Brexit is a boon to Amsterdam, with the European Medicines Agency moving from London in 2019, strengthening the city’s MedTech reputation. More than €1 billion was invested since 2016 and that’s now starting to pay off, says Ton van’t Noordende, founding partner and CEO at 01 Ventures. The city is attracting so much interest from international investors that some observers worry there’s too much capital around.
The city council has been a strong supporter of the tech sector – and a new left/green alliance taking power means 2018 will see an emphasis on more female entrepreneurs and providing youth employment, says Bas Beekman, director of the public/private partnership StartupAmsterdam. “The social impact of tech will be a key topic over the next two years,” he believes.
Harver
Harver founder and CEO Barend Raaff was working at online strategy and marketing startup Kominski when a friend and CEO of a large call centre complained of huge staff turnover. Realising hiring decisions were to blame, he developed AI-powered pre-selection platform TalentPitch to replace CVs with online judgment, personality and intelligence tests. Harver’s algorithms also use the data to calculate a candidate’s suitability. As of January 2018, the company had raised $15.6 million (£11.5 million) and boasts Zappos, Netflix, Booking.com, Vodafone, OpenTable and Casper as clients. At the end of 2017, Harver adapted TalentPitch for smaller companies. The elevator pitch? “Organisations using Harver hire better people, period,” says Raaff. harver.com
Otrium
“Fashion brands struggle with an abundance of excess inventory collecting dust in a warehouse,” explains Otrium’s cofounder Milan Daniels, 26. Launched two years ago by Daniels and Max Klijnstra, 27, Otrium is effectively Shopify for fashion brands, providing the e-commerce technology stack and logistics handling to create online outlet/clearance stores. The company’s technology and marketplace full-service offer is aimed at keeping entry costs low – helping up-and-coming brands in particular shift excess inventory, although each brand does ship its own orders. Claiming 300,000 users and 60 brands across Benelux countries, Otrium recently raised €750,000 (£662,000) – bringing total funding to €1.6 million (£1.4 million) – to fuel international expansion. otrium.nl
Hiber
When Dutch satellite start-up Magnitude Space rebranded last year, it chose the name Hiber for two reasons, according to co-founder and CFO Coen Janssen – the LPA Network provider connects nano-satellites with modems that effectively sleep 99 per cent of the time – until a satellite flies overhead. “It’s like they are hibernating – hence Hiber,” he explains. “And it was also one of the last unclaimed five-letter words on the internet.” Having secured €3 million in private funding and backing from the European Space Agency, Hiber launches two small satellites in spring 2018. Janssen is targeting the likes of truck trailers, hazardous chemicals, cattle in Australia and trawlers at sea to host its cheap tracking devices as it scales production in 2019. hiber.global
Shypple
Over 90 per cent of the world’s international trade travels by ship, but when Shypple founder Jarell Habets worked on logistics for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, he found the industry dominated by freight forwarding agents – middlemen in manual organisations which make shipping slow, error-prone and expensive. “They’re like travel agents in 1996,” he argues. “But they have no competition from disruptors.” He launched Shypple the same year. The company provides a digital dashboard for businesses to search and book freight shipping directly – benchmarking quotes and offering real-time tracking. In February, the company received undisclosed funding from regional state investor the Brabant Development Corporation to finance their international expansion. shypple.com
Helloprint
Europe’s print industry is worth around €160 billion per year, according to market analysts Smithers Pira – larger than the continents €135 billion car export trade. The vast majority of these orders still take place offline, according to Hans Scheffer, Helloprint co-founder and CEO. Helloprint’s platform connects smaller print producers with over 200,000 customers across the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, and Ireland. Offering free online designs and free delivery, the company has seen growth of 4,000 per cent in the last four years. In February, the company closed an undisclosed multi-million euro funding round with existing investors Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A, aimed at expanding its European network. helloprint.co.uk
WHERE TO EAT: Coffee Virus Startup Village is spin-off from the original Coffee inside ALab - a former Shell research laboratory on the shores of Amsterdam Noord – with more space and a bigger kitchen serving healthy food and strong coffee.
WHERE TO STAY: Volkshotel, located in the upcoming Amsterdam East district near the Amstel river has workstations, meeting rooms, brainstorming cabins, coffee, a bar, a restaurant, cocktails and, of course, bedrooms.
WHERE TO VISIT: Freedom Lab is part co-working space, part innovation campus, part library, part café. The Lab’s busy evenings bring together philosophers, entrepreneurs, engineers and designers to exchange ideas and socialise.
Fairphone
Fairphone’s bold launch in 2013 promised easily repairable smartphones built to last using only sustainable, ethically mined materials. The Fairphone 1 raised funds from crowdsourcing and sold some 135,000 handsets – but struggled when suppliers retired the necessary spare parts and stopped releasing chip software updates. 2015’s Fairphone 2 fared better. In September 2017, co-founder Bas van Abel secured €6.5 million from social venture capital fund Pymwymic – making it one of the top ten fund raising Amsterdam startups of the year – to scale its approach to building sustainable electronics “throughout the entire electronics value chain, including material sourcing, production, distribution and recycling,” according to van Abel. Expect the Fairphone 3 this autumn. fairphone.com
Ohpen
When Chris Zadeh, CEO of Ohpen, ran an online broker, he spent ten years “cursing unreliable technology that was almost impossible to adapt to our needs,” he explains. “We put our money where our mouth was and created a complete new core banking engine from scratch.” Ohpen’s premise is simple – existing banks and financial service providers are hampered by legacy systems. Ohpen’s cloud-based core banking SaaS replaces the entire back end, allowing clients to focus on front-end experience and brand differentiation. In July 2017, Ohpen secured €15 million from private equity firm Amerborgh, which then led a €25 million Series C round in February 2018 – the cash will help expand into France, Canada, Australia and the United States. ohpen.com
MessageBird
MessageBird offers an SMS, voice and video platform for companies and developers that powers, for instance, the verification messages you get when you sign up for a new app. It’s a fast-growing market with more than a dozen cloud-based firms. MessageBird founder and chief executive Robert Vis bootstrapped the company’s launch in 2011, forged deals and built interfaces with 220 telecom carriers worldwide to build the only platform running on telecoms carrier-grade infrastructure and not the internet – making it faster, more reliable and cheaper, says Vis. In October 2017, MessageBird’s stealth years ended - it landed $60 million in series A funding - the largest ever early-stage venture capital investment into a European software company, led by Accel Partners with Atomico and Y-Combinator to fuel aggressive expansion. messagebird.com
Hotelchamp
Travel agents may have disappeared from the high street but their replacements – travel booking sites – dominate the travel market with commission fees of up to 30%, hitting hotels turnover, according to Kristian Valk, co-founder and CEO of Hotelchamp. Valk launched the company after watching a friend click from booking site to hotel web page then back to the site to pay. The company’s SaaS AI offers personalised incentives, special offers and best possible prices to encourage direct booking. Launched in April 2015, the company raised €1.7 million seed funding from a wide pool of private investors, returning for a €2.25 million round in August 2017. Clients include Bilderberg Hotels, Corinthia Hotels, Palazzo Versace and Apex Hotels. hotelchamp.com
Felyx
With the city’s drive to reduce carbon and liberal attitude to two wheels, Felyx, a shared electric scooter platform, is as Amsterdam as the Amstel. Co-founders Maarten Poot and Quinten Selhorst raised €400,000 from private investors and €450,000 from a crowdfunding round to launch in July 2017. An app allows registered users – currently waiting list only places – to locate, reserve and unlock available e-scooters. A ride costs 30 cents per minute, and the system is free-floating – scooters can be left anywhere. When the battery drops to 20 per cent, the scooter signals HQ and a team member comes to recharge it. felyx.nl
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
