I’m just back from Riga in Latvia where we held our first ever TechCrunch Baltics meetup (where you will find video of the whole thing). It was a great day of panelists and speakers, (and thanks to all those who organised, participated and attended, especially Andris Berzins). After chatting to a few people at the event I came away with a sense that the tiny Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, triple-sandwiched by Belarus, Poland and Russia, definitely punch above their weight in terms of technology talent. We are all of course familiar with Estonia’s association with the early development of Skype, and lately a clutch of new startups. But that seems to have only served as a rallying call for its two other Baltic neighbours to pick up the pace in developing their own tech ecosystems.
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Today at Techcrunch Baltics, we’re hearing a lot about the need for cooperation between the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. While the latter has won a lot of PR juice from its association with Skype over the last few years, there is no less talent in this other neighbouring countries, so its interesting to see a new initiative appear to cross those borders.

The so-called #BalticMafia – startups people from the region – gets another boost in the form the StartupWiseGuys

They are now offering cold hard cash of €500 to anyone who refers a team to their startup program (which invests up to €15.000 per team) of 13 weeks in Tallinn, Estonia. That referral fee sounds a little low – until you realise exactly how much €500 gets you in Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia…
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European accelerator HackFwd just announced that Infogr.am from Riga in Latvia as its latest investment. Infogr.am’s product is gunning to be a kind of adobe illustrator for online, allowing anyone to create cool info-graphics.

The web-based application needs no programming or design skills, and works in the same way that you can snap a photo and share it on your social networks. Users make a statement or an argument graphically and then share it. An infographic can be embedded on a page or shared as a link or an image directly.
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BaltCap, a leading venture investor in startups in the Baltics region, has signed a €1 million investment in Clusterpoint, an enterprise software startup created by Latvian programmers and backed by seed investors in the UK and Baltics.

Clusterpoint has built a database platform designed for cloud computing infrastructure which they claim is highly scalable. They are competing against open source solutions such as MongoDB.
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We’re running the first ever TechCrunch Baltics meetup today with a mini-conference and pitch contest in the lovely city of Riga, Latvia. The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are tiny countries, but punch above their weight in terms of their technical prowess. Estonia in particular was made famous as being the base from which Skype was developed, and now the rest of the region is coming alive with startups and accelerators. You can find the agenda here. Up to 8 selected Baltic startups will pitch to a jury and audience that includes many key investors in the region and beyond. We also have a dedicated twitter account @TCBaltics and the hashtag is #TCBaltics. → Read More

It’s been a long and winding road since Tariq Krim created and eventually left Netvibes, but today Netvibes has been acquired by huge French engineering giant Dassault Systèmes for an undisclosed amount. Krim continues to pursue his original dream of organising the social web on Jolicloud.

Netvibes had an early lead back in the era when ‘personal start pages’ were the new new thing, but (and we won;t go into the long story here) a large pivot towards enterprise saw it moving into more of a dashboard for Fortune 500 brands, enterprises and agencies (including Coca Cola, HP, L`Oreal, US Dept. of Energy, Digitas, McCann Worldgroup, Edelman, Lufthansa, Sage). Although you’d be forgiven for not tracking its growth in that other world, it’s in fact turned into a decent enterprise story, serving over 250,000 Web apps directly into businesses and connecting internal enterprise systems (like Salesforce, SQL, ERP, etc.) with the real-time Web.
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We were a little concerned at the end of last year that one of Europe’s better VCs, Paul Jozefak (@pjozefak) had parted ways with his firm Neuhaus Partners in Hamburg, and that there was no news on his next move.

Now the word on the street appears to be that he’s working on something pretty interesting. I’ve heard through the grapevine that he’s told people about a new project called Liquid Labs. I reached out for comment but he politely declined.
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I love it when a startup I’ve been covering for literally years suddenly finds itself in the spotlight, and for the right reasons. In this case, Skimlinks, originally from London but now with a growing US base, has been revealed as powering the affiliate links behind Pinterest, one of the hottest startups on the map right now. For some that appears to be a little bit of scandal, at least for Pinterest, though not for Skimlinks.

LLSocial uncovered the practice, whereby if a post on Pinterest happens to link to a commerce site with an affiliate program, Pinterest uses Skimlinks – a third party service – to modifiy the link to add their own affiliate tracking code. Anyone making a purchase from that click through sends affiliate revenue, via Skimlinks, back to Pinterest. Kerching, everyone benefits.
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For many technology startups today, Silicon Valley remains the quintessential place to look towards for inspiration, trends and – for some – a place to set up shop at some point in their startup’s life cycle. That remains true of some European entrepreneurs as well. But with the Valley “mindset” of fast-paced innovation and the global Internet explosion, some eco-systems are looking to vie to become at least as significant. For a long time New York was the poor relation to the Valley in this respect, but with tech startups back in vogue the city is building its own community. As a European looking at the city with fresh eyes, I’ve ben rattling around New York this week, tagging along with a number of European entrepreneurs. ‘World to NYC‘ is a programme organised by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and, from the London side, put together by TheGlasshouse/TakeOut, the networks founded by the uber-connected, and now New York resident, Judith Clegg.
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As I mentioned the other day, the startup competition aspect of GeeknRolla and the Dublin Web Summit, have come together to create the London Web Summit on March 19th in The Brewery Venue, London.

I’ll be co-curating the Summit along with Paddy Cosgrave and chairing the start up competition, which you can apply to enter by clicking here.

The first speakers for the event are below. We’ll be announcing more shortly. → Read More

Fits.me, the Estonian “biorobotics virtual fitting room” startup for e-commerce clothing retailers and shoppers, has been around for a while. We first covered them in 2010 when they secured €1.3 million, taking their total cash to €2.6 million. They’ve now taken another €1.5 million, taking their funding to €4.1 million.

Fits.me lets customers “try on” clothing before buying from online clothes retailers. They can see how different sized bodies fit the the clothes on sale – like in real-world fitting rooms. One barrier to fashion e-commerce growth is ensuring that customers can accurately select their body size and shape. The Fits.me robotic body does it for them. → Read More

Last year’s Startup Week in Vienna was a great event, but we’ve heard tell that they are “pivoting”.

Apart from re-naming it to The Pioneers Festival, part of the programme will be crowd-sourced and will be moving a bigger location which has a capacity for “up to 3,000 people” over three days, according to StartEurope, the people behind it. There is no word on any speakers or event partners yet, but early bird tickets are available here if you feel like slapping down some cash early.
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Early last year we pointed out that implementing the proposed EU cookie law would profoundly affect European technology companies and anyone running a business online out of Europe. Let’s review why.

First of all, it could mean that a staggering 90% of a site’s visitors would run a mile rather than saying yes to accepting a simple Google Analytics cookie. This is what happened when the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) implemented the EU advise on their own web site. → Read More

Bringing US business models to Europe might seem an obvious move for some – but it’s frequently far harder than it might appear. US incumbents can indeed try to expand, but some fall at the first hurdle. Exactly this happened on January 20 when Shoedazzle announced its closure in the UK. UK head Nigel Whiteoak has since admitted to me that the company was looking to make more of the continued opportunity in the US, versus trying to expand in the UK. Shades of the Romans over-reaching their borders? Maybe. Whatever the case, the news has been a boon to Stylistpick, the local UK player which is making hay in the UK and now heading to other markets with a war chest.

StylistPick has now raised an $11million B round led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe. The subscription-based fast fashion brand, kept existing investors Accel Partners and Index Ventures on board, who invested $8 million in a Series A in April 2011. The board of directors is now Davor Hebel (Fidelity), Sonali de Rycker (Accel), Robin Klein (Index) and Eileen Burbidge (Passion Capital).
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Help-desk software provider Zendesk today launched a series of partner programs in Europe, called Zendesk Ambassadors. Clients joining the program have the chance to earn money from referring new businesses to Zendesk.

The program is open to businesses of any size and includes access to private forums and meet-ups with the Zendesk team. Members would usually hope to go on to become Authorised Partners, a step up on the partner ladder. Being invited (and there’s no way in except by invitation) to join the Authorised Partners program means providing consulting, integration and migration services to Zendesk customers.

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We covered the launch of Summly an application that summarises text last year, but I recently caught up with Nick D’Aloisio, the16 year year-old programmer who came up with the application for a video interview.

Its sounds almost boringly simple but the sheer amount of online content means the eco-system for these apps is rising. Formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), Summly was developed by D’Aloisio from his bedroom in South London over a Summer break from school.
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