NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- beBee, a new business networking platform that is creating buzz as competition to LinkedIn, is one of 17 promising tech companies invited to the Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley September 12-21, the premier program for European companies to engage with U.S. industry partners for sales, funding and collaboration opportunities to rapidly scale up their operations.

Madrid-based beBee (www.bebee.com) fills the gap in social networking by enabling users to share their professional resume, interests and hobbies to create a powerful communication tool with professional business-oriented messaging.

It has attracted more than 11.2 million users in its first year and has more than doubled its user base in the past six months. beBee's relationship-building platform has 4.5 million users in Spain, 3.6 million users in South America and already has more than 120,000 users in the U.S. It recently opened its American headquarters in New York City as it heads towards its goal of 40 million users by 2017.

What sets beBee apart is its "affinity marketing" platform in which users share common personal and professional interests (such as "engineers who are into running") to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships rather than just adding layers of connections.

"Being able to interact with people one does not know, but who have the same interests, is something new for a social network, and it works," said beBee co-founder Javier Cãmara, who along with co-founder Juan Imaz invested more than $6.5 million to create and launch the network in February 2015. "It's the way humans naturally interact. It generates a higher level of engagement, resulting in more successful business."

"One of the first things people come to love when they join beBee is our blogging platform, 'Producer." When a user produces content, a blog, a post, a live video, they'll enjoy more views, comments and shares than they ever had on other platforms like Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, or Wordpress," added Matt Sweetwood, CEO of beBee USA.

EIT Digital and Mind the Bridge invited the 17 companies covering E-commerce, Healthcare, Security and Storage from 11 European nations to San Francisco for meetings with Silicon Valley-based partner organizations and investors beginning September 12 with European Innovation Day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

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SOURCE beBee