TechHub

Are you an early stage startup looking to be recognised as the best in Europe? Do you want to join your peers and VCs at an awesome event in London? If so, this is your chance!

The Europas are the European Awards for early stage Internet and mobile technology startups. Last held in December 2010, they saw a month-long voting campaign collecting a total of 33,126 votes and gathering 350 people from among Europe's best startups, VCs and entreprenuers. This year the event will take place on 17 November and promises to be even bigger!  

It will be hosted by Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe (and TechHub co-founder), at the Carbon Bar in London's West End. So don't miss out and make sure to sign up for a chance to be among the startup leaders of Europe. 

Also grab a ticket here.

The qualification requirements this year include:

• A product that has been launched within the last 2 years (your business can be older)
• If you've received external funding in the past it can only be Seed or Series A funding, anything beyond will not be accepted
• Entrants are accepted from the "EMEA" region (Europe, Middle East and Africa)
• Entries must be in by Friday, 7 October

If you qualify, now is the time to take action! Only a few days left to submit your startups. Don't miss the chance to walk among the best in the tech startup and venture capital scene and make your dreams a reality.

Best of luck and we want to see loads of TechHub companies there!

This week we're presenting our very own residents from Clearer Partners who participated last week in the TechCity Launchpad Pitching Event after winning funding as part of the competition organized by the Technology Strategy Board. The TSB specialises in stimulating technology innovation in order to boost UK growth and productivity. 

The competition was a day long investor workshop that gave forty digital and creative businesses the chance to pitch and network with the cream of London’s investment community. 

In order to best illustrate their story we asked Dagmara, from Clearer Partners to give us her first-hand experience from the event:

"With some nerves and excitement, Aaron, Steve and I headed over to The Commonwealth Club for the TechCity Launchpad Pitching Event on Wednesday 10th August. We were 3rd on stage out of a list of 41 pitches, which proved to be good timing - the room was full and attendees were awake, propped up by the first of many rounds of coffee.

Being part of the lucky companies who won the TSB match funding, we had eight minutes to fly through our product and proposition, FrameBlast, which is a collaborative video production platform. Winning bids came in all shapes and sizes, from 3D toy printers, to furniture producers, to trucking logistics software solutions.

The 23 companies who came highly recommended had a lightning two minutes to pitch, and we were all given a powerpoint template to follow to ensure we kept to the point, answered the right questions and stayed within the time limit. It was a very long day of intensive networking and listening to pitches, and we learnt a lot and made a number of great contacts with investors, in-betweeners, and other startups.

Despite the (at times) gruelling process, we'd recommend the Technology Strategy Board for anyone looking to get some government backing for their projects. Now it's time for us to chase those leads and secure the rest of the match funding. Fingers crossed!"

Clearer Partners has now been offered up to £100,000 funding which they hope to match with private sector funding. Please join me in congratulating their enormous accomplishments and wishing them the best with their future efforts. Also, a huge thank you to Dagmara for sharing her story.

We're really proud of you guys and love having you at TechHub! 

If your a TechHub Member and you'd like to share your company's story here, email miguel@techhub.com  

A great opportunity for those working on disruptive technologies in areas of energy, digital, healthcare and sustainability to have their project funded as soon as next month. We want TechHubbers to get in on the act!

It's a competition to help small businesses turn brilliant innovative ideas into new marketable products. As the deadline to enter is this week (!), here's the skinny in quick overview:

• Produce a two-minute video describing your idea for a £25k project
• Upload it at the TSB website...
• ...by this Thursday September 16th!
• 15 projects in each category advance to the next round  (written business case)
• 3 projects from each category are then invited to pitch at Innovate 10 on October 12th.
• At the end of that day, four companies will each walk away with £100k to fund six-month projects, and eight companies will each received £25k for three-month projects.

So in less than a month you could have your innovative project funded!

To get in there now, visit the LaunchPad website.