Burning Heroes Starup Awards Jury’s choice
Experts from the world’s top VCs named the hottest startups of this summer.
Burning Heroes Awards was created by a community of founders – people who have already walked the path of launching startups and know exactly what is important for launching successful products.
This year the competition was held for the first time and brought together the most promising startups selected by the community and world experts on its site. The competition jury included representatives of such VCs as 500 Global, AltaIR Capital, APX VC, Davidovs VC, Fort Ross Ventures, FPV GlobalI, I Am The Fund, MANGA VC, SOSV VC, Starta VC, and Techstars Berlin.
In the category “The best of the best”, two awards out of three go to European startups:
Clous, Berlin, Germany – Clous automates engineering processes with a combined set of algorithms and its platform with over 100 engineers. [winner in the category “Innovations”]
Claas Blume founded his first startup, the HATs, a creative company for developing individualized apps for Apple products, while still studying mechanical engineering at the TU Darmstadt. With that, he was already deeply immersed in the world of founding, making mistakes, learning and restarting. As soon as he finished his studies, he joined Fraunhofer IPK.
Thomas Vorsatz studied mechanical engineering at the TU Berlin. After working for several years in several companies in special mechanical engineering as a design engineer, his high-tech fascination led him to Fraunhofer IPK, where he researched virtual safeguarding using multi-domain simulation as part of virtual engineering and later also the implementation of new technologies as part of Industrie 4.0 projects.
Together, they have over 10 years of relevant industry experience and have more than proven themselves as a team.
Inovat, United Kindom – Inovat is a digital VAT refund solution that allows travellers to save more than 20% in tax on shopping directly in their bank apps without the need to complete any paperwork or stand in airport queues. [winner in the category “Market Fit”]
Sensera, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA – Sensera makes self-therapy a habit and helps people overcome tough situations in 10 minutes a day. [winner in the category “Product Design”]
In total, more than 100 startups worldwide participated in the competition. The winners were nominated in three categories – Market Fit, Innovations, and Product Design.
All the winners
Market Fit
🥈 Sizze , USA – Sizze is a no-code solution for building full-fledged native apps with no coding experience and publishing them directly to app marketplaces like App Store and Google Play.
[also, runner-up in the category “Product Design“]
🥉 Flexpay , Nairobi, Kenya – FlexPay is Africa’s first merchant-embedded saving-based purchase platform (“Save Now, Buy Later”), solving the unaffordability gap for the large underbanked African population while increasing sales and loyalty for merchants.
Product Design
🥉Geekclub, Florida, USA – Geek Club products are electronic construction sets for hobbyists of any age that give an alternative way to learn electronics by uniquely assembling printed circuit boards.
Innovations
🥈 Maaaps – B2b maps for emerging markets. Maaaps crowdsources building addresses and coordinates, layers search algorithms on top and wrap it into APIs that delivery companies call every time someone chooses their dinner, waits for a taxi or sends a parcel.
🥉 Mishka AI, New York, USA – Kids’ educational companion and content delivery platform in the shape of а traditional toy.