Inspiring the next generation of European startups

Europe is home to a vibrant startup scene and four of the world’s top twenty startup ecosystems. But a major barrier to successfully growing a startup is still funding, according to the European Commission’s Vice President for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip.

If you go and ask entrepreneurs everywhere, they’ll usually agree that, no matter how great your idea, you will face a lot of people saying “no” along the way. My CEO - who has been an entrepreneur since the age of 22 - has a lot of those stories to share.

What a potential waste, if the repeated “no” means you give up. Entrepreneurship can have such a galvanising impact on economies; creating new businesses, markets and jobs and can open doors to new opportunities.

UberPITCH was our way of helping encourage the potential of European entrepreneurs.

Since our inception, Uber has used technology to connect people in a smarter, more efficient way. Bringing riders and drivers together is now something we do millions of times a day around the world.

So, UberPITCH was our way of helping encourage the potential of European entrepreneurs. We had almost 4000 entries in just two weeks, as people from 37 cities in 21 countries applied to get a ride in an Uber with a top venture capitalist. The top four were flown to Berlin to meet with Travis and I.

Each of the startups is providing a truly unique service in an exciting field. Memrica’s software provides help for people with memory problems ; Brigad connects restaurants across France with an on-demand staffing marketplace ; Otly helps children learn the value of money by offering an online banking platform for children ; and HiPromine uses insects to tackle 21st century global issues.

Their unique ideas as well as their motivation have fascinated us so much that today I’m excited to announce we have made an equal investment in each of them. The amounts are relatively small but hopefully transformational for them and will help catapult them to the next level of their development.

It was easy for us to recognise ourselves in these entrepreneurs.

We wanted to use the interest in Uber to open doors for these companies. In that sense it wasn’t our intention to invest. But after meeting them - we wanted to help further. Only a couple of years ago, Uber has been at a similar stage in size and determination and so it was easy for us to recognise ourselves in these entrepreneurs.

Meeting with Florent from Brigad, Mary from Memrica Prompt, Vedran from Otly! and Jakub from HiPromine has been truly inspirational and we hope UberPITCH and news of our investment could inspire more people with great ideas to take up the challenge of launching their own startup.