2011 has seen some fantastic startups really making a name for themselves in the UK, but also in the rest of Europe.
I have made a list of whom I believe to be the top 10 European startups of 2011.
Now I know there are loads missing I could of made this list the top 100, but it's not. So let me know in the comments of those that I've missed.
And FYI I have included Israel as a European country since it is recognised as part of Europe by FIFA & Eurovision; that's good enough for me!
Plus they have some great startups, would be a shame to leave them out.
So here they are, in no particular order:
Fon - Madrid, Spain
Fon has a goal to provide free wifi to the whole world.
How?
By signing upto Fon you agree to securely share a little bit of your wifi bandwidth with Fon. Think of it as crowd sourcing wifi, if you will.
This year Fon has seen its users hit 4 million, doubling their userbase in 12 months. They also raised €10million in funding and secured a number of large partnerships with the likes of Belgacom, Belgiums largest telecommunications company, Skype & Nintendo so 3DS owners can make use of free wifi across Portugal.
Soundcloud - Berlin, Germany
Soundcloud Is probably one of the more better known startups on the list.
Having been founded in 2007 by Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss to 'unmute' the web. It is a sound platform that allows anyone to capture, create & share sounds across the web. Almost like the YouTube of sound.
2011 has seen Soundcloud raise $10 million Series B funding round from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures.
They also past the 8 million user mark about a year on from their announcement that they had past the 1 million user mark.
They also announced partnerships with both Songkick & Foursquare and they won the audio and media category of the Telegraph Start-Up 100 awards.
The startup is growing rapidly in the past 12 months & shows no sign of slowing down in 2012.
Waze - Tel Aviv, Israel
The Israeli startup provides GPS maps of countries which are entirely crowdsourced. Users create and edit roads to ensure a continually updated map which has integrated real time traffic alerts from users which is actually a really cool feature.
The product has a gamification aspect to it to further entice users to update maps in real time.
In 2011, the company, which plans to monetize through location based advertising and to expand into Asia, hit 10 million users, up from 2 million in 2010. In fact December alone has seen them gain 1.5 million users.
This year the company also announced it had raised an additional $30 million in funding. This is on top of the $25 million in 2010. Expect Google to come knocking soon!
6wunderkinder - Berlin, Germany
Another from the German capital, 6wunderkinder, a multi-platform productivity solutions for individuals, groups and businesses.
The company's flagship product Wunderlist, task management software, hit the million user mark earlier this year and are releasing their latest tool which looks to offer a more comprehensive productivity tool.
They also raised $4.2 million in funding from Atomico, the investment firm started by the founders of Skype.
Of the 1.5million registered users around 40% are based in the US showing, double that of 2010, showing it's fast growing popularity & international appeal.
Tradeshift - Copenhagen, Denmark
Tradeshift was founded in 2009 & launched in 2010. It has been a rapid rise for the company that offers an online invoicing tool for businesses to build a network of partners online for easy sharing of invoices.
2011 saw the company raise $7million in May and announce deals with both the French & Italien governments, which is a massive win for the company and has helped it grow further.
Further to this in October, Tradeshift announced it had raised a further $17million in funding bringing the startups valuation to $137million.
It has used this fresh round of funding to expand into new territories and now boasts 5 offices including its Copenhagen HQ.
iZettle - Stockholm, Sweden
iZettle let's anyone make card payments anywhere, anytime via an iPhone app and mini chip card reader that can be attached to the phone. It is basically Europes answer to Square
iZettle takes a cut of each transaction which can be consumer to business or consumer to consumer.
The company was founded in April 2010 & came out of beta this year. It has gone on to raise €11.2million in Series A funding.
They already claim that they had grown the Swedish POS market 5% in 90 days before November and signed up over 10,000 users during their beta phase.
It's an area which is taking off quickly & they are looking to change a massive industry in payments & having only one real big competitor at the moment (Square), they are getting in early.
House Trip - Lisbon, Portugal
House Trip launched in 2010 and is an apartment booking website where anyone can book an apartment or villa and property owners can put their places on the site. It's similar to the AirBnB concept.
This year has seen House Trip raise two rounds of funding. $2.7 million from Index ventures back in April and more recently in November they raised $17 million Series B funding led by Balderton Capital.
This year they also expanded beyond Paris, London & Berlin into the whole of Europe and have also made inroads into the rest of the world with close to 60,000 properties on the site, which has increased from 8,000 in march. They have also seen over 500,000 nights booked so far and have grown from 20 staff to 70 full time employees.
Radionomy - Brussels, Belgium
Radionomy enables people to create and listen to radio stations online free of charge and share a personalized radio show complete with music programming, jingles, commercials along with custom reports and podcasts, with friends and the rest of the world.
The Belgian based company has grown rapidly in 2011 announcing that they are now streaming 30 million hours of online radio a month. That's around 1 million hours every day, quite incredible. They are also currently finalising a funding round of $15 million with the help of French investment bank Bryan Garnier.
Radionomy have also been working on a massive new product in 2011 Streamonomy which will essentially open up its platform to external radio stations and help boost its growth further. This is expected to be released in early January.
The company already has 30% of its users in the US, a tough place to crack, but they seem to be doing well over there and with a fresh round of funding they aim to truly establish themselves in America and the rest of the world.
Wooga - Berlin, Germany
Another startup from the heart of Germany, wooga is an online social game developer & yes it's wooga all in lower case, because they're cool like that! They have so far released 6 games that attract over 32 million active players each month.
It has been a whirlwind year for the startup founded in 2009. January began with a bang as they officially became the leading European social games developer and they sat in 7th place in the world with 15 million a month playing a wooga game at the time.
By the end of this year they have moved into third spot in the world, with popular releases this year, Diamond Dash & Magic Land pushing them up the charts and doubling the number of monthly players.
During the year they also won two awards at the European Games Awards for Best Publisher and Best Game (Diamond Dash).
Wooga (short for 'world of gaming') also raised $24 million, in what was its second round of funding, in May. This was used to further grow the team and build more games and will help them to further move up the ranks and challenge the juggernaut that is Zynga for that number 1 spot. Not quite at that level yet but who's to say they can't emulate their US competitors, after all Zynga is 2 years older than wooga, maybe in a couple years wooga will be where Zynga is now!
Wix - Tel Aviv, Israel
The Israeli startup Wix allows users to build flash websites. It is easy and simple for anyone to use (seriously even my dad made a Wix site) and even though the sites are flash based they are SEO friendly.
The company addressed an important issue in 2011 which was mobile access, releasing a free mobile site builder early in the year.
They also created a Facebook application called WixYourPage which allows users to create customised Facebook fan pages.
The startup has grown to over 13 million users and raised a massive $40 million in March to help grow the company further and improve the Wix mobile and WixYourPage features.
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