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This article was taken from the November 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
For the third year, WIRED's editors have visited the continent's startup hubs to identify the ten tech cities you need to know about. Our conclusion: Europe is on a roll. Here are the 100 companies causing the greatest buzz, according to the local commentators, investors and entrepreneurs we surveyed.
STOCKHOLM
Swedish programmers find web development so easy that they do it blindfolded. In March, the windows of the Tictail offices in Södermalm were blacked out with bin bags. Smoke filled the room from a machine and lasers lit it up; electronic music played loudly. "It was really overdramatic," says Tictail cofounder Kaj Drobin, who put on the event, called Code in the Dark. In the middle of the room was a bank of screens, the arena for the battle royal: 30 developers had to recreate the front end of some well-known sites -- including Pinterest and Dropbox -- in 20 minutes, without previewing them.
The 40-strong crowd, comprising employees from startups including Spotify, Klarna and Bloglovin, then rated the best efforts. The final took place at about 10pm and the winner was chosen unanimously: Alexander Ryden, who used to work at Tictail.
Stockholm is hosting more tech events than ever. According to Drobin: "If you look back a year ago, most of the events were held by big companies, like Klarna and Spotify. Now you see events everywhere." The Stockholm Startup Hack, in its second year, took over Skeppsholmskyrkan, a church; the DJ for the after-party played from the pulpit. "The startup scene has exploded in the last year," says Osom cofounder and CEO Anton Johansson. With massive global successes such as iZettle, Wrapp and Mojang showing that Sweden produces category winners, it's party time in the capital city.
1. Narrative
Teknikringen 7
It can take whole seconds to Instagram a picture of your lunch.
Who has that sort of time? Narrative's life-logging camera, about the size of a stamp, hangs on a lanyard. Every 30 seconds, it takes a five-megapixel photo, logging the GPS position and time.
Narrative's killer Android app sorts the photos to create "moments", based on time, faces in the photo, GPS and light level.
So instead of a dump of 2,880 photos at the end of each day, users end up with about 30 key frames. CEO and cofounder Martin Källström says the idea came from "miserably failing" to keep his own diary. "We thought about how you could make documentation of your life effortless."
In March 2012, Källström teamed up with Oskar Kalmaru and Björn Wesén to build the hardware. They launched the camera on Kickstarter, aiming to raise $50,000 (£30,000). It took five hours, eventually securing $550,189 (£338,953). The company has been user testing the product -- aware of how some people might react to a camera worn in public that's always taking pictures. "We feel the interactions with real people are more important than the photos you get," Källström says.
2. Tictail
Mäster Samuelsgatan 10
Tictail is a good-looking, intuitive platform that lets anyone set up an online store painlessly. It launched as a private beta in May 2011 and went public a year later. "Building an e-commerce platform is not a small thing," says Carl Waldekranz, the 27-year-old cofounder and CEO. "It's not like an app that tells you when your cat needs food." Tictail's first client was Waldekranz's mother, an artist.
Since then, the platform has boomed: within ten months, there were 10,000 stores; a month later, 13,000.
3. Osom
Aprilgatan 12
Osom is a money-grubbing version of Instagram: every retro-filtered photo on the app has a "buy" button. Its founders, veterans of Stockholm startups Twingly and Videoplaza, launched it in April and call it "a mobile marketplace for beautiful things". CEO Anton Johansson says his company is "in the front line of emotional shopping".
Ones to watch
4. Shotbox
Kungsgatan 33
Shotbox is a web-based tool that lets users collaborate on video storyboards during the pre-production process for films, games or TV. A bare-bones public beta launched last April. Its founders hope that by making storyboarding easier, creative types will do more pre-production, meaning better films.
5. Instabridge
Saltmätargatan 19A
Instabridge lets Facebook friends connect to each other's Wi-Fi networks automatically. Launched in beta in 2012, it now has 10,000 active users and is preparing an iPhone app, following an Android version.
The ultimate vision, though, is to be "the Dropbox for Wi-Fi, allowing users access to Wi-Fi on any device wherever they are," founder and CEO Niklas Agevik says.
6. Magine
Primusgatan 112 "We can consume music wherever we are, on a phone or laptop,"
Mattias Hjelmstedt, cofounder of Magine, says. "But TV is stuck on your wall. We set out to solve that." Magine, which launched in September 2012, has deals with channels including the BBC and National Geographic, and streams programmes from its servers to any device. A UK launch is expected in 2014.
7. 13th Lab
Pilgatan 3
13th Lab is taking Nasa technology - originally used by autonomous spacecraft - to your smartphone camera. The first implantation was Ball Invasion, an AR iPad game, but in early 2012, the startup released PointCloud Browser, a platform for developers. It raised €550,000 (£461,000) from Nordic VC firm Creandum (which also invested in Spotify) - all part of creating "a user interface for reality".
8. FundedByMe
Klara Östra Kyrkogata 2B
FundedByMe is a startup that's building the Stockholm tech scene more directly than most: its crowd-equity platform connects entrepreneurs with business angels and investors around the world. FundedByMe was founded in February 2011 and claims its pool has a total of €266 million (£230 million)to invest each year.
9. BioLamina
Löfströms Allé 5A
Stockholm has a tradition of consumer-facing apps, but BioLamina is proof it can do hard biotech. Its tagline is "stem-cell culturing made easy": its laminin (the protein network that supports most animal cells) is affordable - 100mg of Laminin-521, used for human cells, costs €219 (£183) ) - and can be used clinically or for research purposes.
10. ShapeUp Club
Kungsgatan 73
ShapeUp Club's iPhone and Android apps help users keep track of what they eat with data visualisations and tailored weight-loss plans. It launched in December 2011 and, in its first year, it lost its Swedish members a combined total of four million kg (across one million users).
Former Spotify-er Henrik Torstensson is its new CEO.
EUROPES OTHER HOTTEST STARTUP CAPITALS London
PREVIOUS YEARS
WIRED's 2012 European startup guide
WIRED's 2011 European startup guide
Update: This article originally referred to "Narrative" as "Memoto". On 9 October, 2013, Wired was informed the company had changed its name to "Narrative". This has now been corrected.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
