Europe finds itself in an interesting position right now as it begins to look inward for progress and development.
This has not been a surprise to me. In the past six months, I have found myself in Europe three times and I have been working with several new vendors and partners there. Before 2017 I had only been to Europe once and it was for vacation. So, it is obvious that there is quite a lot of new movement, expansion and growth there.
Indeed, there’s a massive opportunity for the continent’s various tech hubs to compete globally given a prevailing mindset of sustainability. European companies are found to be open to the growth markets moving to into their countries from their viable U.S. counterparts.
Companies in Europe are gaining ground in innovation as well. In the latest innovation ranking, Europe appears to have it's own personal Silicon Valley incubator. Technology knowledge and science, with the accompanying processes and analytics seem to be staying in Europe -- and bringing the growth hacking to their own countries.
Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany are leading the charge. Even Central and Eastern European countries are emerging as strong tech players in the region. Homegrown ventures are doing quite well with a number of startups starting to dominate their respective verticals.
Here are 7 European startups that I believe are perfect examples of why European startups are moving ahead in the game.
Sales AI: Growbots
How do you improve upon sales and marketing automation? Use artificial intelligence (AI). Founded in Poland, Growbots uses machine learning to automate outbound sales activities.
Growbot’s AI algorithms can create a list of prime leads from its growing database of more than 200 million contacts at more than 90 percent accuracy. From there, these Growbots can send out personalized communication to its leads. They even schedule campaigns to nurture them.
This allows sales teams to focus more on building relationships with customers and closing sales rather than get stymied by gathering and engaging weak leads. Growbots has since build up a presence in San Francisco and Cleveland aside from its Warsaw office.
The company reported a 1,200 percent growth in revenue in 2016 with a monthly recurring revenue of $350,000 in 2017. Growbots’ impressive growth helped them land a $2.5 million investment round last month, bringing the company’s total funding to $4.2 million.
Employee Engagement: Smarp
Finland-based startup Smarp offers an employee communication app designed to boost engagement in the workplace.
The platform allows organizations to build private, in-house social feeds consisting of topic-specific posts. These posts serve as springboards from which team members can engage in internal discussions and schedule social shares with their own audiences.
Smarp also features a gamified leaderboard that encourages employees to earn points towards bonuses for their social media activity, allowing companies to help their teams to become influencers-in-residence.
Launched in 2011 and growing ever since, Smarp has raised more than €5 million in funding to date. This includes a €3-million round last summer, in order to finance their global expansion.
Fintech: Trustly
Swedish payments fintech Trustly allows merchants to accept payments from customers’ bank accounts. Fund transfers are a popular means of payment in territories like Scandinavia and Southwest Europe.
Trustly enables e-commerce merchants and gaming companies to cater to this particular payment method. Recently, the company reached a milestone after reaching an annualized run rate of €3.5 billion in processed payments.
The service currently covers 29 countries across Europe. The Financial Times recently included Trustly as part of the FT 1000: Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies.
EdTech: Brainly
Educational technology company Brainly has successfully gone global from its humble roots in Poland. The social learning service builds learning communities and encourages users to help each other. It has a collaborative peer-to-peer learning.
Brainly also applies gamification principles such as leaderboards to encourage user participation. It boasts of more than 80 million monthly users across 35 countries around the world. Funderbeam estimates the company to be worth $100 million based on Brainly’s last round of funding in 2016.
Health: Clue
Clue is a health app that tracks women’s period and ovulation cycles. The app aims to help women across all age groups understand what is happening in their bodies and what they are they go through. Clue helps women of all ages, whether they are in puberty, fertility, or menopause.
Clue leverages research and machine learning to provide personalized information to its users. Recently, Clue announced a new functionality that is aimed to help users understand the impact of birth control to their health. Clue currently has a user base of 2.5 million women from 180 different countries. The company is based in Berlin.
Cybersecurity: DarkTrace
DarkTrace is a cybersecurity company that uses machine learning (ML) to identify and handle cybersecurity threats. DarkTrace is based in the UK and boasts of having experts from the University of Cambridge and various intelligence agencies working with them. Its advisory board includes former CIA and MI5 officials.
Among its core technologies are self-learning algorithms that plot “patterns of life” for all activities within an organization to better detect unusual behavior in the target environment.
The company has already proven successful thwarting threats and data leaks. It has also garnered awards and recognitions from various groups worldwide.
Internet-of-Things: Playbrush
Oral hygiene is a must, but anyone who has kids would know how challenging it can be to make them brush their teeth properly -- especially on their own.
Playbrush gamifies the act of brushing teeth by converting the toothbrush into a game controller. A Bluetooth device is attached to a toothbrush which controls a variety of mobile games.
Playbrush is founded by Austrian inventor Paul Varga with help from the University College London. The company has received €700,000 in seed funding. Recently, the company signed a deal with Unilever to launch a co-branded version of the device.
Towards global competitiveness
The rapid rise of these startups lends proof that Europe is taking its share out of the tech world. Europe is also becoming it's own monopoly of the tech industry.
These startups show that building a product or service that provides value to a target market is a recipe for success. Exploring niche and under-serviced markets also make it easy to lead such verticals.
These facts and the vast resources for them in Europe are inspiring entrepreneurs globally. These ventures have the global potential to compete because they are dedicated to innovation, as well as excellence -- and they are proving it in Europe.
Tech ecosystems and venture capital will always find their way to new markets who have the innovation -- and into new countries who are proving they have it -- and they are ready.
Image Source: Pixabay