- Irish start-up HeyStaks progresses to final seven out of 35 international entries
5 September 2011, Vodafone today unveiled the seven mobile internet start-ups that have reached the final of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 competition. They are:
Republic of Ireland HeyStaks a one-stop mobile social search solution, combining the best of community and search engine recommendations to get you more personalized and relevant results.
Germany Wunderlist is the first cross platform task management app that supports over-the-air sync and unlimited sharing completely for free.
Netherlands Skylines offers a search platform for real-time images. Combining data from social media sites like Instagram, and Yfrog Twitpic, Skylines indexes over one million photos a day.
Portugal Hole19 is a complete mobile and web performance optimization platform for golfers, connecting them to golf instructors and golf courses.
Spain Frogtek is an app that allows shopkeepers in the developing world to set up a financial system to run their business easily and quickly.
Turkey BillGastro offers restaurant owners an affordable point of sale solution for a unique mobile restaurant app for their customers to reserve tables, to order food online and post news and events easily.
UK ParcelGenie is the world’s first Instant Gift Messaging service that makes sending real gifts to friends and family almost as simple as sending an email or a text message.
HeyStaks, a University College Dublin spin-out company, headquartered in NovaUCD, was founded in 2008 by Dr Peter Briggs, Dr Maurice Coyle and Professor Barry Smyth.
HeyStaks is based on technology developed as part of Professor Smyth’s research group and the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, a Science Foundation Ireland funded research centre between UCD, Dublin City University, and the Tyndall National Institute. The company also has offices in San Francisco where Jonathan Dillon, a former Vice-President of Corporate Development of Yahoo!, is based.
HeyStaks Mobile App
“We are always excited to see the tremendous innovation coming through our Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition each year. It’s the perfect launch pad for start-ups, but it’s always challenging to pick winners because we receive so many superb entries. Through both rounds, our country winners demonstrated not only creativity and innovation, but also the value-add to customers, which really made them stand out from the competition. We’re delighted to have them all on board and we look forward to seeing what they bring to the table in this final stage” said Lee Epting, Director of Content Services at Vodafone Group.
The seven local winners will now be invited to represent their country in the live final at the PICNIC Festival in the Netherlands on 15 & 16 September 2011, where the overall winner will be chosen by a panel of mobile industry experts. Judges include: Rudy de Waele, founder of Mobile 2.0 Europe and dotopen; Peter Barry, Vodafone Ventures; Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners; Reshma Sohoni; partner at Seedcamp and Lee Epting, Vodafone Group.
Jonathan Dillon, CEO, HeyStaks commented, “We were delighted to win the Irish competition and are looking forward to competing with the best of Europe in the finals. This is great timing for us as we are seeing very positive consumer reaction to our iPhone and Android phone apps, and will be releasing our new apps for iPads and Android tablets during September. The whole Vodafone Mobile Clicks experience has been very positive for HeyStaks.”
Ahead of the PICNIC presentations in Amsterdam, members of the public are invited to cast their vote for the winner of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011. At the live final, the overall result of the public vote will be counted alongside the votes of panel members to decide the overall winner.
Helena Leite, CEO of Cardmobili, the Portugal-based start-up that won last year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition, commented, “We were incredibly excited and proud to hear we had reached the final of Vodafone Mobile Clicks. When you meet the other finalists you will know you’ve already achieved a lot by being part of that group of creative and bright people, and you should remain confident that you can reach the next level. My advice to this year’s contestants is to prepare, prepare, prepare. Think about the message you want to convey but keep it clear - remember that the judges won’t be as close to your product as you are. And then make sure you rehearse your pitch lots… time flies when you are presenting to the judges!”
Click here for further information about the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 competition or keep up-to-date by following tweets with the hashtag #vmc2011.
ENDS
5 September 2011
For further information contact Andrew Brennan, Vodafone Ireland, t: +353 87 222 8841, e: andrew.brennan@vodafone.com or Micéal Whelan, NovaUCD, e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, t: + 353 1 716 3712.
Editors Notes
PICNIC is Amsterdam’s leading annual international event, highlighting creativity and innovation, particularly in media, entertainment and technology. PICNIC brings together and disseminates the ideas and knowledge of the world's best creators and innovators.
Vodafone is one of the world's largest mobile communications companies by revenue with approximately 382 million customers in its controlled and jointly controlled markets as at 30 June March 2011. Vodafone currently has equity interests in over 30 countries across five continents and more than 40 partner networks worldwide.
NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre, is the hub of innovation and knowledge transfer activities at University College Dublin. NovaUCD is responsible for the commercialisation of intellectual property arising from UCD research and for the development of co-operation with industry and business. NovaUCD as a purpose-built centre also nurtures high-tech and knowledge-intensive enterprises such as HeyStaks. NovaUCD has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx.