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Malin-Iulian Stefanescu, the general manager of EEU Software, is now a minor shareholder in the company which makes CarsCup car strategy game (having 11,5% of the shares).

green-horse-games-logoGreen Horse Games, profiled here on Romanian Startups, was founded by George Lemnaru who also co-founded eRepublik, a popular massive multiplayer online game, browser-based.
The first game coming from Green horse Games is CarsCup, a browser-based strategy game centered on car racing. Basically, Carscup offers you the experience of a car racing manager where you have to make the best decision to get on top of the race.
CarsCup has a fremium model, which mean you will have to pay to unlock some of the features.

With the angel investment, Green Horse Games wants not only to improve CarsCup but also make other games.

“We want to show that we can create powerful gaming companies in Romania which can go international.” said George Lemnaru, the CEO and founder of Green Horse games.

Malin-Iulian Stefanescu has 17 years of experience in the software industry and his company, EEU Software, has contracts with clients from USA, UK, Argentine, France, Holland and Belgium.

June 12, 2013 |

iceefest-interactive-festival-bucharest-romaniaThis year, between 6-9 June, Romania become the “center of the Internet” in Europe, since it hosted ICEEfest interactive festival. This is one of the biggest event in Central and Eastern Europe that brings together the Internet, digital industry and some of the technology’s biggest players in the world.

More than 1500 participants from 8 countries attended ICEEfest this year and the organizers estimate an overwhelming number of 10,000 visitors.
On the first day some of the biggest companies in the world went on stage: Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Skype followed by presentations on the future of classic television.

The most important question the companies engaged with debated whether classic television is going to withstand the assault of the online television. This matter was discussed by representatives of Youtube, BBC, HBO GO, DG Megamind, Discovery Channel and SeeNow.
Also, IAB MIXX Awards took place on the first day of ICEEfest. IAB MIXX Awards ( Marketing and Interactive Excellence Awards) are given as a sign of recognition for the best digital campaigns of the year and this year’s big winner was Interactions with 4 prizes including the best campaign of the year. The day concluded with the CEO Masterclass, a private event for CEOs, and with the ICEEparty at “Casa Vernescu”.

Nadeo, Deezer, Facebook Mobile and Gameforge started off the 2nd day of ICEEfest, considering subjects such as online video games, music apps and AION, the popular free-to-play MMORPG. The day continued with a workshop from Facebook and a training and workshop from Tom Eslinger ( Saatchi & Saatchi ).

Read More…

June 9, 2013 |

ventureconnect-logoThe first edition from this year of VentureConnect series of events (held on 28 of May) 12 entrepreneurs showed their projects for over 30 investors from Romania and Southeast Europe looking forward to engage their interest and financial resources in the development of their enterprises. VentureConnect teamed up with the Romanian financial newspaper Ziarul Financiar in an effort to find investors and potential partners who were willing to support the entrepreneurial community.

The event took place in an exciting new location, “Grand Cinema Digiplex”, inside Bucharest’s Baneasa Shopping City. This year’s edition of VentureConnect (the 7th) was very original, since it was the first time the event was divided into two sections, one dedicated to mature companies in need of more substantial capital, and another dedicated to early stage companies looking for a breakthrough. During the event, and after careful consideration, 12 Startups were selected from 50 other projects from Romania, Germany and Bulgaria. The finalists had to showcase their projects in a limited time frame of about six minutes, and had to handle a five minutes Q&A session professionally.

Among the special guests attending this year’s event we have to mention Nils Granath (Cartagena Capital), Barry Kolodkin (Black Sea Trade Investment Promotion Program), Orlando Szasz (Renania), Ciprian Ghetau (Black Sea Capital), and Numan Numan (212LTD). Of course, they were joined by other important investors and businessmen from Southeast Europe.

Up to the present date, six sessions of VentureConnect were organized and two important Startups were set off, namely tjobs.ro (online recruitment platform) and bitnetsystems.ro (network training). Now it’s time to assess which of these 12 Startups holds the specific credentials to have an extensive impact on the market.

See the presenting startups.

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May 30, 2013 |

As a founder of an early stage startup you need to be able to wear many hats, do many things. Yesterday you had to be a UX Designer, today a Product Manager, tomorrow a Product Developer, day after tomorrow a Marketeer and so on.

Adelina PelteaAdelina Peltea, the co-founder of the startup Splinter.me – aiming to improve the recruiting business (profiled on Romanian Startups too), put together a prioritization map for product development in startups.

You may be needing this map for when time comes to be a Product Manager (or have someone who wants to take on this role).

The article below is reproduced with her permission (published originally on her blog).

Read More…

May 17, 2013 |

Business Insider, one of the leading online tech publications in the world, compiled a list of best designers in the world.
Whether they are gadget designers, app designers, or web designers, Business Insider wanted to know about them.

Lucian-Slatineanu-EmblematiqLucian Slatineanu was thus nominated as one of the best web designer by Romanian’ Startups founder Mircea Goia. Mircea Goia worked with him at Cinely.com – the filmmaker’s platform (Mircea is involved there as an advisor/marketing and shareholder) where Lucian did the visual aspect of the website. He also helped a lot in the designing of the user experience on Cinely.com.

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May 9, 2013 |

startup live bucharest-logoFor those of you who don’t know, Startup Live is an international concept that tries to reunite young people passionate about entrepreneurship, technology and innovation with investors, mentors and business angels. This event is hosted by a significant number of countries and it’s supported by high-ranking international partners like STARTeurope and Konica Minolta.

The first edition of Startup Live Bucharest took place in October 2012 and brought together more than 70 entrepreneurs and over 15 mentors from different areas of expertise who shared their knowledge and provided feedback. The second edition is going to take place between 7-9 June 2013 at TechHub Bucharest, and it aims to attract even more participants from many diverse fields such as web design, business journalism, mobile development, business environment and, of course, entrepreneurship.

The goal of the meeting is to help young entrepreneurs find new opportunities to expand their projects while connecting with investors or mentors.
The format of the event will follow the usual pattern “pitch idea – team building – work on Startup – get feedback – present Startup”. There will also be workshop sessions were participants can develop their communication skills and learn strategies on how to manage a conversation with a potential investor, or how to pitch their Startup professionally.

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June 10, 2013 |

Mary Meeker, partner at KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, the well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm) has done it again.
She and Liang Wu has released the State of the Internet 2013 presentation at the D11 conference.

 

Some highlights from the slides:

– 2.4 billion Internet users around the world
– More than 500 million photos are uploaded and shared every day.
– More than half of those are on Facebook.
– About 100 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.
– About a quarter of people worldwide say they share “everything” or “most things” online. In Saudia Arabia, India, and Indonesia, at least half say the same thing.
– Mobile internet traffic as a percentage of all internet traffic is expected to continued growing one-and-a-half times per year. It’s currently 15%.
– In China this year, mobile internet access surpassed PC internet access for the first time.
– On Groupon, 45% of transactions are conducted with mobile devices.
– Smartphone users check their devices about 150 times a day.
– QR code scanning is up fourfold in China from a year earlier.
– China now has more users of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems than the United States does.

Read More…

June 2, 2013 |

innovation-labs-demo-day-bucharest11 teams, 50 students and 3 months of hard work, these are the numbers for Innovation Labs, a joint project of TechLounge and TechSoup Romania developed with the support of Microsoft Romania. For the first time, Innovation Labs tries to bring the entrepreneurial culture into Romanian universities.

The project started in “Politehnica” University from Bucharest with the Innovation Labs Hackathon. The event gathered over 100 students, and after 24 hours of intense work 12 ideas developed into viable projects. After establishing the teams, the students who remained in the competition became part of weekly public talks, one-on-one sessions of mentoring and pitching sessions.

Three months later the “exam” was held at TechHub Bucharest, and Innovation Labs Demo Day chose its finalists. Their task was to skillfully present their projects in front of their mentors, potential investors and friends.

The jury members were the following: Todi Pruteanu (Microsoft Romania), Teodor Ceausu (IXIA), Radu Georgescu (Gecad Group), Alex Marinescu ( EA ), Daniel Dragomir (TechHub ), Raluca Georgescu (Allegro Group ), Diana Olar ( Voucherry ), Daniel Enache – ( Media IQ ) and Gabriel Iovu ( Top HoReCa ) – they had to decide which of projects worth the first place.

See the winners.

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May 24, 2013 |

renderstreet-logoRenderStreet is a young Romanian startup (founded in 2013) which is offering the next generation solution to the 3D rendering market using top of the line hardware and technology, a friendlier interface, a better customer support and competitive prices.

The company’s target market are small and medium architecture firms, media studios, post-production companies, as well as individual artists/architects. The 3D rendering software market is projected to have an annual growth rate of 21% over the period of 2011-2015 and the largest Blender online user community has more than 146.000 members at the moment.

The startup acquired the American competitor BlenderRenders which was one of the first render farms on the market exclusively dedicated to Blender 3D software users (established in 2010 in Boston, USA). Blender is a free open source 3D software used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. It also features a built-in game engine.

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May 14, 2013 |

techhub-bucharest-how-to-webAfter months of work and a period of “beta”, TechHub Bucharest (Romania) will fully launch on 9th of May this year, entering into a string of TechHub initiatives around Europe (Manchester, Riga, London).

TechHub creates spaces around the world for tech entrepreneurs to meet, work, learn and collaborate, and runs a load of great events, advice sessions and more. They provide physical and virtual spaces that enable technology startups to work smarter, develop faster and increase their chance of success.

TechHub is an initiative started by Elizabeth Varley and Mike Butcher (yes, the London Techcrunch writer). Mike Butcher himself will be present in Bucharest at the launch of TechHub Bucharest and will co-host with Daniel Dragomir (TechHub Bucharest co-founder and executive manager) and Bogdan Iordache (TechHub Bucharest and How To Web co-founder).

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April 30, 2013 |

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