One of the highlights during our EU-Startups Summit last week in Barcelona was clearly our big pitch competition. In total we received and reviewed around 950 applications from startups from across Europe. 14 of them made it to the finals and pitched in front of an expert jury and in front of the attendees who followed the program on the main stage. This year’s pitch competition featured an interesting mixture of exciting business models and ambitious startup teams, from nine different European countries!
In the end, it was the Berlin-based startup Tribe, which provides lifelike avatars with the ability to read and express emotion for customer service, that won the competition and took home the prize package worth €75,000.
The package includes €50,000 in AWS cloud hosting credits, €9,000 in credits for an enterprise package of the social media monitoring tool Senti.One, €8,500 in credits for the explainer video creation services from mysimpleshow, €2,000 in credits for the design platform 99designs, a Spaces coworking membership for 2 people & 1 year (value: €3,600), and €1,900 in credits for job posts on the EU-Startups Job Board.
Tribe is a Berlin-based startup that brings conversational AI to life; giving it a face and human emotions. Their realistic, lifelike 3D avatars are easy to create, and allow AI-powered customer support bots and virtual store assistants to express real human emotions on user interfaces; understand and react to the mood of users; and companies to collect rich visual, emotional feedback from customers that enable them to improve their decision-making and customer service models.
The company’s CEO Julian Hoelz delivered a very good pitch and not eventually conviced our expert jury and audience.
The expert jury included high profile investors like Ravi Kurani (earlybird), Marie-Helene Ametsreiter (Speedinvest), Stephan Glänzer (formerly Passion Capital), and Josep Solé (OneRagtime).
According to the jury, it was a tough decision, since there were many other strong startups that took part in the competition. As Marie-Helene correctly pointed out, it would be nice to see more female applicants and female founders at next year’s pitch competition. We completely agree with this observation and will try our best to motivate more women to apply next year!
Once again: Congratulations to the Tribe team and to the startup’s CEO Julian Hoelz, who represented the company on stage! And last but not least: A big “Thank You” to all participants at this year’s EU-Startups Summit. You were awesome! 🙂
Our Event Sponsors
Arrow is a global technology company with thousands of engineers, exclusive online design tools, distribution services, marketing and supply chain expertise all set up to support you! They teamed up with leading entrepreneurship platforms like Indiegogo to help bring new ideas from concept to market, and put every resource in the hands of entrepreneurs.
Catalonia Trade & Investment is the public agency that works to attract foreign investment to Catalonia, promoting the area as attractive, innovative and competitive business location. Check their offerings and the Catalonia Startup Directory.
InfoJobs is the leading platform in Spain to find new job opportunities and the best talent. In 2018, more than 3 million jobs were offered and 1 out of 3 people who apply find a new job. Already over 50,000 companies in Spain are trusting InfoJobs every year to find talented employees.
Catalunya Emprèn, a program of the Generalitat de Catalunya, promotes public and private actions for the support of entrepreneurship. The creation, growth and success of startups and new companies, as well as the promotion of entrepreneurship, are the main objectives of this initiative.
SAP.iO is growing a generation of revolutionary software businesses in the SAP ecosystem. Through the SAP.iO Fund & Foundry, they help the next wave of enterprise software innovation build products, find customers and change industries by investing in and accelerating startup innovation.
Target Global is an international Venture Capital firm headquartered in Berlin, with €700 million in assets under management. Connecting the key European startup ecosystems, Target Global leverages the unique DNA of each of their target geographies, across their global network.
K-Startup Grand Challenge, organised by the Korean government agency NIPA, is a startup competition helping startups to expand into the Korean market and the broader Asian market. The application phase starts in April. The top 40 startups will be invited to Korea for a 3½ month-long accelerator program. Free office space and financial support included. The 1st prize winner will receive $100K cash prize.
Spaces offers creative working environments with a unique entrepreneurial spirit and a great community. Add an international network of mobile workspaces and a full calendar of business events and networking lunches, and you’ll see just how Spaces keeps you engaged and open to new possibilities. Originating in Amsterdam, Spaces wants to redefine the way work is done.
