Despite being Sweden’s second largest city and home to a good engineering university, we don’t seem to get a good deal-flow of startups or stories coming out of Gothenberg. Despite that, as Spring warms up the region, Gothenberg is heating up thanks to a hackathon that brought the community together to create new apps and services.
Before Gothenberg Startup Hack happened we heard a lot of good buzz, thanks to an impressive list of backers- companies like Google, Spotify, and Dropbox were listed as sponsors. Additionally the venue set the mood right by being held in an old historic bank vault.
Leading up to the event we’re told over 300 people applied and a jury culled the best 100 ideas which competed against each other to form 27 teams with 100 people participating in the hack. But in total over 700 people attended the event thanks to some parallel events that allowed people to mingle and see what was coming together.
“We are doing this to boost the Gothenburg startup community. Here there are many exciting ideas that could become apps or computer programs. It is extremely fun to see the creativity that the participants have,” said press officer Andreas König.
Among the companies created out of the hackathon was a prototype that put together automated opinion polls on Twitter. The winner of the “Überhead” we’re told is a nicely designed presentation tool where the viewer is able to communicate in a smooth manner with the presenter in real time on the internet.
With this good buzz and attention, hopefully this means we’ll be hearing more from Gothenberg companies coming out of the event.
“This is our collective contribution to Gothenburg. The city has an incredible potential and capacity, which is particularly noticeable during a day like this. We will definitely be seeing more exciting startups here. It’s clear that something special is going on,” says one of the organizers, Per Bergström.
PHOTO: Dino Soldin
