Hungary is a cool small country in middle of Europe. Many Hungarians see themselves as talented underdogs and might joke about Hungary having lost most of the wars in its history, being a kind of isolated thanks to their strange language which Slavs dominating the region do not understand. The Hungarians are right about talent. Hungarians showed a couple of examples that building a startup from a country that isn’t a huge market itself is possible. Here is my list of new young companies where I see potential.
1. Enbrite.ly is a company that reveals the hidden fraud in advertising. Although online advertising is a $121 billion business, as much as 36% of ads are ‘fraudulent’, where bots are the viewers instead of humans. This amounts to $41 billion in fraud each year. Unviewable ads, non-human generated clicks, malevolent publishers and negligent middlemen – this is the murky reality of online advertising. Enbrite.ly tries to make traffic sources for ads as transparent as possible. The firm won the $500K investment prize for the best startup at Slush 2014. The syndicate was lead by FiBAN, and included over 30 business angels from around the world.
2. Brandvee allows you to find influencers among your visitors and turn them into your advocates. Social sharing doubles every year, and is now shifting towards mobile, which is somewhat untraceable. Brandvee tracks these shares, and then finds the influencers that both set the trends for content and also drive sales through referrals. With Brandvee’s data, marketers of e-commerce companies can generate more sales with targeted on-site referral offers. A few major brands in CEE already use the service (Update – July 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
3. Tago Arc is the world’s most unique bracelet with infinite display possibilities. Its crowdfunding campaign is currently trending on Indiegogo as a #NObutton #NOcord #NOcharge bracelet, with a full surface ‘E Ink’ display controlled by smartphones. The tago arc is an accessory that fits your dynamic lifestyle perfectly, where you can tag any pattern or text you want on your bracelet via the tago app downloaded on your smartphone. Although it is high-tech it is extremely easy to interact with: you can change the design on the go, whenever and wherever you want, any number of times.
4. Synetiq might feel a bit scary for some. Focus groups and market research are very expensive, but Synetiq is offering an alternative – crowdsourced neuromarketing. Synetiq is a cutting-edge media research company providing content producers with emotional insights directly from their customers’ brain and body. Synetiq leverages recent developments in wearable bio-sensor technology to understand how people feel when they see an advertisement, TV show or movie, and helps its customers create more engaging videos and ultimately increase their sales. Synetiq’s approach, called ‘crowdsourced neuromarketing’, delivers unprecedented insights to understand their customers anywhere in the world in a fast and cost-efficient way. What is next? Similar sensors on our body that will be automatically buy products while we will watch TV? 🙂 (Update – July 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
5. Pubify is a SaaS solution for e-books. The startup distributes e-books to every retailer automatically with one click, from major stores (such as Apple, Amazon etc.) to local ones. Pubify lets you create your e-book, distribute worldwide and integrate social media for effective marketing, so you can just sit back and enjoy your hassle-free publishing experience. Pubify just joined WiseGuys in Tallinn, one of the best accelerators in the Baltics (Update – July 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
Many thanks to Peter Kovacs for his help with this list.
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 the Startup Sourcing Service of EU-Startups.com!
