Winner of the 2016 European Venture Award

Last month I was one of three judges who chose the recipient of the 2016 European Innovation and Technology Venture Award.  Contestants were start-up companies from across the European Union, who are creating smart business solutions to address important social issues. The top six contestants came to present their concepts in front of our jury, in a Shark Tank-style format.

The presentations and ideas were all high quality, but our jury unanimously picked one that stood above the rest.  The venture is called Nerdalize, formed by a group from Holland that is simultaneously tackling two social issues.  Or even more impressively, they are using two social pain points to eliminate each other.  One pain point is the high cost of cloud-based services, whose principles cost driver is the cooling of servers that generate high heat.  The other pain point is the high cost of heating private homes. So Nerdalize’s solution?  Place servers in private homes as a highly affordable source of heat.

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