Startups are springing up everywhere in Europe at an increasing rate. At the beginning of this year, we took a look at major European countries and tried to come up with a list of 5 startups for each country to look out for in 2014. We started with France, and now it’s time for Spain.
As with France’s list, it’s been hard to narrow this list down to just five. Despite this, we’ve decided to select five promising Spanish 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.
ByHours.com – This Barcelona-based startup enables you to book a hotel room for 3, 6, 12 or more hours. One use case could be if you have to wait at the airport in Bilbao for your connecting flight, and would like to take a shower and a nap over a three-hour stay; one of the last hotels to become available on ByHours.com is the Holiday Inn Express Bilbao, which is right next to the airport and offers a free shuttle. ByHours.com was founded in 2011 and secured €600K seed funding in July of 2013.
ForceManager – Also founded in 2011, ForceManager is a fully-integrated sales force management system. The Barcelona- and Madrid-based startup has created a simple-to-use sales platform and optimized it for mobile devices like tablets, desktop computers and smartphones. ForceManager, which was founded by a dedicated team of expert sales consultants and engineers, is available Spanish and English.
Lingualia – A social network for language learning that applies artificial intelligence to personalize the course to match the exact requirements of each student. The Valencia-based startup, which was founded in 2012, motivates its users and guides them towards a faster progression. Thanks to an algorithm, Lingualia is able to learn from each user and adapts its language learning course to each student, not the other way around.
Medtep – This Barcelona-based startup creates secure and helpful applications for patients and healthcare professionals. Their applications uClinics (for healthcare professionals) and uPatient (for patients) are making the prevention and health monitoring processes easier. Medtep was founded in 2011 with the goal to improve doctor-patient communication, optimise doctor processes and empower patients.
JoinUp Taxi – Meet the mobile platform that promotes shared taxi journeys. This Barcelona-based startup is closing partnerships in order to be the official supplier of shared taxis for events, including the World Handball Championship and the Rhizome Festival in Madrid. The JoinUp Taxi App is available for Android and iOS devices. Founded in 2012, JoinUp Taxi has secured €200K in angel funding in July of 2013.
The above list was prepared with the help of the European Startup Initiative (esi). During their research they spoke to accelerators and startup enthusiasts from all EU member states and asked them which three startups from their home country are most likely to be successful on a global scale. Their answers were one of the sources that led us to the above list of 5 Italian startups to look out for in 2014.
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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