News and Articles

Liverail, a Romanian startup, acquired by Facebook

Facebook just acquired Liverail, the leading publisher monetization platform for video, in a transaction valued around 400-500 million dollars.

Liverail was founded in 2007 by three people:
– Mark Trefgarne (CEO, English)
– Andrei Dunca (CTO, Romanian)
– Sergiu Biris (Romanian)

Andrei Dunca and Sergiu Biris were also associated previously with founding Trilulilu.ro, the Youtube of Romania, a site which is the leading service provider in the Romanian online entertainment.

The company, Liverail, has 170 employees and 50 from among them are located in the city of Cluj-Napoca in Romania (most probably the technical arm of the startup). The main office is in San Francisco with secondary offices in New York, Paris and London.

Liverail-founders

Liverail connects marketers to publishers in realtime and was on track to serve 7 billion ads a month and on a pace of 200 million dollars in gross revenue this year (thus, the amount Facebook supposedly paid for the company is credible).

Some of the big customers Liverail has are ABC Family, Major League Baseball, A&E Networks, Gannett, Dailymotion.

“When we started talking to the team at Facebook about how we could work together, it quickly became clear that we shared a vision for the future of digital advertising. They believed, as we do, that publishers deserve a new generation of audience-aware advertising technology. We realized that by joining forces we’d be able to draw upon our respective strengths to move even faster towards our shared vision of creating the advertising platform of the future.”, said Mark Trefgarne, Liverail CEO.

“We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month. More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too. Publishers will benefit as well because more relevant ads will help them make the most out of every opportunity they have to show an ad.” mentions Brian Boland, Vice-President of Ads Product Marketing and Atlas at Facebook.

Mihai Putinelu

Mihai Putinelu has a background in both training and sales. He’s currently the project manager – Wallet Buzz

April 2011 – August 2012 (1 year 5 months)Bucharest, Romania
• Market research and analysis for identifying new customer and new business opportunities for the company;
• Establishing new meetings with potential clients and holding specific presentations pointing out the company’s advantages.
• Understanding client needs and providing specific business proposals.
• Sold company products and services to potential customers for achieving my monthly/annually objectives.
• Providing support for portfolio clients for 1 year after date of signing: new products and locations, explaining terms and conditions, scheduling occupational health timetable.

October 2007 – March 2011 (3 years 6 months)
• Market research and analysis.
• Identified new customer and new business opportunities for the company;
• Sold company products and services to potential customers by taking advantage of my previous experience, company tools, training programs and other learning opportunities;
• Understanding client needs and providing specific business proposals.
• Developing personalized training – courses to meet and satisfy client requests.
• Hold presentations and trainings for Microsoft Office Excel, Word, PowerPoint – advanced level
• Conduct preliminary evaluations and give individual and overall feedback.

May 12, 2014 | Wallet Buzz

Irina Marinescu

Co-founder of Enveloper.
Business Developer for startups and day-to-day SEM Expert & Newbie Marketing Director.

She is very passionate about all the stages of any project, especially tech projects. Really believes that a good product will always be successful if it solves a real problem and takes care of it’s users. Also likes to see how projects develop from a mere idea to an actual product subject to the feedback of the users.

Likes cats, coffee (but only drinks decaf).

April 5, 2014 | Irina Marinescu

JuniorTube

JuniorTube helps parents and teachers curate and share their own YouTube playlists of educational videos, remotely, over-the-air, safely to children’s iPads, iPhones, iPods Touch, Apple TV, or web browser.

From the playroom to the classroom or homework desk, JuniorTube brings the benefits of YouTube’s educational videos safely into the hands of tots and K-12 youngsters.

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PARENTS AND FAMILIES

Do you allow strangers to decide which videos your kids should watch? If not, select them yourself! With JuniorTube, YOU curate and pre-approve YouTube videos for your kids, remotely, from any of your own device.

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TEACHERS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS

JuniorTube Edu allows students to safely access teacher-curated educational videos. JuniorTube Edu is the school version in the series of four JuniorTube apps, and it’s ready to be used in Pre-K and K-12 schools, particularly in 1:1 iPad classrooms.
• Download “JuniorTube Edu” from the App Store.
• Synchronize students’ tablets with your teacher-approved YouTube playlists of educational videos.
• Add JuniorTube Edu tool to your LMS: https://www.eduappcenter.com/apps/285

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SUBSCRIBE CHILDREN TO YOUR CURATED YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS

• Use YouTube.com or YouTube’s mobile app to curate educational videos by adding them to your own playlists.
• In the admin area of JuniorTube, you can generate a secure code to share with children a playlists of videos.
• The videos you’ve selected and pre-approved on Youtube will automatically synchronize over-the-air to JuniorTube on children’s iPads, iPods or iPhones.
• The children will enter the secure code in their JuniorTube app and, from there on, they will get your curated educational videos, remotely, over-the-air, safely to their devices.

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VIDEOS FOR CHILDREN ARE LIMITED TO ONLY THE ONES SHARED BY PARENTS OR TEACHERS

• Children using JuniorTube only have access to the videos that the parents or teachers curate and share with them remotely.

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CHILDREN ANNOTATE ON TOP OF VIDEOS

• Children draw, scribble and annotate on any frame of any YouTube videos that the parents or teachers curated for them. (iPad only)
• Children create and share digital stories made out of annotated video frames.

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SLOW DOWN VIDEO PLAYBACK

• Children can slo-mo or fast-forward video playback. Tuuurrttllleee slow or rabbit fast! This should help children take their own pace while watching any instructional video. (iPad only)

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QUIZZES

• Parens and teachers create quizzes on top of videos, and the children answer questions while watching those videos. Parents and teachers evaluate students’ responses.

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CHILDREN USE DEVICE’S CAMERA TO CREATE VIDEOS THEN ANNOTATE ON THEM

• Videos recorded or edited on the children’s device (with Camera, or iMovie etc) can be watched on JuniorTube.
• Children can annotate on the videos that they created.

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TV MODE

• Continuously play your curated videos, like a TV channel for kids. (iPad only)

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APPLE TV

• JuniorTube is also available on the new Apple TV.

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DESIGNED FOR KIDS

JuniorTube is carefully designed just for kids. It’s the safest, most customizable YouTube interface for kids.

Latest features are documented at www.juniortu.be/pdf.

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TESTIMONIALS

“JuniorTube: Curate YouTube playlists. Remotely push them to kids iPads.” – Product Hunt

“We give [our kids] a few minutes of iPad time to watch her favorite YouTube videos… but only through JuniorTube. No suggested videos. #safe” – Matthew B.

“With JuniorTube, parents can push pre-approved videos to their kids’ iPads, iPhones & iPods.” – The iPhone Mom

“If your kids watch videos on YouTube like my sweet girl does, you need to download the app JuniorTube!” – Claire B.

“It’s not wise to let kids randomly browse YouTube, even if you enable Safe Search. Step in and pick up our remote control.” – JuniorTube team

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JuniorTube allows streaming to TV media adapters at home or in classroom: Apple TV, Chromecast, HDMI.

JuniorTube comes translated in English, French, German, Italian, Romanian and Spanish for a start.

Prerequisites
• Children don’t need to sign in. Parents or teachers will share videos remotely.
• Videos are played as they are provided by YouTube.com, some videos may include YouTube’s original advertising.
• Parents and teachers, for accessing and sharing your YouTube playlists you are required to own a YouTube/Google account.

Support
• Parents and teachers, send us feedback at support@juniortu.be.
• JuniorTube is not affiliated with YouTube, all video content is owned by its respective author/channel mentioned on YouTube, and you are the only responsible for sharing YouTube video content with children by using JuniorTube simply as a video player platform.

For assistance, please visit www.juniortu.be.

March 31, 2014 | Nelu Lazar

Ubirimi

Ubirimi delivers a versatile project management product suite together with a very competitive market strategy.
The focus is on simplicity, ease of use, fast product maturity and customer support.

Ubirimi encourages customers to request features and be actively involved in the development process by sending feedback and feature requests.
Ubirimi sells its product suite as a whole without splitting the products apart. This strategy is uniquely to Ubirimi so far. They also promise future products and update free of charge to existing customers.

Founded in 2012, in Timisoara, Romania by two software graduates at Timisoara Politechnic Univerity.

There are currently 5 products in Ubirimi’s stack:

Yongo
The project tracker for teams planning, building and launching great products.
Use Yongo to capture and organize issues, work through action items,
and stay up to date with team activity.

Agile
Unlock the power of Agile, whether you are a seasoned Agile expert or just getting started. Create and estimate stories, build a sprint backlog, identify team commitment and velocity, visualize team activity and report team progress.

Documentador
Documentator connects teams with the content, knowledge, and co-workers they need to get work done, faster. Crowd-source meeting notes, share files, define product requirements, and make decisions – all in one place

SVN Hosting
You enjoy plenty of space on our dedicated servers while we take care of the entire setup and maintenance procedures. Unlimited number of projects with unlimited number of users.
Also, we offer free email support for any issue you may have.

Events
Plan and keep track of people, projects and events.
A complete calendar application. Manage your day to day tasks with ease,
remind yourself of the most important events, plan your team activity and more.

February 26, 2014 | Francisc Nopcea

Campadillo

As former students, we know how important the student-professor relationship is. We also had a hard time organizing our schedules and coordinating our efforts with our peers. For this, we built Campadillo – an academic tool that will help both students and professors communicate, take notes and handle assignments.

With Campadillo, students will find the tools they need to become better learners. They can manage their school assignments, keep track of their progress and manage group discussions. But Campadillo is more than this: it covers the entire academic process. For instance, teachers, professors and their assistants can keep track of their students’ activity, manage assignments and send out new projects and materials – all in just a few clicks.

Our tool gathers all the things you need in school to become a better learner. And by “all the things” we mean courses, schedules, projects, assignments, classmates and group discussions. Using smart features such as our interactive calendar or our modern notification system, you will be able to keep an eye on projects and deadlines and keep up with what your peers are doing.

Campadillo’s calendar will auto-fill your activities for the whole semester as professors make the assignments available. Our notification system will let you know when the deadlines are approaching so you will have plenty of time to complete them.

We believe Campadillo can improve how the educational system works now and help students and professors take control over their academic experience. You can find us over at campadillo.com, so go on and request an invite! You can provide us valuable feedback and insight into our users’ experience.

May 23, 2014 | Campadillo

LAUNCHub welcomes 6 new portfolio companies and one is Romanian

In short, the Romanian startup Style Jukebox (profiled also here on Romanian Startups) is now part of LAUNCHub portfolio.Congratulations to the team!

Style Jukebox is a cross-platform, mobile and desktop app, for music storage and streaming solution that automatically synchronizes music and playlists and offers the easiest way to play music, both online or offline.

The LAUNCHub Seed Fund (Bulgaria) announced today, 5/7/2014, six new investments finalized late in April 2014, thus welcoming these six new companies on board. The latest investment decision followed the dedicated selection run launched earlier in February 2014.

With the new six teams on board, LAUNCHub’s investments now span the European map across Southeastern Europe. The portfolio has now increased to 41 companies in 7 countries in Europe – Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia and Ukraine. Throughout its two years in operations the LAUNCHub Seed Fund has invested over 3 million Euros in the digital tech sector in the SEE region. In the same time, the Fund has attracted more than 3 million Euro of co-investment funds for its portfolio companies, seeing through two Series A rounds and participating in joint rounds some ranging up to 400K Euro.

The newcomers on board include Bulgarian teams AdTapsy, Clusterize, CM2W and Zeduki, Slovenian Enolyse and Romanian Style Jukebox. With the latest investments finalized, over 120 founders have now become members of the LAUNCHub family with opportunities for collaborating together in reaching new dimensions in business and technology.

And there is yet more hot news coming from LAUNCHub. The 9 million Euro Seed Fund is partnering with Digitalk and Mini Seedcamp for an incredible digital marathon in the end of May in Sofia.

Mini Seedcamp Sofia will take place on May 29, 2014 and is an excellent opportunity for startups to network and get immediate valuable feedback from leading experts. The best three teams will get the unique chance to pitch on the mainstage at DigitalK.
Mini Seedcamp Sofia will be organized for a second consecutive year as part of the strategic partnership between LAUNCHub and Seedcamp, Europe’s leading micro-seed investor and mentoring programme. Please apply via AngelList or f6s before May 14, 2014 (apply here).

LAUNCHub is also one of the main organizers of the DigitalK Conference, a leading two-day technology event in SEE. The digital-tech event is coming up on May 29 and 30 in Sofia, Bulgaria and this year will bring together 900+ startup founders, investors, entrepreneurs, business leaders, featuring a distinguished guestlist of keynote speakers, brought to you with the special contribution of LAUNCHub.

And last, but not least, LAUNCHub is up for new applications and a new dedicated selection run is scheduled to open on May 12, 2014. Check the LAUNCHub website and social media channels.

RomanianStartups.com is partners with LAUNCHub (Bulgaria), which is a seed fund supporting the most promising entrepreneurs and digital startups in Southern and Eastern Europe..

May 7, 2014 | Romanian Startups

General

eDistribution

The B2B web-based application is designed to be the online shop for online shops. Basically, eDistribution.ro is the only opportunity within Romanian market for eCommerce industry to have a well-developed system that provides online product documentation and drop-shipping services.

How it works:
– Product documentation: a reseller with an online store chooses the products to sell online. eDistribution platform allows each reseller to choose and integrate description, pictures and any other information available;
– Product feed: each supplier has to update current information in regard to prices and quantities for each prouct. The reseller will receive every two hours a feed that includes all data collected form all supliers choosed by the reseller.
– Drop shipping: each reseller submits via edistribution platform the orders to be delivered to end consummers. A curier company approved by suppliers delivers the the order to the clients. The reseller must say if it has to be used private label or not.

Current providers part of edistribution network: Chicco Romania, miniPRIX Romania, ASBIS, elko, NOD, Dinamic ’92, Diverta.

Details related to the concept are available here http://www.edistribution.ro/article–conceptul-edistribution–1777.html

April 4, 2014 | Andreea Iordache

Romanian startups are invited to Timisoara Business Days 2014

On the 2nd and 3rd of April 2014, in Timisoara will take place the starting event of the 2014 Business Days series, which is the most important platform fully dedicated to provide support for the Romanian entrepreneurial environment. Business Days returns to Timisoara for the third time (http://timisoara2014.businessdays.ro) and brings along the already traditional event format with plenty of novelties, also international speakers – experts in the very recent domains of the business world. Timisoara Business Days will be hosted by Centrul de Evenimente Hotel Club Senator & Expovest (the Events Center at Hotel Club Senator & Expovest).

The anniversary edition of this 4 year old Romanian business event with the biggest impact will incorporate, among many others the following:
– 4 conferences (a total of 44 inspirational presentations),
– 16 workshops with more than 50 experts, consultants, entrepreneurs, managers, professional trainers and moderators who will assist the participants in their development of managerial and entrepreneurial abilities within the frame created by the interactive sessions and exchange of experiences,
– 4 round tables (with debates focused on some hot topics with huge direct impact in the Romanian business environment, involving more than 48 prestigious guests from various fields).
One of the novelties brought by the present edition is a special workshop dedicated to leaders, held by the famous conductor and neuroscience expert, maestro Giorgio Fabbri, dedicated to a new kind of intelligence for an innovative leadership.

One of the events will be dedicated to the technology entrepreneurship having speakers like Radu Georgescu, Andrei Pitis, Radu Ticiu, Horatiu Moldovan and Daniel Giurea.

Building Innovation at Innovation Labs 2.0

Innovation Labs 2.0, the first pre-acceleration program in Romania organized by TechLounge with the support of Orange and Microsoft is open once again for business.
Students and young professionals passionate about entrepreneurship and technology can register for the hackathons that open the program by completing the registration form available online at http://2014.innovationlabs.ro/register

Innovation Labs 2.0 is a pre-acceleration program targeting the youth that want to build their own technology startups. The program starts with two 24 hours hackathons that will take place in Bucharest on March 1st and in Cluj on March 8.

Each hackathon starts with a pitching sessions where the attendees have 1 minute to convince the audience. The teams are then formed around the most appreciated projects. For the next 24 hours the participants will work to develop their business concept and their minimum viable product. Their efforts will be supported by mentors: entrepreneurs, professionals and industry leaders. In the end the teams will pitch their projects in front of a jury and the best 26 projects (16 in Bucharest and 10 in Cluj) will enter the pre-acceleration program.

innovation-labs20-poster

In between March 4 – May 15, the Innovation Labs 2.0 teams will continue to develop their own startups by working with well-known entrepreneurs, specialists and industry leaders. They will attend TechTalks, open discussions with experts in different areas, and they will participate in mentoring sessions aimed at helping them solve the problems they face and turn their ideas into viable startups.

The Romanian Internet Tech Startups Directory

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