Believe Digital, a french company that provides a digital music platform for independent artists and labels, was crowned Europe’s Allstar Company of 2019 at the 18th annual Investor Allstars Awards ceremony.
Denis Ladegaillerie, CEO and founder, made an impassioned pitch before the judges for his company’s ability to serve “all artists”. Believe Digital, which, as the name suggests, is an exclusively digital music distributor, provides marketing, funding and promotion for independent labels, using their digital expertise to help artists spread their music through opaque algorithms such as Spotify’s.
Sara Murray, CEO and founder of Buddi, which provides a software platform for remote monitoring used by police forces and the NHS to track psychiatric patients and criminals, won CEO of the year.
In a booming industry – $23 billion was invested in Europe’s technology ecosystem in 2018 alone – and competition was fierce. The CEOs of 12 companies had 15 minutes to make their bid to be crowned this year’s winner. The sheer breadth of the nominees was astounding, with companies bidding to shake up markets ranging from travel to recruitment and online security.
Two firms putting forward pitches focused on revolutionising human resources were Beamery and Peakon. Sultan Saidov, president of Beamery, explained how the company is changing recruitment by offering a platform for searching out possible employees and taking a proactive approach to training.
Peakon, on the other hand, whose pitch was delivered by CEO Phil Chambers, offers a platform for employees to offer real-time feedback about their workplaces. “We’ve only just scratched the surface – being able to get real-time feedback from employees on data is huge,” said Chambers. “The FTSE 100 are starting to quote Peakon results in their reports.” Customers include BMW, Nike, Easyjet and Vodafone.
Fintech was also well represented. Martina King, formerly of Yahoo and Guardian Media Group, made the pitch for her company Featurespace, which uses advanced machine learning to detect online fraud. “53 million financial crimes a year cost the global economy 2.4tn dollars annually," she said. “Our organisation is trying to stop it.”
In the same area, Norris Koppel from Monese argued that our current banking system is holding back international customers: “I’ve spoken to vice presidents from Mastercard who came over to the UK and couldn’t open a bank account,” he said. His company focuses on the “borderless generation”, making it a breeze for travelling users to open bank accounts all over the world – over one million have signed up in the last 12 months.
There were also several environmentally focused pitches. Frédéric Trinel promoted EcoVadis, which provides other companies with business sustainability ratings. “Millenials are starting to realise that their time on Earth is being impacted,” said Trinel. “In ten to 15 years from now, when people think about corporate social responsibility, they will think about EcoVadis.”
Similarly, Taco Carlier claimed his Amsterdam-based company VANMOOF has created the perfect electric city bike, with an integrated battery, smartphone connectivity, keyless lock, a 32kPH top speed and even a turbo-boost button. The company also provides bike hunters who will find your stolen VANMOOF bike within two weeks, or you will get a replacement – he even shared a photo of one being recovered in Casablanca. “We want as many bikes in the cities of San Francisco and London as we have in Amsterdam,” said Carlier.
Other pitches came from software company Bizagi, sports membership company Urban Sports Club, programmatic advertising company MIQ, and Tourlane, a company that arranges complex, personalised holidays.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
