Barcelona is coming alive with preparations for Mobile World Congress and we are pumped about the super-international TechCrunch Mobile Barcelona meetup in the same week. With thanks to our local supporters in the shape of Barcelona.io and Wayra, we’ll be bringing you a healthy round of startups, VCs and TechCrunch writers to while away your evening. The hashtag for the event will be #TCMB. Here’s our line-up.
As a keynote speaker we’ll be featuring Michael Jackson, former COO of Skype and now Partner at Mangrove Capital Partners who will be talking about his story at Skype and how he sees mobile trends developing in the future from a platform and investor perspective. Few people know mobile as well as Michael.
We’ll also be joined by TechCrunch writers Kim-Mai Cutler and Ingrid Lunden who will be grilling the founders of hot Israeli startup Sync.Me, Joe Braidwood, CEO of SwiftKey and Vassili Filipov, head of Mobile Product Distribution at Yandex.
As well as Michael Jackson, we’ll have Roberto Bonanzinga of Balderton Capital and Oriol Juncosa, a partner with one of Spain’s key VC investors, Nauta Capital. Alongside them will be representatives from Active Venture Partners, Nauta Capital, StartupBootCamp and Caixa Capital Risc.
Our pitching competition will feature 8 teams selected from the below shortlisted group. All the companies will go through a closed session where they meet a panel of investors and experts to determine who goes on stage to pitch, with a panel of judges deciding the winner.
Well cap it off with networking over food/drinks.
Before TechCrunch Mobile Barcelona, Wayra will be holding their Barcelona Demo day. If you are an investor or mentor and are interested in attending the Wayra demo day, please contact julian@wayra.org.
Main event: 6:30pm Wednesday, 27th of February.
Networking: 9pm onwards
Address: Plaza Ernest Lluch i Martí nº 5, Telefonica Tower.
Unfortunately tickets sold out when they were announced and will not be available on the door.
Here are the shortlisted companies:
OpenSignal – London
The OpenSignal app helps users get better signal on their mobile phone through a suite of tools including the ability to see the direction of better cell signal in real time and the location of nearby free Wi-Fi hotspots. The app also crowd-sources data on the performance and coverage of the network so we can build unbiased and accurate cellular coverage maps. Consumers can use this information when considering a new cell phone plan, to ensure they are on the network offering the best coverage in their area.
Tellyo – Helsinki
Tellyo allows social sharing of moments from TV shows so people can discover interesting programs and TV stations can reach new audiences. Constantly increasing number of TV programs makes it difficult to TV stations to reach new audiences, and to viewers to find interesting programs to watch.
BugSense – Athens
BugSense is on a mission to set the quality standard for mobile apps. Analyzing 1 billion metrics each month across various platforms, BugSense provides more than 13,000 developers globally with app performance reports that help developers identify issues and create better mobile app experiences. BugSense solution has the largest distribution in the industry according to AppBrain.
BePark – Belgium
Be Park stems from the idea that parking spaces in cities are underused. At Be Park, we have developed an innovative solution based on the latest mobile and web technologies. Be Park technology handles the entire logistics management of the parking lot at the parking users’ end and providers’ end. The parking user can localise access general information (price, availability, pictures, etc), open the door/barrier of the parking and pay through its cell phone (call, sms or SmartPhone App). The parking provider can join BePark parking network without any investment. BePark will then manage entries/exits, payments, sales and reporting in exchange of a revenue share.
AudioSnaps – Barcelona
AudioSnaps takes pictures and simultaneously captures the surrounding sound and packs it all together in a standard JPEG file (patent pending). It’s as easy as any photo app and doesn’t require any extra steps. Resulting AudioSnaps can be shared in any site and don’t require a player. The result are pictures accompanied of 5 seconds of sound that better represent the moment when they were taken and enhance the transfer of emotions.
Shpock – Vienna
Shpock (“SHop in your POCKet”) is a mobile flea market app for beautiful things and is available on iPhone and Android since 4 months. Shpock enables users to rummage through thousands of products (picture based) in their neighbourhood (products sorted by location), discover and sell things like your old playstation, your favourite shirt, which became too tight, or your unique, but not matching the other furniture, designer-couch.
Bizzcall – Madrid
We are serial entrepreneurs with a strong international business development background and vast experience in building digital platforms. We cofounded Lextrend five years ago. Lextrend develops on-demand agile software products for companies. Today Lextrend is a trusted developer for corporate mainstays. Bizzcall is an application that allows the use of one phone for both business and personal calls. Bizzcall doesn’t use VoiP, we are the first to work with the employees’ own mobile contract to ensure quality service and fair reimbursement.
Pockets United – Munich
BAM! ‘Social’ is the next big thing in mobile payments, and has already triggered the disruption of many industries: With Pockets United Mobile Payment will be next! The app allows friends to split costs on the go, by automatically cross-balancing open debts, and managing paybacks at the end of each month. Peer pressure and social scoring alogorithms ensure a high payment morale. While far from easy to implement for existing PSPs or banks, a category killer in this field must be social by design. Think of us as PayPal, just with a lot more pal and get excited about a cutting-edge user experience that is fun to use day after day. Cause after all, dividing expenses should lower the burden for all, not cause additional effort for some.
Appscend – Romania
Appscend is the world’s first performance oriented mobile application platform. Specifically Appscend reunites under one unified cloud based infrastructure the fastest cross-platform development technology available today, together with a complete mix of backend technologies that ensure application management, a powerful push messaging platform as well as app analytics.
Vilynx – Barcelona & Menlo Park
Vilynx helps you gain control of managing your precious family memories. It allows you to access your videos across multiple devices. Our revolutionary 5-second thumbnail summary makes browsing, searching and sharing fast and easy. Your videos are uploaded automatically to your cloud storage solution of choice (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube). You’ll not have to worry about losing a video again. The social network element of Vilynx provides users with an easy-to-use interface to share videos on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, email or within Vilynx.
PixelPin Ltd – London
People remember images better than words. Scientists call it the Picture Superiority Effect (PSE). PixelPin uses PSE so you never have to remember a password again. Weak passwords expose the user to the risk of fraud whilst complex ones puts them off using the service. PixelPin is more secure than PINs and passwords, eliminates phishing and encourages users to return. There are real advantages when you use a no-keyboard mobile/smart device as it’s a lot quicker to login than with alphanumeric passwords and makes the authentication process very quick and easy for users. PixelPin is a unique product that allows users to authenticate themselves securely without the need to for additional hardware or accept the risks of using biometrics, without the associated privacy and storage costs of these technologies. PixelPin’s mission is to bring a new breed of mobile authentication products to market that are easy to use, memorable, secure and accessible to all.
PASSNFLY – Barcelona
PASSNFLY is an automated multi-airline check-in solution. The easiest way to automate your check-ins. Automatically detects flights, across more than 200 major airlines worldwide. Even with no Internet connection, PASSNFLY will do it all for you, and process your flight check-ins 24/7, automatically. Wherever you are in the world!
LetsLunch.com – San Francisco
Linkedin + Lunch = LetsLunch. WE connect you with interesting professionals to go out for lunch.