2Parale, the first and largest Romanian affiliate network, expanded to Bulgaria in 2011 and today offers affiliate programs from Serbia, Iraq and Cyprus. More than 14k affiliates (publishers like InternetCorp, ProTV, bloggers and online marketing freelancers) are promoting 230+ online shops and advertisers (Groupon, Flanco, TinaR, FashionDays, Bestjobs, Romtelecom) with remarkable results: 55 million clicks, 8 million euro in sales and 660k euro in commissions. The revenue model consists of profit sharing: online shops pay a flat fee and a percent of their sales.
2Parale continues to change the rules off affiliate marketing: affiliates’ engagement is increased through gamification: turning online marketing into a social strategy game increases conversion and revenue for everybody in the system. The self-service approach for advertisers allows them to run their own program with lower costs. As the network continues to grow, 2Parale will focus on expanding to emerging markets (Turkey, India and countries from CEE).

The company was launched at the end of 2006, putting all its bets on the power of the Internet, constantly optimizing their website www.rca-ieftin.ro, so that calculating a quotation for car insurance can be as simple as ever, with just a few steps to be completed until the final purchase.. By doing so, the business has been growing constantly; therefore, 6 years later, Pintilie Insurance Broker grew from being a small one-bedroom apartment business to a full mature SME company, with over 60 people as staff, enjoying now a spacious headquarter in the city center, with 7 other branches in Bucharest’s main shopping areas.
Today, their website www.rca-ieftin.ro is the most important information source for all the visitors, having more than 750.000 unique visitors (around 25% of the total car market) in the last 12 months and more than 100.000 active clients.

Entrio is the simplest, social online platform for selling tickets, with rich event promotion and integration options and great UX for customers. Entrio enables event organizers, such as festivals, concerts, seminars, conferences to start online ticket sales in a matter of minutes. Entrio provides unique Facebook shop app, mobile web and other integration options to ensure ultimate web visibility to the organizer. Discount codes, real‐time control and monitoring and our new Check‐ in app are some of the great Entrio tools which provide significant time and money savings. On the other hand, we do our best to ensure seamless, frictionless and fun ticket purchase process for the visitors.

KeenSkim helps people to learn more by reading less – it fixes Information Overload by creating automatic summaries for news & web articles. KeenSkim is a disruptive Web product that aims to solve the Information Overload problem. It does this by creatingsummariesfor online news & web articles. It’s simple & concise. Works fully automatic with 1-button click. It’s most beneficial for heavy information consumers (decision-makers & innovators) but is something that can be used by anyone online (everybody is an information consumer).

FinZoom operates leading financial comparison portals in Bulgaria (www.moitepari.bg), Romania (www.finzoom.ro) and Turkey (www.finzoom.com.tr), and the leading mortgage brokerage company in Bulgaria – Creditland (www.creditland.bg). FinZoom’s mission is to empower millions of consumers to make well-informed decisions about their personal finances. Started in 2005 in Bulgaria and 2006 in Romania and Turkey, the portals are well positioned as aggregators and providers of transparent comparison information on all financial products and services, including consumer loans, mortgages, credit cards, pay-day loans, auto-loans, business loans, deposits, current accounts, savings accounts mutual funds, pension funds and others. Because of the highly focused, quality visitor traffic FinZoom is well established as a lead generation and sales channel for its partners.

This is the first Romanian cashback website. When a customer makes a transaction online, instead of visiting the retailer directly, he may choose to follow a link from a CashCow.ro website to generate a monetary reward for products or services he purchases.

CarsCup is the first social game built for men. You can finally upgrade the virtual version of your real life car, improve it and participate in races around the world. Even more, you will be able to join car clubs together with your friends and become the best racing pilot in the world.

The team has a strong social gaming background (they built/cofounded eRepublik.com), car community background (cofounding the first Romanian community of Alfa Romeo owners) and strong UI and Lean Development experience.

ShopMunk boosts foot-traffic in retail stores by giving users real-world rewards and bonus points for entering and exploring venues. With ShopMunk, we serve the process of shopping rather than the process of buying. Therefore, we influence shoppers by stimulating them to explore and interact with brands, rather then making them purchase at a lower price. We achieve this through gamification, a process of stimulating people to be actively involved in brand interaction. We deliver to our users a combination of universal bonus points system, virtual- and real-world rewards.

Traderion is a virtual reality game simulating the international interbank markets through an authentic trading engine. The project started offline over a business summer school in Sibiu, 2011, organized by one of the founders and received a great feedback from the participants. Later that year, an improved version of the game was successfully organized for students in ASE. Encouraged by the participants wish to continue playing, the founders decided to create an online version of the game. That’s how Traderion was born.

TribeGarden will help you to choose and buy the perfect gift, alone or with friends. Our solution finds the gifts that will be most appropriate for him or her and the occasion they are for. It does this by crawling your friend’s social stream and then based on data mining and machine learning algorithms it determines suggestions. When your friend’s birthday approaches, you will be notified and given suggestions about possible gifts. Then you can start funding one of these ideas. Funding is not a one- man thing, others will contribute as well. We will encourage this by suggesting people that will be more likely to contribute.

Nexi.me brings the offline referral programs in the online era. We offer a platform where employees can easily refer any of his friends from Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and we help him in the referral process by offering great suggestions. Together with our new endorsement feature we offer recruiters the possibility to reach the best candidates.

Simplio Labs, Inc., based in Florida, USA, is a web development company that in short time managed to penetrate the US market. Synappsio is a set of development tools to create online shops as native applications for iPhone and iPad using web interface (to manage the store) and a markup language (SYNML). Using only an iPad and minimal knowledge of XML, developers can create custom online store, with integrated payment methods very quickly.

Social Strategist and imaginator, Giovanni Giro, has created the first social platform that fosters feelings, not posts news.

“Posting is the past,” explains Giovanni. “It’s been fine, even acceptable, to post. Pictures, news, information. Everyone has been moving around with their “post window” that everyone else can look into. But people carry emotions, not just information. And until now, there has been no means to go from posting to fostering. Flobes!t is now that means”, he states.

Flobe!t is a visual social engagement app enabling users to foster feelings – with anyone, anywhere, by uploading emotions, not just pictures, and receiving an affirmation in heartbeat (360 seconds).

This is the key element to making Flobe!t unique. It delivers immediately with immediacy. And in the words of founder, Giro, “Flobe!t gives people exactly what they are searching for today–a reaffirmation of their humanity.

Flobe!t’s Mission:
It’s time to create a social platform built on action.
The action to share and foster feelings, not post news.
It’s time to go from social networking to emotional engagement.
It’s time to do what you feel. And feel for what you do.
It’s time to foster feelings around the world in a heartbeat.
When you feel it, Flobe!t

Giovanni is supported by an experienced American creative partner, who helps him to tell the emotional story of Flobe!t, and by a Romanian webmaster, who turns Flobe!t into the system everyone can use.

Heroes of Alcor is a game designed by Advanced Ideas Studio.We are a full service interactive web agency. We design brilliant websites, games, mobile apps. and innovative social media applications for countless companies.Heroes of Alcor is a multi player online game centered around a sci-fantasy environment.Think about a sci-fi environment like StarTrek with fantasy graphics from Lord of the Rings mixed up by our talented art team into a cocktail of superb space environments with millions of stars and planets to explore and conquer. A space adventure introducing a great story, fascinating new characters and challenges. The whole game concept and story is meant to attract the hard core gamers the so called “big whales” that spend lots and lots of money for virtual in game goods, achievements and character upgrades.We target a hardcore gaming audience, most of them located in US, UK and Russia.So, we have a great game with a great story, we have the talent, the technology and the tenacity to build it and we need your financial backing to make it happen.

Blueseed is a Silicon Valley startup working on launching a cruise ship 22 kilometers from the coast of Silicon Valley, in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the United States. The location will allow entrepreneurs from around the world to start or scale their companies without the need for US work visas. They will work on the ship, flagged in The Bahamas, and will be able to travel to the mainland using easier-to-obtain business/tourist visas. The revenue model consists of residential and commercial rent, equity in each startup onboard, event space rental, and proceeds from TV shows, educational seminars and other media activities that will take place on the ship.

To date, 850 entrepreneurs from 245 startups in 50 countries have expressed interest in locating their startups on the ship. The project has received wide media coverage in the American an international press, from Associated Press and BBC to TechCrunch, USA Today, Financial Times, The Economist, La Tribune, El Pais, and Reuters.

Blueseed is co-founded by a Romanian entrepreneur (Dan Dascalescu, who will be attending Venture Connect) and two American partners.

BugTopia is a real time, multiplayer, browser game, developed using only HTML5 technologies. Because we are multiplatform (PC, Mac, iPad, Android), we have real-time experience between players, and we can deliver a desktop gaming feeling on a web environment, we believe the market potential is very high addressing both the casual and the dedicated player at the same time. Also, we are using the F2P sales model, which is proven to be the best commercial approach to online gaming.

CommissionForce – the first crowd-sales solution in Europe that offers companies the opportunity to promote themselves both offline, as well as online, thru large numbers of commission-based agents. CommissionForce was founded in 2011, as a reaction to the tough global economic crisis. It offers a performance based solution to the slowing economic engine: a way for companies to access a massive online and offline distribution channel in a matter of days, with minimum fixed costs and reduced pressure on cash flow (“pay when you get paid”). At the same time, it offers professionals a way to earn additional motivating income. Commissions offered to agents are not set by CommissionForce, but by the companies entering the program, based on their intended profit margins, reduction in fixed costs, willingness to attract and motivate sales agents and what the competition is offering.

Infozone is a mobile application and web service for real-time precise targeting, interaction and attracting clients via special offers and promotions. It is state-of-the-art service with unique functionalities that is intended mostly for emerging mobile markets. The platform is scalable and could be branded and filled in with data for specific market and/or industry by importing available data base and could be offered as ready technical solution to local partner. There are available prototypes of the mobile application for Android and iOS. The business was launched in July 2011 in the city of Ruse in Bulgaria. The founders are Emiliyan Enev (General Manager and majority shareholder), Emil Stoyanov (Chief Technology Officer) and Boyan Petkov (Chief designer).

Iptelis is a cloud based Unified Communications service for small and medium size company. The company’s goal is the launch of an Internet VoIP communication service, oriented to the business segment and in particular to SMB (small and medium business) market for Romania. The hosted PBX service (and hosted Unified Communications) is a new generation of Internet services. Hosted PBX services are delivered to end users using standard broadband Internet infrastructure. The service is aiming to replace traditional phone equipments installed on customer premises and more, to add the new collaboration and productivity functions opened by Internet, VoIP and cloud technologies.

MavenHut transforms classic casual games into social multiplayer experiences, on mobile and the web. Our first game, Solitaire Arena, is already successful on Facebook, attracting over 15,000 players in less then two months. We are an Irish-registered company, with senior co-founders that have been active for more than 5 years in social gaming.

MavenHut recently “graduated” Startup Bootcamp Dublin, which is considered Europe’s top business accelerator (affiliated to the TechStars network). During the program the company has received the People’s Choice Startup award. Our aim is to become the world’s leading brand associated to classic multiplayer games within the next 2 years.

Optima Group is a system integrator for mobility and process automation with 10 years experience in providing automation solutions for sales, stocks and assets. The company is specialized in software solutions developed internally using Microsoft technology and third party software controls. The software solutions developed involve a front end interface running on a mobile device and a back end interface running on an corporate server.

The solutions developed by the company range among the best in their segment: Sales Force Automation, Asset Management, and Warehouse Management. The systems, which are delivered together with hardware components as a turn-key solution, have been implemented by leading organizations such as: Ursus Breweries, Interbrands Marketing & Distribution, FrieslandCampina Romania, Banca Comerciala Romana, Banca Romana pentru Dezvoltare, British American Tobacco, Ministerul Finantelor, ANAF, RAAPPS, Carrefour, Intesa San Paolo Bank, etc. The company employs 25 professionals, with dedication towards mobility solutions, in two offices: Bucharest and Cluj Napoca.

Mobile city guide and social network which improves going out experiences by relevant information offered where and when it is needed. Orasul Meu is designed as a local city guide, bringing together state of the art technology and a well documented content database. Its objective is to provide an optimal going out information about places, events and special offers in Bucharest and other large cities in Romania, putting people in contact with their cities.

Real Colors is a mobile app that helps designers find color inspiration in the real world, around them. It is a tool that automatically ”drills” for harmonious color palettes in the photos taken with the mobile phone.

It was reviewed and apreciated by Google’s Android Staff (http://bit.ly/K7qDHF). Almost 10.000 people are using the app and loving it (4.6stars on Google Play).

Our vision is to help people be more creative with color. The team that will make this vision possible is:

Andrei Blaj, Technology Engineer, 10+ software development experience
Catalin Morosan, Mobile Engineer, 10+ software development experience
Mihai Iova, Idea Engineer, 10+ design experience
Find out more about RealColors: realcolors.makan-studios.com

WebVanity is a Bulgarian startup company staying behind the idea: MyTeam – sport social network. With their innovative social platform they create one of the leading sport social network portal in Bulgaria, the platform has also iPhone App version. The portal is 5 times awarded including 1st place for Website of the 2010 in BG Site 2010 competition, 1st place for Website of the 2011 on Web Awards 2011 competition, and 2 awards for innovative StartUp project in Bulgaria.

ZyWay replaces paper forms with mobile forms and helps companies get faster, better business reports and insights at lower cost. ZyWay offers a simple online cost effective solution for small companies and in-house product for enterprises.