London Crowned Winners! Berlin v London Startups Head-to-Head
Well done to all of the pitching companies and their representatives for putting on a great a show on Friday night.
Berlin, it has to be said, put on both a fantastic meetup and had some very high quality companies taking part, none more so than their eventual shortlisted winners Klash, Musicplayr and Kinderfee. Testament to the growing buzz around the Berlin scene and German startups in general, the entrepreneurs were fired up, the products looked extremely polished and the presentations were, let;s say, pushing the boundaries. Ahem.
The London meetup was the smallest in terms of attendance that we’d ever done, but that didn’t stop the 7 companies coming out and showing what they’re made of.
Firstly, from the local side, it was Tray who was declared the winner, closely followed by Shhmoose and Teddle.
When it came down to the Live show, it was extremely close throughout as a highly competent Berlin pitch was met with an equally compelling London rebuttal.
It literally came down to the last pitches as there was not enough daylight between the four preceding companies to break the deadlock. Kla.sh then shook the startup pitch format with a highly disturbing mixture of serial killer stare, mankini and arse tattoo (check the video).
I felt that a combination of off-the-wall pitch and a really great looking product had really put us up against it. Taking one for the team, I decided to even it up in the only way I could. So, in a moment of inspiration, I too decided to get naked and think of England.
Luckily enough, we’d saved the best to last as Tray stood up and impressed both the judges sufficiently to be both of their favourites overall. With Shhmoose a unanimous second, it was confirmed.
LONDON WINS!!
And so, on to the next round showdown with which ever city dares stand in our way!
If you want to rummage around the startups, entrepreneurs, This Week In show, presenters etc. you can take a look at it all in my public MySpareBrain chart, with notes, feeds and links galore.
Just click the chart screenshot below and select the TWiSTldn 6 – 29th June tab.
View TWiSTldn v TWiSTBerlin on MySpareBrain
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TWiSTldn 5 – See the Pitches on This Week in Startups
A hugely successful meetup; 3 impressive companies, a lively panel discussion, awesome venue and over 100 London Entrepreneurs. TWiSTldn 5 featured a Live in-Person meetup with host Jason Calacanis, Tyler Crowley, Peer Index CTO Sanford Dickert and VC Hussein Kanji.
Thanks to our venue sponsors Forward Internet Group for providing a fantastic space, Dominos pizza and beer.
Here’s the official show video, more of the less official discussion, news round table and questions for Jason to follow.
Pitches from StreamingWell, Six3 and Leemail
Read MoreMyChoicePad is a Winner! Founder Zoe Peden on life after TWiSTldn
MyChoicePad founder Zoe Peden dropped me this email to keep us updated and thank TWiSTldn for our minor part in the success that followed their appearance in July, where MyChoicePad and Kliqed had Jason and Tyler stumped as to who would be crowned the winner.
Hi SteveI just wanted to let you know that last week MyChoicePad was announced as a Big Venture Challenge Winner www.bigventurechallenge.com.This was a nationwide competition to find the top 25 most investable social enterprises in the UK – ran by Unltd and funded by The National Lottery.We won a £25k grant to help us scale fast and we’re on a 3 year support programme to find more match funding and to get support and mentoring.You can find details of the programme and the other winners at www.bigventurechallenge.comWe’re so grateful for TWiST:Ldn for getting us off the ground right at the beginning. The exposure and pitch practice worked wonders towards making it through the rounds of the competition.Hope to see you around.Regards,Zoe
So bit about the competition from their press release:
Big Venture Challenge is a national competition to find 25 of the most ambitious social entrepreneurs in England.
The 25 winners of Big Venture Challenge receive an initial £25K grant and the chance to access up to £150K of seed funding if matched by loans or equity from co-investors, plus first class business support and mentoring designed to keep pace with high growth social entrepreneurs.
These social entrepreneurs have vision, talent and determination. In other words, they are:
- people with big ideas to transform disadvantaged communities across England
- people who have got what it takes to build credible ventures
- people who have the ambition to scale up impact fast
Ryan Carson’s TreeHouse is enough to get Jason to open his wallet.
Bath-based Amercian, Ryan Carson of Carsonified and the “Future Of…(web apps, web design, etc.)” events was on the latest This Week in Startups show with Jason and Tyler, to talk about his experiences as a web developer come entrepreneur, building an events business, the desire to build products, raising money and his business/life philosophies (mainly derived from Dale Carnegie at some stage).
The show’s a good watch, and Ryan is a bit of a star. I’m a huge admirer of his companies, mostly, I just love the beautiful design and attentional to detail he puts into everything. I know very well that it can be too easy to skip over design in favour of speed, in a world where he who shouts loudest usually wins. It takes some balls to stick to your guns and apply the same consistently high quality of design to websites and products that Ryan does and I’m a huge admirer of that.
And clearly, there’s a number of people who agree.
Ryan was over in the US and able to attend the studio, since he was presumably out closing the round which included and started with non-other than Kevin Rose, Reid Hoffman, Mark Sustre, Greylock Partner et al. You can see a much better run down of the deal on this TC article.
And maybe it was this illustrious list that made Jason’s competitive streak kick in, and kick himself for originally passing on the deal. Well, it had to happen sometime, heck, we came close a couple of times at TWiSTldn meetups with Tripbod and YReceipts, but Jason finally loosened the purse strings (alright, a little unfair considering the volume of investments he’s been making) on air. What was more surprising was that Jason put out a lengthy email only a few days back explaining why he was cutting back on the Angel investments and so to cave so quickly was quite a surprise.
I think what everyone in the UK and the International meetup cities around the world are waiting for, is Jason to fall in love with one of the global companies and put his money where his mouth is and back some of the TWiST community companies that tickle his fancy.
OVIA nets $2.5m funding round
OVIA, the Online Video Interviewing Application software, and friend & Alumni of TWiSTldn following their early stage pitch at our very first meetup, announced their latest round of funding from DCM.
For insights into the deal, check out this article on VentureBeat, with David Chao, co-founder and general partner of DCM.
It comes not long after a deal which saw the company move entirely to the US and a round of funding through Dave Mclure’s 500 Startups.
TWiSTldn companies will be familiar with OVIA, since we’ve been using the application to take preliminary applications to pitch at our meetups and the team will agree, it’s been a fantastic tool to cut through the nonsense of sifting through decks, emails, phone calls, coffee meetings and get some short straight answers to our questions about the companies and to get a real feel for who the entrepreneur behind the idea is.
I’m sure there’s much more to come from OVIA, and as a member of the TWiSTldn community, we’re rooting for them to kick ass.
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Venture Candy – TWiSTldn Alumni do Battle
Let battle commence!
TWiSTldn has given a platform to many companies to compete for share of voice, to fight for a place on the the live This Week in Startups show. But, such is the fast growing competitive environment we now exist in, it’s only a matter of time before that competition spills out into the streets. We’re talking full-on drunken street-fighting, bandaged fists dipped in glue and nails, baseball bats with nails through the end, winner takes all, fight to the death.
Or maybe not. I may just have a slightly over active imagination, let’s reign it back into reality for a second.
Instead, we’re talking about a prestigious competition run by Venture Candy. Those companies to which we refer are in the “Green” category – that is, companies that strive to make the world a cleaner, greener, more enjoyable place to live. It’s come down to the final three candidates, and proudly we know, you’ll recognise a couple of them.
The Finalists:
GoingGoingBike - James Johnson and crew help cyclists to verify that bikes they buy are not stolen, obtain information about bikes through their Bikepedia, and match buyers with bikes through their Bike Match product. VOTE!
CampingNinja - Founders Rhian Evans and Geoff Vaughn have brought the old process of finding, booking and enjoying Campsites online, in a beautifully designed booking engine. No more trawling outdated websites, phoning/faxing/emailing numerous campsites and turning up to campsites to be dissapointed with what you find. VOTE!
GiveaCar – Tom Chance helps people dispose of their old cars in an environmentally safe and legal way (believe it or not, this doesn’t always happen!). A social enterprise, a highly significant 75% of the proceeds go to charity. VOTE!
You may recall Rhian and Geoff pitching their UK Campsite booking engine, at TWiSTldn 2, back in August 2010 and James Johnson, who pitched at TWiSTldn 3 in February 2011 and made it onto the live show. If you liked either of these really great entrepreneurs and companies, take a minute to vote and make a difference.
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