Startups at Uprise Festival 2015: Learn platforms, Tents out of cardboard, Spotify of Gaming and Tinder of Job search.

TSO logoI am in Amsterdam for Uprise Festival. The Startup Orgy, a fresh and newly opened Co-Working Space in Amsterdam is supporting my trip by providing workspace, putting me in contact with Startups here and of course providing the right dose of caffein.

Hello from Day 2 at the Uprise Festival. On Day 1 I blogged about Music Startups and the Growthhacking Workshop. I collected content from five Startups which caught my interest while strolling around at the venue.

Cocoon – Find a your dream job

I blogged about Grip app using the basic concept of Tinder for business networking. Here is another one borrowing some of the elements from Tinder, like using existing data from a social network you are already using (LinkedIn) and the simple Yes/No concept applied for “finding your dream job”. This is what Cocoon App is doing.

After signing in with your LinkedIn account you choose five skills you want to get listed on your profile in the app. Then you rank your skills by giving points to your skills, it asks “how experienced are you”. What follows is a short personality test. Companies can post jobs and potential applicants can browse through them. If there is a match, the chat can begin. The project started in April 2015. It’s currently available as a responsive web app and is open to try it on the web.

I like the concept. If this works it could save lots of time and money in HR departments. The personality test is of course very basic at the moment and its hard to guess if someone really is a fit by just looking at the profile and not having more data on projects etc. But I suppose that the chat function could be an easy to use tool to quickly get in contact with a potential candidate and sort the ones out which do not fit. Then set up the meet. Like it!

 

Learningspaces – platform for group based learning

Learningspaces.io Learningspaces is an easy to use online learning platform. It provides your own learning “space” on a subdomain, like freshstorytelling.learningspaces.io. You can brand the site with logo and “chapters” with cover pictures. I signed up and liked it from the beginning. It offers a minimalistic feature set basically in 3 categorys: Create spaces (the actual topic which is covered in the learning group, like “digital storytelling”), create chapters (“Blogging with WordPress”), assignments or a quiz.

The web-app is free to use for up to 10 people. After that 2 EUR per person. A team of about 12 people is driving the project out of Groningen. It was started 1.5 years ago, the site is now live since January and growing with 200-300 users a week and has about 2700 users overall. Check it out if you work as a trainer, teacher or just give workshops from time to time.

Learning Stone – Learning & Collaboration platform

Michiel Klonhammer, Founder LearningStone
Michiel Klonhammer, Founder LearningStone

Learning Stone is also a platform for group learning activites. Compared to Learningspaces the feature set is much more advanced. This is more targeted at larger companies needing a broader set of features. In addition to the features Learningspaces has this also provides calendar appointments, sending newsletters, a newsfeed, you can post files, chat with other group members, create surveys etc. The platform is targeting professional training institutes offering in-person trainings looking for a platform to support their learning online. Its free to use for a group up to 20 people. It went live beginning of 2014 and has been developed (from starting coding basic elements) over the past four years.

Utomik – Spotify of Gaming

Utomik Co-Founder Chris van der Linden
Utomik Co-Founder Chris van der Linden

As advertised at the stand already, this is the Spotify concept for games. Pay 10 $ a month and play as many games as you want. Utomik is currently in beta and allows to play about 50 games. At launch the platform aims to have 500 titles in its program. Right now its about starting it all up. How it works? You install the Windows client, sign up and choose which game you like to play. The game needs to be downloaded and installed locally, so its not game-streaming. The company is incorporated in the US, product development is done in Eindhoven (a high tech engineering hotspot in the Netherlands). I talked with the co-founder Chris van der Linden and got a great tagline to describe it: Discover great games which you might not know. So the concept is not about having the latest Blockbuster title right at launch, but having the hidden gems from the beginning.

Kartent – your festival tent out of cardboard

Jan Portheine, Co-Founder Kartent
Jan Portheine, Co-Founder Kartent

Remember when you left the camping area at the music festival you last attended? Yes, the camping area was full of trash and many tents left behind. Thats what Kartent is looking to solve: Instead of bringing your own tent you can get a tent out of cardboard for about 15 EUR (The price is that low because of a sponsoring deal). Kartent guarantees that it at least lasts for the length of the featival, even when its raining. The business model? Working with festival organizers directly to sell it on site, by providing the tents and the service to clean up the camping area afterwards. The tent fits 2, weight is about 5kg, and is of course recyclable. Project was started in March 2015, so far festival organizers love it. I hope this succeeds and its adopted at many festivals.

More about Uprise Festival

Want to learn about all the other Startups at Uprise Festival? Check the Twitter feed and their Website. Also check the video of Day 1 and some pictures. The next Uprise Festival seems to be planned for April.

 

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