Berlin Meetup Sees City Brimming With Talent Ahead of TechCrunch Disrupt Europe

The Berlin TechCrunch Meetup and Pitch-off last Friday saw 13 startups battle it out for the prize of a Startup Alley table at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin this October.

The event coincided with the christening of The Factory Berlin by none other than Vint Cerf, founder of the Internet as we know it. The Factory will be an enormous new building in the heart of Berlin where huge startups like Soundcloud will co-exist alongside tiny new ones.

The building is close to completion later this year, but in the meantime, our gracious hosts allowed us to turn it into a venue – complete with bar – for the TechCrunch Meetup, which was followed by an enormous closing party for the excellent TOA Berlin.

As we did in London, we got the entrants to pitch with just a microphone and their personality – after we’d put them through their paces at an Office Hours session with TechCrunch writers Mike Butcher, John Biggs and Natasha Lomas.

Here’s who won a table in Startup Alley:

Avuba
“We redefine banking by creating a bank account that is easy to use, tells your where your money goes and includes worldwide money withdrawals. After that we push limits and include easy p2p payments, developer friendly online payments and government-ID-level online identification.”

Here’s who won tickets to the event:

Satago
“Satago is where freelancers and small businesses anonymously share, direct from their accounting software, data about when their business customers pay them versus agreed terms. By bringing transparency to late-payments, we want to help people understand when they will get paid, as well as put some health peer-pressure on companies to pay their suppliers on time.”

Voice-sphere.com
“Until now, users are frustrated with voice control apps because they can’t do much with them, app developers are frustrated because they can’t use voice control for their apps. This is why voicesphere is a voice control app that is open for developers. We give app developers the abilities to integrate their apps into our voice control without having to know how language processing works. The team play results in ever-increasing functionality.”

And here’s a run down of the other entrants, all of whom did a great job.

appNG
“appNG helps Enterprises to develop, deploy, operate and integrate applications faster by providing a powerful Platform-as-a-Service Framework. Benefits are reduced costs due to faster time to market, higher automation and modularization. appNG will be released as open source software. We will be making money by offering enterprise subscriptions/SLAs, providing support, updates and maintenance on a yearly basis. Furthermore, we will create a marketplace for exchanging appNG applications.”

Babywatchome
“Future moms can have great physicians, but doctors cannot monitor their patients 24/7. At the moment, the available solutions are either expensive pregnancy monitoring devices or very simple baby apps that cannot provide much information. BabyWatch is a system consisting of: a pocket size ultrasound Doppler, and a mobile application which makes it possible for you to hear and visualize your little baby’s heartbeat. In other words, you can check up on your baby anytime, anywhere!”

Civocracy
“Civocracy is a user generated personalized political forum, which also connects you to relevant politicians at the click of a button. Civocracy allows users to write about the issues they care about. Users can up-vote writings they find more relevant or compelling, and the most voted submissions rise to the top of the page, naturally allowing the most compelling arguments to become the most visible. They can see geographically who in their area is interested in similar issues. Most importantly, users can send their submissions to politicians involved with that issue.”

Coach
“COACH is the leading destination for professionals that want to get ahead in their careers. COACH provides the most effective way to learn new skills part-time through integrating online learning with offline coaching and group support. Through an innovative P2P model, learning with COACH is convenient, fun, fast and affordable. In addition, COACH is an aspirational community that enables people to connect, find new opportunities and get ahead!”

DokList
“DokList is a localized medical services comparison and booking platform. On DokList patients can compare, browse and book medical services, leave reviews and communicate with their doctors after the treatment. Moreover, doctors/clinics can handle their bookings, keep all of their patients registered at one place and send them information, requests or updates. DokList is focusing on the Eastern European market, with a long term goal of expanding to medical tourism services.”

Drungli
“Drungli is the fastest search engine of low cost flights bringing you the cheapest random destinations available at any given moment. Drungli’s aim is to surprise and inspire you to travel more and find new destinations for beautiful adventures at the cheapest rate possible.”

Funifi
“Funifi provides highly targeted advertising solutions for FMCG brands at the exact time consumers are using or performing actions related to their products. Funifi works by taking the latest in cutting edge 3-way accelerometer technology in combination with a mobile app to record your motions while performing boring tasks such as mopping or sweeping. Your actions are converted into points to compete amongst friends & family to stand a chance of winning great prizes.”

Likeyou
” “likeyou” is an application for students. By using Geolocalisation, the app “likeyou” detects members within the users direct visibility range to then connect the various social network profiles (for example facebook, instagram, twitter) with one click. The application is a meta-network, that makes digital networking in everyday life faster, simpler and more fun. Share a moment, talk about it and stay connected!”

Pandadoc
“PandaDoc helps to send, receive, annotate, sign, and track digital documents.
The application relies on third-party add-ons to extend its functionality in order to cover all aspects of documents processing. Working as a tool to both send and receive documents, PandaDoc offers a wide range of features including electronic signature, real-time annotations, version control, and more.”