Germany Archives - Serious Startups

Berlin Startup Tame Launches First Context Search Engine For Twitter

Twitter is a treasure trove of content. We actually source quite a bit of startup news and new startups from everywhere else using Twitter. The problem is, until now there was no great way to do a contextual search. You can use the Twitter search tool built into Twitter and most of the good third party Twitter apps, but they fall short when looking for context. For example, a search for accelerator brings up tweets about car parts and incubator talks about babies.

The team behind Berlin startup Tame have been tirelessly working on solving that problem. They want to make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for on Twitter. That can be tough when at peak loads there can be 300,000 tweets per minute.

The company has launched their product today at tame.it. We got a chance to talk with them, check out the interview below.

What does your startup do?

Tame is the first context search engine for Twitter delivering relevant content around a specific topic in real-time. Aimed at journalists, PRs, marketers and politicians, Tame analyses content from Twitter, sifting through the huge amounts of noise to find exactly what is relevant.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Frederik Fischer is founder and CEO of Tame. Fischer has five years of professional experience as a staff and freelance journalist for TV, radio, online and print.

Arno Dirlam is founder and CTO of Tame. The developer guy!

Torsten Müller is founder and CMO of Tame. He has three years professional experience as freelance journalist for online and print including the German Press Agency dpa, stern.de, Zeit Online.

Where are you based?

Berlin, Germany

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Berlin is a perfect place to start a business. It may be over-hyped, but we find that the scene is indeed very active, people help out each other a lot and are very open. Since the city is attractive for living, many people from Europe or beyond flock into it which helps creating international teams with a global approach from the start, which we think is important. We came to Berlin with not much more than an idea and thanks to the Humboldt University’s spin-off team and many others we could get Tame off the ground in a bit more than a year.

What problem do you solve?

Tame aims to address information overload on Twitter. Nearly every user follows more people than they can manage. At peak times, more than 300,000 tweets are sent out per minute, hence people miss a lot of important content. Professionals working with social media need to identify relevant topics, users and content quickly. A solution to ‘Tame’ the social web is needed.

Why now?

In 2011, Google stopped indexing Twitter and has since left a gap in filtering real-time information. Twitter has continued to grow and has a global impact as not only an alternative, but often primary news source (think of Arab spring). Our mission is to tame the wealth of real-time information in social networks so as to empower people to make sense of the world.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

We got an initial € 94k ($125,725) funding from the German Federal Ministry of Technology and Economics (BWMi) in 2012

Tame has secured € 250k ($334,375) from a crowd-investing campaign with Companisto

A product already used by thousands of journalists and PRs, first paying customers and first cooperations with outlets

We won a spot in the Germany Silicon Valley Accelerator (also by BMWi) and will be working from San Francisco from October on for at least 3 months.

What are your next milestones?

rolling out more features for Tame including a refinement of our Algorithm that will improve the results by ie filtering out spam on Twitter

starting our global launch by entering the US market from October onward

looking in to the possibility of including more real-time information services

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

People can find out everything they need at tame.it. We’re also on Twitter – https://twitter.com/tame_it – and Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/tameapp.

This Berlin Startup Has A Great Idea But Is The US Patient Enough For It?

A startup from Berlin Germany called ParkTag came out to TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 all decked out to draw attention to their startup. Parktag is a peer 2 peer social parking application.

Here’s how it works:

You’ve parked in a public parking spot and gone into your favorite restaurant for lunch. When you are getting ready to finish lunch you go to ParkTag and let the app know you’re about to leave your parking spot and where it is.

Someone who is in the area and needs the spot will see that your spot is coming available. They go to the spot and wait for you to arrive and move out of the spot.

Once you pull out, they pull in, in what ParkTag calls the “Handoff”.

When the new person parks their car, they send you a thank you and voila they have a parking spot. Users can earn point by making the transactions as smooth as possible.

ParkTag is up and running in Europe where they say people love it. Things could be a lot different in Europe but I’m not sure that drivers in the U.S. have the patience to effectively use ParkTag. There’s a good chance that while you’re waiting for the spot you would block traffic and people would quickly become frustrated with you.

Without building immense scale people in the US aren’t going to understand that you reserved the spot via the app.

ParkTag doesn’t seem to have those problems in other countries. I’m very interested to see how it turns out if they do come to the US.

Check out the video interview and learn more about this great idea below.

SplitThe Check, The Bill The Kitty With Kittysplit

You gotta love it when startups name themselves after exactly what they do. That’s the case with Berlin startup Kittysplit. The company, founded by Caspar Wrede and a team of four friends have found a way to split checks, and settle up when more than one person is paying for anything from a meal to a bar tab to a weekend holiday.

The app uses an easy three step wizard for splitting up the “kitty” and it’s free of charge.

When asked how they came up with the idea for Kittysplit, Wrede told nibletz.com “The ski trip where everyone has a different mix of how they got there, where they stayed, and what they ate — splitting the costs afterwards was a huge headache. The shared apartment whose expenses are kept via a mind-bogglingly complex Excel spreadsheet. We searched in vain for a painless solution online. Finally, the 5 of us got together, drank beer and stroked our chins, and set out to to make splitting costs as easy as humanly possible.”

For now the platform is web based. Wrede says an app is in the works but he wants to make sure that the mobile app doesn’t complicate things.

Check out the rest of our interview with Wrede below.

Berlin Entrepreneurs Trying To Curb Facebook Fatigue With Flowsee

A new Berlin based startup called Flowsee is hoping to take advantage of Facebook fatigue by offering users a social network with a local angle and curated multimedia. Flowsee is a mashup of Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

The Flowsee social network has multiple category pages like music, tech and photography. In each of the categories users can upload photos and videos that are relevant to that category or whatever other categories they like. Pictures, links and videos are then voted up or down in a way similar to both Digg and Reddit with the most “likes” getting to the top of the page.

While the site is stating out and focused on Berlin, the company feels that it’s readily scalable. Back in late October they told us that they had already surpassed 10,000 users per month.

Like some other social networking projects, while Flowsee has a definite infrastructure to it, they are letting early adopters use the social network the way that they want to. For instance, vendors at the Mauer Park Flea Market has started using the platform to post their handmade and vintage goods for sale. Co-founder Olivier Jarfas told Silicon Allee that it didn’t take long for the vendors to start adding photos and even videos to their pages.

We all know that Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, they past the billion users mark last year and continue to move forward despite the fact that their stock market price is a lot lower than they had hoped. Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann also reported earlier this week that Facebook may be perceived by teenagers as “for older people”.

As a result more and more social networks are popping up. Most of the newer social networks are finding verticals to launch in like food, academia and careers.

As for Flowsee, we got a chance to talk with the Berlin based team. Check out the interview below.

Dave McClure, The King Of Everywhere Else, Makes First German Investment: Versus IO

While here at nibletz we are the “voice of everywhere else” Dave McClure, Sith Lord at 500 Startups and founder of Geeks on A Plane, is the reigning king of “everywhere else”, to prove that his first investment in a German startup has just been revealed. McClure has invested $100,000 in comparison platform Versus IO.

We’ve been covering the German startup since earlier this year and even had the opportunity to interview their CEO Ramin Far, earlier this month.

Versus IO in it’s simplest form is a comparison engine that allows you to compare two different things side by side. With Versus IO you can compare gadgets, electronics, and even cities. They are quickly ramping up to having 640 different comparison verticals.

It’s not just a “hot or not” style comparison either, for instance in their cities comparisons they use over 100 different factors including: education, crime rates, climate, infrastructure, safety, economy, business, culture, people and a whole lot more. What makes the platform truly unique is the fact that they aren’t in the business of selling things so there’s no chance that the comparison’s get skewed over things like price, discount and offer.

“We’re extremely excited about the investment from Dave and the role he will play in helping to take VERSUS IO to the next level in terms of what we offers users and the direction of the business”, Far, said in a statement. “Dave’s experience of working with growing companies will be invaluable for us moving forwards. 2013 has the potential to be huge for us to be even more successful than 2012 has been.”

This $100,000 investment is the first for McClure in a German company and it appears that it’s separate from the 500startups fund.

Linkage:

Check out VersusIO here

Here’s Dave McClure’s blog

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Check out some of the 500startups graduates at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Interview With Berlin Startup VERSUS IO, Compare Anything

Last month we brought you a story about Berlin comparison platform startup VERSUS IO. They recently added 240 cities to their comparison platform which takes comparing two things and brings it down to it’s simplest form.

The internet is great for comparison shopping. Every major online retailer like Amazon, Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse and everyone in between, offers some kind of side by side comparison of products. Just about every time I go to make a major electronics purchase, I comparison shop something online.

Sure you may want to compare the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S 3, or the Galaxy Nexus vs the iPad Mini. But what if you wanted to compare other things? What if you wanted to take a European vacation and wanted to weigh France vs Italy. Well Versus IO allows you to do that comparison too.

With their recent addition of 240 cities to compare it makes deciding your next vacation a breeze. The team at VERSUS IO is in the process of creating the go-to site for comparing anything and they are well on their way. In fact they plan on providing comparisons on 640 different verticals.

We got a chance to talk with VERSUS IO, founder and CEO Ramin Far who previously headed MTV Networks’ North European online departments. Check out our interview below.

Berlin Startup: Versus IO, The Comparison Platform, Adds 240 Cities To Compare

Well Berlin startup Versus IO is a comparison platform for just about anything in the world. Sure you may want to compare the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S 3, or the Galaxy Nexus vs the iPad Mini. But what if you wanted to compare other things? What if you wanted to take a European vacation and wanted to weigh France vs Italy. Well Versus IO allows you to do that comparison too.

Versus IO added 240 cities to compare using their platform. Just go to their website here and enter each of the two cities you want to compare (as seen below) and voila, instant comparison.

While the site is still in Beta the folks behind Versus IO plan on continuing expansion in to a wide range of verticals. Versus IO has been set up in such a way you should be able to compare just about anything.

Adding comparisons for things like hotels, cars, airlines, department stores and other things people use everyday will definitely make Versus IO a goto site for information. Review sites like Yelp are great but with Versus IO you can get the comparison info and do your own research based on the things you’re looking for.

With their new city comparison Versus IO used over 100 factors in their criteria for comparison. Including:

Education – universities
Crime rates – murder
Climate
Infrastructure – airports, stations
Safety – smoking ban
Economy and business – GDP
Culture – museums, art galleries
People – population, salaries, ethnic groups
And many more…

The results screen is graphically rich but once you drill down you can see where each city met in terms of those criteria factors. For the comparison that we tried, Baltimore vs Caracas, we saw that Baltimore was “Pro” for 17 reasons and Caracas was “Pro” for 12.

The comparison actually took milliseconds but the information returned was plentiful. The top reason to choose Baltimore over Caracas was the higher proportion of women. Baltimore is 53.4% women where Caracas is only 50.5%. Versus IO also found that there are 72.37% more Facebook users in Baltimore than Caracas. Surprisingly, we found out that Caracas has more murders than Baltimore.

Versus IO isn’t just a cute expansion on the hot or not concept, it does exactly what the founders say it does.

Now that they’ve implemented cities and made a step away from traditional electronics comparisons they have plans to increase their comparison engine to 640 verticals. In the coming year Versus IO plans to add real estate, food, credit cards, TVs, banks, plastic surgeons and motorcycles.

Linkage:

Go try it for yourself here

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Google Acquires German Company Nik Software For It’s SnapSeed Startup

While the Instagram staffers were taking their new offices at Facebook on Monday and Tuesday, Google announced that they have acquired German company Nik Software and with that, their photo sharing startup SnapSeed. Instagram officially moved it’s modest staff of under 20 into Facebook’s headquarters Monday where they will be able to integrate and innovate closely with the existing Facebook team.

Nik Software, which has been around since 1995, catapulted in recent days with their picture sharing app SnapSeed. Forbes recently called SnapSeed “Instagram and a lot more”. SnapSeed has more features and more ways to edit and play with photos in the mobile environment.

Nik Software has a few photo apps out there already but none as popular as SnapSeed. SnapSeed boasts 9 million users, which may seem like very little compared to the 100 million that Instagram says they have. However, SnapSeed’s 9 million users have paid $4.99 for the app, opposed to Instagram which is free.

Parmy Olson at Forbes Magazine suggests that SnapSeed may fit in better with Google+. Google+ has a huge community of semi pro and pro-mateur photographers who have taken a liking to Google+ and the fact that they allow you to save high resolution photos directly to the Google+ network.

Vic Gundotra, the Google executive who oversees Google+ said this about Nik Software “We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone…”

Nik Software’s US office is in San Diego. The terms of the Google deal were not disclosed. It’s unclear whether or not Nik Software employees will immediately move to Mountain View or if they’re staying on at all. It’s also unclear as to whether SnapSeed will remain a stand along product or if it will be integrated into Google’s Picassa product.

In regards to the acquisition, Nik Software said “We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.”

Linkage:

Check out snapseed here

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German Startup: Carpooling.com Plans For US Expansion, INTERVIEW

Ridesharing is big overseas. There are a few standout startups working on ridesharing in the United States, including Iron Yard Labs startup RidePost. Established German ride sharing startup Carpooling.com is preparing for a big expansion in the US.

Carpooling.com has grown from 41,000 riders in it’s first year to well over 4 million today. They currently operate in 40 countries with their app available in 7 languages. Carpooling.com allows the rider to select someone to share a ride with based on vehicle, comfort, location and cost. This feature set insures that every rider gets to where they want to go, and how they want to get there. If you need to go 70 miles down the countryside you may want to ride with someone with a comfortable. If you’re just trying to get 15 miles to work you may be ok in a minivan. With carpooling.com the choice is yours.

Carpooling.com sees huge growth potential in the United States market. In their research they found that there’s an average of 3.75 seats available per car (not sure about that .75 part but ok) and over 3 trillion miles traveled per year. Now that startups like couchsurfing.com and airbnb.com have made it normal to share space with complete strangers, hopefully ridesharing startups can do the same for cars.

In our interview below carpooling.com tells us about their ridesharing startup, building a startup in Munich Germany and how they went from mitfahrgelegenheit.de to carpooling.com. Check out the interview below.

German Startup: Honestly.de Says They’re The Easiest Way To Give Feedback INTERVIEW

Giving feedback should be easy. When you take into consideration that most businesses that want your feedback have already somehow earned your money, than you want the easiest most simplest way to get that feedback. Even when you get $10 off your next meal or a buy one get one free, many of those surveys at the bottom of receipts are never answered.

Once you’ve been on the phone with a customer service department for 30 minutes the last thing you want to do is take some kind of survey. That may seem easy enough to you, but it’s not.

That’s why German startup honestly.de has come up with what they call is, the “easiest way to leave feedback”. Honestly.de promises that within 30 seconds you’ll be able to leave feedback for any service organization, and reach the pertinent people. That’s a pretty lofty goal, with the two hardest parts being building scale and engagement.

We got a chance to talk to Honetsly.de about their new startup. Check out the interview below: