50 of the Hottest Amsterdam Startups You Should Know
Amsterdam is the Netherlands’ capital, and the most populated city. As a startup hub, the city boasts multiple universities and an influx of international high skilled tech-workers. Due to its transient nature it experiences continual reinvention which is great for startups wanting to experiment with new ideas, and scrap ideas that don’t work with less fear or guilt.
Amsterdam is appealing to entrepreneurs with its simple tax structure, lots of funding potential and ease of incorporation. Innovative technologies like AR, Blockchain and ML have made their way there, and the emergence of data centers and cloud computing have been welcomed to the city.
Here are 50 new, emerging, and established startups headquartered in Amsterdam that we think you should get to know.
Fintech
Dyme
Dyme (one of our favorite Amsterdam startups) uses smart and innovative technologies to help its users understand their personal finances and inform them about potential financial opportunities. By connecting to a users’ bank account, Dyme gives a clear overview of fixed costs and offers a one-click cancellation and switching of subscriptions.
The application is leveraging changing regulations (PSD2) to connect to its’ users bank account and recently received a prestigious license to operate from the Dutch Central Bank. This will enable the company to connect to any bank in Europe.
Ohpen
Established in 2009 by Chris Zadeh, Ohpen is a market leader in cloud-based core banking software in the Netherlands. The scaleup offers a modular approach to banking IT systems. The company claims to save customers up to 80% in IT costs.
Founded in 2006, Adyen built an online payments platform. The platform simplifies and accelerates global payments for its customers. It lets merchants accept payments in a single system that enables revenue growth online, at the point of sale terminals and on mobile devices. The company, one of the biggest competitors of PayPal, experienced an impressive IPO in June 2018: the shares soared 90 percent on the first day of trading.
Spotcap
Spotcap is a global online lender and takes business lending to the next level. Founded in 2014, the company provides established SMEs with tailored finance.
Being a fintech company, Spotcap uses smart technology to process applications and carry out credit and risk analysis. The team assesses complete applications within one working day and once approved, business owners have immediate access to the funds.
Spotcap wants to innovate within the finance landscape and help business owners focus on what really matters: their business.
Founded in 2014, BUX is a fintech application that offers free trading of stocks and cryptocurrency. The company has 2 million users across Europe and raised over €20M in venture capital. Recently the company has launched BUX Zero – the first Dutch free stock trading app.
bunq
bunq was one of the first European neo-banks. The bank is internationally active and headquartered in Amsterdam. The company was founded in 2012 by Ali Niknam, original founder of the IT company TransIP (now merged with Combell to create team.blue). bunq has attracted 35.000 customers and has been completely funded by Ali Niknam itself.
Five Degrees offers services comparable to those of Ohpen (another exciting fintech mentioned above). The company provides its customers with an omnichannel digital banking platform and multiple core banking solutions. This enables the banks to offer banking services on web-based and mobile-based channel.
Ikbenfrits
Ikbenfrits is a platform that offers mortgage switching possibilities for its customers. The company was founded in 2015 and received investment from Finch Capital, a notable fintech investor from Amsterdam. The interesting model of ikbenfrits relies on the discount customers can receive by refinancing their mortgage.
Peaks is a new fintech startup backed by Rabobank that automatically invests your change in several ETFs (exchange-traded funds) across the world, yielding higher returns and lower risks than investments in individual stocks or bonds. This way customers are automatically and sometimes even unknowingly investing their money!
Dimebox
Dimebox develops an online payments platform that offers payment gateways, billing and settlement, acquiring processing, data and analytics and fraud prevention solutions. Dimebox was acquired by Verifone in 2018, a multinational fintech firm with its headquarters in the United States.
Commerce
The Peerby app and platform was created to help you borrow things you need from people in your neighbourhood. With Peerby you don’t have to spend money on things you need only once in a while. The app is on Android and iOS, and has over 100K members in 20+ European cities. Both the borrower and lender are covered against damage or loss by a daily fee paid by the borrower
Hubs
Hubs (formerly 3d Hubs) formed to create the largest and fastest network of 3D printers, connecting around 16,000 printer owners worldwide to provide access to 3D printing to virtually anyone within 10 miles of their home. However, the company recently pivoted away from peer-to-peer printing and now exclusively focuses on the maintenance and growth of their business-to- business 3D printing platform.
Hiber has been founded by multiple serial-entrepreneurs and aims to build the first interconnected global satellite system. The company offers monitoring services based on IOT technology. The company provides some possible use cases on its website; water wells in California, potato fields in East Africa, or trains across Europe and Asia. The company claims customers can monitor everything, wherever, whenever.
Fairphone
Launched in 2010, Fairphone is a social enterprise hardware startup that creates ethically sourced and built smartphones. The startup’s entire supply chain is transparent from the minerals and components, to the people who build it, to the entire process and its social and ecological impact.
Fairphone has raised over €35M in funding. Part of the funding has been two incredibly successful crowdfunding campaigns.
Launched by Anca Stefan and Roemie Hillenaar, this Amsterdam based online marketplace has been rapidly growing ever since their launch. Creative Fabrica offers premium content from leading designers through an affordable subscription, reducing project costs and boosting productivity. Besides receiving investment from venture capital firm Peak Capital, the company has been extremely successful in providing fitting products for their ever increasing user base.
Temper
Temper has only been around since 2016, but is growing fast. More than 4,500 companies already work with Temper, such as DeLaMar Theater, Kurhaus and DHL. More than 70,000 workers have registered on the platform. Temper has raised €4M from leading venture capital firm Slingshot Ventures. The funding will be moved to increase the usability of the platform and possible scale outside of the Netherlands.
Magnet.me was launched in 2012 to solve a problem that the founders experienced as students themselves: it is hard to find a graduate job people love. Traditional student job sites are spammy, user unfriendly and only used by big companies with big recruitment budgets, leading to nothing but frustration.
Magnet.me enables Employers to post their internships, placements, graduate jobs and career events on Magnet.me for free, so students are not limited in their choice of opportunities due to a limited recruitment budget of potential employers, like startups and SMEs.
Dekbed Discounter
Niels Verwij founded Dekbed Discounter in 2014 with 5,000 euros that he borrowed from his parents and quickly grew it to €40M in yearly revenues. Dekbed Discounter has a serious market share of 10 percent and challenges all bricks and mortar bed stores. After all, Verwij can deliver cheaper online than offline giants and consumers no longer have to leave the house.
One of the most successful companies within the Dutch sharing economy has been Barqo. Barqo is an online boat rental platform. The company connects aspiring captains with boat owners. Launched in 2014, Barqo now helps over 100.000 people a year on a boating experience. In 2017 the startup won the Emerce eTravel startup award.
Charly Cares
Charly Cares aims to provide reliable babysitting services. Need a babysitter for after school care or for a spontaneous night out? Charly Cares provides reliable babysitters for every moment. These are personally screened, fixed flexible or last-minute and the platform provides ratings & reviews after every babysitting services. The company was founded by Charlotte van der Straten and her partner. The company completed a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2017 and subsequently raised an undisclosed amount in follow-up financing in 2018.
Crisp is the first Dutch online supermarket for fresh products. Recently launched in April 2018 and backed by the largest seed funding in the Benelux in the last 3 years. Crisp is an app-only service, with delivery throughout The Netherlands. The shop stocks products from more than 350 farmers, growers and makers.
Ekster
If wallets were invented for the 21st century, what would they look like? Ekster answers this question with their line of smart wallets. Built for minimalists who need to carry more, this RFID-proof wallet fans out your most-used cards at the click of a button. Pair it with the solar-powered tracker card to make sure you never lose your wallet or phone again.
Swapfiets offers a service where you can rent a bike for a monthly fee, and in return Swapfiets guarantees that you will have a working bicycle while your subscription is active. If your bicycle brakes, Swapfiets will come to your location and provide you with a working bicycle within 12 hours. They’re a Dutch startup operating in most student cities in the Netherlands, with much of the operation being run by students. The company has received investment from Ponooc, the sustainable investment arm of Pon Holdings.
Pabbl
Pabbl is a mobile platform that enables advertisers to reach their target group in a fun and non-disturbing way via the screen we view about 150 times a day: the mobile phone lock screen. Founded in 2015 the company revolutionised the way customers interact with the lock screen. The start-up has signed numerous partnerships with advertisers and brands to provide its users with quality rewards for their screens.
The company Dott is a micro-mobility European start-up, gathering the most experienced team in mobility and tech in Europe. Dott recently raised an initial investment of €20M, co-led by EQT Ventures and Naspers. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam but has its sights on quick European expansion.
For Your Business
Ligo
Ligo offers legal documents, notarial services, and free phone consultation with lawyers and legal workflows. The company was founded in 2015 and successfully raised a seed funding round in 2018. The web platform has been a popular destination for aspiring entrepreneurs to make and download the first legal documentation needed to officially start a company in the Netherlands.
Framer is an open-source JavaScript framework for rapid prototyping, which has a bundle with Framer Generator that allows users to import layers into common design tools like Photoshop and Sketch. With experienced entrepreneurs and designers as founders, this startup raised a total of €30M from investors such as Atomico and Accel.
Messagebird
MessageBird claims to be on a mission to modernize and simplify the overcomplicated space of customer communication. As the only leading cloud communications platform with its own telecommunications carrier infrastructure, MessageBird connects over 15,000 enterprises to their global customers via the fastest and most reliable SMS, Voice and Chat APIs in the world.
Interestingly enough the company joined the Y combinator in 2017 and raised the biggest Series A funding (led by Accel) raised by any European Software company to date.
Mollie is a technology-based company processing payments with more than 50.000 customers. Mollie aims to make online payment simple for merchants by taking away the complexity from payment methods and offering a simple, but powerful API.
Mollie has always had a strong focus on technology, innovation and reliability. The company was founded by developers, and developers are still in charge of daily operations. To this date Mollie has raised a total of €25M.
WeTransfer
WeTransfer is a file sharing platform that has grown worldwide with around 25 million active users to solve this everyday problem. This tool allows users to send large files (up to 2GB) quickly and free of charge through a very simplistic interface. WeTransfer raised €64M in two funding rounds.
Launched two years ago by Milan Daniels and Max Klijnstra, Otrium is effectively Shopify for fashion brands, providing the e-commerce technology stack and logistics handling to create online outlet/clearance stores. The company’s technology and marketplace full-service offer is aimed at keeping entry costs low – helping up-and-coming brands in particular shift excess inventory, although each brand does ship its own orders.
Shypple
Shypple launched in 2016 and provides a digital dashboard for businesses to search and book freight shipping directly from the sources. The company has received funding to finance their financial expansion and with 90% of the world’s international trade travelling by ship, we are quite excited about the potential of this startup!
Homerun is an all-in-one recruitment software (ATS) that enables you to attract, review and hire the best talent, together as a team. The company boasts customers such as Ace & Tate, Takeaway, Mollie and Ticketswap. The startup was founded by Thomas Moes and Willem van Roosmalen and has its offices in startup building TQ.
Ed Tech
Studocu
StuDocu (known in The Netherlands as Studeersnel) is an online platform where students can share knowledge. The company currently has over 17-million registered users that view millions of study documents on the platform every month, both growing at a rate of about 10% a month. They just had their 5,000,000th document uploaded this past November. The company has successfully been focussing on international growth over the past years.
Customization of all kinds is trending, and StudyTube is bringing that idea to the education space with their platform that customizes educational content to fit the needs of individual students. Their plug and play solution allows universities, publishers, and other businesses to build, deliver, and sell courses from the cloud, with its first product being an online “study coach” for law students.
Students can monitor their progress and gain feedback on where they need more practice, while StudyTube will automatically generate content to accelerate learning in those trouble areas. StudyTube has raised €2M in seed funding from HENQ.
Lessonup
LessonUp is an award-winning online platform that makes it easy for teachers to create engaging lessons using video, images, interactive questions and quizzes. Differentiate to your students personal needs and let them join your lessons with their own device.
Marketing, Sales, Content
Hotelchamp is founded in Amsterdam (April 2015) by Kasper Middelkoop and Kristian Valk to restore a fair balance between direct and third party hotel bookings. Together with their experienced team of 50+ employees, they are successfully providing smart technology solutions for hotel websites resulting in direct bookings. The company has raised €4M in seed funding.
Media Distillery
Media Distillery was founded with a mission to help people discover relevant video content faster with an ultimate user experience. They do this by analysing video and extract next-generation metadata. Metadata that was previously only visible to humans. Media Distillery provides an AI platform to understand what’s inside video. The company has raised €4M in funding, both venture capital from Peak Capital and a €2M grant from the European Union.
Usabilla, a user experience testing tool, helps marketers, designers, UI, and UX practitioners around the world build better websites with improved user experience.The platform allows the collection of visual, quantitative user feedback on their website in a fun way, where groups of participants answer questions, and the results are analyzed and presented visually with charts and heatmaps. Usabilla raised around $1M in seed funding led by Boralis in 2011. The company has recently been acquired by SurveyMonkey.
Scoupy
Tired of going through the weekly ads to clip coupons you may or may not need? Scoupy is the Groupon of couponing that offers users discounts and promotions within the proximity of the user. The app is on iPhone and Android, and is based on the GPS-location of the user, who can discover the best discounts at nearby grocery stores, shops, bars, and more.
Founded in 2011, Scoupy was backed by Sanoma Ventures and eventually acquired by Sanoma Media.
Hatch (formerly Iceleads) is a marketing technology company, leading the way in Where to Buy solutions and services. Hatch connects top brands with global retailers (both online and in-store), allowing consumers to purchase products through every touchpoint. By blurring the lines between physical stores and e-commerce the company breaks down the silos between various sales channels and enable a true omni-channel experiences, while enhancing the customer journey and strengthening retail relations.
Hatch B.V., headquartered in Amsterdam and formerly known as Iceleads B.V. was founded in 2010 and is based in Amsterdam. The company raised €3M in a Series A backed by Vortex Capital Partners.
Bundle
With digital photography at our fingertips, the amount of photos the average person takes each week is between 51-100. We take a whole lot more photos than we used to, but often don’t have the time to go and organize. Bundle is a platform that pulls photos from your smartphone and Dropbox, picks out what it thinks are the best using computer vision algorithms, and packages them into cohesive albums.
The more you use Bundle, the smarter the algorithm becomes at creating albums. Bundle has raised around $581K led by Startup Bootcamp and Utrechtinc. The startup has been acquired by ReSnap in 2017.
Dashmote is an image search platform that allows users to browse the most popular image search databases on one interface. Users can select their favorite images and easily create mood/inspiration boards that are easily shared with others. Earlier this year, Dashmote raised $3M in an international funding round backed by Chinese and American investors.
Silk
With content marketing on the rise, a need to keep it all organized has emerged. Silk launched in 2010 to make it easier for people to interact with content online. The cloud-based application allows users to manage their online content via interactive web pages called “Silks”. Silk allow users and non users to explore data more efficiently.
Silks raised $3.7M in three rounds of funding led by Atomico and New Enterprise Associates and was acquired by Palantir Technologies.
Plot Projects is a location based mobile marketing platform that sends notifications when a user nears a specific location. This geofencing solution is available on all mobile platforms, and lets users create and track geofencing campaigns through the online dashboard.
Plot Projects has raised $1m in seed funding, using the funds to fuel commercial operations and continue their global expansion.
Blendle
Blendle is basically an iTunes for Dutch newspapers, an app and a website where readers can buy articles for €0.10 to €0.30 a pop. Blendle sells articles from most of the major Dutch papers, as well as from some Belgian publishers, and magazines that include the Economist. Readers can scan the major front pages and a handful of recommendations for individual articles from staffers and their friends. The recommendations are presented in a format that looks a little like Twitter. New users start with a credit of €2.50, and so far one in five has spent more than that. Buyers have a short window during which they can cancel an article purchase and get a refund. If they don’t, Blendle takes a 30% cut. Blendle raised funding from strategic investors such as Axel Springer and the New York Time, but also from a venture capital firm: INKEF.
Music and Events
Tiqets is a platform that allows travel companies like hotels and airlines to sell entertainment like tours, shows, and events to their customers through multiple touchpoints. The startup is investing in its product development and mobile technology to expand its global growth in the coming years.
The company recently raised a €60M funding round led by Airbnb, which increased the total amount of funding to €100M.
TicketSwap
TicketSwap is a safe, convenient and fair place to buy and sell e-tickets for concerts, festivals, sports events, theatre and day trips. TicketSwap protects buyers from overpricing by keeping to a maximum 20% mark-up from the original selling price. As a buyer, you know you’ll always be paying a fair price for your tickets. Fraud is prevented by user-checks and through partnerships and collaborations with event organizers.
Health Tech
As fitness continues going mobile, we are excited to follow startups like Fitmo, that bring personal training to the convenience of your cell phone.
The platform connects users to a trusted community of real personal trainers who facilitate a continuous, personalized online coaching experience, at the rate of what a gym memberships would cost. The app integrates with major fitness platforms in the market like Runkeeper, Fitbit, and Jawbone.
MedEye
It is estimated that 1 in 5 medications are given incorrectly in hospitals around the globe. MedEye helps nurses verify and document patient medication administration using a computer vision technology that integrates with hospital information systems.
The company behind MedEye, Mint Solutions, has raised a total of €15M in funding from NSA Ventures, Seventure Partners, and Life Sciences Partners. This includes a €2.4M grant from the European Horizon 2020 program.
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