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The dotcom boom may have originated in the USA but European entrepreneurs are fighting to grab a piece of the action. We profile four of Europe’s brightest online stars
WORDS BY DAVID MATTIN
Cast your eyes back over the business news of the last 10 years, and one small corner of northern California will feature time and again. More than any other place on earth, it’s Silicon Valley that has powered the rise of the internet from its geeky origins to the cultural force it is today. The figures behind that phenomenon are now media stars, and unimaginably rich. Just take Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, the twenty-somethings who founded YouTube in 2005 and sold it to Google for $1.65bn (€1.18bn) just 18 months later. Or 21-year-old Mark Zuckerburg, the Harvard dropout and founder of social networking site Facebook, currently valued at around $2bn (€1.42bn).
But what of Europe? While Silicon Valley may have dominated “round one” of Web 2.0, a new generation of online entrepreneurs, led by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, are set to ensure that Europe stamps its mark on the future of the internet. So could the next Google hail from this side of the Atlantic? Over the following pages we profile four of Europe’s strongest contenders; men blessed with wide-angle vision, tons of ambition, and some serious venture capital. The game is on.
34 | France | www.Netvibes.com
Tariq Krim worked as a journalist for French newspaper La Tribune, covering hi-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. That was until he decided he should be making net history, not writing about it. Now his site, Netvibes, which allows users to pull information from all over the web to create their own homepage, boasts 19 million users worldwide.
Before Netvibes, Krim ran one of France’s most popular technology blogs; but the “information overload” he suffered from started him thinking.
“Every day there would be so many sites I wanted to check,” remembers Krim. “So I started working on a homepage that would display these sites; that was the first Netvibes.”
Krim describes the Netvibes page as a personalised dashboard, full of modules that display what you want. You might choose a running update on your favourite blog, a link to an eBay auction, and streaming tennis results: Krim calls it “infinite personalisation”. The perfect antidote to the one-size-fits-all Google or Yahoo start page.
When Krim launched the site in 2005, 15,000 users signed up on the first day. Now Netvibes—based in Paris, with a staff of 35—boasts 19 million users, across 150 countries.
“People used to tell me no European online start-up could make it big in the US,” says Krim. “But there was Skype, and now there is Netvibes.”
27, 23 | Sweden | www.Tablefinder.com
 The two Swedes behind Tablefinder want to become the Google of eating out. Industry watchers are calling their online restaurant booking site —backed by a Swedish venture capital firm—one of Europe’s most promising start-ups.
Internet restaurant booking certainly isn’t a new idea; sites such as OpenTable, Livebookings, and TopTable have long offered the service. But it’s exactly that plethora of options that Fredriksson and Matuszczyk—the pair met at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg —are seeking to resolve: “Currently you have a fragmented situation where you have to go to different sites to book different restaurants,” says Fredriksson. “Tablefinder is a one-stop search and book engine; we will combine all the information out there.”
 In September, the site signed a deal with LiveBookings, giving them access to 10,000 online-bookable restaurants. “Currently, there are around 20,000 restaurants in the world that take online bookings,” says Fredriksson. “But in Europe and the US there are 400,000 restaurants; we’re going to see tremendous growth in this market.”
And when online booking really takes off, says Matuszczyk, Tablefinder —another finalist at this year’s Seedcamp—will come into its own: “You can upload your network from Facebook, and see where your friends have eaten recently. The site will be able to provide you with smart recommendations based on your previous preferences.”
Fredriksson and Matuszczyk imagine an eventual future in which restaurants book us. Say you’re a party of four, wanting Chinese food you simply post that on Tablefinder and let local Chinese restaurants bid for your party.
30 | Holland | www.RentMineOnline.com
 A London-born Dutch entrepreneur, Spiegel was on the banks of Amsterdam’s canals when he had the idea that became his start-up. RentMineOnline aims to connect owners of assets—ranging from boats to houses to golf clubs—with those seeking a minimum hassle rent. Word among web watchers is that it could become the eBay of online hire.
“I was in Amsterdam with some friends, and we really wanted to take a boat trip,” remembers Spiegel. “The canals were lined with boats sitting empty; it got me thinking.”
Spiegel worked for start-ups in Silicon Valley before returning to Amsterdam to found RentMineOnline, collaborating with a team of Bulgarian software engineers to create the site. His concept cleverly taps into the social networking phenomenon, allowing users to import their networks from Facebook to build a base of potential renters:
“Social networks are trust networks,” says Spiegel. “Say you’re going on holiday and you want to rent your room. You can open that rent to just your immediate network, or you could use your extended network.”
In September, RentMineOnline beat more than 300 other start-ups to become one of six winners at Seedcamp, a London industry event where online giants meet budding web entrepreneurs; the win also meant Spiegel came away with €50,000 to help with his business.
What’s the first item for rent? Spiegel’s Amsterdam boat, the Green Machine.
30 | UK | www.Crowdstorm.co.uk
There’s a major buzz in the blogosphere around British start-up Crowdstorm, a new service that seeks to combine two indisputably potent cultural phenomena: online social networking and shopping.
The impetus behind the site deals with a familiar problem: you’ve decided you want to buy a digital camera; but don’t know which one you should spend your money on? Crowdstorm aims to plug you into a network of users who’ll help you answer that question.
“With price comparison, you’re typically looking at a specific product,” says Wilkinson. “But I’ve always been interested in the stage before that, where you’re researching your choice. How many megapixels should your camera have? Should you prefer Canon or Sony? It’s a complicated business.
“Our vision is of a one-stop destination where magazine reviews, expert reviews, and user reviews are served to you via an easy interface. You can type, ‘I want a digital camera’ and be guided through.”
The clever bit comes with the way Crowdstorm orders this information. “If you think a review is helpful, you can tell the system,” says Wilkinson.
Crowdstorm, meanwhile, will make money when users click on links that allow them to buy their desired product. Wilkinson—who previously founded Shopgenie—is aiming high: “I want Crowdstorm to become to product research what Google is to online search,” he says. “When Crowdstorm is used as a verb—‘I’m going to Crowdstorm digital cameras’—then we’ll have made it.”
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