13 Awesome Startups We Met At The Next Web 2017

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

Os chatbots de IA estão chegando.

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? 🔍

Esse GIF épico foi criado com Guggy (see #13)

Acontece que a criação, a descoberta e a monetização de chatbots inteligentes não são exatamente um passeio no parque. Especialmente para nerds como eu. Como eles funcionam? Até que ponto eles são confiáveis?

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

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

Hu:toma quer acabar com sua dor e remover essas barreiras de entrada para a alma mais simples 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 🤖.

Seu próprio BB8. Um que possa agendar reuniões, dar instruções e falar com seus clientes. Talvez em algum momento ele também lhe traga 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.

Em algum momento, criar sites parecia tão difícil quanto criar chatbots hoje. O Hu:toma quer ser para a criação de chatbots o que o WordPress é para os sites: altamente personalizável e extremamente 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. Recrutado — Turbocharge your hiring process

Recrutado 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.

O Recruitee oferece tudo o que você precisa para criar o processo de contratação perfeito para sua empresa. Ele abrange todas as etapas do processo:

• fez uma bela seção de trabalho em seu site
• Divulgar rapidamente anúncios de emprego nos principais quadros de empregos e de nicho
• candidatos de fontes de toda a web
• rastrear e gerenciar candidatos (eles têm um pipeline!)
• métricas e análises avançadas para aprender e otimizar

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.

E veja só: existindo há apenas três anos, eles já contam com Hotjar, Greenpeace, VICE e Growth Tribe entre seus clientes. Juntamente com cerca de 2.000 outros.

#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.

Essas ferramentas supostamente aumentam a produtividade e simplificam os processos, tornando-os eficientes como máquinas, mas os funcionários acabam trabalhando para os aplicativos, e não o contrário.

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

Essa pequena joia permite que você faça coisas como enviar pedidos de compra, solicitar férias, visualizar números de vendas, reservar salas de reunião e divulgar notícias da empresa. Tudo no mesmo lugar e com a mesma interface.

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

O dia de trabalho típico do Salesflare começa com uma reunião de stand-up.

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 😜.

Também fazemos reuniões em pé:

• share understanding of goals — as well as problems and improvements
• coordenar os esforços da equipe
• identificar-se como uma equipe

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 🤖 é um Slackbot que faz o trabalho pesado de standup para você. Todos os dias, em um horário predefinido, ele perguntará aos membros da equipe no Slack:

• o que eles fizeram ontem
• o que eles querem alcançar hoje
• quais são os maiores 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.

O GeekBot já está sendo usado por empresas de ponta como Nike, Zappos, Salesforce, Sony, Shopify, AIG, Kissmetrics e outras.

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

Pluot. é uma startup de videoconferência recém-saída da Y Combinator.

Posso ouvi-lo pensando.

Mas não é apenas outro.

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.

O Pluot. Pro é para reuniões de vídeo completas. Ele vem com uma câmera e um microfone sofisticados para transformar as TVs em poderosos navios de guerra para conferências. Perfeito para equipes remotas e empresas com presença mundial.

#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.

Eu estava apenas verificando um novo carregamento de notificações na TNW quando Omer vem até mim e me diz que vai resolver meus problemas com o 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 😍.

No momento, o Social.co funciona para o Twitter e o Instagram, e o Facebook será o próximo.

A plataforma está atualmente em fase alfa, o que significa uma grande oportunidade para você. Inscreva-se e ajude esses profissionais a aperfeiçoar um produto de que muitos profissionais de marketing precisam.

#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.

O WordLift quer tirar isso de suas mãos.

Conheça um plug-in para WordPress com tecnologia de IA que o ajudará a aumentar o tráfego orgânico, transformando seus artigos em gemas amigáveis para máquinas de busca, chatbots e assistentes pessoais, como o Google Assistant, Siri e Alexa, que adoram.

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 peito — The slow-messaging revolution

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

As coisas se aceleraram desde então. O Snapchat apareceu e as mensagens se tornaram rápidas e sem sentido. É claro que as mensagens autodestrutivas são divertidas para brincar, mas algumas experiências e algumas pessoas merecem mais do que 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? 🤔

O Chestnote quer trazer de volta aquela sensação calorosa e agradável de antigamente, fazendo com que suas mensagens sejam importantes novamente.

Além do conteúdo em si (texto, foto ou vídeo), você pode definir o local e a hora em que a mensagem será revelada. A pessoa especial para quem você a enviar só poderá abrir a mensagem naquele local e naquele horário, transformando-a em uma experiência que ela dificilmente esquecerá.

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 ✋)

O Chestnote não é apenas para romance. As empresas podem usá-lo para envolver e ativar clientes. No mês passado, o Chestnote fez uma parceria com o provedor de rede belga Mobile Vikings para enviar os usuários em uma caçada por prêmios especiais de Páscoa.

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

O Kontentino é uma ferramenta de agendamento e gerenciamento de mídia social.

Soooo, another Hootsuite or Buffer? 🤔

Not quite ☝️.

A Kontentino tem como objetivo otimizar os fluxos de trabalho de criatividade e produtividade entre vários profissionais e equipes. Eles se concentram em grandes agências de mídia social e marketing, em vez de freelancers individuais, pequenas equipes e usuários pessoais que o Hootsuite e o Buffer estão ajudando.

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 🎂.

Os criadores de conteúdo podem se alinhar em torno de um calendário intuitivo e interativo, visualizar publicações ao vivo em todos os formatos possíveis de mídia social e enviá-las para um fluxo de trabalho de aprovação que também inclui o 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 e Absolut Vodka já estão contando com a Kontentino para suas estratégias de mídia social.

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. AXSemântica — Self-writing content

Espere, o quê? Conteúdo que se escreve sozinho?

👇 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.

Pense em sistemas de comércio, bancos de dados de informações sobre produtos, plataformas de business intelligence e similares. Todos eles estão repletos de dados valiosos que o AXSemantics pode transformar em conteúdo pronto para o site.

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, e esse pequeno robô de texto fala todos os idiomas do planeta.

#11. YouTeam — Booking.com for IT outsourcing

Hoje em dia, todo mundo precisa de um desenvolvedor de software durão.

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.

Na verdade, a ociosidade da equipe técnica é um problema típico que gera cerca de 10% em custos para as agências de software. Juntamente com os bônus de S&M e RH, isso pode chegar a um total de 30% de custos indiretos.

A YouTeam reúne os dois lados da equação, oferecendo às empresas a oportunidade de alugar engenheiros de primeira linha desse grupo de agências de software.

A YouTeam também cuida dos riscos inerentes à terceirização de TI, como pagamento e garantia de código, bem como verificação independente de habilidades.

👉 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.

Fique atento a mais coisas incríveis, como a correspondência candidato/emprego orientada por IA, currículos aprimorados verificados de forma independente e soluções para reembolso com base no desempenho e muito mais.

#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.

No momento, eles têm bancos de dados dos Estados Unidos, Finlândia, Suécia, Noruega, Dinamarca e Holanda para pescar seus leads. A Dinamarca, a Irlanda e a Austrália estão sendo anunciadas para breve.

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 o GIF perfeito para expressar um sentimento pode ser muito difícil. O GIPHY me decepcionou em mais de uma ocasião ao tentar encontrar um GIF que correspondesse à vibração que eu queria transmitir em minha postagem.

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.

Sempre o GIF perfeito na ponta de seus dedos.

Eu estava cético, mas eles provaram que eu estava errado. O Guggy adiciona automaticamente seu texto a uma série de GIFs relacionados, e devo dizer que ele faz um ótimo trabalho de busca.

A Guggy tem bots para Viber, Slack, Messenger, iMessage e Telegram, bem como uma excelente extensão para Chrome e uma API. E mais, verifique você mesmo em 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! 🤗