Competing isn’t just about winning
By: Kim Nielsen , Local Software Economy Lead
Tags: BizSpark, entrepreneurs, funding, SMEs
While competitions are great to win, they are also a great way for start-ups to network with investors and possible partners, hone their presentation skills and generate some visibility. That’s why we were pleased to sponsor the Eurecan European Venture Contest which drew to a close this month.
Across 2009, the Contest challenged over 700 companies for a place in the final. Companies qualified for the EEVC Top 100 from investment events including the Nordic Venture Forum, Benelux Venture Forum, Tech Media Invest 2009, Cleantech Invest, plus six dedicated contest semi-finals from Budapest to Lisbon.
This year-long project has been a platform for companies in our BizSpark program to show the European business community what great work they are doing. We are very proud of the eight BizSpark members who made it to the final 110: Autolog (Denmark), DeciZium (Belgium), Doc On Time (Spain), Econoetica srl (Italy), Frotcom (Portugal), Nomadesk (Belgium),Overtreusoftware (Portugal) and INTEC (Luxembourg). I took the chance to video some of these companies during the contest – check out the videos below.
We were delighted that Nomadesk – a BizSpark member from Belgium – made it through to the finals in Barcelona. The company has a great proposition: to provide on-demand file sharing, synchronization and data security for the world’s increasingly ‘nomadic’ workforce. The solution is very intuitive, simple to use and designed to fit seamlessly into any user’s desktop environment. An ideal solution for today’s SMEs.
CEO Filip Tack had this to say about participating in the contest, “For us, it’s not about the winning or even the prize money, though of course that is always useful. The European Venture Contest has been great for Nomadesk on three levels. First, you get to be challenged by a group of judges who really know what they are talking about. Second, it has helped us to network with more people, particularly investors. And third, it gives us visibility.”
Filip is also a fan of the BizSpark program itself: “It’s important to us. BizSpark gives us availability to the latest innovations from Microsoft and there are huge cost benefits to this. But beyond free technology, BizSpark has also given us access to the wider Microsoft community.”
So what’s in it for Microsoft? Well, this is all part of our mission to support the next generation of entrepreneurs through the BizSpark program to help them succeed. BizSpark is about software, support and visibility – and the contest has been a good platform to in achieving this last point, by giving our BizSpark start-ups some great exposure to business partners, angel investors and venture capitalists.
Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman Europe, Microsoft Corporation commented “We’ve been delighted to support this contest, which is a partnership that enables us support more ICT startups.We do this not just with technology, but in also other areas critical to their success, such as providing greater access to capital and visibility.”
Congratulations are due to the ultimate winner of the Contest: Biomodics, the Danish life sciences company.