Belgium is the birthplace of the saxophone, the Mercator projection and the combustion engine, but key contributions to the digital space such as Drupal, the jpeg format, and even the World Wide Web also have Belgian origins. Now, ten startups will represent Belgium during the Interactive track at the famous South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
Startups.be
SXSW has been the site of numerous tech announcements, film premieres and musical discoveries, as well as host to the who’s who of industry, culture, and technology, including Brené Brown, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Lady Gaga, Malcolm Gladwell and Elon Musk. Startups.be, Morning Glory and other key partners organized the large-scale mission to South by Southwest for the first time. Startups.be is a non-profit that helps Belgian tech startups grow and reach new markets through matchmaking and expertise. Morning Glory is a branding and positioning agency based in Antwerp, Belgium with roots in Texas.
Belgian Booth
The Belgian booth at the SXSW Trade Show, called Café des Belges, will showcase 10 Belgian companies from Sunday, March 12th until Wednesday, March 15th and highlight their products and services—all with demonstrable intellectual, creative or entrepreneurial excellence. The Trade Show boasts participants like NASA, ABInBev, and Wolfram Research, mixed with exhibitors from all over the world representing entities like Business France, the Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy and the Trade Commission of Spain.
Participating startups
Startups participating in Austin include:
- Jack: Jack is a messaging application that combines anticipation, patience and rewards. Jack lets you send messages and decide when these can be read. While a message is delivered instantly, the recipient must wait before the message can be read.
- iText: iText Software is a world-leading specialist in programmable PDF software libraries. Its solutions are used in sales & marketing, legal and governance, finance, IT, operations and HR.
- Look: Look enables you to utilize someone else’s smartphone if they are near a place you want to see (and they are part of the network). Anyone can be your webcam!
- ONAK: ONAK’s case on wheels unfolds to a working canoe in less than 10 minutes. Thanks to important material innovations, it can handle urban water adventures, as well as the wild outdoors.
- Sentiance: The Sentiance platform empowers companies to build behavioral profiles of connected users and enriching those profiles with personalized, predictive and context-aware services.
- Muuselabs: With Jooki, Muuselabs created a modern figurine-based music player great for kids—and there’s no screen in sight!
- Farmboy: is a premium visual content studio based in Ghent offering services worldwide in photography, video, film, animation and motion graphics.
- Fifteen24: Fifteen24 applies digital marketing tools and tactics to explore business opportunities, establish your brand locally, collect valuable market insights and generate your first leads in the United States.
- Foodpairing: Foodpairing has developed one of the world’s largest ingredient and flavor databases. This unique, proprietary data is the basis of Foodpairing’s products and services.
- Yondr: Yondr is growing an ecosystem of VR creators by licensing its brand to scale on know-how, R&D, marketing and events. It serves clients on a global base and has become a worldwide thought leader brand in virtual reality content creation.