13 Awesome Startups We Met At The Next Web 2017

#1. Hu:toma — Build your own deep-learning chatbot

Llegan los chatsbots de IA.

Or are they? 🙄

It’s been about a year since the AI chatbot hype reached its peak at Facebook’s developer conference.

Where you at Google, Facebook and Apple? 🔍

este épico GIF fue creado con Guggy (see #13)

Resulta que la creación, el descubrimiento y la monetización de chatbots inteligentes no es precisamente un paseo. Especialmente para los novatos como yo. ¿Cómo funcionan? ¿Son fiables?

👉 Not to mention: how the hell do I make one? 🤔

But what if it doesn’t have to be all that difficult?

Hu:toma quiere quitarte el dolor y eliminar estas barreras de entrada para el alma más sencilla que existe.

Imagine a place where everyone can build their very own chatbot. Everyone. That includes the I-don’t-know-how-the-fuck-to-code part of the world. That includes you and me.

Hu:toma wants to make building chatbots as easy as playing with Lego. How? By giving you pre-built bots to play around with. You can just handpick the functionalities you’re looking for and hook ‘m up with each other, into your own unique little bot 🤖.

Su propio BB8. Uno que pueda reservar reuniones, darte direcciones y hablar con tus clientes. Quizá en algún momento también te traiga café.

There’s more: deep learning means you can have your bot learn from data you already have in emails, your CRM or chat channels. No need to build conversation trees yourself.

En algún momento construir sitios web parecía tan difícil como crear chatbots hoy en día. Hu:toma quiere ser para la creación de chatbots lo que WordPress es para los sitios web: altamente personalizable y muy fácil para todos.

Oh, and if you’re one of those crazy people who can actually code chatbots: Hu:toma is the place where you’ll make money 🤑.

#2. Reclutado — Turbocharge your hiring process

Reclutado is some of the most impressive piece of HR tech I’ve seen so far.

Hiring the right people is as tough as it is crucial to the good fortune of your business. This is especially true if you’re a startup and need to scale up your team while still thin in resources. One wrong hire can kill your vibe.

Recruitee te ofrece todo lo que necesitas para crear el proceso de contratación perfecto para tu empresa. Cubre cada paso del proceso:

• poner una hermosa sección de trabajo en su sitio web
• difundir rápidamente anuncios de empleo en bolsas de trabajo tanto importantes como especializadas
• buscar candidatos en toda la web
• seguimiento y gestión de candidatos (¡tienen un pipeline!)
• potentes métricas y análisis para aprender y optimizar

Easy and impressive. Truly 👌.

It’s not just the pipeline that made us think of our own software.

Walking up to Recruitee’s booth for a moment we thought they were demo’ing Salesflare. These guys are totally on the same page as us when it comes to UI design. Their software looks superb.

Y mira por dónde: con apenas tres años de existencia, ya cuentan entre sus clientes con Hotjar, Greenpeace, VICE y Growth Tribe. Además de otros 2.000.

#3. Spencer — All your workplace tools in one app

There’s an app for that!

Well yeah, there’s an app for everything, right? 🙄

Apps are the backbones of today’s enterprises. CRM, ERP and HR tools are key for day-to-day business surviving and thriving.

But they have become so big and omnipresent that they’re now undermining employee engagement and productivity rather than empowering it.

As an employee you’re basically spending your days on hopping from tool to tool, keeping up with the fast flow of information and processes they drive, all in different flows and UIs.

Se supone que estas herramientas aumentan la productividad y agilizan los procesos para hacerlos más eficientes, pero los empleados acaban trabajando para las aplicaciones y no al revés.

In comes Spencer — the virtual employee that keeps up with the enterprise app ecosystem and integrates everything into one single mobile app.

Esta pequeña joya te permite hacer cosas como enviar pedidos, solicitar vacaciones, consultar cifras de ventas, reservar salas de reuniones y difundir noticias de la empresa. Todo desde el mismo lugar y con la misma interfaz.

A mobile workplace assistant like Spencer allows employees to reclaim their productivity and creativity. They’ll be better at their jobs and they’ll smile more.

Just a couple of months in their existence, the guys from Spencer already managed to sign three of Belgium’s biggest companies: telecom giants Proximus and Telenet as well as the Dredging, Environmental and Marine Engineering Group, better known as DEME.

#4. Geekbot — Never fu*k up your standup again

La jornada laboral típica de Salesflare comienza con una reunión de pie.

Each team member stands up (we don’t actually stand up — we should 🙄) and fills in the team on what the hell she/he’s been doing yesterday and what she/he’s planning to do today.

So we all know what the hell everyone is doing. Even if no one actually knows what she/he knows what the hell they’re doing 😜.

Hacemos reuniones de pie para:

• share understanding of goals — as well as problems and improvements
• coordinar los esfuerzos del equipo
• identificarse como equipo

One of the main pains about standup meetings is that I often tend to forget what I did the day before. If only I’d have a little minion to keep track of that for me…

GeekBot 🤖 es un Slackbot que hace el trabajo pesado por ti. Todos los días a una hora preestablecida, preguntará a los miembros del equipo en Slack:

• lo que hicieron ayer
• qué quieren conseguir hoy
• cuáles son los mayores obstáculos

Once you’re done, Geekbot will post the session to the broadcast channel.

👉 This brings transparency to the team’s efforts and empowers individual leadership as well as self-management.

You also get to dig back into standup archives to check up on what the team’s been doing over a longer time frame. This extends the value of standup meetings from just one day to longer time frames.

GeekBot ya está siendo utilizado por grandes empresas como Nike, Zappos, Salesforce, Sony, Shopify, AIG, Kissmetrics y muchas más.

#5. Pluot. — Move over, Skype & Google Hangouts

Pluot. es una empresa de videoconferencia recién salida de Y Combinator.

Te oigo pensar.

Pero no sólo otro.

Pluot’s free version is unlike any other video call software I ever used in terms of audio/video quality, speed and convenience 😯.

👉 One link, one click, one second and you’re sitting in front of each other. No logins, no downloads.

You know when you accidentally switch to your phone’s front camera and all of a sudden you’re staring at your own stupid face? It’s that quick 👇.

Forget about Skype, Slack and Google Hangouts — these guys play in a different league. Sure, Slack is convenient but Pluot also has a Slack integration. It also links with Google Calendars and supports screen sharing.

Pluot. Pro es para videoconferencias en toda regla. Viene con una ingeniosa cámara y un micrófono para convertir los televisores en potentes acorazados de conferencias. Perfecto para equipos remotos y empresas con presencia en todo el mundo.

#6. Social.co — Cut social media clutter for good

If you’re doing online marketing like I am, you know how much work it can be to keep up with all of your social media channels. I need about 10 minutes every day when I wake up just to read through my phone’s notifications.

There’s so much clutter. How do you break through the bullshit and stay top of mind with the people that really matter to you?

Disconnecting is not an option. Social media is where you do market research, it’s where you find leads, it’s where you nurture relationships and it’s where you connect with customers

You can’t afford to not show up every day.

For a while I’ve been thinking about ways to lessen the quantity of social media while upping quality and ROI.

Estaba comprobando una nueva carga de notificaciones en TNW cuando Omer se me acerca y me dice que va a solucionar mis penas con Social.co.

Sure, but… how? His pitch blew me away.

Okay dude… But how? 🤔

It’s quite simple. With Social.co you’ll only get the notifications that matter to you. It will bother you with nothing but notifications related to targeted accounts and keywords you select.

Notifications can be set to appear both immediately and periodically — whatever floats your boat. Minimum disturbance for maximum social impact on customer engagement, business relations and influencer marketing 😍.

De momento Social.co funciona para Twitter e Instagram, Facebook será el siguiente.

La plataforma está actualmente en alfa lo que significa una gran oportunidad para ti. Inscríbete y ayuda a estos chicos a perfeccionar un producto que tantos profesionales del marketing necesitan.

#7. WordLift — Have AI take control of your content

I don’t particularly like SEO.

I prefer to write content for humans rather than for machines. Problem is, if you’re not pleasing the machine, your written-for-humans content may barely get noticed — no matter how awesome it is.

There’s no way around SEO. We all need to suck up and do it.

WordLift quiere quitárselo de las manos.

Conoce un plugin para WordPress basado en IA que te ayudará a aumentar el tráfico orgánico transformando tus artículos en gemas aptas para máquinas rastreadoras de búsqueda, chatbots y asistentes personales como Google Assistant, Siri y Alexa.

The idea is that you can just focus on writing epic content while WordLift does the heavy SEO lifting for you 💪.

WordLift’s magic is driven by Natural Language Processing technology. It analyses articles and transforms text into metadata. That metadata will be automatically published and made available to web crawlers as Five-Star Linked Open Data. If you have no clue what that is, check it out — it’s pretty cool.

👉 This will get you a bunch of content-enriching opportunities like semantic content recommendations, automatic interlinking, data visualisations and free images.

So in a nutshell: WordLift will help you create content that both humans and machines love. Without you having to lift an extra finger 😎.

#8. Nota de pecho — The slow-messaging revolution

Remember the days when you got excited when seeing your phone flash and say ‘You have one new message’? 😍

Las cosas se han acelerado desde entonces. Snapchat apareció y la mensajería se ha vuelto rápida y sin sentido. Claro, los mensajes que se autodestruyen son divertidos para hacer el tonto, pero algunas experiencias y algunas personas merecen más de cinco segundos.

Back when I was rocking a Nokia 3310, I kept a secret map of messages that were dear to me. I’d pop them up and read them again at the right time. Can you imagine doing that today?

I mean, do you actually remember what was on the last iMessage, WhatsApp Message, Slack Message, Facebook Message, LinkedIn Message, Twitter Message or Whatever Message you got? 🤔

Chestnote quiere devolverte esa sensación de calidez de antaño haciendo que tus mensajes vuelvan a ser importantes.

Además del contenido en sí (texto, foto o vídeo), puedes establecer el lugar y la hora en que se revelará tu mensaje. La persona especial a la que se lo envíes sólo podrá abrir el mensaje en ese lugar y a esa hora, convirtiéndolo en una experiencia que le costará olvidar.

It’s a great way to relive old memories that shaped connections with your loved ones. Imagine luring your loved one to the place you had your first date, have them open up a message saying ‘Look up’ and they see you descending from an air balloon with a ring ready to pop the question. (Yes, guilty of being a helpless romantic ✋)

Chestnote no es sólo para el romance. Las empresas pueden utilizarlo para captar y activar clientes. El mes pasado, Chestnote se asoció con el proveedor de red belga Mobile Vikings para enviar a los usuarios a la caza de premios especiales de Pascua.

#9. Kontentino — When Buffer doesn’t cut it

Kontentino es una herramienta de gestión y programación de redes sociales.

Soooo, another Hootsuite or Buffer? 🤔

Not quite ☝️.

Kontentino trata de optimizar los flujos de trabajo de creatividad y productividad entre múltiples profesionales y equipos. Se centran en las grandes agencias de redes sociales y marketing, más que en los autónomos, pequeños equipos y usuarios personales a los que Hootsuite y Buffer están ayudando.

Here’s the problem: the bigger your agency and the bigger the clients you work for, the complexer it gets to collaborate on great content and plan distribution across the social media ecosystem.

For social media to pay off you have to get right the content, format, channel and timing just right — every time again.

Kontentino is designed to make social media content collaboration, planning and approval a piece of cake 🎂.

Los creadores de contenidos pueden alinearse en torno a un calendario intuitivo e interactivo, previsualizar en directo las publicaciones en todos los formatos posibles de las redes sociales y enviarlas a un flujo de trabajo de aprobación que también incluye al cliente.

👉 Everyone knows at all times what the team is doing and only content everyone approves gets through.

Grandes marcas como Adidas, SAB Miller, Pernot Ricard y Absolut Vodka ya confían en Kontentino para sus estrategias en redes sociales.

If you want to dig deeper, Kontentino’s blog has two neat posts where they break down the exact differences between them and both Hootsuite and Buffer, with cases on where one of the two would be the better fit.

#10. AXSemántica — Self-writing content

Espera, ¿Qué? ¿Contenido que se escribe solo?

👇 Behold our reaction when we walked by AXSemantics’ booth.

Salesflare is about automation. We want you to use a CRM you don’t have to waste time and energy on. Right now that means it fills out your address book, keeps track of all your contact’s interactions and tells you to follow up when you should. In the future there will be a lot more where that came from. How about self-writing emails? 😏

Hence our interest 😎.

AXSemantics automates content from sources of big data. You can plug it into your systems via REST-API or manually import with .XLS and .CSV. They also provide the possibility to enrich your data with data from partners.

Piense en sistemas de comercio, bases de datos de información de productos, plataformas de inteligencia empresarial y similares. Todos ellos están repletos de datos valiosos que AXSemantics puede convertir en contenido listo para su uso.

Not sure if you’ll like the content that comes out? No worries, you can set your own wording, linguistic styles and story structures into rulesets to direct the content creation process. You stay in control.

Ah, y este pequeño robot de texto habla todos los idiomas del planeta.

#11. YouTeam — Booking.com for IT outsourcing

Hoy en día, todo el mundo necesita un desarrollador de software de primera.

If you’re ‘everyone’ you know how much of a pain in the ass it can be to find one, let alone a good one.

Currently, there’s about 5 (!) software jobs per available candidate.

That’s a huge problem and it only gets bigger for SMEs and startups. They have a hard time competing for the top dogs out there, leaving them to fight over the crumbs. Not exactly ideal when you’re fighting fierce battles to emerge in your market.

Wouldn’t it be great if a fresh load of experienced engineers would magically appear out of nowhere? 🤔

That’s what YouTeam is working on. Magic ✨. But not out of nowhere.

Turns out a lot great engineers working at software agencies are currently nowhere to be found on the job market while they could be. They could be because that these engineers are often underloaded at their agency and could work on other projects. The problem? They don’t want to freelance or change employer/location.

De hecho, el personal técnico inactivo es un problema típico que suma unos 10% en costes para las agencias de software. Junto con las primas de S&M y RRHH, esto puede combinarse con unos gastos generales totales de 30%.

YouTeam aúna ambos lados de la ecuación ofreciendo a las empresas la oportunidad de alquilar ingenieros de primera de este grupo de agencias de software.

YouTeam también se ocupa de los riesgos que conlleva la externalización de TI, como la custodia de pagos y códigos, así como la verificación independiente de las competencias.

👉 All you have to do is handpick yourself the best engineer for your team.

YouTeam’s mission: to build the world’s biggest database of idle tech talent. Similar to what our customer Udacity does for tech alumni.

Esté atento para conocer más cosas increíbles, como la búsqueda de candidatos y puestos de trabajo basada en IA, la mejora de los CV verificados de forma independiente y las soluciones para el reembolso basado en el rendimiento, entre otras.

#12. Vainu — Big Data helping you find the best leads

Vainu is your best friend, your least paid employee and your competitor’s worst nightmare.

That’s some solid marketing copy right there 👌.

Question is: is it as awesome as it sounds? 🤔

Vainu doesn’t brew your beer, neither does it bring your coffee. What it does do is bring you leads. Not just any leads — qualified leads.

How? Data baby 😎.

Vainu uses intelligent data collection from millions of open and public data sources to identify prospecting signals. It’ll get you the best leads out of that data based on a set of parameters you set and tell you when the time is right to contact them.

Actualmente disponen de bases de datos de Estados Unidos, Finlandia, Suecia, Noruega, Dinamarca y Países Bajos para pescar sus clientes potenciales. Se dice que Dinamarca, Irlanda y Australia llegarán pronto.

They’re already counting big fish like FedEx, DHL and Adecco among their happy customers.

#13. Guggy — Transform any text into epic GIFs

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I have the hots for animated GIFs.

Encontrar el GIF perfecto para expresar un sentimiento puede ser un dolor de muelas. GIPHY me ha decepcionado en más de una ocasión al tratar de encontrar un GIF que coincidiera con la vibración que quería transmitir en mi post.

The Guggy-guys (read that out loud, it’s fun) told me their app could give me the perfect GIF for every combination of words I typed in.

Siempre el GIF perfecto al alcance de la mano.

Era escéptico, pero han demostrado que me equivocaba. Guggy añadirá automáticamente tu texto a una serie de GIFs relacionados, y debo decir que hace un trabajo de la hostia.

Guggy tiene bots para Viber, Slack, Messenger, iMessage y Telegram, así como una dulce extensión de Chrome y una API. Para más información, visite guggy.com.

We tried to talk to all 262 startups at The Next Web but came short of that goal. Not every booth was manned at all times and there’s only so much time in a man’s life, let alone at a two-day conference.

If you were rocking TNW17 with your startup and you believe you should have made this list, please, oh please, let us know! 🤗