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"The Next Web was at the Springboard Investor Day in Cambridge, England, and we were privy to ten startups pitching and demoing their way to funding from the investors in attendance.\r\n\r\nSpringboard is an intensive 13-week programme based  at the ideaSpace, which is part of Cambridge University\u2019s  state-of-the-art Hauser Forum. The purpose of the annual Springboard programme is to provide seed capital, office space and a \u201Csmart-community\u201D with mentors helping budding entrepreneurs accelerate their businesses.\r\n\r\nEach founder is provided with \u00A35,000 (up to a maximum of  three founders per startup), and they each move to Cambridge, where they live and breathe their business in a fertile, entrepreneurial environment for over three months.\r\n\r\nBrad Feld was a special guest at the Springboard Investor Day, and the entrepreneur, investor and TechStars founder offered some words of inspiration before the pitching kicked-off, noting that accelerator and mentorship programmes such as Springboard weren't just about the money. He said:\r\n&amp;quot;If you want to build sustainable entrepreneurship over time, the value that exists in such programmes isn't just about people writing cheques. It's also not about people doing work for free for no good reason. It's the magic of getting all of this together, whilst doing everything in a very compressed period of time.&amp;quot;\r\nA common theme throughout the day, which was hit on by Brad too, was that participants in the Springboard programme made the same progress in 90 days as they would otherwise have made in a year or two. So the seed money and investment is great, but it's the speedy progress that the young startups make that really highlights the value of such initiatives.\r\n\r\nWe first reported on Springboard when it opened for applications last November. And the ten selected companies hailed from across the UK, Europe and even the South-West Pacific region. Here's a quick look at the companies to emerge from the programme:\r\nAdwings\r\nWeb. www.adwings.com\r\nTwitter. @adwings_com\r\nCountry: Lithuania\r\nKey people: Arturas Starovoitovas, Egidijus Jarasunas, Remigijus Kiminas\r\n\u201CImagine you could plan your advertising campaign based on intelligent suggestions and informative insights. Imagine you could book any type of advertising, anywhere in the world within a couple of minutes.\u201D\r\nAdwings is a platform that lets advertisers plan, book and track advertising across various media channels, ranging from print to digital media, from mobile to outdoor, and even video.\r\nApiary.io\r\nWeb: www.apiary.io\r\nTwitter: @apiaryio\r\nCountry: Czech Republic\r\nKey people: Jakub Nesetril, Jan Moravec\r\n\u201CWeb APIs are a critical piece of cloud infrastructure \u2013 enabling businesses to monetize their data, provide services to third parties, power applications and migrate enterprise to the cloud.\u201D\r\nApiary is a suite of tools designed to help businesses build Web APIs quickly, and test/monitor/ document them easily.\r\nArachnys\r\nWeb: www.arachnys.com\r\nTwitter: @arachnys\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: David Buxton, Harry Waye\r\n\u201CEmerging markets are seeing an explosion of business information coming online, but information is fragmented, badly organized and often unsearchable.\u201D\r\nArachnys consolidates valuable business information from emerging markets, helping companies increase opportunities and reduce risk in complex but attractive markets like India, China, and Russia. It uses spidering technology to dig out information buried in the deep Web.\r\nHubflow\r\nWeb: www.hubflow.com\r\nTwitter: @hubflow\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: David Hazell, Nick Grant\r\n\u201CWith your sales team out in the field, getting timely product information, training and feedback to them when they\u2019re never sat at a desk is an impossible task.\u201D\r\nHubflow enables companies to distribute training content to their workforce\u2019s mobile devices, with a view to saving time &amp;amp;amp; money that would otherwise be spent running training workshops.\r\nMayday\r\nWeb: www.maydayhq.com\r\nTwitter: @maydayhq\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: Ben Hall, James Hollingworth\r\n\u201CCompanies are dependent on customers complaining in order to identify problems with their website.\u201D\r\nMayday alerts companies to problems users experience on their website, and is designed to save firms lengthy testing time and, subsequently, prevent lost revenue.\r\nMiniMonos\r\nWeb: www.minimonos.com\r\nTwitter: @minimonos\r\nCountry: New Zealand\r\nKey people: Greg Montgomery, Kaila Colbin, Melissa Clark-Reynolds\r\n\u201CThe website has core messages of sustainability, generosity and community embedded throughout. Every purchase supplies clean water to kids in India.\u201D\r\nMiniMonos is a virtual world for kids who love to play whilst caring for the planet. The site launched out of beta last month, and it has been growing at more than 20% per month over the past nine months. It now has around 300,000 members.\r\nPlayMob\r\nWeb: www.playmob.com \r\nTwitter: @theplaymob\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: Caroline Howes, Daniela Neumann, Jude Ower\r\n\u201CWe significantly reduce the costs of fundraising while increasing engagement by getting in front of mass audiences whilst they are having fun.\u201D\r\nPlayMob enables charities to fundraise through games with a platform that links virtual objects to good causes.\r\nPublification\r\nWeb: www.publification.com \r\nTwitter: @publification\r\nCountry: Estonia\r\nKey people: Janek Priimann, Marius Arras, Rait Ojasaar\r\n\u201CPublishers have direct access to their customers, not wasting marketing budget on driving people to marketplaces that they don\u2019t own. For self-publishers, Publification offers a web-based drag \u2018n drop editor.\u201D\r\nPublification is a platform for publishers to convert their file-based eBooks to platform-agnostic Browserbooks that can be read on over 2 billion existing devices.\r\nTastebuds\r\nWeb: www.tastebuds.fm \r\nTwitter: @tastebuds\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: Alex Parish, Julian Keenaghan\r\n\u201CMusic has proven to be a great conversation starter as evidenced by an extremely high response rate to opening messages \u2013 33% higher than OKCupid.\u201D\r\nTastebuds is a dating website that helps you meet like-minded people who share your love for music. The Next Web first wrote about Tastebuds last July.\r\nTotalGigs\r\nWeb: www.totalgigs.com \r\nTwitter: @totalgigs\r\nCountry: UK\r\nKey people: Jim Mann, Mike Parker, Tom Dancer\r\n\u201CComplete strangers with similar interests can contribute to ad-hoc social networks that are created and last for the duration of a particular event. When the event finishes, the stream closes but the memory can be relived.\u201D\r\nTotalGigs lets disparate groups of users collectively share and relive event experiences \u2013 this could be music, sports, conferences and anything else.\r\n\r\nSome truly great startups, you'll no doubt agree, and we'll be following up with some of the companies in question, to delve a little deeper into what they're all about."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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