The Next Web Conference 2012 is almost upon us, and as with previous years, the Startup Rally is set to be a real highlight of the event.
Once again, we’re giving startups the chance to launch new products in front of an audience consisting of journalists, VCs, bloggers, potential users, potential exit partners, thousands watching on video from afar – and of course a jury of experts who will decide the eventual winners.
This year, in partnership with Microsoft BizSpark, we’re taking things a stage further by separating the finalists into two channels – Alpha and Beta. The Alpha channel sees brand new startups launch for the first time, while the Beta channel is all about existing names with big new announcements.
A panel of experts, chaired by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, will question each startup and judge their pitches to choose this year’s winners.
All the startups that have made it this far deserve congratulations – they’ve already made it through an initial application stage, had to submit a video pitch and finally face an intensive interview in order to join the list here. A word of thanks to YouNoodle, too – its platform helped us organize the many, many entries we received for this year’s Startup Rally.
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The Next Web Conference 2012 takes place on 26-27 April. Do you have your ticket yet? If you want to join the 1500 individuals and companies that are already attending, make sure you secure yourself one of the final tickets today – be quick, they’re nearly all gone!
So, who are this year’s finalists? Read on…
Alpha Rally
From: Warsaw, Poland
Quick pitch: “Think of it as Nintendo Wii, but with your iPad as a console and screen, and iPhone as a controller.”
From: London, UK
Quick pitch: “DeadSocial allows anyone to create scheduled messages. These are sent out via the social web after the user passes away.”
From: Even Yehuda, Israel
Quick pitch: “We reduce website abandonment by enabling continuous browsing between devices.”
From: Tel Aviv, Israel
Quick pitch: “Making games competitive.”
From: Wilp, Netherlands
Quick pitch: “The best marketing is great service. Therefor Robin | interaction on the fly.”
From: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Quick pitch: “Crowdfunding app creation platform to transform all brilliant ideas into an actual mobile app.”
From: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Quick pitch: “Snowciety gathers data while you are skiing or snowboarding and provides you with insight into your and your friends progress and performance. We show you where you and your friends are on the slopes and offers real-time navigation to them or POIs.”
From: Tel Aviv, Israel
Quick pitch: “Tawkon encourages a healthy lifestyle by monitoring radiation emissions in your mobile device, alerting you to make small changes in the way you’re talking to bring high radiation absorption down to safe levels… so you can talk on!”
From: Poznan, Poland
Quick pitch: “Zapstreak will put AirPlay into Android media apps (video, audio, photo). No hardware required.”
Beta Rally
From: Tel Aviv, Israel
Quick pitch: “The world’s first automated website protection suite.”
From: Santiago, Chile
Quick pitch: “Babelverse is the first application for real-time voice translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters.”
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Quick pitch: “BellaDati cloud analyze retail business. Connect it in minutes to CRM, social networks, sales, marketing and get your customer insights now.”
From: Seoul, South Korea
Quick pitch: “Between is a mobile service that provides a secret place for lovers to communicate and keep their precious moments through chatting, sharing photos and memos.”
From: Chemnitz, Germany
Quick pitch: “Make all your cloud apps work as one. Hojoki builds one newsfeed for all your productivity apps. See what’s happening and react instantly. Discuss your work in private groups.”
From: London, UK
Quick pitch: “With over 25,000 stores and 300,000 products, Nuji is creating a new type of social retail platform.”
From: New York City, USA
Quick pitch: “Shelby is your place for video. It’s all the video your friends share, in one place… then Shelby gets smart, to give you personalized video on web, mobile, and smart TV.”
From: London, UK
Quick pitch: “Six3 lets people send and reply to private video messages on smartphones, PCs & Macs. The richness of Skype video calls, with the convenience of SMS.”
From: Stockholm, Sweden
Quick pitch: “We connect people through the world of travel using big data.”
From: Stellen Bosch, South Africa
Quick pitch: “Linking addresses and GPS co-ordinates to user generated, managed and controlled, unique location tags called !waytags.”
Follow all of our coverage of The Next Web Conference 2012 here.
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