European startups to know: The 12 finalists of the NEXT Conference

While the NEXT Conference in Berlin, Germany is traditionally all about “Data Love,” because “data is what electricity has been for the industrial age,” innovation and fresh ideas have always been at the heart of the NEXT Community. This year, NEXT has created a new platform for ideas, giving founders the opportunity to pitch before investors and opinion leaders as well as socialize.

12 days left until NEXT 2011, taking place on May 17 and 18 in Berlin and here we present you with the 12 finalists of the NEXT Elevator Pitch, the conference’s first startup competition.

Shopgate

Shopgate is a mobile shopping startup based in Germany. CEO Andrea Anderheggen and Co-Founder Ortwin Kartmann founded Shopgate together and went live in August 2010. With over 170 shops, 5.7 million products, Shopgate is the market leader for mobile commerce in Germany. In the future, Shopgate aims to connect every offline advertisement such as catalogues, print ads, billboards etc. with a mobile shopping terminal.

Wahwah.fm

Wahwah.fm is a yet to be released music service for your smartphone. With wahwah.fm, users can listen to and broadcast their music at the same time. Other users can tune in and listen to your tunes, so it’s like running your own mobile radio station. Wahwah.fm’s iPhone app will be released this spring.

http://vimeo.com/17266597

Replydone

Replydone immediately sounds like something we want. Replydone analyzes your incoming mails and “understands” the content. It then suggests a text based on replies you have already sent, so essentially you may never have to send the same email again. Replydone relies on an “intelligent prediction system” that finds text from old replies, knowledge bases, wikis, boiler plate texts and external sources. Replydone then prepares relevant yet personalized suggestions. Simply select the text you want to use, and the reply is done. Does want.

Spoovel

Spoovel brings retailers and customers closer together by publishing opt-in deals to a passer-by. Through the app, users can subscribe to retailers and themes. For example, subscribe to your favorite venue and be alerted every time a fun new band is playing.

Niriu

Niriu is a platform that promotes local interaction in neighborhoods by facilitating easier communication. Niriu says it “puts an end to the anonymity and makes you and your neighborhood closer together”. In addition, it helps small local businesses interact within their own communities. In short, Niriu uses technology to build a stronger sense of community, which reminds of very much of the U.S. based startup Home Elephant.

TrustYou

TrustYou is a “social semantic search” startup. TrustYou’s mission is to build the world’s largest sentiment database by aggregating and structuring the Internet’s comments, reviews and opinions on local data and products. TrustYou encourages websites, developers and services to use its data and applications to better understand and benefit from “the wisdom of the crowds”.

Scitotec

The German based Scitotec is the first spin-off from the Faculty of the IT department at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt. Scitotec develops the “dpEngine,” which is a completely new integration solutions for contacts and additional data. Scitotec also provides consulting in the field of data-integration and quality. Scitotec believes they have unique approach for integrating and managing contact data, cleaning the data up and enrichit into every other application seamlessly.

Halalati

Halalati helps you to create, run and analyze viral Facebook apps on your Facebook Fanpage within minutes. Use its Facebook Apps, which meet the marketing guidelines and have been optimized over the last few years. Use it to create Facebook gambling or DIY contests in minutes. Simply assign a name, define the mode, set the duration of the Facebook contest and set a price. Halalati currently competes with wildfireapp.com, involver.com, northsocial.com, and tigerlillyapps.com.

Newshype

Newshype is an aggregator for the German blogosphere. It collects the most linked and talked about blog articles and helps to discover new interesting blogs. Co-founder Jannis Kucharz is the editor of Editor of Netzfeuilleton, a popular German blog.

EgoArchive

EgoArchive is a startup that helps you to find, group and share your information by automatically saving a screenshot and the text of every website you browse and every update in your social streams. Traditionally, bookmarking urges you to think too much, and it doesn’t index your social networks. egoArchive captures and indexes your streams and every page you visit including a screenshot, so you’ll be able to recall your online life anytime you want. They envision becoming your private archive for every stream and every data you see and use on the web to help you to find your stuff again. It aims to change the way you search, remember and manage your information from anywhere on the web and reminds us a little bit of the U.S. based BO.LT technology.

Storytude

Storytude is an app for mobile storytelling. Smartphone users can use the GPS triggered app to tap into audio content as they move through specific locations. Chapters in a story are digitally placed along a path and the user walks on the story line. As the user moves, the story evolves. It reminds us quite a bit of the first location based musical album that dropped this spring in D.C. [See our story here.]

Joinbox

Joinbox joins all of your information on one website with only one login. It’s an easy to use inbox which allows you to keep track of all the news you care about with realtime updates resulting in the most recent information always on top. Joinbox allows you to share information across different services with only one click whether it is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or your own blog.