The Winners: Europe's Young Entrepreneurs

Winning an entrepreneurship contest is a feather in the cap, but it takes a lot more than that to make a business grow. As the nominees in this year's Best Young European Entrepreneurs competition can attest, building a successful startup requires passion, focus, constant work, and sometimes a bit of luck.

Still, recognition is a welcome reward for young businesspeople struggling to hit the big time. That's why it's so gratifying every year to solicit nominations from our readers for the most promising European startups and then ask the public to cast votes for the best. This year, we widened our criteria to include entrepreneurs under the age of 30 (it was previously 25 or younger). As you can see from a glance through the nominees, they're an impressive bunch.