The third Berlin Tech Meetup attracted the usual mix of engineers, entrepreneurs, designers and anyone else interested in the technology scene. The tech-focused pitches this time round were from Berlin regulars Ezeep, Squadmail, WhenAUser, Loopcam and Moviepilot – and there was also a special treat for the audience in the form of Shapeways, a 3D printing system from the Netherlands which proved a big hit.
Taking the stage last, community manager Bart Veldhuizen explained the printers and the advances in technology that had made 3D printing viable on a commercial scale. He had brought along some examples which drew an admiring crowd.
Ezeep had opened the pitches at mobilesuite on Wednesday with an overview of their cloud-based printing service, allowing users to print documents from any device without printing software. Engineer Will Perkins gave a brief explanation of the technical details, but focused more on what the service offered.
Next up was Loopcam, the gif creation and sharing app from Swede Tor Rauden Källstigen. Tor focused on how Loopcam has developed as a service and the natural community that built up around the product rather than on the more technical aspects of the app, and showed the audience the company’s LOL graph.
WhenAUser was one of the more technical pitches of the evening. Co-founder Christian Weis launched straight into the mechanics of the startup, explaining briefly how the program seeks to manage and engage customers using APIs. He showed the simple algorithm that WhenAUser employs, and explained how non-technical people can engage easily with the service. Despite the technical nature of the pitch, there were plenty of questions for Christian afterwards.
Moviepilot was already popular with the audience even before the event started after it sponsored all the drinks. But Caspar Clemens Mierau also provided an insightful and well-balanced look into what they do and the mechanics behind it. As a home for people to follow the progress of a movie from first rumour to release, Caspar stressed the importance of Facebook as a marketing tool and gave an insight into the behind-the-scenes stuff that keeps Moviepilot running, briefly describing their use of Backbone.JS and Github, as well as statistical program Q.
Philipp Mayer of Squadmail, an up and coming startup which recently won a wildcard shortlisting to Startupbootcamp, described their Dropbox-like folder system for email that is currently in public beta. He focused on his live demo and described the different ways in which Squadmail could be utilized. He tended away from the technical explanations and focused more on pitching the business itself.
Organisers Gabriel Matuschka and Florian Hübner were pleased with the pitches for the most part, and thought that the blend of technical and non-technical elements were essential to inspiring up-and-coming tech people and entrepreneurs, with Gabriel saying: “We want them to briefly explain what the company is doing, what problem they are solving, and then maybe take a deep dive into explaining how they are doing it.”