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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.
TEL AVIV
There's a Yiddish word that accurately describes the mindset of Tel Aviv entrepreneurs: chutzpah -- audacious confidence. "The community is thriving, full of energy with a 'go get it' culture," says entrepreneur and conference chairman Yossi Vardi, who's mentored 80 companies in the last 16 years.
The secret to their success, he says, is the partnerships with multinationals, including Google, Intel and IBM, which have flocked to Tel Aviv's "Silicon Wadi". Saul Klein, partner at London-based Index Ventures and tech envoy from the UK to Israel, has another explanation. "The energy, focus and dynamism comes from everyone being in the army," he says. "The challenges you face, it's a lot like being in a startup."
1. Wix
40 Hanamal
Wix has turned designing websites into a simple drag-and-drop activity. "Even a non-creative person can create a beautiful website in HTML5 or Flash, just by choosing from templates and customising them," says Omer Shai, VP of marketing at Wix. Founded in 2006, Wix has published over 29 million sites through its platform. Although free to use, users pay extra to have the Wix logo removed from their site, or to integrate a payment-checkout option for an e-commerce website. With a pervasive ad campaign in the UK, this company is widely tipped by investors to go public soon.
2. Any.do
6 Agripas Street
Any.do is a to-do list app that launched on Android in 2011 and on iOS a year later, when it became the most downloaded to-do app on both platforms, with five million users. With its uncluttered design and daily reminders to review and set alarms, it helps you to actually complete tasks rather than just list them. "People try to-do lists but most have a hard time maintaining them," says founder and CEO Omer Perchik.
3. Outbrain
6 Arieh Regev Street
When Israeli adman Yaron Galai was running contextual ad company Quigo, which he sold to AOL, he realised he rarely clicked on his own ads. "In general, most ads are terrible. They squeeze out revenue with no relevance to the reader," he says. "I thought, how do we build a business sort of in the ad space, but feels curated, part of the package?" His solution was Outbrain, a startup that supports online journalism by promoting editorial content. "We recommend links to readers on a site, either to other stories within that site or on another site," says Galai, who is cofounder and CEO.
Founded in 2007, Outbrain now powers recommendations on 100,000 sites including the Daily Telegraph and Sky News in the UK, and American sources such as the Wall Street Journal. The business model is similar to an advertising-revenue approach. "If you are on CNN and you see recommendations for CNN stories, we don't charge,"
Galai, 42, says.
When links point to other sites, Outbrain makes money. "The site we direct to will pay us on a cost-per-click basis, and we share the revenue with CNN, if that's where they were linked from." The brain of the system is 30 algorithms, which constantly compete with each other. "Each link is the result of a winning algorithm," Galai says. The startup, based in Tel Aviv and New York, has raised $65 million (£40 million) from four VCs, including Index Ventures. "We don't care if you're consuming text, video or audio,"
Galai says. "We want to be the recommendation engine for all online content."
Ones to watch
4. Waze
25 Haharoshet Street
Among Israeli taxi drivers, the word "Waze" is synonymous with "GPS". Since its founding in March 2008, map app Waze has signed up 45 million users. It is crowd-powered, collecting data from users. Having received a total of $67 million (£41 million) in funding, it was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion (£616 million).
5. Etoro
32 HaBarzel
The six-year-old startup is a social-investment network whose 2.8 million users can invest in stocks, currencies and commodities online, and share these trades in real time. They can follow the top traders in the network, learn from their investments and even "copy" their trades. Founded by Yoni Assia, eToro acts as a broker, making a commission on every trade.
6. Lool Ventures
8 Dov Friedman
Lool Ventures is an incubator started by serial entrepreneurs Avichay Nissenbaum and Yaniv Golan, to nurture mobile-internet startups. It invests in early-stage ideas, but also comes up with ideas. Projects include sheet-music iPad app Tonara, which turns pages automatically, and MyPermissions, which alerts you to apps that access your social network.
7. Taykey
32 Maskit Street
The algorithms of advertising startup Taykey eavesdrop on the real-time online conversations of a client's audience, then place ads accordingly. If a studio is releasing the GI Joe film, for example, and wants to target teens, Taykey can spot teens talking about Justin Bieber. GI Joe ads are then placed on Bieber fan sites.
Clients include Unilever and Sony.
8. MyHeritage
3 Ariel Sharon
Founded in 2003, MyHeritage is a family-genealogy startup. It has a billion profiles and uses advanced algorithms to find lost family members by comparing records (including photos and stories in newspapers, census records and government databases back to the 1700s) to 27 million family trees in 40 languages from around the world.
9. Fiverr
Haumanim Street
Need a logo designed? You might search online, but how do you get the right price? Three-year-old Tel Aviv startup Fiverr runs an online marketplace for "gigs" -- services such as design, copywriting, translations -- all offered for $5 (£3). "It takes away the friction of negotiation," says CEO Micha Kaufman, 42.
10. DensBits
7 Palyam Street
DensBits' product has the potential to transform data storage, according to Bessemer Ventures Partners' Adam Fisher. The startup has designed the patented Memory Modem, a technology to reduce the cost of flash-memory chips by up to 50 per cent, while maintaining reliability and performance on a par with magnetic hard disks.
EUROPES OTHER HOTTEST STARTUP CAPITALSLondon
PREVIOUS YEARS
WIRED's 2012 European startup guide
WIRED's 2011 European startup guide
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
