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Darktrace (Growth Award), Calastone (Innovation Award), beqom (Special Jury Prize) are the big winners at the Tech Tour 2018 Growth Awards. The top 3 innovative European technology companies were announced at a special ceremony taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland.

 

The Tech Tour 2018 Growth Summit is a celebration of high-trajectory growth companies included in the Tech Tour Growth 50 – a selection of Europe’s 50 most promising growth companies with the very best potential to become $1BN+ companies.

 

In its 12th edition, the Tech Tour 2018 Growth Awards continue to write the history of Europe’s potential unicorns, bringing together the boldest CEOs and their investors to celebrate the success of entrepreneurs with the vision and drive to build game changing businesses. The rich portfolio of success stories of the previous Growth Award winners includes Octo Telematics, Skyscanner, Openet, Klarna, Betfair, Gameforge, QlikTech, Parallels, MySql and Wonga. Previous Innovation Award winners include Movidius, Shazam, Tobii Technology, Enecsys, and Soundcloud, and previous Special Jury Prizes have been awarded to FeedZai, Novaled, Corevalve, Scytl, and Vente-privée.

 

“European Growth Technology companies are becoming world-class in terms of number and quality of the teams. As a single reference point, there were 70 Unicorns in Europe in 2017 versus just 1 in 2005. Looking ahead, the pool of technology start-ups from which these mature growth companies are emerging from is phenomenal as entrepreneurship becomes mainstream. In 2018, once again, the selection committee which is made up of a large group of the most active venture capitalists in Europe, carefully picked 50 European companies that fit our multi-variable criteria of scale, growth and success” Chris Wade and Eric Archambeau, Co-Presidents of the Tech Tour 2018 Growth Summit.

 

The Tech Tour 2017 Growth Award winner, Darktrace, founded in 2013 by mathematicians and machine learning specialists from the University of Cambridge, together with world-leading intelligence experts from MI5 and GCHQ, bring transformative technology to the challenge of cyber security. It was named ‘Best Security Company of the Year 2016’ at the Info Security Global Excellence Awards and a Gartner ‘Cool Vendor’ 2015. We are honored to be recognized as Europe’s number one super scale-up by Tech Tour Growth 50,” commented Poppy Gustafsson, CEO EMEA at Darktrace. “Darktrace was founded in 2013 and today protects thousands of organizations around the world with AI that detects and fights back autonomously against cyber-threats. The massive demand we have seen for this fundamental technology has fueled our growth; we now have 32 offices and more than 650 employees. Being recognized by Tech Tour Growth 50 is a testament to this incredible achievement.

 

The Tech Tour 2017 Innovation Award winner, Calastone, founded in 2007, is the largest global funds transaction network, connecting many of the world’s leading financial organisations. Our mission is to make funds accessible to everyone by reducing the frictional cost of trading. Julien Hammerson, CEO of Calastone had this to say about their achievement: “We are thrilled to have been recognised as Tech Tour’s most innovative technology company for 2018. With Tech Tour representing Europe’s leading investor community and most innovative technology entrepreneurs, receiving an award, from such eminent industry peers, is all the more valuable.”

 

The Tech Tour 2017 Special Jury Prize winner, Beqom, founded in 2009, is a global provider of compensation management software, delivered using a cloud computing platform. Fabio Ronga, CEO of Beqom, had this to say: "We are very honored to receive such a prestigious award. We take it as a validation of the unique global company culture developed out of Switzerland and an innovative product addressing an unmet market opportunity on a worldwide basis. We hope this contributes to the worldwide image of the dynamic Lake Geneva region."

 

About Tech Tour

Founded in 1998, Tech Tour is a community with strong positions in the venture capital market. We promote innovative companies and their projects through our online community platform and in person at 25 networking events that we organise each year. We have 20-years of experience across Europe and the Middle East and present a unique cross-border platform for growing and emerging innovative tech companies on their way to investment and funding – from the idea to the success story. For more information please see: www.techtour.com

 

About the International Venture Club

The International Venture Club is a collaborative platform of over 70 leading independent venture capital, corporate and institutional investors promoting successful international investments. The Club objectives are to share better practices, build co-investor trust and relations, foster new funding and investment opportunities through joint actions and grow portfolio companies with corporate partners and co-investors. The International Venture Club is managed by Tech Tour. For more information, please visit: www.iventureclub.com

 

About the Tech Tour Growth 50

Every year Tech Tour, in conjunction with the International Venture Club and Silverpeak Technology Investment Banking, identifies 50 of Europe’s fastest growing pre-exit investor backed companies, to identify European companies with the chance to achieving the iconic “Unicorn” status. Companies are selected through a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and have to meet a minimum of 3 out of 4 of these criteria: exceeding €10mn in revenue; exceeding €20mn in total funding; has a valuation between €100mn and less than €1bn; has had a minimum revenue growth of 50% over the last 3 years. For more information, please visit www.techtourgrowth50.com

 

VP Selection Committee:   Chris Wade, Isomer Capital (United Kingdom)

                                                      Eric Archambeau, Wellington Partners (Germany)

 

2018 Selection Committee Members:

 

Matthias Allgaier, Summit Partners Limited (United Kingdom)

Antonella Beltrame, Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. (Italy)

Chris Caulkin, General Atlantic Partners (United Kingdom)

George Coelho, Good Energies AG (Switzerland)

Malcolm Ferguso, Octopus Investments (United Kingdom)

Alexander Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners (United States)

Anne Glover, Amadeus Capital Partners Limited (United Kingdom)

Alberto Gómez, Adara Venture Partners (Spain)

Ravi Kurani, Earlybird Venture Capital (Germany)

Sven Lingjaerde, Endeavour Vision S.A. (Switzerland)

Dominique Megret, Swisscom AG (Switzerland)

Stephan Morais, Indico Capital Partners (Portugal)

Falk Mueller-Veerse, Bryan, Garnier & Co (Germany)

Jacob Bratting Pedersen, Vaekstfonden (Denmark)

Seth Pierrepont, Accel Partners (United Kingdom)

Mauro Pretolani, Fondo Italiano di Investimento - Tech Growth Fund (Italy)

Helena Prokhorenko, Highland Capital Partners Europe (United Kingdom)

Morgan Seigler, TA Associates (United Kingdom)

Patrick Sheehan, ETF Partners (United Kingdom)

 

The Tech Tour Growth Forum and Awards are proudly supported by Pictet, Orrick, State of Vaud, Korn Ferry, Bryan Garnier & Co, Nasdaq, Euronext, Silverpeak and Pitchbook.