The Class Of 2007: Where Are They Now?

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A lot can happen in a year, as the winners and nominees of last year's Best European Young Entrepreneurs contest [BusinessWeek.com, 6/1/07] clearly show. Of the 10 who responded to our request for updates, most rattled off growth figures, marketing strategies, and future goals with a business acumen that would impress even the most seasoned corporate executives. But at a time when the global credit crisis has dried up loans and spooked venture capitalists, it's make-or-break for many of these twentysomethings.



Although his fellow contestants are proving to be formidable challengers, last year's champion, Aodhan Cullen, continues to enjoy what is probably the most successful business. Cullen's Dublin-based Statcounter, started in 1999, allows users to track and measure the number of hits on their Web sites. The online tool, which competes with rival offerings from the likes of Google (GOOG) and Omniture (OMTR), also tracks the geographical origin of hits, documents what pages visitors view on a site, and logs the keywords they use to get there.



Even before the BusinessWeek contest in 2007, Statcounter was wildly popular, with more than a million registered users and money rolling in. Today, 50% of Cullen's business still comes from the U.S., but he says BusinessWeek's coverage created a surge among European customers. Winning the contest also yielded a barrage of media coverage that featured Cullen on radio and TV programs across Europe.



Statcounter Stays Independent

Cullen says business is better than ever, and that the economic crisis has actually helped. With bloggers and Web site administrators eager to avoid wasting valuable advertising space on their pages, Statcounter can help them maximize returns on their ads. The company, which remains profitable, now counts 2 million members and tracks 10 billion page views per month across 3 million Web sites. An average of 1,500 members sign up for the service every day.



The phones at Statcounter's Dublin headquarters are constantly ringing with venture capitalists and larger companies eager to talk takeover or investment. But Cullen won't budge. "We've done the hardest part already," he says. "We don't need the money now, and we just love what we are doing." Statcounter continues to add more features and improve its services, based on member feedback. Cullen says he hopes to increase membership by 25% this year.



The runners-up in last year's contest tell similar stories of success. They've been winning awards for innovation and design, expanding internationally, and striking deals with major companies.



Greek fashion designer Thomas Mylonas is a busy man. At the time of last year's contest, his Amsterdam firm, Dot Kite, had already designed shoes for Puma (PRTP.PA) and clothes for Hannah Marshall. Since then, Dot Kite has grown 300%, attracting the interest of venture capitalists in Greece and Holland. This year, Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) and Boeing (BA) even approached Mylonas about designing interiors for the new 787 Dreamliner. A tireless entrepreneur who focuses his energies on the luxury industry, Mylonas found time this year to start a company called Loggia Imports, which brings high-quality Italian and Argentinean wines and extra virgin Greek olive oil to the Netherlands.







Kwiqq Growth

Mylonas' pan-European interests keep him on the road constantly. He spends his time traveling between his offices in Amsterdam, Athens, and Rome. Incredibly, he has even more ideas to execute this year. He is tight-lipped about the details but says Dot Kite is set to introduce a new women's brand focused on accessories and fashion items.



When we talked to him last year, Raj Anand's Brighton-based Kwiqq, whose Web-based software can be used to create customizable social-networking sites, was only six months old. The recognition Anand garnered from the BusinessWeek contest snowballed into a mountain of publicity. He was featured in a dozen business and tech magazines and went on to accumulate more business and design awards. He was even invited to speak at the British Library, a host of universities, and several young entrepreneur events.



So what about the business? Kwiqq's revenues have grown tenfold in the last three quarters, and Anand has tripled his staff, from three to nine. Using the money he made this year, his team has started developing a product to be sold through retail. Anand says customers willing to buy his software off the shelf would find a more robust set of features, including one that allows administrators to track traffic on their new social networks.



Although Anand says the economy threatens to strain his marketing budget, he remains optimistic. "Companies that increase their marketing budgets during a recession make it bigger on the other side," he says. Kwiqq is exploring expansion into the U.S., as well as France and Germany.



Wakoopa's Big By-Product

Last fall, Wakoopa, a social network founded by Dutch entrepreneurs Robert Gaal and Wouter Broekhof, counted 6,500 members. Today, the network -- which makes it easier for software users to find, share, and track applications being used by other members -- boasts 50,000 people. The site has tracked some 400 million hours of software usage over the last year.



Gaal and Broekhof abruptly upended their business model earlier this year, when they realized the potential of one of the network's by-products -- profiling software users by accumulating data on their demographics and activity. Wakoopa's aim now is to give software makers a way to track how their products are being used, by whom, and how often. Gaal and Broekhof hope to attract small software vendors who don't have the time or budget to create and analyze their own metrics. They entered into talks with venture capital firms this summer and signed a $1 million deal in June.



Coming soon: The pair are gearing up to make their software available on a Web-based platform to track the sorts of applications that users create for Facebook and Google. Wakoopa also has received 150 applications in response to its search for a software-savvy chief executive to direct the company's operations.



Bulgarian entrepreneur Boris Kolev managed to overcome a major blow to his Sofia-based JT International, which offers IT and marketing services. Earlier this year, Kolev's spirited founding partner, Bilyana Hristova, resigned her position and holdings to travel and pursue her studies full-time. "We had a small crisis after she left," says Kolev, who had to hire three people to match her output. "She was very enthusiastic about everything that she did."



Innovation at JT International

Despite the loss of Hristova, JT International has managed to expand. It now counts 50 clients, most of them Bulgarian, for whom the company provides software and Web design, product innovation, brand promotion, and public relations. As of last summer, JT International had seen a 90% year-on-year increase in revenue and added an innovative marketing solutions team to the other services it provides.







For now, Kolev says he and his 20 employees live by a mantra engraved on a sign that hangs above the entrance to his company's door: "Becoming the best marketing innovations company in Europe!" He hopes to open offices in Vienna and Brussels by the end of next year and to have one up and running in London in 2010.



And what about the nominees who didn't win the 2007 contest? Of the five who got back to us, three are doing quite well.



Swedish entrepreneur Jonas Hombert's easy-to-use video editing Web site, JayCut, has won innovation and entertainment awards from the likes of Google and Internetworld. In April, Hombert shifted his business model to licensing his technology directly to other businesses. The idea is that companies will be able to give online customers the opportunity to upload, edit, and post videos of their experiences with products. [There's nothing like having your customers compose advertising for you.]



Hombert is conducting talks with several multinational retailers, and he expects revenues of a few hundred thousand euros by the end of this year. Next up: He is upgrading his software to make playback faster and interface more "intelligent." Hombert says the new version, which launches next month, "will redefine Web editing."



Even a Paper Success

Italian Michele Finotto's Wonsys, a Web services and consulting company he began with some high school friends, has taken off, too. The company has done consulting work for high-profile clients such as eBay (EBAY) and others he won't name, and it has worked on social networking and media processing for regular clients that include Fortune 500 companies. Although he won't reveal how much, Finotto says Wonsys' revenues have doubled in the last year and adds that he is benefiting from a dearth of venture capital funding available to would-be competitors in Italy.



Sten Saar, who turned a high school class project into a trans-Baltic business selling spiral notebooks, reports that his company, Realister, recorded sales of more than half a million euros in 2007. In the past year he has expanded the company to Finland and has upgraded the notebooks to include rulers and pockets, as well as more complex printed math formulas, for which the notebooks first became popular. Saar says he expects sales to top 750,000 this year, which will help him broaden his consumer target to younger schoolchildren. "We want to make learning for youngsters cool," he says.



But for at least two of last year's finalists, the economic turmoil of the past few months has been less kind. Artemi Krymski's online real estate site, DotHomes, was probably hit the hardest as the housing market in Britain went down the tubes. [DotHomes, a subsidiary of his holding company BytePlay was originally called Extate, but Krymski changed the name when he discovered that Google searches frequently returned a correction: "Did you mean Estate?"]



Krymski had hoped that his searchable platform, which trawls other real estate and agent Web sites, would become "the Google of real estate." But "we're still far off," concedes Krymski, who attributes the slow progress to the fact that it's not a self-perpetuating social-networking site. Britain's loan-deprived home buyers are probably the real cause, admits Krymski. "It's not profitable in this environment," he says.



Hard Times Hit GoodMood

Despite winning an award from the International Academy of Visual Arts and being nominated for another one by Esquire magazine, DotHomes hasn't seen consistent revenue growth. Krymski has spent the last few months looking for distributors interested in embedding his search technology into their Web sites, and he has explored partnerships with companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), AOL (TWX), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Google. Krymski has just begun to consider selling the company. But those opportunities, too, are becoming slimmer.



Estonian entrepreneur Karoli Hindriks' company, Goodmood, which makes fashionable knit hats and gloves out of soft reflective material, also has experienced some setbacks. Goodmood showed a minor loss in 2007, owing to rising operating costs and unrealistic growth expectations. Today, Hindriks says she has worked out some bugs and expanded her business to the Netherlands, where dark winters and a bicycle-happy culture make her clothing quite useful. Sales are stable, and she expects to profit this year. But it may not make much difference: Hindriks is considering selling Goodmood in 2009 to concentrate more on her increasing responsibilities [and success] as the country manager for MTV (VIA) in Estonia.



That's how it goes for entrepreneurs. Some make it, some don't. By nature, the ones that don't succeed usually come back and try again. It's gratifying to know that so many of the young entrepreneurs we profiled last year are still in the game.