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Meet the first wave of speakers & enter your startup for The Europas Awards, 25 June

Excitement for The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups is heating up. Here is the first wave of speakers and judges — with more coming!

The Awards — which have been running for over 10 years — will be held on 25 June 2020 in London, U.K. on the front lawn of the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton, London — creating a fantastic and fun garden-party atmosphere in the heart of London’s tech startup scene.

TechCrunch is once more the exclusive media sponsor of the awards and conference, alongside The Pathfounder.

The application form to enter is here.

We’re scouting for the top late-stage seed and Series A startups in 22 categories.

You can nominate a startup, accelerator or venture investor that you think deserves to be recognized for their achievements in the last 12 months.

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 25 March 2020

For the 2020 awards, we’ve overhauled the categories to a set that we believe better reflects the range of innovation, diversity and ambition we see in the European startups being built and launched today. This year we are particularly looking at startups that are able to address the SDGs/Globals Boals.

The Europas Awards
The Europas Awards results are based on voting by experts, experienced founders, hand-picked investors and the industry itself.

But the key to it is that there are no “off-limits areas” at The Europas, so attendees can mingle easily with VIPs.

Timeline of The Europas Awards deadlines:

Submissions now open!
25 March 2020 – Submissions close
14 April – Public voting begins
25 April – Public voting ends
8 June – Shortlist Announced
25 June – Awards evening, winners announced

Amazing networking

We’re also shaking up the awards dinner itself. There are more opportunities to network. Our awards ceremony this year will be in the setting of a garden/lawn party, where you’ll be able to meet and mingle more easily, with free-flowing drinks and a wide selection of street food (including vegetarian/vegan). The ceremony itself will last less than 45 minutes, with the rest of the time dedicated to networking. If you’d like to talk about sponsoring or exhibiting, please contact Claire Dobson on claire@thepathfounder.com

Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs.

The Europas Awards have been going for the last 10 years, and we’re the only independent and editorially driven event to recognise the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech.eu, The Memo, Smart Company, CNET, many others — and of course, TechCrunch.

• No secret VIP rooms, which means you get to interact with the speakers

• Key founders and investors attending

• Journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters

The Pathfounder Afternoon Workshops
In the afternoon prior to the awards we will be holding a special, premium content event, The Pathfounder, designed be a “fast download” into the London tech scene for European founders looking to raise money or re-locate to London. Sessions include “How to Craft Your Story”; “Term Sheets”; “Building a Shareholding Structure”; Investor Panel; Meet the Press; and a session from former Europas winners. Followed by the awards and after-party!

The Europas “Diversity Pass”
We’d like to encourage more diversity in tech! That’s why we’ve set aside a block of free tickets to ensure that pre-seed female and BAME founders are represented at The Europas. This limited tranche of free tickets ensures that we include more women and people of colour who are specifically “pre-seed” or “seed-stage” tech startup founders. If you are a women/BAME founder, apply here for a chance to be considered for one of the limited free diversity passes to the event.

Meet some of our first speakers and judges:


Anne Boden
CEO
Starling Bank
Anne Boden is founder and CEO of Starling Bank, a fast-growing U.K. digital bank targeting millions of users who live their lives on their phones. After a distinguished career in senior leadership at some of the world’s best-known financial heavyweights, she set out to build her own mobile bank from scratch in 2014. Today, Starling has opened more than one million current accounts for individuals and small businesses and raised hundreds of millions of pounds in backing. Anne was awarded an MBE for services to financial technology in 2018.


Nate Lanxon (Speaker)
Editor and Tech Correspondent
Bloomberg
Nate is an editor and tech correspondent for Bloomberg, based in London. For over a decade, he has particularly focused on the consumer technology sector, and the trends shaping the global industry. Previous to this, he was senior editor at Bloomberg Media and was head of digital editorial for Bloomberg.com in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nate has held numerous roles across the most respected titles in tech, including stints as editor of WIRED.co.uk, editor-in-chief of Ars Technica UK and senior editor at CBS-owned CNET. Nate launched his professional career as a journalist by founding a small tech and gaming website called Tech’s Message, which is now the name of his weekly technology podcast hosted at natelanxon.com.


Tania Boler
CEO and founder
Elvie
/> Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.


Kieran O’Neill
CEO and co-founder
Thread
Thread makes it easy for guys to dress well. They combine expert stylists with powerful AI to recommend the perfect clothes for each person. Thread is used by more than 1 million men in the U.K., and has raised $35 million from top investors, including Balderton Capital, the founders of DeepMind and the billionaire former owner of Warner Music. Prior to Thread, Kieran founded one of the first video sharing websites at age 15 and sold it for $1.25 million at age 19. He was then CEO and co-founder of Playfire, the largest social network for gamers, which he grew to 1.5 million customers before being acquired in 2012. He’s a member of the Forbes, Drapers and Financial Times 30 Under 30 lists.


Clare Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
what3words
Clare is the chief commercial officer of what3words; prior to this, her background was in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. Clare was featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for technology and is involved with London companies tackling social/environmental challenges. Clare also volunteers with the Streetlink project, doing health outreach work with vulnerable women in South London.


Luca Bocchio
Principal
Accel
Luca Bocchio joined Accel in 2018 and focuses on consumer internet, fintech and software businesses. Luca led Accel’s investment in Luko, Bryter and Brumbrum. Luca also helped lead Accel’s investment and ongoing work in Sennder. Prior to Accel, Luca was with H14, where he invested in global early and growth-stage opportunities, such as Deliveroo, GetYourGuide, Flixbus, SumUp and SecretEscapes. Luca previously advised technology, industrial and consumer companies on strategy with Bain & Co. in Europe and Asia. Luca is from Italy and graduated from LIUC University.


Bernhard Niesner
CEO and c-founder
busuu
/> Bernhard co-founded busuu in 2008 following an MBA project and has since led the company to become the world’s largest community for language learning, with more than 90 million users across the globe. Before starting busuu, Bernhard worked as a consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. He graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and holds an MBA with honours from IE Business School. Bernhard is an active mentor and business angel in the startup community and an advisor to the Austrian Government on education affairs. Bernhard recently received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 UK Awards in the Disruptor category.


Chris Morton
CEO and founder
Lyst
Chris is the founder and CEO of Lyst, the world’s biggest fashion search platform used by 104 million shoppers each year. Including over 6 million products from brands including Burberry, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Saint Laurent, Lyst offers shoppers convenience and unparalleled choice in one place. Launched in London in 2010, Lyst’s investors include LVMH, 14W, Balderton and Accel Partners. Prior to founding Lyst, Chris was an investor at Benchmark Capital and Balderton Capital in London, focusing on the early-stage consumer internet space. He holds an MA in physics and philosophy from Cambridge University.


Husayn Kassai
CEO and co-founder
Onfido
/> Husayn Kassai is the Onfido CEO and co-founder. Onfido helps businesses digitally onboard users by verifying any government ID and comparing it with the person’s facial biometrics. Founded in 2012, Onfido has grown to a team of 300 across SF, NYC and London; received over $100 million in funding from Salesforce, Microsoft and others; and works with over 1,500 fintech, banking and marketplace clients globally. Husayn is a WEF Tech Pioneer; a Forbes Contributor; and Forbes’ “30 Under 30”. He has a BA in economics and management from Keble College, Oxford.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/26/meet-the-first-wave-of-speakers-enter-your-startup-for-the-europas-awards-25-june/

Lorde called a bigot in Washington Post ad over cancelled Israel concert

Advert placed by Americas rabbi Shmuley Boteach also accuses singers native New Zealand of prejudice against Israel

A full-page advert has been placed in the Washington Post calling Lorde a bigot, a week after the New Zealand-born singer cancelled a concert in Israel.

The ad, in the 31 December edition of the newspaper, was placed by outspoken rabbi Shmuley Boteachs This World: The Values Network and criticises the 21-year-old for joining a global antisemitic boycott of Israel while still performing in Russia.

It features a large photo of the singer superimposed over a picture of men running through rubble cradling babies, with the headline: Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel.

1 NEWS (@1NewsNZ)

Lorde accused of anti-semitism in full page Washington Post ad as fallout from cancelled Israel concert continues https://t.co/Hc7IoCi1yT pic.twitter.com/G9WDQ4zLVX

January 1, 2018

Last month the Grammy award winner cancelled a concert scheduled in Tel Aviv for June after criticism from activists in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

The decision also came after an open letter written by two New Zealanders argued the concert would show support for Israels occupation of Palestine.

I have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show, Lorde wrote at the time. Im not too proud to admit I didnt make the right call on this one.

The ad says Lordes decision showed how a growing prejudice against the Jewish state in New Zealand was trickling down to its youth.

It cites New Zealands choice in December to vote, along with 127 countries, in favour of a UN resolution calling for the US to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

It also criticises New Zealands co-sponsorship last year of a UN resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and caused a six-month diplomatic rift with Israel.

Regarded by his critics as a rightwing self-publicist who styles himself as Americas rabbi, Boteach was widely criticised in 2015 for a similar full-page advert in the New York Times accusing Barack Obamas then national security adviser Susan Rice of turning a blind eye to the Rwandan genocide when she was on President Bill Clintons national security team in the 1990s.

Boteach rowed back amid strong criticism at the time, saying: It was construed by some as a personal attack, that is certainly and absolutely not its intent.

While Boteach whose organisation is funded by the controversial US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has been quick to level suggestions of antisemitism at figures he regards as anti-Israel, he has also had no qualms about defending others on the right from the same accusation, including Steve Bannon and the Breitbart website.

In 2016, Boteach defended Bannon from accusations made by Jonathan Greenblatt of the US Anti-Defamation League, who criticised Bannons appointment as a White House adviser, saying it was a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the alt-right a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed antisemites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house.

In an open letter to Greenblatt, Boteach vouched for Bannon, saying it was unfair to object to his appointment on the basis of Breitbarts content or audience.

Boteach has accused numerous high-profile figures and institutions whose views on Israel and the Israeli occupation he disagrees with being antisemitic, including the former US secretary of state John Kerry who he accused of devalu[ing] Jewish lives, and appear[ing] to justify the spilling of Jewish blood, over his pursuit of an Iranian nuclear deal.

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/01/lorde-called-a-bigot-over-israel-stance-in-full-page-washington-post-ad

A Wonder Woman at the UN? How about a real one? | Catherine Bennett

It hasnt been a good week for female empowerment, with fictional characters being held up as role models

There was a good deal of sympathy for the writer Julian Barnes last month, when he described as straightforwardly daft the opening up to US competition of the Booker prize, historically limited to British, Irish and Commonwealth countries. The Americans, Barnes said, have enough prizes of their own.

Then again though this is not to doubt the justice of his complaint at least Booker eligibility has yet to extend to the dead. Without wishing to start a daftness competition, the Booker isnt available to cartoon writers of fiction, to fictional novelists, to people who are living, but unpublished, with a view to encouraging non-novelists who are opposed, on principle, to prizes for fiction. But something not dissimilar, in 2016, has been the fate of various awards devised to celebrate or promote female achievement at a time when, the UN says, gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in every society.

At the BBC, the contribution from the judges on the latest Womans Hours Power List in the week that the anti-feminist obsessive Philip Davies MP, was promoted to the Commons women and equalities committee was the inclusion of two dead women, Margaret Thatcher and Barbara Castle, and of the fictional airhead, Bridget Jones. Admittedly, the Nobel judges have demonstrated the advantages, for a prize, of an occasional shake-up. The inclusion of the deceased, never real and wholly unconnected, represented by, say, Eric Liddell, Velvet Brown and Bob Dylan, could be just the thing to transform the BBCs Sports Personality of the Yearinto an almost endurable event. In future, London could send Patti Smith to accept the Best Kept Village award. Journalisms George Orwell prize could be awarded, at long last, to George Orwell.

And in fairness to Helen Fieldings excellent creation, Jones is not, like one of Glamour magazines Women of the Year, male. Some may find her more lifelike than the UNs latest womens ambassador, Wonder Woman, just retired after an in-house petition and protest. Moreover, given the striking absence of awards for fictional characters, it could not be argued, as Barnes did of US novelists, that there were plenty of other places where Jones, a genial imbecile, could be hailed as a catalyst for change over the past 70 years.

Anyway, following the past weeks publicity, congratulations are absolutely in order for the Womans Hour judges. They have overjoyed BBC publicists with an instantly controversial list that,left to the more literal or sentimental, might well have included names such as Jo Cox, Victoria Wood or Caroline Aherne. Or, indeed, a living woman up for crushing Philip Davies. If therewere a 2016 prize for most ridiculous womens award, such as to convey their obsolescence, the Power List judges would definitely, with Bridget Jones, beatGlamours Bono. But they lose, narrowly, to the UNs peerless insult to the living, its honorary ambassadorship for Wonder Woman. The UN director of outreach, a Mr Maher Nasser, reasoned: There is a Wonder Woman in every woman.

Maybe the Top Cat in every UN executive explains why a semi-naked, gigantically bosomed, wartime-era sexual fantasy should have struck that organisation as the ideal ambassadress for female empowerment, excepting, naturally, within the UN, where male leaders are strongly preferred. Now that the WW scheme has been aborted, the lads in outreach must be wondering, desperately, what other photogenic heroine sods law: Jones is taken would be big enough to signal its fathomless respect for women, following the appointment of another male secretary general. Minnie Mouse? Moana? That eagle taming girl or is she real?

Bridget
Bridget Jones, played by Renee Zellweger in the film Bridget Joness Baby, is hailed as a catalyst for change despite being a genial imbecile. Photograph: Allstar/UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Its hardly an excuse that the men appear to have been enthralled by feminist assurances from Diane Nelson, DC Entertainments very own belle dame sans merci, whose superpowers include transforming UN functionaries into her besotted PRs. The UN-DC creative partnership coincided with a Warner Bros remake of WonderWoman. Nelson seized the chance, at a celebrity launch attended by Ban Ki-Moon, to reintroduce a character nowadays best known as a stripogram choice, as an emblem of hope for the female downtrodden.

Her ability to operate alone, Nelson told the BBC (maybe not completely getting the whole united part about the UN), and to be her own independent person but also to work right alongside with the same strength and same abilities as some of the strongest male superheroes, I think is a testament to her character and kind of ties back to the UN designation and this idea of gender equality.

While some of us prefer to stick, thank you, to the inspiration afforded by Noggin the Nog, team-building in his winged airboat, there is no disputing Nelsons faithfulness to the vision of WWs creator, the early psychologist and creepy huckster, William Moulton Marston. WW existed, Marston wrote, to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement. At home, he was the ill-tempered master of a mini harem.

If her feminist career never entirely took off, it may be because Marston also conceived Wonder Woman and approved every aspect of her pin-up inspired clothing as a vehicle for his dearest erotic imaginings. Thanks to Jill Lepores fascinating biography, the UN outreach personnel could have discovered what Nelson must know: that Marstons obsessions came to alarm his publishers almost as much as they thrilled bondage fetishists. Do some careful chaining here, he would instruct the illustrator. Put a metal collar on WW. Have her hands clasped together at her breast with double bands at her wrists… Between these runs a short chain. Then put another, heavier, larger chain between her wristbands which hangs in a long loop to just above her knees… His editor noted that Marstons idea of feminine supremacy was the ability to submit to male domination.

Even without that, an online search could have filled in UNs outreach officials on growing opposition to sexist depictions of women in comics, to a point that might contraindicate a comic-book ambassadress for women. Failing that, any marginal awareness of female UN co-workers should have indicated the likely response if line managers preferred, to any of the worlds 3.5 billion or so living women, a cartoon, dressed in pants.

True, the WW team was reportedly aware of sensitivities. Working with illustrators around key words regal and appropriate, Mr Nasser ensured that Madam would be shown only from her tiny waist up, with a slogan semi-obscuring her breasts: Think of all the wonders we can do.

If that sounds trite, it was, indeed, no time at all before real women workers at the UN demonstrated, by returning Wonder Woman to political oblivion, the power of direct protest. Closer to home, the real UK MP Eilidh Whiteford just overcame, no less wonderfully, an attempt by that supposedly invincible nuisance, Philip Davies, to talk out her bill protecting women and children. And to think none of it might have happened without that catalyst for change, Bridget Jones.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/18/wonder-woman-at-un-how-about-a-real-one