Digital Butler wins European Super Angels Club Wildcard
picture from left: Berthold Baurek-Karlic (European Super Angels Club), Philipp Baldauf (Butleroy) and Chris Houghtaling (European Super Angels Club).
The pan-European investor network European Super Angels Club (ESAC) awarded a wildcard for the next ESAC Roadshow yesterday at the Bits & Pretzels Festival in Munich to the startup of Butleroy from Linz.
Butleroy is an artificial intelligence that supports users in the coordination of leisure and family activities. In addition to Android and iOS, the application will soon be available for Amazon’s language assistant Alexa.
“Butleroy is thus even closer to the real model of a butler and can coordinate appointments by means of voice commands,” explains Philipp Baldauf, founder and CEO of the company. “Artificial intelligence-based assistants are a tremendous growth market on which all leading tech companies are intensively focusing on. With Butleroy, we have built a technology-independent application and focused on the scheduling process in the first step. As a result, we were able to quickly launch our software and provide users with real added value”, continued Baldauf.
Roadshow through European hubs
Among the 100 start-ups that qualified for Bits & Pretzel’s startup pitch, the European Super Angels Club selected the winner of the wildcard. The award was presented by Berthold Baurek-Karlic and Chris Houghtaling from the European Super Angels Club, together with Frank Wiethoff, KPMG regional board member Ost and head of the KPMG StartUp Initiative “Smart Start” at Bits & Pretzel’s stand at KPMG.
The ESAC is an initiative launched by KPMG and Venionaire Capital Partners and provides club members access to high-quality and tested investment opportunities. In the focus are regularly happening roadshows through the European start-up hubs. In October, the club will be in Zurich, followed by stops in Amsterdam, Vienna, Munich, London and as a side event Hong Kong.
“In the rapidly growing European startup ecosystem, it is not always easy to keep the market overview. Investors are usually well informed about which companies are first-class in their own country. The challenge, however, is to know whether the same topic is better covered by a startup in the neighbouring country. With the ESAC, we are bringing a new European perspective”, says Berthold Baurek-Karlic, Member of the Executive Board of the European Super Angels Club. The club, founded in January of this year, has already successfully completed its first investment with Yodel.io, a British-Austrian company.
Hungarian Fashiontech
L!BER8 Technologies from Hungary also qualified for the next roadshow. The startup convinced our team at a pitching event in Budapest organized by our local partner and venture fund OXO Labs together with KPMG Hungary. L!BER8 creates jewelry with digital elements by equipping its “Tago Arc” bracelets with E-ink technology. This allows the wearer to change the pattern of the bracelets according to mood and outfit. Even photos can be transferred by the app to the bracelet as a design.
[Read the German press release here]
