During the recent years, the Netherlands has become one of the most important tech hubs not only in Europe, but in the whole world as well. With 75 major deals with a total investment of  Euro 500 million in 2014 and with 153 major deals last year, ( twice the number of the previous year), Dutch startups managed to raise Euro  429 Million in 2015.  Having one of the most prominent startup scenes in Europe, the Netherlands deserves to be mentioned along with other top tech hubs in Europe such as London and Berlin.

Netflix and Uber for example have decided to establish their European headquarters in Amsterdam and many giant companies are expected to do the same in the near future. Eindhoven is another city that has come a long way to becoming a great tech hub city in the Netherlands as well. In 2013, Forbes called Eindhoven as “the most inventive city in the world, while Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development data showed that Eindhoven produces 22.6 patents per 100,000 residents followed by San Diego which produces 8.9.

“This city lives tech. We live, breathe, and eat hardware for breakfast,” Bert-Jan Woertman, the marketing director at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus, said for TechCrunch.

Here are some of the most popular tech startups in the Netherlands:

WeTransfer

File sharing platform WeTransfer makes it easier for users to email small and large files up to 2GB for free and in a short period of time. Founded in 2009 by Bas Beerens and Nalden, the cloud-based file transfer service has around 25 million active users worldwide.

Based in Amsterdam, WeTransfer launched in September 2012, and managed to raise $25M by Highland Capital Partners Europe in its Series A funding round last year becoming one of the top five deals of 2015. So far WeTransfer has delivered more than 100 million files.

Catawiki

Founded by Dutch René Schoenmakers and Marco Jansen, Catawiki was launched on September 10, 2008.  “I got so fed up spending hours on eBay searching and searching before I found one really great item,” according to Schoenmakers.

Originally available only in Dutch and focused on comics, the site has been serving as a weekly online auction host of various special items from comic books to classic cars and since 2011 was made available in English. During the recent years the site has also been made available in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese.  

In September 2014, the company was able to raise Euro 10 million in a series B funding round by Accel Partners, Silicon Valley venture capital firm behind Facebook, and Spotify while in July 2015, Catawiki raised Euro 75 million in a series C funding round led by Lead Edge Capital. In December 2015, Catawiki won their first place in the 2015 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa program.

TravelBird

Recently called “a European scale-up to watch,” Amsterdam-based travel company TravelBird was founded in 2010 by Symen Jansma and Dennis Klompalberts. Originally limited to the Netherlands, TravelBird has currently over 700 employees in 17 countries and offers its daily travel packages to over 2.5 million customers in various countries including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, and United Kingdom, etc.

The company has raised $59.3M in funding led by Rocket Internet, and in May 2015 it managed to raise $18.4M.

HackerOne

Leading platform for ethical hacking, HackerOne was founded in 2012 by Michiel Prins, Jobert Abma, Alex Rice, and Merijn Terheggen though Abma, Prins and Terheggen had started finding vulnerabilities in tech giants since 2011.

With its headquarters in San Francisco, California, HackerOne connects businesses with security researchers and has another office in the Netherlands which opened in 2015.  Among the company’s clients are Twitter, Slack, Adobe, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Airbnb.

HackerOne received $9 million in Series A funding from Benchmark in May 2014 and in June 2015 announced a $25 million Series B funding round led by New Enterprise Associates.

Adyen

Multichannel payment company,  Adyen offers businesses an outsourced payment solution which is currently used by popular companies including Uber, Facebook, Evernote, Spotify, Airbnb, Mango, Vodafone,Booking.com, KLM, Greenpeace, Soundcloud, Superdry, Groupon, etc.

Serving over 4,500 customers worldwide, in 2014 Adyen grew by 100% in revenue and by 40% in new customer wins. Launched in 2006, the online payment company can handle over 250 payment methods including credit cards, debit cards, bank transfer, online banking, etc.

“Adyen’s technology is developed and maintained in-house. This gives us the control and flexibility necessary to meet the evolving demands of the most innovative businesses and to release new features on an ongoing basis,” according to the company’s official website.

Shapeways

New York-based 3D printing service company Shapeways was founded by Peter Weijmarshausen, Robert Schouwenburg, and Marleen Vogelaar in 2007. The startup company can help users to design and 3D print their files from numerous materials.

“Shapeways is led by folks who've spent most of their careers in startups, and combine serious technical chops with an inspiring vision of what the world could be. We’re bringing together a passionate, dynamic team of game changers. We're having a great time working and playing harder than we ever have in our lives. It doesn’t hurt to know that what we do is changing the future as we know it,” according to Shapeways.

So far the company has sold millions of user-created 3D prints and in July 2014 it announced its partnership with Hasbro, Inc. which can lead the company to make collaborations with other Hollywood companies in the future.