Last Friday I was in Amsterdam for the final part of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks awards – a 100.000 euro competition initiated by Vodafone Netherlands, SPRX Mobile and MobileMonday Amsterdam. Six finalists were selected out of +50 entries after four busy months and 3 jury intensive jury rounds.

Finalists were: TipSpot, Nulaz, MapTheGap, MobyPicture, Exphera and Mi-i.

Nulaz (www.nulaz.com) was the big winner with 60.000 euros, followed by TipSpot (www.tipspot.com) with 30.000 euros and MapTheGap (www.mapthegap.nl) with 10.000 euros. Nulaz is an advanced LBS social networking application with reviews and ratings. TipSpot is a mobile social city guide for events in your neighbourhood. MapTheGap is a highly innovative mobile application for location-based idea management and sharing.

It was a very interesting couple of days in Amsterdam during summer to go through the evaluation of the startups, lots of great quality presentations, freshness of ideas and professionality of the work in general. Though this was a ‘national’ competition, I believe some of the startups have a true chance to develop to an international market. Be bold and go for it, I would say… Congratulations to all winners! A job well done also to all other participants. We’ll hear more of these startups in the near future, for sure.

It was also a chance to meet some great people, the very professional Vodafone Internet team led by Patrick Leenheers, the whole SPRX Mobile team, and last but not least Vincent Everts (Trendwatcher and Gadget expert). Vodafone announced already the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2009. Hope to see you all there again!

Here’s my Flickr set of the jury sessions and the event last Friday at PICNIC.

Below also my keynote slides on Mobile Startup Case Studies I did for the opening of the event.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to discuss some of the topics in detail or leave a comment.