discover unique concepts and exclusive quality, whether in your hometown or across the globe. The Twisper team believes that travel should be personal, social and smart.
Asuum – Founded at the beginning of 2013, Asuum offers an advertising solution that allows publishers to monetise and enrich their content at the same time. The Berlin-based startup is already working with some of the largest publishing houses in Europe. How does it work? Native advertising brings content and commerce together, and Asuum’s context-aware technology automatically enriches and monetises said content. You can now shop without needing product references in the text, as Asuum is freeing up publishers from having to write about products or linking to them. The startup helps content creators to focus on what they do best: creating great content. In October 2013, Asuum received $700k in seed funding.
CouchCommerce – CouchCommerce is a cloud based e-commerce SaaS platform, offering responsive online shop apps for ‘post-PC’ devices like tablets, smartphones and smart TVs based on AngularJS technology. CouchCommerce is based in Hannover and was founded in January of 2012. The startup has been bootstrapped by a founding team with longstanding e-commerce experience. The vision of the ambitious CouchCommerce team is to become the leading responsive commerce platform for brands and manufacturers in the SMB sector. In September 2013, CouchCommerce secured €1.2 million in seed funding.
GoEuro – This Berlin-based startup has created a multi-mode search engine for all major forms of travel, that compares and combines air, bus, trains, and car rental options for destinations to and from Europe. GoEuro, which was founded in 2012, aims to simplify the problem of figuring out the best mode of transport to get from A to B — whether that’s coach, train or plane. The platform suggests nearby airports and train routes to connect up where you’d like to go, and also estimates the entire length of travel time. After pulling in diverse data sources to offer various route options, GoEuro is displaying a comparative chart based on what’s cheapest or fastest. In 2013, GoEuro received $4 million in seed funding (Update – May 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
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!
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