Exclusive – What is the deal with all these small Belgian startups suddenly developing severe international ambitions? Yesterday it was Wondergraphs, today it’s Getyoo, a provider of NFC interactive solutions for the events and meetings industry.
The fledgling company has raised €600,000 (which is roughly $850,000) from Eric Bigeard, ex-CEO of Lyreco, a European leader in the B2B distribution of office supplies with current sales surpassing 2 billion euros.
Getyoo believes the event industry will change radically thanks to the possibility of near-field communication (NFC), technology that enables simplified transactions such as data exchange (a digital business card a list of contacts, photos, applications, money, virtual items and so on).
Getyou co-founder and CEO Alexis Tinel tells me its first product, a small physical device called the Clickey that can be compared with the Poken, is currently distributed throughout Europe, and that the company has now launched a brand new NFC interactive card that allows people at events – think business conferences and summits but also live music concerts and whatnot – to interact with social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Another European startup called Cardcloud is also doing interesting things in this space.