Nine Irish start-up companies have been shortlisted for The Europas, Europe’s prestigious tech awards.
The companies made the shortlist of 200 start-ups, which were selected from more than 1,000 nominees in over 20 categories.
The Irish start-ups shortlisted for awards include peer-to-peer foreign exchange company CurrencyFair, research information tool Scrazzl, eye-controlled app Fixational, mobile gaming firm Swrve, social betting platform BragBet, business networking solutions firm Datahug, clean-tech start-up Wattics and social directory SkillPages.
The judges included YouTube founder Jawed Karim, Bebo founder Michael Birch, Cloudflare founder Matthew Prince and angel investor Troy Carter. Dublin Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave is the co-organiser of the awards. The Web Summit team has taken over the organising of the awards from this year.
Some 147,321 votes have been cast in the People’s Choice category of The Europas. Among the Irish start-ups nominated for the category are ArtFetch, Senddr, BatCat Games, NewsWhip, BragBet, 45 Sound and Redeem Get.
This year the awards were expanded to include a number of regional categories. Examtime, farmflo, Buzzoo, Converser and Episensor are among the 11 companies shortlisted in the Best Irish Startup category.
The winners of The Europas will be announced at an awards ceremony in Berlin on January 22nd.
Awards chief adjudicator Mike Butcher said there had been a rapid improvement in the quality and quantity of start-ups across Europe, spurred by new platforms that allow even a teenager to create a start-up.
