In a couple of days, Lisbon will be the host of Web Summit, the largest technology conference in the world that gathers tens of thousands of startup founders, investors, business and technology experts, and other tech enthusiasts. The majority of the attendees share the same goal – establishing relationships that could be beneficial for their businesses.
There are numerous success stories that demonstrate the official Web Summit’s promo message “When people and ideas come together.” Uber, Trello and Snatch are just some of the startups whose success skyrocketed after meeting the right partner.
Surely, not all the startups in Lisbon are that promising. However, here’s a list of 10 startups that are worth the attention and might be your pivotal business opportunity.
1. Infinity – Flexible Project Management and Team Collaboration Tool
Infinity is a new, highly flexible collaboration tool that can easily adapt to your project by providing ‘infinite’ depth to the workflow organization.
The creators of the tool came up with the idea of building their own solution since they’ve been struggling to find a tool that would meet their needs. They have been building products, doing growth and managing teams for years and, along the way, they realized that other tools have limitations once the business starts scaling.
The idea was to create a tool which would solve their workflow chaos and could adapt to projects of any type and size.
“Ultimately, we want to create a PaaS where everything is customizable and integrable so that you can create a workflow that fits you best. That’s what we call flexibility,” claims Stefan Lazarevic, one of the co-founders.
Since the tool is still in beta, it hasn’t been promoted that much. Yet, the waiting list for early access already has over 6,000 subscribers.
Infinity aims to bring the following benefits to the market:
- Powerful all-in-one blend of multiple collaboration tools
- Ability to handle any type of work data
- Multiple views to fit every purpose
- ‘Infinite’ structuring power
- Versatile attributes to build a workspace exactly how you want
2. CallPage – Website Button & Pop-up Widget for Automated Callbacks
More than 60% of leads want to connect with a salesperson during the consideration stage which usually happens after spending a decent amount of time on a certain website. This fact gave Ross Knap, the founder of CallPage, the idea to create a unique tool.
CallPage is a platform that helps businesses convert website views into inbound sales by providing them with a button and a widget for making free calls, worldwide. By connecting with potential customers in just 28 seconds, CallPage has become a marketing solution that helps businesses gain 75% more inbound sales calls from their website visitors.
Although CallPage is recognized as being the biggest international provider of automatic callbacks, its founders claim that their plans are much bigger: “Our mission is to tokenize customer support and sales industry, and to create revolution in terms of corporations and their outsourced call operators.”
The global call center market is currently worth 300 billion dollars and more than 30 million people are working in call centers all over the world. This definitely works in favor of CallPage’s idea to disrupt the market and make some serious changes.
When it comes to the benefits that CallPage provides, there are quite a few:
- Increased website visitors’ engagement
- Very easy setup process
- 30-125% more leads gained on the phone
- Possibility to close more deals
- Free phone connection worldwide
The team behind CallPage is led by their CEO and founder Ross Knap, a serial entrepreneur with previous startup success.
CallPage has raised $5.7M so far and is counting over 700,000 calls made by this widget.
The startup has already been mentioned in various big publications and has made a good impression on the audience on all important tech review websites.
3. DBrain – Blockchain Platform for Data Labeling and AI Building
AI is slowly changing the world but only those with the right knowledge can participate and take advantage of all its benefits. DBrain enables a smooth and safe process for building the AI for anyone’s specific needs.
Dima Dewinn and Dmitry Matskevich are not only accomplished entrepreneurs, but also data geeks who created a platform that links crowdworkers with data scientists in order to develop AI models. In its essence, DBrain is an open blockchain-based platform that turns raw data into real-world AI solutions and rewards its participants with cryptocurrency.
“We at Dbrain want to create a community which is involved in income distribution as much as in the development process. Anyone can join the platform, earn crypto and become a part of AI-driven industrial revolution,” claims Dmitry Matskevich.
DBrain is basically a win-win solution for both data scientists and businesses. The former use the assets on the platform to build AI apps, and the latter get to use the apps for their particular needs.
The platform has already reached the soft cap of 5M USD and is the main award winner at the biggest ICO Pitch Competition in 2018. If you are keen on finding out more about this platform, you can get more information on ICOBench and Cryptoze.
4. Paystack – Modern Online and Offline Payments for African Countries
Online payment scene in Africa was quite underdeveloped until Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi recognized that their expertise and knowledge might provide a solution. They created Paystack, an online payment method that completely disrupted the Fintech market in Africa.
Paystack is a secure online payment solution that allows African businesses to receive funds from anywhere in the world via credit and debit cards, money transfers and mobile apps.
The company first caught the industry experts’ eye, which led to it being accepted into the world-famous Y Combinator program. This resulted in over $10 millions in funding and partnerships with Stripe and Visa.
“The Paystack founders are highly technical, fanatically customer oriented, and unrelentingly impatient,” says Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, in a statement. “We’re excited to back such people in one of the world’s fastest-growing regions.”
Over 17,000 businesses trust Paystack due to the many benefits it provides:
- Easy and transparent pricing
- Instant payment acceptance, worldwide
- No integration or maintenance fee
- Advanced fraud detection and 24-hour support
5. SE Ranking – Cloud-Based SEO Software
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This software provides a wide set of tools useful for in-depth site audit and competitor analysis, keyword and backlink suggestions and monitoring. Additional features that SE Ranking provides, such as White Label and Marketing Plan are highly valued by online marketing professionals.
“Be bolder and push more ideas to fruition while experimenting regardless of how crazy they might sound at the beginning.” – explains Valery Kurilov, SE Ranking founder and serial entrepreneur.
Kurilov claims that his tool has always been profitable without the need for additional investments. It’s easy to believe this statement considering they have over 200,000 satisfied users.
With great reviews and testimonials from successful companies, SE Ranking can easily compete with all the big players like Ahrefs, SEMrush and others.
6. Trustly– Simplified Online Solution for Bank Payments
Trustly is a Swedish company that sells overseas online payment solutions. It is currently available in 29 countries across Europe and operates with more than 1.8 million transactions each month.
Trustly’s founders, Carl Wilsson, Joel Jacobsson and Lukas Gratte share the vision of providing online payments that are simple, fast and secure for both consumers and merchants.
Trustly Group has already made several big partnerships; it has twice been recognized by The Financial Times as one of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies and has registered two trademarks.
Besides being a profitable business with $5M in revenue annually, Trustly has raised €23M in funding and has taken some serious steps in becoming an industry leader.
7. Viddyoze – Web-Based 3D Animation Software Platform
Business owners are rapidly learning that video is becoming the future of marketing, and creators of Viddyoze decided to take advantage of it. David Chamberlain and Ajay Sahota created a unique animation software platform that allows its users to create 3D animated video elements in just a couple of clicks.
The platform has over 100,000 companies among its users and they have even developed their own marketplace. Vodafone, Sony, DHL, Tesla, Verizon and Philips are just some of the big names that have realized the advantages of Viddyoze compared to its competitors:
- Professional 3D animations in just a few clicks
- Fully automated 3D animation engine suitable for businesses of any size
- Cloud-based solution with free access from any device
- Great substitute for hiring freelancers and other contractors
Viddyoze has managed to stay a private company for over three years now and we are eager to see what the team has to show in a couple of days in Lisbon.
8. AcademyOcean – Educational Content Creation for SaaS Companies
AcademyOcean is a platform that aims to upgrade your marketing and maximize customer engagement through education.
It enables businesses to engage more deeply with their customers by creating custom courses and lessons. Furthermore, by adding checkmarks, unlockable lessons or social media sharing, AcademyOcean encourages gamification that can result in even more customer motivation. On top of that, all the courses are on a custom domain and mobile-friendly.
Vladimir Polo, AcademyOcean’s founder and managing director, claims that his software helps businesses get more leads, a higher Customer Lifetime Value and better conversion rates.
His idea was acclaimed by Product Hunt’s community last April when AcademyOcean was elected for the Product of the Day. Even Product Hunt’s founder Ryan Hoover shared words of praise about the tool.
AcademyOcean is still a team of just several people, with a private IPO status, but very open to new partnerships.
9. CleverAnalytics – Business Mapping Software
CleverAnalytics is currently the only cloud-based business mapping software that provides a visual, intuitive context-first map.
By combining location-based data that provides customer intelligence and geo-mapping, CleverAnanytics develops an intuitive context-first map for your business. The software helps businesses to understand and monetize this important customer data.
The value of this software has been acknowledged by MindForge that has already invested CZK10M, which is somewhere around 440,400 in USD.
The CleverAnalytics team is led by the co-founder Ondřej Tomas who has already established himself as an industry expert. The tool itself has plenty of successful use cases that prove its value.
10. Snovio – Cold Outreach Automation Platform
Snovio is a platform aiming to become your personal cold outreach assistant since it provides a comprehensive solution for your whole lead generation process.
This is what Snovio covers:
- Domain email search
- Email verification
- Drip campaigns
- Email tracking for Gmail
- LinkedIn email search
- Technology checker to identify your competitors
Basically, Snovio provides a full set of tools that can automate cold email outreach from finding leads to building email campaigns.
Founder of Snovio Oleksii Kratko has more than 10 years of experience in email marketing, and he’s more than familiar with all the challenges associated with lead generation.
The startup has managed to gain financial sustainability in just 5 months and their services are used by companies such as SoundCloud, Uber, Lego, Lenovo, Ubisoft, Oracle and others.
This year’s Web Summit sure looks like it’s going to be interesting. So, if you are visiting Lisbon on November 5-8, take the opportunity to network, learn and promote your business. Hopefully, the startup list above will help you decide which startups deserve your attention and effort to establish a partnership.
