What start-ups are doing to stand out in the crowd

With more than 2,000 start-ups from 109 countries exhibiting at the Web Summit this week, the point is to stand out from the crowd. Here are what a few of them are doing to get noticed.

Laura Fisher of Wevolver (England) Wevolver is a social media platform that allows open source projects to be shared. Wevolver had two moving robots on display, one called Tammy with a sassy silver wig, and two 3D printers. "We're the online community that manages all the open source files. There were 100 files to make this robot," says Fisher, growth hacker for Wevolver.

Tammy had a difficult journey from London. She broke a finger and the replacement the team 3D printed for her sat in the printer at Wevolver’s stand, to be assembled later.

Leonard Krawinkel of Zoobe (Germany) The team from German company Zoobe wore chancellor Angela Merkel masks to advertise their customised mobile messaging animations. Users select the avatar of their choice, including one of Dr Merkel, record a message and seconds later an animation appears that can be shared with friends on Whatsapp and other social media platforms. "It's a premium, emotional messaging forum to enjoy with your friends and family," Krawinkel says.

Users create 400,000 videos every day and have shared more than 65 million videos this year.

Daniel Reese of Oniria Virtual Reality (Mexico) The Oniria team offered a full virtual reality experience at their booth and people queued to navigate a maze wearing a headset and standing on a mat. Oniria integrates sight, sound and senses for an immersive virtual reality experience for both rehabilitative and entertainment purposes.

“The hardware is very fancy, but we also use a make-it-yourself cardboard headset to democratise virtual reality,” Reese says. “You can download an app and get access to virtual reality with your headset.”

Rachel Francine of SingFit (US) The SingFit booth offered karaoke with a purpose. Passersby could sing, record and send out the recording via social media. "Singing is a wonder drug. It's a full-brain workout. You can increase mass in different areas of the brain by singing and doing different rhythmic activities," says Francine, who is a music therapist.

The company combines a technique called lyric prompting with music to target healthcare issues such as dementia, chronic breathing disorders and pregnancy. “With pregnancy, for example, the important thing is stress relief. When you sing, you release endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, melatonin, and those are all really good things for pregnancy,” Francine adds. The singing programme is tailored to the health problem being addressed.