It means we’ve now invested in over 150 startups since 2007. We couldn’t be more thrilled. We’ve watched the European startup ecosystem grow over the last few years and it’s been incredibly exciting to see the quality of Seedcamp Week applications improve year after year. A big part of it is due to our amazing network of investors and mentors who give their time helping companies from around Europe, so we’d like to extend a big “thank you” to them!

Introducing Seedcamp’s newest startups

• Car Quids (London, UK) – Connecting brands with unique, targeted outdoor advertising spaces.
• Clowdy (Manchester, UK) – A platform that gives creatives an identity to start their career and the network to grow.
• Data Smoothie (London, UK) – A software platform that revolutionises how data scientists analyse data and share results.
• HOKO (Lisbon, Portugal & London, UK) – A deep-linking platform for mobile apps, allowing apps to connect smoothly.
• JOBDOH (Hong Kong) – A quick location based booking platform to get quality temporary workers for hospitality and exhibitions.
• MagicTab (London, UK) – A tabletop smart-menu that makes food look beautiful (and takes orders and payments automatically too).
• Opinion (Stockholm, Sweden) – The world’s first mobile podcasting studio.
• Queueco (London, UK) – An algorithmic market maker providing liquidity to digital currencies on a global scale.
• Revolut (London, UK) – Allows you to exchange currencies at interbank rates, send them through social networks, and spend with multi-currency card.

Since launching our new fund we’ve been actively making seed investments as well. We were thrilled they could join us and are pleased to officially announce they’ve also joined the Seedcamp family:

• MarcoPolo (New York, USA) – A 21st century edutainment brand focused on sparking curiosity in young children about the wonders of the natural world.

Finally, you may remember this startup as one of the teams that joined us at Seedcamp Week Berlin in December. Well, we’ve been keeping it quiet, but we’re also finally able to share the exciting news that Gamewheel did indeed join us and has been working in stealth for the last few months:

• Gamewheel (Berlin, Germany) – A technology platform that allows brands and agencies to create and launch compelling games that range from classic 2D games to blended reality games, with just a few clicks.

We’re incredibly excited to welcome the new startups to Seedcamp HQ and help them grow into the billion-dollar global companies they can be.

If you run a disruptive startup with global ambitions, we want to hear from you! View our events page to apply to the next Seedcamp Week or meet with the Seedcamp team in advance. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest news. Best of luck!

You may remember the first reddit AMA we held back in July ’14. It was a great experience and proved popular, receiving almost 90 questions. So we promised to do it again – which we did, earlier this January.

This time Carlos was joined by Dave (business development) and Tom (investment manager) who were on-hand to help answer any questions that came their way. It was a good job too, since the 2-hour AMA turned out to be even more popular that last time – generating 130 comments, almost 50% more than last time. It seems redditors are really interested in accelerating startups!

Fortunately the ‘AMA-Team’ were at the top of their game and managed to get through the vast majority of questions.

Thanks to reddit’s up-voting system we’ve been able to sort the questions by most-popular. Interestingly, these focused mostly on financial issues, suggesting that there’s some work to be done sharing knowledge in this area within the startup community.

So let’s do that. Let’s share some knowledge. Here are the top five AMA questions, as voted by the redditors!

Q1. Burn rate

The most popular question asked how founders manage their burn rate before closing their first seed round.

Dave replied, saying that while Seedcamp’s investment can help with living costs it’s a good idea to save up before embarking on your startup so you have a longer runway before needing to raise further investment.

Q2. Hiring a co-founder

The next question asked how a single founder should go about raising money to hire a team.

Dave again stepped in to answer this one. He said that while Seedcamp does hire single founders, it helps to be a technical founder since you’ll find it easier to build your prototype. From there, applying and receiving an invite to Seedcamp Week could lead you to meet your next hire.

Q3. Selling physical products

The next question asked if Seedcamp invests in startups with a physical product focus, whose overheads are often higher than software-focused startups.

Dave answered again… he said that Seedcamp has invested in several physical product-focused startups over the years, and while they are typically more capital-intensive, Seedcamp companies go on to raise an average of $1.6m – hopefully enough to cover any storage/warehousing/logistics costs!

Q4. Successful startup characteristics

The next question asked which traits make successful startups… successful.

Tom stepped in to answer this one. He said that above-all, Seedcamp looks for people with a positive attitude; they can inspire their team and use setbacks as a learning opportunity, helping their business grow stronger. Carlos added that his blog post on the subject goes into more detail.

5. Largest investments

The next question asked which startups Seedcamp had funded at the top of its investment range.

Carlos answered this one. He shared that Seedcamp had made several larger investments recently, including Property Partner who are democratising property investing.

Many more questions were asked and we encourage you to take a look over on the reddit AMA.

We’d like to thank everyone who took part; the question submitters, the commenters, the up-voters, the Twitter sharers… thank you! We’ll be back to answer your questions again soon.

In this edition of the Seedcamp Podcast Series, Carlos Espinal and Tom Wilson, Investment Manager (and ex-Lawyer) at Seedcamp, have a chat with Tina Baker, Partner & Co-founder of JagShawBaker and real-life rockstar. They discuss:

• how Tina transitioned from professional musician to law-firm Partner
• addressing early-stage legal disputes between founders
• why reverse vesting is a smart way to allocate shares
• using legal documents like the Founders Collaboration Agreement at Seedsummit.org
• picking the right lawyer for your startup
• how much you can expect to pay a law firm

If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.

• Catch up on episode 1 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: What We Look For In Founders
• Catch up on episode 2 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: Evaluating Interested & Existing Investors in Your Startup
• Catch up on episode 3 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: The Moo.com Growth Story with Richard Moross, Founder and CEO
• Catch up on episode 4 – Seedcamp Podcast Series: Alex Trewby of Divide

Subscribe on iTunes or by pointing your podcast player to the link below…

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:126198189/sounds.rss

In this episode of the Seedcamp Podcast Series, Carlos & Dave chat with Alex Trewby of Divide (now Google). They discuss:

• how to grow a company
• tackling M&A
• how to build an enterprise sales strategy
• selling into large organisations

If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.

• Catch up on episode 1 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: What We Look For In Founders
• Catch up on episode 2 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: Evaluating Interested & Existing Investors in Your Startup
• Catch up on episode 3 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: The Moo.com Growth Story with Richard Moross, Founder and CEO

Subscribe on iTunes or by pointing your podcast player to the link below…

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:126198189/sounds.rss

For the third podcast in this series, Reshma and Carlos tackle some of the questions that many founders would love to ask success-story Moo‘s founder, Richard Moross. They discuss:

• why Richard founded his company
• what drives innovation within Moo
• how to hire good people
• how to find good investors (see our second podcast for more info)
• the worst investor rejection Richard received
• how an overhead-heavy startup can manage its costs
• how to know when you’re not a startup anymore…

If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.

• Catch up on episode 1 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: What We Look For In Founders
• Catch up on episode 2 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: Evaluating Interested & Existing Investors in Your Startup

Subscribe on iTunes or by pointing your podcast player to the link below…

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:126198189/sounds.rss

The office is abuzz with energy… it’s Seedcamp Week! 22 exciting startups have travelled to London from as far as Hong Kong to spend the week presenting, learning and networking with over 200 of Europe’s top investors and mentors.

Introducing the teams

It wasn’t an easy task selecting just a handful of the hundreds of applicants that applied – in fact, this was one of the highest-quality groups of applicants we’ve seen – but we’re confident we’ve picked a strong group and can’t wait to see how they progress throughout the week! Each startup is working on an ambitious and disruptive technology, spanning a broad range of sectors including FinTech, eCommerce, EdTech, Media, and Analytics.

• ArtGuru (London, UK) – An app that recognises artworks and suggests where to visit. Galleries get big data and a marketplace.
• Assimilate (London, UK) – A visual collaboration tool for sharing knowledge about relationships.
• Car Quids (London, UK) – Connecting brands with unique, targeted outdoor advertising spaces.
• Clowdy (Manchester, UK) – A platform that gives creatives an identity to start their career and the network to grow.
• Coinfetti (Bucharest, Romania) – Converting Bitcoins to fiat on your prepaid debit card.
• Concis.ly (Wokingham, UK) – Google Docs for lawyers. Speeding up the process of drafting and reviewing contracts.
• Data Smoothie (London, UK) – A software platform that revolutionises how data scientists analyse data and share results.
• Edurio (Riga, Latvia) – Tools for schools to track their education quality and identify improvement opportunities.
• HOKO (London, UK & Lisbon, Portugal) – A deep-linking platform for mobile apps, allowing apps to connect smoothly.
• JOBDOH (Hong Kong) – A quick location based booking platform to get quality temporary workers for hospitality and exhibitions.
• Magic Tab (London, UK) – A tabletop smart-menu that makes food look beautiful and takes orders and payments automatically too.
• Queueco (London, UK) – An algorithmic market maker providing liquidity to digital currencies on a global scale.
• Revolut (London, UK) – Revolut is the personal money cloud, a great alternative to banks.
• Stockflare (London, UK) – Helping consumers pick stocks easily. Mission: to encourage millennials to save & invest well.
• Teamlayer (Cambridge, UK) – Providing straight-forward team collaboration by connecting the user’s web apps on a central interface.
• Travelchat (Cagliari, Italy) – Allowing travellers to chat with locals and get personalised travel tips in real time.
• WealthKernel (London,UK) – SaaS provider of wealth management solutions focusing on simplified advice platforms for financial advisors.

Also joining us

Our seed fund allows us to invest in later-stage startups too, so we’re thrilled to announce some new investments who are going to be joining us for Seedcamp Week.

• Cronofy (Nottingham/London, UK) – The unified calendar API that allows you to integrate your apps deeply within your customers’ lives.
• Edgefolio (London, UK & New York, USA) – The platform connecting Hedge Funds and Allocators.
• MarcoPolo (New York, USA) – A 21st century edutainment brand focused on sparking curiosity in young children about the wonders of the natural world.
• Plastik (Tel Aviv, Israel) – Finding better ways to pay, with the ambitious goal of bridging known gaps in the financial world.

During the next few days these promising startups will present their companies to the Seedcamp investors and over 200 of Europe’s top mentors, advising in their areas of expertise; from Product to Finance to Marketing and beyond.

They’ll also hear two insightful masterclasses; Richard Moross (Founder & CEO of Moo.com) will be speaking about growing Moo into an internationally-recognised brand, and Alexander Trewby (Founder & COO of Divide) will share his journey growing Divide up until its recent acquisition by Google.

Of course, we couldn’t do this without the support of our amazing Seedcamp Week partners; Campus London who will be providing the space for the week, our friends at WhiteStar Capital, and Runway East and Second Home where we’ll be holding our renowned after-parties!

Look out for a very special announcement in the coming weeks, as we’ll be investing in some of the participating Seedcamp Week startups.

Follow the action on Twitter

If you’re a startup founder interested in applying to Seedcamp, applications for May’s Seedcamp Week Berlin will be opening on Monday 9th February. So check back at our website for the official announcement or keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook for details.

Carlos leading a workshop for the startups at blueprint

We recently announced an exciting partnership with Hong Kong’s new blueprint accelerator and workspace. The space will provide Asia’s b2b startups with a network of mentors, investors and partners, and additionally provide an excellent landing pad for Seedcamp startups looking to enter the Asian market.

Seedcamp Partner Carlos visited the new space in January to help officially open blueprint’s doors to their first accelerator cohort as well as conduct workshops for the startups. The 11 promising startups were also able to pitch to him and receive feedback.

It proved a great opportunity to see Asia’s burgeoning startup ecosystem first-hand – so having returned to the UK, Carlos summarises in his podcast; why he thinks Honk Kong is the gateway to Asia, his thoughts on the local investment scene, and why he thinks Hong Kong makes a great place for startups to grow their business.

To find out more about Seedcamp’s partnership with blueprint, read our announcement here.

For the second podcast in this series, Reshma and Carlos look at what investors look for in other investors to syndicate with, but also what founders should look for in investors, when actively fundraising. They discuss:

• why choosing your investors is like choosing a family
• what an amazing investor looks like
• what type of investor might be most suitable for your startup
• why the size of your investor’s fund is worth considering
• the pros and cons of working with specialist vs generalist skill-set investors
• why an investor’s deal experience is important
• how to tell if an investor might not be suitable for your startup

If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.

For more information on what to look for in an investor, read our blog post that goes into more detail.

Catch up on episode 1 – Reshma & Carlos Take On: What We Look For In Founders

Subscribe on iTunes or by pointing your podcast player to the link below…

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:126198189/sounds.rss

Here you’ll see an overview of everything you need to know to prepare for Seedcamp Week London. If you have any additional questions please let us know at group email address that you’ll be invited to. Make sure to go through this thoroughly as it covers every aspect of the event and how to get the most out of it.

Schedule

Seedcamp Week is extremely busy – events will run from the 2nd to 5th February and participating teams must attend all events:

• Monday 2nd – Seedprep, 2pm – 6pm
• Tuesday 3rd – Investor Forum, 11am – 2pm (15 min slots with the panel)
• Wednesday 4th – Product Day (9am – 6pm). Presentations, masterclass Richard Moross, lunch, mentoring sessions.
• Thursday 5th – Investor Day (9am – 6pm). Presentations, masterclass Alexander Trewby , lunch, mentoring sessions.

Location

• Monday 2nd – Campus London
• Tuesday 3rd – Campus London
• Wednesday 4th – Campus London (evening party at Runway East)
• Thursday 5th – Campus London (evening party at Second Home)

Event announcements

Please keep your participation in Seedcamp Week quiet until 11am on Tuesday 3rd February.

We’ll publish a blog post in the morning of the 3rd announcing all participating teams. Please widely distribute this post to gain the best possible exposure for the event and your company – and help the others.

We’ll contact you when it’s live so you can be first to announce the good news!

Your team

Each team is welcome to bring a maximum of two members to Seedcamp Week. The person limit is due to the tight venue space, and in our experience mentoring is optimal with two people from each startup. Feel free to rotate one person, but make sure that at least one of you is there for all four days.

Investment decisions, joining the Seedcamp Family

Investment decisions will be made during the week – not just in the investment interviews, but also based on feedback from our team, mentors, and investors.

Don’t worry too much about it – just be your natural self and show us how great your company is and how passionate you are about it. You will have an amazing week regardless of the outcome.

After Seedcamp Week (Onboarding)

Winners of Seedcamp Week London will be required to join us at HQ (Campus London) the week commencing 16th February to participate in Onboarding. Please check you have no important commitments during the week, as you’ll need to free up this week for Onboarding if you win.

Prep Call

We will host a Seedcamp Week preparation call during the noon/afternoon of Thursday 29th January for all the selected teams. During the call we’ll walk you through the complete schedule and all materials you should prepare. Don’t worry, we will answer all of your questions. We’ll send you the meeting invite shortly.

Read about the experiences from past teams

To ensure you fully benefit from the day we’ve listed a few more blogs from past Seedcamp Week startups, below:

• Seedcamp Week: From a Startup’s Point of View
• Reflections on Seedcamp Week London

What to cover in your presentation

Presenting your company can be a stressful experience if you’re not prepared. We will be practicing and reviewing your presentations during Seedprep on Thursday 29th, but in the mean time we suggest you:

• Work hard on creating your deck!
• Include your twitter handle on each slide

You have strictly 3 minutes to present your company. This is your chance to introduce yourselves to the mentors and let them know why you are there. DON’T use it like an investment pitch (i.e. ask for money). A beneficial tactic can be to concisely summarise what your company does in the very beginning of your presentation. We also recommend including:

1. What you’ve built and what problem it solves
2. Who you are and why you can build this business better than anyone else (Read our blog article on the perfect Team slide)
3. Who your competitors are
4. How you get your product to the masses
5. How you’ll eventually make some money

A great question you may want to answer to set the tone for your mentoring session: What do you want to get out of the day? Keep the number of slides manageable and practice, practice, practice!

We will give you feedback during the training session, but don’t rely on this session alone to work on your presentation. Most of our venues have Internet available to demo your product, however, experience shows that it is prudent to have a slide backup, as there may be connectivity issues. Same goes for using sound and video during the presentation – usually a personal presentation is much more effective. Presentations will be in alphabetical order, and of course in English. If you’d like further guidance this is a good demo to watch – it’s not Seedcamp’s so ignore the 90 sec rule but it might give you inspiration.

Getting the most out of mentoring

Your startup team will participate in mentoring sessions on Wednesday and Thursday with experienced entrepreneurs, investors, product experts and developers. You should aim to get as much out of these sessions as possible. Each mentoring session lasts approximately 45 minutes and will contain your team and approximately 3-4 mentors.

Mentoring sessions are meant to give you feedback in an open and honest context, so do not pitch! Research the names and background of mentors you’ll be meeting (you will receive a list shortly) and write down potential questions you want answered. Mentors can get off topic, so asking direct questions and setting topics for individual sessions works best. Teams tend to get most out of the mentoring sessions when they take control of the discussion.

We have grouped mentors so that experts from certain fields are together, so find out what a good topic for the session could be and focus on those issues. For example, you may have a grouping of angels and VCs who you could ask for feedback on your fundraising strategy. With marketing experts, consider discussing your go-to-market strategy. In addition to open sessions where mentors choose their desired teams, breaks and the evening event provide opportunities for deeper interaction. Make sure you leverage every opportunity to interact with mentors. Form a concise description of your business and consider conveying your goals for the day during your presentation.

Take notes & follow up

Remembering the details of an initial conversation can make a huge difference when reconnecting with mentors in the future. Always exchange business cards and be sure to take notes. Some teams choose to have one member especially accountable for taking detailed notes while the other member leads the discussion. It may also be valuable to recap each discussion with your team member after the session.

Post-event, if you connected with a mentor be sure to follow up! This is the key to forming mentor relationships. Make sure you connect personally with each mentor you met – it’s easy to drop an email saying how much you enjoyed the session; this keeps the door open for future meetings and queries. Mentors are interested in what you do, so think about giving periodic updates. Mentors may also offer to make introductions they promised during the sessions – reminding them of this could be the best way to get your feet in the door. An easy yet under-utilised tactic is to publicly thank mentors for their time on Twitter.

Business Cards

You will meet a lot of new people so ensure you have a stack of business cards available; Moo is a local company that offers great quality business cards.

Finally…

Finalise your product, prototype, presentation, and get ready for Seedcamp Week London!

Join us as we explore various topics throughout the world of Startups and Early-stage Investment.

During each episode we’ll speak with members of the Seedcamp family to hear their views; including the Seedcamp team, our Investors, Mentors, and Startups.

We begin with our ‘Take On’ series. In this first episode, Seedcamp Partners Reshma & Carlos discuss the qualities we look for in startup Founders.

• how important is it to be a good relationship builder?
• do jerks make good startup founders?
• does having a positive outlook create more opportunity?
• is integrity important?
• will founders who are able to inspire others build a stronger team?

If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.

We hope you enjoy this first episode and encourage you to subscribe to the podcast to hear more insightful discussion on a range startup and investment topics.

Subscribe by pointing your podcast player to the link below…

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:126198189/sounds.rss