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12 companies pitch for cash at Startup Bootcampв s London investor day

2012-02-02 13:40
The Next Web has been on-hand to get an early glimpse of the plethora of startups emerging from accelerator programmes across the UK and Europe. In the UK, there are a number of hotspots springing up around the country, with the likes of Cambridgeв s Springboard and Birminghamв s Oxygen Accelerator launching some cool new startups, and two weeks ago Ignite100 launched 9 new startups and lit up the UKв s Northeast startup scene. This week, it was Startup Bootcamp 8217;s turn, and we were there to see 12 startups from across Europe as they pitched for investment. Back in December we reported that Startup Bootcamp is currently expanding, with the launch of a new base in Amsterdam, adding to its existing presence in Copenhagen, Dublin and Madrid. Berlin and London are being added to its accelerator network in 2012. Following the TechStars model, Startup Bootcamp selects a group of early-stage Internet companies, gives them up to в 17,000 ($22,100) and puts them through an intense 3-month development and mentoring program in return for a small stake in each business, before presenting them to investors. Incubators are for premature babies, to keep them safe and warm from the outside world, said Alex Farcet, the co-founder and Managing Director of Startup Bootcamp. Accelerators, which is what we are, are rocket-boosters. We launch startups into space, and then hope they stay in orbit. The secret sauce of the startupbootcamp is the mentor-base. When I launched the programme in 2007, I spent six months headhunting the very best mentors I could find. Almost five years on, Startup Bootcamp is going from strength to strength. Over three hours earlier this week, twelve startups took to the stage to pitch their products in the hope of gleaning the necessary funds to advance to the next level. And here they are. Archify: Search beyond Google (Austria) Have you ever had the problem of finding something again you have already seen on Facebook or elsewhere on the Internet , asks Gerald BГ ck, co-founder of Archify. A few vague nods of agreement flickered around the audience as Gerald explained some of the difficulties in remembering where you 8217;ve read a piece of content online. ArchifyВ is a browser plugin which, once installed, saves everything online that you browse - including every update from you and your friends on your social streams. If you search for something on Google, a little overlay will appear telling you that there are also results in Archify. Archify is like your own personal browsing archive. In addition to indexing all the content youв ve viewed, Archify also takes a screenshot of each page you visit, allowing you to not only find content, but view it exactly the way it looked on the day you visited the page. It 8217;s currently in private beta, and we 8217;ll be revisiting this one again soon. AutoUncle: Find used car deals (Denmark) AutoUncleВ is like a flight-comparison website, but for used cars. It garners data on the second-hand ca...
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