50 innovative companies from Holland

Written on September 11, 2008 – 6:59 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck

Today the shortlist of the Dutch Innovation Awards, organized by Accenture has been announced and 50 Dutch (some from Belgium) companies made it to the list. A professional jury selected these companies out of 200+ submissions.

I’ve handpicked some of the nominees that might be of interest to you:
Game Overlord - Game developers
Habbo Hotel - Virtual hangout for teens
eBuddy - Web based IM with over 40 million users
I-wood - Banners on your idle mobile screen (Dutch)
LiveCastr - Livestream from your mobile
Movels - Read books on your mobile
Myngle - Learn languages online
Netlog - Pan European social network
I-Rex - Kindle lookalike
Open Projects - free open source 3D content creation suite
Paybymail - Payments via email (iDeal). (NOTE: ~~Paypal is non existent in the Netherlands~~ UPDATE: Paypal has almost 2 million Dutch customers in NL, can paybymail grab a piece of the market?)
Payter - Mobile payments via Near Field Communication
Rabo SMS Betalen - Per per TXT message no account needed
SellaBand - Crowdfund your favorite band
StartyourStation - build your own tv channel
Symbaloo - Before the iPhone was out they already had the icon interface. Easy startup page
ViralTracker - Tracking Viral Commercials
Wuzzon - Mobile content platform (Dutch)
Zilok - The Next Web startup 2008, online rental platform aka the eBay of rentals

To see all nominees and vote for your favorite go to the Innovation Award website.

I hope you like that post!

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awards, innovation

About the author: Patrick de Laive is co-founder of Fleck and initiator of The Next Web Conference, Bowlr and OpenCoffee Amsterdam. Check his LinkedIn profile for more information.

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10 comments/trackbacks to “50 innovative companies from Holland”

Sep 12, 2008: StepFree » Blog Archive » StepFree Bookmarks week 37
[...] 50 innovative companies from Holland [...]
Sep 13, 2008: Video | FrenchWeb - l'actualité des startups internet, Voip, TVip, Saas en France
[...] 50 innovative companies from Holland - The Next Web [...]
Sep 29, 2008: Pact between Wuzzon and Dance4Life for STOP AIDS NOW : The Next Women
[...] Wuzzon is an online community in which vistors can make and sell their home-made ringtones and wallpapers in their own online shop. Founders Louise Verschuren en Brigitta Schlumpf obtained their initial funding, by participating in the TV programme Dragon’s Den. They won an amount of 75,000 Euro. The company is expanding into Europe after winning several competitions. They are in the final 50 of the Accenture Innovation Award. [...]

By Eelco Lempsink on Sep 11, 2008

What do you mean by “NOTE: Paypal is non existent in the Netherlands”? Nowadays it’s perfectly possible to ‘pair’ your PayPal account with a Dutch bank account.

[Reply]
By Egbert on Sep 12, 2008

If I am correct, PayPal has over 1 million account holders in The Netherlands.

Egbert

[Reply]
By Maarten on Sep 12, 2008

@Egbert - we are close to 2 million account in the Netherlands :).

@Patrick - I would have expected a bit more research if you make a bold statement like this. I do not think we would fit this list (we aren’t Dutch) but to say we are non-existent…

[Reply]
By Patrick de Laive on Sep 12, 2008

@all thanks for your replies.

I know Paypal has over 2 million accounts in the Netherlands (I have 5 accounts).
My guess would be that Paybymail is looking to become ‘the Dutch Paypal’ where people can send and request money by email. This is going to be a tough job. They do have one advantage over Paypal, you can request money via email and the paying party do not need a Paybymail account, any bankaccount will do.

If I check Paypal payments for events we organize (The Next Web, KingsofCode, Blog08, Bowlr) less than 1 percent is paying with Paypal, and 90 percent of that one percent is not Dutch.

So yes, the statement that paypal is non existent in NL is a bit bold, but the point I’m trying to make is that paypal is not widely used as pay per email service in NL.

I’ve edited the post as well.

[Reply]
By Adriaan Mol on Sep 13, 2008

Netlog is from Belgium?
Habbo Hotel is from Finland?

[Reply]
By Patrick de Laive on Sep 13, 2008

@adriaan I know, I didn’t make the rules

[Reply]
By friend on Sep 14, 2008

yeah..i also think Netlog from Belgium

[Reply]