TechCrunch: ' The Europas' - and the winners are.....

Last night TechCrunch (the blog bible for all things Web 2.0 and mobile), held The Europas - the publication's first-ever awards to recognise the brightest and the best in the industry. Over 250 people attended, with a stella cast directed by the editor Mike Butcher, including Robert Scoble and the Traveling Geeks, Brent Hoberman of MyDeco and Lastminute fame and Michael Birch of Bebo and BirthdayAlarm.

News of the night was that Hoberman and Birch have indeed partnered (the rumour broke earlier this year) to form a fund - PROfounders Capital and panel debate focused on why expansion of start-ups into Europe was so tough. (Although our cross-border eCommerce white paper - Borderless - was published way-back in October 2008, language was deemed to be a key factor, as Sarah Lacy on the panel pointed-out.)

So the winners were:
Grand Prix - Spotify
Best New Startup Summer 2008-2009 - Spotify (TweetDeck, my personal Twitter application favourite, was Highly Commended)
Best Investor - TAG The Accelerator Group
Best Startup Founders - Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon of Spotify
Best Mobile Application (EMEA) - Spinvox
Best Mobile Startup (EMEA) - Nimbuzz
Best Entertainment Application or Service - SoundCloud
Best European / Real World Gadget - Poken
Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup - AlertMe
Best Enterprise / B2B Startup - Huddle
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society EMEA) - Mendeley
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old) - Soup.io
Best Design - Songkick
Best Web Application or Service (EMEA) - Spotify

It was truly a fantastic evening. Spotify certainly swept the board, however there were some extremely deserving businesses in the Highly Commended categories. I'm personally hoping that the awards will be repeated next year to give well-deserved credit to the stars and future stars of this innovative and extremely exciting industry.