- AUSTRIA
- FragNebenan
- Paint A Friend
- Qgo
- SmartDreamers
- Younited Cultures
- CROATIA
- DriveAngel
- ESTONIA
- Fleep
- MRPeasy
- HUNGARY
- BitNinja
- POLAND
- CloudYourCar
- SLOVAKIA
- Speekle
Last week, we asked investors about their prognoses for 2015 (read more here), but what changes are startups expecting for their industry or their country? Eleven teams from all over CEE gave us an insight on their main achievements of 2014, summarised their goals for 2015 and told us about their most important startup events of the new year.
AUSTRIA
FragNebenan
What were your main achievements of 2014?
We went online! Also, we got the impulse XS-grant from aws austria wirtschaftsservice and more than 1.000 neighbours use FragNebenan to restore community within their neighbourhoods.
What are your goals for 2015?
To continue growing within Vienna, to raise money and to bring our network to Germany.
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We’ll be a company, not a project. On a more general level, we expect a rising significance of privacy in social media and a higher focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in Austria.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
The Pioneers Festival in Vienna.
Paint A Friend
[reference id=”4546″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
Paint A Friend’s main achievements in 2014 were some collaborations with well-established international enterprises like Nestle and Ikea, which also helped us to sharpen the brand awareness in the German speaking countries.
What are your goals for 2015?
We are planning to escalate our presence beyond the borders of German speaking countries by launching our website in English and French. We are as well in negotiations with some big players concerning marketing and other collaborations.
Photo credit: Paint A Friend
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
Due to ongoing extensive marketing actions and our really emotional product we expect a two to three digit sales growth rate and will have to align our internal processes. As the overall economic development in the EU is slightly unstable, we hope that the EZB measures take effect and the purchasing power at least stays the same in our core market.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
There will be plenty of them. Just like our facebook page to stay informed.
QGo
[reference id=”1396″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
We launched our new product, the QGo Ticketsystem won the second place at the Idea Challenge of the EIT ICT Labs (read more here) as well as the Sonderpreis of the trend@venture award – which gave us a spot in the TV Show 2 Minutes, 2 Millions of PULS 4. Moreover, we achieved a successful application in the aws Innovative Service Call funding.
What are your goals for 2015?
We want to increase our sales and bring our products to customers. Therefore, we not only focus on ski areas and bring the QGo Alpin Product to ski resorts, but also sell the new QGo Ticket system to potential customers. With those two products we can cover a wide range of fields where reducing waiting time matters.
[related_articles ids=”1395,4087″]
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We expect to grow this year, not only in numbers, but also in our team. We are currently searching for developers to expand our team and we are looking forward to grow a lot in the next month. We have multiple products now for more than just one market and we are confident that we will be able to reduce waiting time not just in ski areas but also in other fields.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
QGo will be present with a booth at the Interalpin Trade Show in Innsbruck in April and we will also visit the Pioneers Festival and are planning to attend some awards.
SmartDreamers
[reference id=”3217″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
In March 2014, after months of development, we officially launched the SmartDreamers recruitment platform. We gained over 30.000 users on the platform and over 600 companies in just a few months after it was launched, with little to zero marketing investments. And last but not least, we were picked as Startup Pick on inventures.eu 🙂
What are your goals for 2015?
Based on all the feedback we received from our users, we are now working hard on the new SmartDreamers website, which will be launched by the end of January 2015. If 2014 was a busy year for us, filled with great achievements, we know this year will be even more spectacular. So if there are goals we want to accomplish, they’re regarding our constant development as a reliable recruitment platform.
We can see an entrepreneurial culture taking shape in CEE.
SmartDreamers
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We expect the online recruitment activity to grow in the CEE area both in terms of job seeking and also regarding the competition between recruitment platforms. As long as each platform tries to offer more and more to its clients, both companies and job seekers will have a lot to gain and this is what really matters in the end, doesn’t it? We can see an entrepreneurial culture taking shape in CEE. This will bring new players, new ideas and thus more solutions to satisfy their users’ needs.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
We are seriously considering visiting as many startup events as possible, because we still have so much to learn.
Younited Cultures
[reference id=”4500″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
We founded the company Younited Cultures officially as a GmbH and got our starting capital. Moreover, we won the Social Impact Start 2014 and got nominated for Wiener Mut. We turned our first four stories (Poland, Romania, Bosnia and YC) into scarves and managed local production for two of them, launched our online shop and got our first two partner stores in Vienna which are selling our scarves.
What are your goals for 2015?
We aim to produce six more stories on scarves, launch our business officially in the media and through a launch party, organize three impact events for our target group and establish our own atelier in Vienna so that we can continue local production.
Photo credit: Younited Cultures
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
The social fashion business is somehow constantly caught in between the high-end fashion events and the impact group we are having, in our case immigrants. As we know for sure, integration will be an even bigger topic in 2015, as it will be the year in which Vienna will break the barrier of 50 per cent of the population having an immigrant background. We are looking at an increased support from various state institutions in the form of awards and competitions onthe topic of integration.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
This year we’re planning with more presence on fashion fairs and events for our target group. To mention some, we are part of the Mendes project hosted by the Vienna Globe, an incubator for handcrafted businesses. We are also very active in the Networking Youth Career events, in TEDx, and other social networks. But we will also be present at events organized by the Fashion branch of WKO or Mingo.
CROATIA
DriveAngel
[reference id=”4393″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
In 2014 we managed to sign contracts with our first corporate clients – Croatia’s largest roadside assistance company and the country’s largest car insurance company started offering the DriveAngel service to their clients under their own brand colours. The most satisfactory achievement, though, is the reaction of our first users – they seem to be very happy with our product.
What are your goals for 2015?
The main goal in this year is to expand our client base beyond Croatia and Europe. In addition to this it would be nice to find an investor/partner but we are deeply aware that the chances of this are extremely slim as European investors are extremely averse to game-changing and disruptive solutions.
The main goal in this year is to expand our client base beyond Croatia and Europe.
DriveAngel
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We do not expect any major changes in Europe or our country in 2015. As for our industry (connected car and big data) – its growth will accelerate dramatically in the coming years.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
At the moment we do not plan to visit any such events in 2015. These startup events are certainly helpful for most startups but in our particular case it seems they tend to be a waste of time.
ESTONIA
Fleep
[reference id=”3174″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
We launched our Fleep service, grew significantly (everyday active users, registerd users, messages sent in a week), Integrations & Public API and have Free & Premium Subscriptions by now.
What are your goals for 2015?
As usual with startups in our phase – we need to keep growing and accelerate growth speed as well 🙂
Photo credit: Fleep
What changes do you expect for your startup/your industry/ your country in the new year?
As a startup we will need to keep growing our userbase and improve product. In our industry and business communication I expect to see more good competition and better choice for the users
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
We don’t have any plans yet.
MRPeasy
[reference id=”3813″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
MRPeasy got its first 20 permanently paying customers, which shows strong interest to our product.
What are your goals for 2015?
We plan to proceed to refine or software product and customer acquisition model, and to raise the number of new active customers monthly 10 times.
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We believe that SaaS in B2B sector will be much more popular than before.
[related_articles ids=”3791″]
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
We plan to take part in business accelerator Startup Wise Guys 3-month program from March this year. Also, we probably will visit SLUSH 2015 in Helsinki.
HUNGARY
BitNinja
[reference id=”4289″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
2014 was the big start for BitNinja Server Security. We launched the MVP in March and worked day and night with development and setting up our perpetual motion business model and by the end of the year we succeed to get in partnership with 5 huge providers worldwide. They are testing BitNinja beta on production servers (100 in all) and they seem to be our first future customers in 2015.
What are your goals for 2015?
First of all, we hope to pass the filtering to the Accelerator successfully, so that we can spend 4 months in Israel. It would be a great stepping stone for the BitNinja project. After that we our first paid version will come out in March. By the end of the year we’d also like to be available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace and raise a 100,000 dollars first round.
Photo credit: BitNinja
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
We really hope the tendency of preparing for server defense during infrastructure planning will continue to grow among providers, and they will be aware of BitNinja’s role in that. As we get positive feedbacks from testers continuously, we really aim to have 1000 active BitNinja armed servers and one billion caught web attack attempts by the end of the year. This is how we’d like to contribute to making the internet a safer place.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
We will certainly appear in HostingCon Global, California in July and hope to visit someevents of the Startup City, Tel-Aviv as well.
POLAND
Cloud Your Car
[reference id=”3535″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
We have completely pivoted the Cloud Your Car business model upside down. Before that we worked in a model with online sales (paid advertising) and traditional direct B2B sales. Now we have an ultra scalable machine spawning dozens of startups based on CloudYourCar across the world. We are a meta-startup.
What are your goals for 2015?
Spawning even more startups. Especially in emerging countries like Philippines, Brazil or Nigeria.
We have completely pivoted the Cloud Your Car business model upside down.
Cloud Your Car
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
Connected Cars as well as IoT in general will grow like hell. That’s for sure.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
We attend industry-specific events only. Unfortunately startup events didn’t work that well for us.
SLOVAKIA
Speekle
[reference id=”3087″]
What were your main achievements of 2014?
During the last year we have been remodeling our product and sale strategy – we made a mobile version of our solution, and split it into several applications, which are sold separately.
What are your goalsfor 2015?
We aim to move forward to adjust our solution for other countries, get support of speech therapists and expand our company on an international level. We are also going to look for funding and expanding our team.
[related_articles ids=”1322″]
What changes do you expect for your startup, your industry or your country in the new year?
Since this is the year where we will get our mobile versions on market, we expect that we will get rid of that “big barrier” of getting our product to our customers. So, we want get more feedback on product ideas and improvements. Finally, we believe that we will significantly raise brand awareness for our products in our country this year.
Which startup events are you planning to visit in 2015?
Rather than pure startup related events, we mostly plan to attend events devoted to the speech therapy domain, such as the European CPLOL Congress 2015.
