10 startups that graduated from Rockstart’s Amsterdam 2015 cohort
Amsterdam’s Rockstart accelerator takes on 10 startups every year to develop their ideas into a business.
This year’s startups pitched a crowd of investors, journalists and other business people on demo day inside an old warehouse in Amsterdam North and we came away impressed with the calibre of companies.
If you’ve ever tried to acquire the perfect domain name for your startup from another person, you’ll understand how difficult it is to negotiate the price and actually complete the sale.
This service allows those that own domain names to list them for sale with an attractive landing page, rather than one laden with advertising and malware which is commonly found online.
Buyers can search for any domain name and get in touch with the seller directly instead of laboriously hunting for their contact details. It then facilitates the payment and transfer of the domain.
Undeveloped has only launched for the Netherlands top-level domain and sells domains with an average price of €1,400.
The company also announced that it has received a $400,000 investment.
Missing a package delivery is annoying, so Packatch hopes to fix that by offering addresses for you to use when shopping online. The service then arranges the delivery at a time that works for you by communicating through its app.
Packatch is now available in Amsterdam and utilizes existing delivery mechanisms like Uber, taxis and even traditional shipping companies like DHL to avoid overhead costs.
Discovering new music you actually like can be hard, so Kollekt.fm taps into your existing services to learn about your tastes and help you find new artists, playlists and tracks to listen to.
Users can filter by genre, mood or simply a band they like to discover playlists by other users full of new music.
Find a job you’ll love in a Tinder-style format. Those looking for a job can swipe quickly through a list of job roles, summarized in a way that’s easy to read.
Rather than simply copying Tinder’s UI, Cocoon has used it as inspiration and evolved it to fit the job market.
Cocoon is already being used by some companies to find new employees, including TravelBird and WeTransfer.
Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are increasingly popular but the market is fragmented. There are hundreds of exchanges and no centralized overview of the entire Bitcoin market.
Tabtrader is a mobile app that allows you to buy and sell Bitcoin from any exchange with a single account. Users verify themselves by snapping a picture of their driver’s license using their smartphone camera and can quickly start trading Bitcoins without any hassle.
Despite TabTrader having just started out, it’s seen $35 million processed through the platform already.
An interesting take on making reminders more intelligent.
There are plenty of reminder apps out there already, but MarkO can set reminders like “Buy flowers for my girlfriend” and it’ll automatically remind you as you’re walking past a flower shop.
The company plans to add opportunities for brands to take advantage of this by allowing them to offer a discount as you walk past a business that triggers a reminder.
Klets creates an attractive landing page for businesses to directly chat with their customers. It’s mobile friendly and makes it easy to chat to users without needing to implement chat in their own service or app.
The company launched publicly on demo day and already touts Google, Rabobank and more as users.
Crowdfunding for live events. Say you want to see a personality like Craig David perform or attend a talk by a famous speaker in your city, but they haven’t scheduled appearances there. Live on Demand allows you to start a campaign that gets fans to put money up to encourage them to visit.
Say you want to see a personality like Craig David perform or attend a talk by a famous speaker in your city, but they haven’t scheduled appearances there.
Once you’ve raised enough pledges, the idea is that Live on Demand will reach out to the speaker, artist, or other notable person and ask them to join with the evidence that there are people enthusiastically putting money up for it.
Most online retailers rely on external companies, like UPS, to provide package tracking services on their own site, losing valuable opportunities to get customers back into their store.
Packpin redirects customers back to your online store to track their packages, where they can see related products to buy. Buyers are sent emails each time their status changes with further opportunities to advertise other products.
The company said it’s been growing 100% each week and has tracked more than 25,000 shipments.
