On May 11th ten amazing startups flew to milan to conquer the Italian capital of innovation in the hope of finding the right investor, partner and/or fellow startup to collaborate with and to bring their companies to the next level!
This year the competition was quite high, with more than 200 very talented international startups applying to the call for project, but these are the 10 startups that have made it:
- AriaWearables (Milan) an active thermal shoe sole that heats and cools down the feet
- CloudRoom (Madrid) a cloud based learning platform that brings MOOCs into the corporate world
- GirlCrew (Dublin) a global community for women
- LinkFish(Berlin) a bookmark manager that allows people to work with the information behind urls
- Replex(Berlin) a service for IT teams that enables them collecting critical information on all infrastructure assets both physical and virtual
- Replit (Madrid) a social discussion platform based on short videos
- Solo (Milan) a virtual POS that lets merchants accept credit and debit card payments
- SwiftComply (Dublin) a platform solution for Fat, Oil and Grease compliance in the food service industry
- Toursnapp (Berlin) a service that applies the concept of Smart cities to cultural tourism
- UpToSeven(Madrid) a social network that enables foodies to share recipes
These 10 companies will travel across Europe visiting the WELCOME HQs aiming to to get in touch with each ecosystem innovation and tech scene, meet corporates, fellow startups, potential clients and investors. The first stop of 2016 engaged them in a three day visit to Milan from May 11th till May 13th, where they got in touch with the Milano startup scene, met some of the most active investors and visited most of the main accelerators.
On the day of their arrival they had been welcomed in the dpixel office for an introductory session on the Italian investors’ and startups’ ecosystem and a presentation of who is who, all the relevant contacts in Milan. On the moring of May 12th startups visited TAG Calabiana one of the bigger co-working. While in the afternoon, for their first Italian public appearance dpixel organized an ad hoc pitching session during the Seeds&Chips event to allow them to present their projects in front italian VC fund representative and angel investors, corporates and media, in a public event that gathered more than 150 attendees.
The day finished with a private dinner during which startups were introduced to some of the main investors and policy makers. On the last day of their visit, May 13th, startups visited Impact Hub, another popular co-working space. The visit was quite a success, the founders enjoyed their staying in Milan and many of them took advantage of the situation getting in touch with some relevant players with whom they are still following up.
“Milan was a great kick off to start the European tour, meeting all my colleagues and knowing the startup unique propositions was the best!” said Miguel Almagro CEO of UptoSeven “Seeds&Chips event was also a great event to visit, finding companies from the food industry to get inspiration”
But this was just the beginning of their adventure… they will all be in Berlin on June 9th an 10th to attend the Startup Europe Summit!