seedcamp

Seedcamp winners get thinking on user experience with ThoughtWorks

2009-11-04T17:15:00.007Z

Time and again we hear from start-ups one of the biggest reasons they apply to Seedcamp Week (apart from the great mentors/advice and networking opportunities) is the support we give our winning teams in the three months after the winners are announced.

This year, part of that support came in the shape of workshop sessions with leading user experience consultants ThoughtWorks. Marketing Director, Katy White and Project Manager, Liv Wild kindly offered time with two of their leading user experience consultants to Seedcamp Week winners to improve and refine the usability of each company’s product. As we all know, no matter how great the technology or product features are they are worth little if the user doesn’t find it solves their need or problem.

Each team was given a four hour session with one of their top usability experts, Marc McNeill and Eewei Chen. So, the question you may have is: what is a website’s user experience? Well, in short, it is just that: the experience a user has while using the website for its intended purpose. The elements contributing to this ‘experience’ are quite varied and ThoughtWorks' perspective shines a light on these.

Curious about the process involved in identifying usability issues and working out solutions to address identified shortfalls we managed to attend one of the sessions as ‘flies on the wall’ with Patients Know Best and Marc McNeil. A full blow by blow account of their session can be found here if you are interested in getting more detail on the process followed but needless to say I was very impressed. Marc managed to reduce the 10-step patient registration process to four steps that was less error prone.

Let’s get something straight: Marc is not like you and me when it comes to evaluating the appeal of a website. You and I may notice the colours, layout and pass a comment to the effect of “this site is so web 1.0”. Not Marc. He would look at a web page and silently evaluate its ability to convey the intended message and utility to its users for what appeared to be an eternity and then come out with his comments that were diligently noted by the Seedcamp teams.

Needless to say, the other Seedcamp winners also found these sessions very helpful including Platogo (to improve the USP and social aspect of their product), Kwaga (creating an automated email assistant to prioritise emails) and Codility. Indeed, some of the teams will continue to work with ThoughtWorks to help them in their journey to create the ultimate customer experience for their target segment.

This really showcases the power of the start-up ecosystem and how true collaboration can benefit teams that are starting out. Providing the Seedcamp winners with sessions featuring usability experts ThoughtWorks at such an early stage can help each one of them get better traction with their target segments.

So on behalf of all the Seedcamp winners, we would like to thank Liv, Katy, Marc and Eewei at ThoughtWorks for making these sessions possible. Thanks guys.

Lastly, we’re always keen to get to know more user experience experts and open up the opportunity to work with start-ups. So, if you are interested in getting involved as a mentor do get in touch with us at info@seedcamp.com

Talasim are featured on Reuters

2009-10-07T10:09:00.003+01:00

Talasim are one of our winning teams from Seedcamp Week 2009 and have attracted worldwide press attention for their Arabic comedy community.

Here is a video clip from Reuters about their story.

Awaiting Moderation....

2009-09-25T21:49:00.007+01:00

There's a much more interesting post below.....

But while I'm awaiting moderation on Phil Wilkinson's post about Seedcamp this week - I'll take the chance to quickly post my comments here. I'm going off the grid now, so have a great weekend and thanks to everyone - especially Reshma, Alasdair and all the teams - for a brilliant Seedcamp Week.

Saul (@cape)

=================================

@Phil – sorry it’s taken some time to get to your post, as I’m sure you can imagine its been a pretty busy week with the 22 teams at Seedcamp. Also sorry you couldn’t make it last night to connect at the Techcrunch party, it would have been good to talk in person. I did have a quick chat to Mike Butcher that I’m delighted to discuss this and any other questions folks have on Seedcamp in the next few weeks – see http://bit.ly/mWAQx

One quick factual point – of course mentors are able to attend the judging sessions, several did this year and have done every year. I think what happened yesterday was a pretty innocent misunderstanding – you came into the room mid-pitch and as you’d not been a mentor during the week, I guess that’s why Reshma asked very politely for you to not join the session.

@Nick – we also love the thought of any investors putting money into Seedcamp finalists who don’t make the top 6 or in fact the top 6 as well. This year (as every year) investors from all over Europe joined us throughout the week meeting and mentors the teams; including William from DFJ, Sandy from Pentech, Lukasz from Team Europe, Sean from ProFounders, Fred from USV, Will from Amadeus, Ashish from Partech, Mario from Eagle Ventures to name a few. While most of the teams love Seedcamp for the advice and networking, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear from any of the above – or the other investors who have been following up with teams from the great coverage Techcrunch (http://bit.ly/vECkN) has given to all 22 Seedcamp Week finalists and the 140 teams we’ve mentored throughout the year at seven Mini Seedcamps (http://bit.ly/mWAQx)

Signing off now for the long weekend – looking forward to spending time with the family and doing penance on Monday for my year’s indiscretions (http://bit.ly/13ou3W)

Apologies you felt slighted. Reshma and team have done and amazing job this year with Seedcamp, I know no offense was meant. I’m looking forward to chatting with Mike about the issues you raise and any others people want to throw to him.

In the meantime, lets celebrate 22 awesome teams and 6 very special winners from Jordan, Estonia, Cambridge, Romania, Poland and Birmingham looking to build world-beating companies from the hub we are building in London (http://bit.ly/2xj9fb, http://bit.ly/1ZTK37).

We should be proud and have lots to look forward to. Peace.

And the winners are….Seedcamp congratulates the 2009 winning teams

2009-09-25T10:20:00.062+01:00

What an incredible week.

Seedcamp set out in 2007 to help build a cohesive network which promising entrepreneurs could leverage and tap into to build great businesses that as Fred Wilson said yesterday, adopt the Silicon Valley mindset and “go for it”.

This year, we’ve hosted 22 stellar teams in the time zone between London and Amman. They’ve been mentored by 350 world-class advisors. The quality of teams just keeps improving and as the Seedcamp network grows, the capacity to build great companies keeps improving.

So, without further ado – we’re thrilled to announce this years Seedcamp Week 2009 winners (in alphabetical order):

• Boxed Ice (Birmingham, UK - Server monitoring for all website owners.

• Brainient (Bucharest, Romania) - Helping video publishers monetize on the increasingly growing video content.

• Codility (Warsaw, Poland) - First line of testing of programmers, saving employers a time and money.

• Erply (Tallinn, Estonia) - ERP on the web. Comprehensive CRM, accounting, billing and inventory management for SMEs.

• Patients Know Best (Cambridge, UK) - Revolutionizing how patients ineract with doctors as a start to better provided care.

• Talasim.com (Amman, Jordan) - The Comedy Channel of the Middle East, providing a space for self-expression and sharing humour.

These teams will all receive a €50k investment from Seedcamp and active support over the next 3 months to help develop these companies into world-beaters.

All 22 teams demonstrated outstanding performance and growth throughout the week. They listened to the wisdom of serial entrepreneurs like Hjalmar Winbladh and Brent Hoberman about the rollercoaster of startups, learned about pivoting and continuous deployment from Eric Reis, product/market fit from Sean Ellis, how to swear (and something about metrics!) from Dave McClure and to fail fast, think big and build great businesses from Fred Wilson. On the way they had practical advice from the great successes of the tech world like Google, Yahoo, last.fm, Twitter, Microsoft, eBay and Skype.

What impressed us the most was how the teams processed this torrent of feedback and evolved not just their pitch but their business and thinking between Monday’s and Thursday’s presentations. Shortening the loop between listening and learning is so critical to sustainable startup success and every team showed they had this in spades.

Seedcamp is not a one-week event and most of the teams in London this week were folks we’d met at one of the 7 Mini Seedcamp’s we ran this year. Building this localized network is core to our vision and we want to take this chance to call out Kwaga (Paris, France) and Platago (Vienna, Austria), both of whom Seedcamp has invested in this year from our Mini Seedcamps in Paris and Berlin.

We’ve always believed the start-up world doesn’t revolve around one location but we love the Valley. Last year, we went out West with the Seedcamp alumni and this cycle we’ll be going on the road again, this time taking in New York as well as San Francisco. Immersing yourself in the US market is something we always advise to startups – learn, make contacts and then go back home and code ☺

So joining us on this year’s Seedcamp on the Road, we are also inviting these talented tourists:

• Advertag (London, UK) - Advertag extracts data and creates tag cloud based on the advert.

• Fabricly (London, UK) - A web-based solution for fashion labels to manage their supply chain.

• Pearl Systems (Bristol, UK) - A web-based solution for SMEs to customize billing, CRM, accounting, business improvement software.

• Joobili (Budapest, Hungary) - A travel website offering inspiration specific to your dates and interests. You say when, Joobili says where.

• VouChaCha (London, UK) - A location based mobile discounts for consumers. A usable platform for brands to engage with their customers.

Finally, we’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this year’s Seedcamp Week including all the amazing mentors, Seedcamp investors, Tim Barnes from UCL for being an awesome host and our numerous Seedcamp supporters – without whom, we could not function.

Thanks again to the teams for converging on London for the week where we hope your experience was life changing and you continue to grow, network and emerge as successful entrepreneurs.

Please keep in touch and come see us at one of our Mini Seedcamps over the next 12 months and check out our video blog for day 5 highlights.

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 4 Highlights

2009-09-25T10:08:00.007+01:00

Well, we can’t say much about yesterday as it was a closed session for the teams to re-pitch to the Seedcamp judges for funding. But what we can say is WOW!...it was tough! Check out our daily video blog to get a feel for the Seedcamp buzz on day 4.

Besides the pitching and judging, we had the pleasure of having Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures in the US give an awesome masterclass on “Going for It”. Fred wrote a great post that really sums up Seedcamp, so check it out.

Stay tuned when we announce the lucky winners shortly....

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 4 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 4 Highlights

2009-09-24T21:08:00.002+01:00

Well, we can’t say much about today as it was a closed session for the teams to re-pitch to the Seedcamp judges for funding. But what we can say is WOW!...it’s gonna be tough! Check out our daily video blog to get a feel for the Seedcamp buzz today.

Besides the pitching and judging, we had the pleasure of having Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures in the US give an awesome masterclass on “Going for It”. Fred wrote a great post that really sums up Seedcamp, so check it out.

Stay tuned tomorrow when we announce the lucky winners…hmm, don’t even think a few cocktails at the TechCrunch party will help us sleep tonight!

Until tomorrow everyone….

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 4 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 3 Highlights

2009-09-23T18:44:00.025+01:00

We’re at the midway point of Seedcamp Week 2009 and this is the cool part for us as we really start to see the light-bulbs going off within the teams…which is awesome, ‘cause that’s what we’re all about!

Day 3 saw the teams get practical advice from the Technical Panel Discussion on ‘Scaling Through Ups and Downs’. Returning to moderate this year (because he rocks) was Matt Biddulph of Dopplr who managed to draw out the essentials from James Aylett of Kittens with Jetpacks, Vijay Pandurangan of Google, Blaine Cook of BT Open Source (formerly at Twitter). The focus was around scaling your product, marrying technology with product and the user and not just scaling or developing in isolation. Also, a lot of the discussion centred around the importance of getting the holy trinity of right people in biz/tech/product in your founding team. The quality and constitution of the team was crucial.

Top takeaways are:

“Hire people that are smarter than you”
"If I had started Doppler a year later, I would have looked into Amazon Cloud hosting"
"Build great products and forget about scaling. If clients love your system, they'll forgive it for being flakey"

The morning continued with mentoring sessions that got so heated the fire alarm went off – erm, literally! The best of the best teams didn’t loose a moment and continued to show their products and to extract and absorb as much from the mentors as possible while hanging out in the alley waiting for the nice Firemen to let us back in the building.

The afternoon scorched on with David McClure and Sean Ellis holding the speediest of Masterclasses on “Startup Metrics” and “Startup Marketing”, which continued in the vein of Hjalmar Windblah’s Masterclass of telling it like it is. It’s all about the product/market fit and actually doing something with what you measure.

We could quote these guys all day long, but you should really check out their presentations below:

Startup Customer Development (Seedcamp, London)

View more presentations from Sean Ellis.

Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp, Sept 2009)

View more documents from Dave McClure.

The teams’ eyes lit up when we followed on with an Investor panel that had a fiery discussion on the Ins and Outs of Angel and VC funding. Our own Reshma Sohoni moderated the discussion with Fred Destin of Atlas Venture, Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures, Charles Grimsdale of Eden Ventures, Ben Holmes from Index and Torleif Ahlsand from Northzone Ventures. Touching on points like when is the best time to bring in capital to your startup, to what investors look for in a product, in a team, and even the crucial term sheets, teams definitely had much food for thought.

Key quotes are:

“Buy the smallest amount of runway early on”
“Angels hunt in packs”
“You need to think about the quality of the VC that is interested in your company – be strategic about your VC partnership”

Check out our daily video blog here and previous ones here:

The teams are now working hard on their presentations, implementing the 3 days of priceless knowledge and feedback they gained over the last three days.

Tomorrow is the moment of truth when the teams get a chance to pitch in front of the Seedcamp Investors…and we are waiting with baited breath!

Good luck to all the teams!

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 2 Highlights

2009-09-22T20:37:00.019+01:00

Day 2 of Seedcamp Week was all about Product and Marketing. We kicked off the day with a panel discussion on Product, featuring a few friends from Silicon Valley. Moderated by Dave McClure of 500 Hats and “Geeks on a Plane’ fame, he poked and prodded the best out of the likes of Eric Ries, from TheLeanStartup.com, Ian Dodsworth of Tweetdeck, Ali Mitchell from Huddle and Matt Ogle of Last.fm.

A recurring theme from yesterdays panel emerged around validating your product and the importance of customer feedback.
A few juicy bits from those who know the game when it comes to Product are:

- “..what is the one thing (about your product) that will make you grow as a business”
- “there can’t be any product development without customer development”
- “Act on their (customer’s) behalf – not their request”
- “you haven’t completed an iteration until you learn something about your product”
- “Know, not guess, if the features you're building are making a difference - using split testing is essential”
- "people don't mind bait & switch IF the switch is better than the bait"
- “get customer feedback integrated into your release process so it's a NATURAL process"
- "I don't think your capital structure should drive your startup strategy"
- "all startup advice is contextual..."

After an intense discussion, teams immersed themselves in morning mentoring sessions, where no doubt the above was front of mind.

Post lunch saw us back in the main lecture theatre and being enlightened by a Masterclass from Eric Ries on The Lean Startup. Both teams and mentors were treated to his insightful trilogy of ‘Shadow Beliefs” and how these can hamper any startup from the outset. Slides from the same talk he gave at The Web 2.0 expo are embedded below.

Here’s some meat from Eric’s tough-talking Masterclass:

*Shadow Belief #1*: "We know what customers want."
*Shadow Belief #2*: "We can accurately predict the future."
*Shadow Belief #3*: "Advancing the Plan = Progress."

- "The biggest source of waste in startups is building products nobody wants."

As if that wasn’t enough food for thought, we went right into our Marketing panel on ‘Growing Users and Turning Users into Customers’ lead by our own Saul Klein. We were very lucky to have with us Thomas Gensemer, whose agency ran the Online campaign for the Barak Obama campaign, Lisa Rodwell from Moo, Andrew Hunter from Qype, Sean Ellis (advisor to Xobni and Dropbox) and Anders Hallin of Stardoll (exSkype). A well-rounded discussion was had from positioning and pricing to partnerships and SEO and the importance of email marketing and cohort analysis.

Key takeaways were:

- “email was the backbone of the Obama campaign”
- “If you’re treating everyone (customers) as equal, you’re not spending you’re marketing money wisely”
- “Critical component in marketing is pricing”
- “it’s important to develop SEO in-house and educate (employees)”
- “..wait for the right partner…the one that is the most enthusiastic, not just the big ones”
- “Partnerships can be a big distraction for a start-up”
- “…implement best practice with SEO…don’t look backwards”

The general view from the teams is that today has been one of the most valuable days so far on their Seedcamp journey. They’re taking it in and processing all the data! We look forward to the output on Thursday’s final pitches.

Bring on day 3 where we get to dig into technology issues in the morning with a Panel on ‘Scaling Through Ups and Downs’ and get thrown in front of some of the heavy hitting European investors who will talk about the ‘Ins and Outs’ of raising funding.

We’d like to say Happy Birthday to Moo who is 3 today and throwing a party tonight where no doubt many Seedcampers will be present. And a big thanks to Atlas Venture who once again treated Seedcamp to a swanky opening party in London last night…hopefully we’ll all make it back in tomorrow!

Eric Ries Lean Startup Presentation For Web 2.0 Expo April 1 2009 A Disciplined Approach To Imagining, Designing, And Building New Products

View more presentations from Eric Ries.

Seedcamp Week 2009 Day 1 Highlights

2009-09-21T17:25:00.018+01:00

Seedcamp Week started today with some stellar pitches from the 22 teams. Year to year the quality of the teams that come through Seedcamp goes from strength to strength, with this year’s teams showing unprecedented quality and confidence. Pitches were mature, on point, clear and entertaining to boot!

With our first day themed around Founders, today’s panel discussion focussed on the first 100 days of a start-up. With our own Saul Klein moderating, words of wisdom were imparted by some very prestigious entrepreneurs including Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com and mydeco), Errol Damelin (Wonga), Ian Hogarth (Songkick), Turi Munthe (Demotix) and Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt and Studio VZ).

A few recurring key points, takeaways and quotes of note are:

- “Validation is key…before attempting to gain capital investment” (Errol Damelin)
- Focus - ask yourself the hard questions
- “Self- imposed deadlines can drive people towards specific goals “Turi Munthe)
- “The best deadlines are not the one’s top-down but the ones decided on that excites a whole team” (Ian Hogarth)
- “Having little investment taught us how to be lean” (Turi Munthe)
- “Sometimes not having money is an excuse not to get things done” (Lukasz Gadowski)
- “Put your self into the minds of your customers – would you trust yourself?” (Brent Hoberman)
- Sometimes “it’s about deciding what not to do” (Errol Damelin)

On Hiring:

- “Choose a team of passionate people in the same mindset and let them work on challenging things" (Brent Hoberman)
- “Good is not good enough – take only the best (people)” (Lukasz Gadowski)

After an amazing Thai-fusion lunch catered by Deliverence, twitter was awash with quotes from our afternoon Masterclass on ‘Navigating the Startup Rollercoaster’ with Hjalmar Windblah of Rebtel. Hjalmar shared he’s experiences from Sendit and Microsoft to ditching it all in to sail the world for 3 years with his family and on to his latest creation – Rebtel. This was one of the most insightful and heartfelt Masterclass given at Seedcamp Week, with direct kudos coming from Dave McClure (especially for the plethora expletives peppered throughout his talk).

Some juicy Hjalmar quotes:

“Entrepreneurship is a life-long journey”
“Be an honest, transparent and valuable startup”
“I’ve been closer more times to bankruptcy than to selling for lots of money”
“You need passion and vision, but you need to be able to execute”
“If I believe in it, I need to prove that it works”
"Creating a company is at least for 10 years, and you'll make lots of mistakes"

For the teams it was an intense morning of presenting ideas and companies that for some have been deep underground. They are busy incorporating the tons of feedback they received today from some of the best Founders in Europe and prepping for the week ahead.

Check out our front page or vimeo for daily video posts to see highlights of the day and we look forward to a day of Product and Marketing tomorrow!

Top Teams for Seedcamp Week 2009 Announced

2009-09-10T13:12:00.009+01:00

It’s hard to believe that we are about to kick off our third Seedcamp Week event. It has been a whirlwind over the past three years as we try to create a platform that helps first time entrepreneurs start and grow businesses in Europe. That’s obviously a lofty goal, and our approach has definitely been refined and adjusted as we learn more about what is most helpful. We are now focused on offering a complete program, not just a week-long event, which includes ongoing mentoring from our amazing network, events all over the world, flexible investing structures, and access to the companies and people who happen to know a thing or two about building businesses.

Here are a few quick points that help put the last three years into perspective:

• We have reviewed more than 1,500 applications
• We’ve seen teams from 53 different countries
• We have connected entrepreneurs with more than 500 mentors
• We’ve held more than 1,620 mentoring sessions
• We’ve had Mini Seedcamp events in 10 countries
• We’ve mentored more than 280 companies
• And we invested in 14 Seedcamp winners

We now look ahead to Seedcamp Week 2009 and are happy to announce that the following teams have been chosen as finalists. Across the board, we were impressed with the overall quality of submissions this year, which continues to increase, and were happy to see so many entrepreneurs thinking about the practical aspects of making money, in addition to developing game-changing ideas. At the shortlist stage, we were extremely impressed by the quality of the teams and in many cases they had the killer combination of team and product. We saw everything from marketplaces, healthcare IT, middleware, gaming analysis, and some serious AI based solutions.

Seedcamp’s regional scope also continues to grow strength to strength with five finalist hailing from CEE (Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Estonia), two from the Middle East (Jordan, Israel), teams from Austria, Germany, Belgium, France and from all across the UK including Scotland, North England, West Country, Midlands and Cambridge.

Seedcamp Week Teams:

• Advertag – London, UK
• Boxed Ice – Bromsgrove, UK
• Brainient – Bucharest, Romania
• Codility – Warsaw, Poland
• Comufy – London, UK
• Erply – Estonia
• Joobili – Budapest, Hungary
• Kukunu – London, UK
• Loc8 Solutions – Edinburgh, UK
• Patients Know Best – Cambridge, UK
• Petsicon – Berlin, Germany
• Plug in SEO – London, UK
• ShoutEm – Zagreb, Croatia
• T27 Systems (Pearl Systems) – Bristol, UK
• Talasim.com – Amman, Jordan
• Teachable – London, UK
• Vooices – Wigan, UK
• VouChaCha – London, UK
• Wondergraphs – Leuven, Belgium
• World on a Hanger – London, UK
• YubiTech – Ramat Gan, Israel

Along with the 21 finalists, we’re very happy to have Kwaga from France and Platogo from Austria joining us at this year’s Seedcamp. These teams are winners from our Mini Seedcamp program earlier in the year and will benefit from the intensive week long mentoring and networking with the rest of the teams.

Thanks again to the hundreds of companies that submitted their ideas for Seedcamp this year. We really appreciate the time you spent thinking through your new ventures, and hope that you continue on your entrepreneurial pursuits! If you missed this opportunity to apply to Seedcamp, we are starting again with Mini Seedcamps in January 2010. And the best of luck to the Final 21 teams!

# # #

Applications to Seedcamp Week just closed - What did we see?

2009-08-25T17:30:00.011+01:00

48 days later and applications for Seedcamp Week 2009 are closed. We believe the startups submitted represent a cross section of what is emerging from EMEA. So what have we found?

Quantity is the most obvious measure, but one we don't like to shout about as it doesn't mean much on its own, plus we don't like to boast. That said we are happy to announce that application numbers are similar to last year's - downturn, what downturn? Considering TechCrunch's graph of doom (see below), which shows a fall in startups founded, bottoming out around the new year - we think this is remarkably good news. Additionally, applicants came from over 40 countries highlighting that entrepreneurs are very active all across Europe and that teams want to startup here.

The graph of applications over time resembles the famous hockey stick curve - almost half of the submissions were received on the last day! Last Sunday must have been a busy day for startups over Europe...

There are many other trends we want to extract from the application data, such as; where are the teams from? what tools are they using? and what are their business models? When compared to previous years applications this could cast an interesting light on the state of and trends in European technology startups. Seedcamp's current Fellow, Mirwais, is working on some of these questions so we hope to regale you with the answers soon.

Finally, this is a really exciting time for us. Seedcamp has now backed 14 companies, and over the past year we have got to know some cool nascent founders from all over Europe. Hence we are excited to be starting the processes which select the next batch of teams we will be working with at Seedcamp Week and beyond.

Seedcamp Week 2009 - Key Mentors Attending

2009-08-05T15:29:00.014+01:00

Another year and another great list of mentors have already signed up for Seedcamp Week 2009. As most of you know, our goal is to bring together up and coming entrepreneurs with experienced company builders from the tech industry and the world’s top investors. We try to achieve a balance of different geographies and different backgrounds and look for mentors who have started or grown their own companies and understand the unique challenges facing entrepreneurs today. We also bring investors in who can provide practical advice, not just on raising VC money, but what to do once you have it.

We’re really happy to announce that the following mentors are on board for Seedcamp Week this September. We’ll be adding more to the list in the next two months, but couldn’t resist sharing a few of these great names with you now.

• Alex Ljung – founder of Soundcloud (Germany)
• Brent Hoberman – founder of Lastminute.com and MyDeco, now partner at PROfounders Capital (UK)
• Charles Grimsdale – founding partner at Eden (UK)
• Danny Rimer – partner at Index Ventures (UK)
• Dave McClure – Founders Fund, Angel investor (US)
• Erol Damelin – founder of Wonga (UK)
• Fred Destin – partner at Atlas Ventures (Switzerland)
• Fred Wilson – Union Square Ventures (US)
• Hjalmar Windblah – founder of Rebtel (UK)
• James Bilefeld – ex CEO Openx, head of Digital at Conde Nast (UK)
• Kristian Segerstrale – founder of Glu Mobile and Playfish (UK)
• Lorenz Bogaert – founder of Netlog (Belgium)
• Lukas Gadowski – founder of Spreadshirt (Germany)
• Sara Murray – founder of buddi and member of the Technology Strategy Board (UK)
• Yossi Vardi – angel investor (Israel)

To get an idea of how many great mentors we’re expecting in September, check out the list of who has joined us in the past.

If you’re an entrepreneur out there with a great idea, want to get advice from some of the best mentors around, and get a real jumpstart for your startup, apply now for Seedcamp Week 2009.

Important Seedcamp dates
• Early August: first round of mentors announced
• August 24: applications close
• September 21 – 25: Seedcamp Week in London

About Seedcamp

Seedcamp is a program that was started by Saul Klein (of Video Island, Skype, Index Ventures, and The Accelerator Group) and Reshma Sohoni to support the entrepreneurial community in Europe – this includes companies starting in Europe or businesses in the US interested in expanding to the European market. Seedcamp puts the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs in front of a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists. The main event of the year is Seedcamp Week, held in London, but the program also hosts smaller events throughout Europe and in Silicon Valley. In addition, they provide ongoing mentoring and support for the annual Seedcamp Week winners.

Seedcamp is in its third year and has so far invested in 14 companies including Zemanta, MyBuilder, Kublax, and uberVU. Click here for a full list of previous winners:

2007
2008

Seeding ideas Round 2

2009-08-03T17:59:00.004+01:00

As the application process enters its final 3 weeks, we thought it was time for a 2nd post on a few more ideas we’d like to see entrepreneurs tackling.

Advertising performance – Better tracking systems for ad performance, enabling proper attribution of value to the contributions of different ads seen at different points on the customer journey towards purchase. On whichever side of the online ad market you look at, this would be much better than the current last cookie wins solution

Targeting systems – whether it’s behavioral, semantic, heat sensing, or the like... less obtrusive but generally more effective targeting systems for ads. We've seen the great success of Targeting 1.0 and with more conversations and data opening up through social media or more open systems, I have to believe these trends can be leveraged across improved targeting systems

Lead generation for high value services – lead generation can often be quite lucrative and can get quickly to significant revenues with little capital requirement. The key here is obvious but important that these are truly high value services and the lead is highly relevant, measurable, and effective

Solutions for SMEs – there are thousands of small businesses across Europe that are underserved now and the unique nature of doing business in each country in Europe makes it particularly attractive for a company to develop localized products they can then expand throughout their region. While we are looking for globally targeted ideas, we'd like to see more entrepreneurs taking on the challenge of localizing to fit the particular market needs

Productivity apps - In these times when old style businesses are trying to improve productivity and reduce costs, we'd like to see more applications addressing their needs. These could be concentrated in a very specific vertical where the methods of doing things are outdated, inefficient or very costly - or more generally aimed. What we need to see more of is not just tech or geek tools but tools that can be used in the real world

Again, these are a few thoughts we've been ruminating over here this summer at Seedcamp. But if you are working on some of these areas or other sectors where you see a lot of opportunity emerging, maybe 3 weeks is just enough time to submit that application!

Help is a 2-way street

2009-07-29T16:25:00.008+01:00

I've been reading a few posts lately from Sarah Lacy or Paul Jozefak about how tough it is for startups in Europe. While I agree that startups need easier fundraising opportunities, I also think the ball is in our court, this goes for Seedcamp companies as well as all the other startups.

We're not doing enough to share learnings, reach out to each other, and generally take time out to help the many people and companies that help us. I think it's a huge disservice European startups are doing to themselves and I don't understand why this is. I also believe it's one of the key ingredients in creating a tighter community and ultimately lowering the hurdles towards executing and iterating faster - another key advantage I see from Valley companies over those in Europe.

There are some notable exceptions like Moo , Songkick , Zemanta , Ubervu so big thanks to you guys. But all in all, thinking beyond one's own startup is in high order.

So, here's a call out to European startups to set a better example. We've created a Business tools Wiki to help startups in Europe, US, or anywhere really to put up content that they used themselves and found very useful. The idea is for you guys to help each other and therefore hopefully shorten the learning curve on using some very beneficial tools. So, please do use it and the more you contribute the better it will be for you!

Otherwise, would be happy to hear thoughts from you on whether you agree or you think I'm off the mark.

Activity in the Seedcamp Forums

2009-07-14T10:45:00.004+01:00

A picture perfect exchange occurred the other day on the forums. You know the story, developer meets designer, start creating a prototype, and apply to Seedcamp Week...

We have been overwhelmed by the response from teams interested in Seedcamp Week since applications opened earlier this week. We figured lots of you would have questions and comments that would benefit yourselves and other teams. So, we put together the forums for you to get advice, ask questions and connect with other startups.

One of the teams from last year used the community in an interesting and effective way, Decisions for Heroes crowd sourced their application, earning them a place at Seedcamp Week. An exchange we would like to see happen is the community helping teams compile applications.

In the coming weeks we will encourage Seedcamp winners and judges onto the forums to give top quality advice - so why not join up?

Seedcamp Week 2009 applications are now open for the next wave of European web-tech talent to apply

2009-07-07T00:38:00.028+01:00

After the great success of Mini Seedcamp 2009 that attracted nearly 500 applications from across Europe, we are very happy to announce open applications for Seedcamp Week 2009 being held from 21st to 25th September at UCL in central London. We have seen some great talent throughout Europe this past year and along with new teams we haven’t met yet, we want to encourage teams who attended or applied for previous Seedcamps to apply again to win a spot on one of the most rewarding and prestigious startup programmes Europe has to offer.

Seedcamp Week 2009 is a weeklong programme that connects 20 early stage web tech startups with over 400 highly experienced and sought after entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, product and developer experts. Along with current board members Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni, the chosen teams will also have access to Seedcamp’s recently appointed board members who have been selected for their broad range of entrepreneurial experience and international background in order to help Seedcamp deliver its mission to build a world-class, sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.

• Fred Destin, partner at Atlas Ventures
• Charles Grimsdale, co-founder of Eden Ventures
• Alex Hoye, co-founder of GoIndustry plc
• Christophe Maire, Head of Maps & Explore Unit, Nokia Services
• Dave McClure, Founders Fund
• Richard Moross, Founder and CEO, Moo.com

Through interactive panel discussions, master classes and several informal 1:1 sessions, teams will gain invaluable insight and a solid foundation to help kick-start a viable business in Europe today. Not to mention being inspired by fellow entrepreneurs and a chance to broaden their scope within the European startup ecosystem. With 99% of teams who attended the Mini Seedcamp programme recommending Seedcamp to fellow startups, teams know they’re in for the entrepreneurial ride of their lives. London based startup Lovestruck who attended Mini Seedcamp London this year says, “Let me say that I was literally taken aback by the quality of the whole set-up. It oozed quality, from the agenda to the mentors. Hats off!” You can imagine a whole weeks worth!

What do the winners get?
The 20 teams do compete for seed funding, but most importantly, garner world-class connections in the European entrepreneurial ecosystem. At the end of the week Seedcamp will invest up to €50K each in 5 teams for a small equity stake (5%-10%). On occasion, we have been known to select more than 5 teams.
The winning teams then have 3 months in London. This is where we really roll up our sleeves and begin to build a kick-ass product and company with the teams. The startups will have an opportunity to take advantage of the same ecosystem of experts that participated in the Seedcamp event through weekly dinners, topical lunches, conferences, and continued mentorship, culminating in further Demo and Investor Days. Similar to last year, we will also take the teams to the Valley to meet with companies and additional mentors who’ll be important partners and customers.

What we are looking for
We are looking for strong, quality startups that have the talent, drive and capacity to fully embrace the opportunities that participating in the Seedcamp Week programme brings. Which is receiving quality advice from top industry leaders and start building those key relationships to help drive your business. Relationships that normally take years to build, you’ll have access to in one day. Seedcamp is not an event or conference and should not be treated as a one-off. Seedcamp Week is a programme that provides an entrepreneurial ecosystem of support to strengthen and catapult your ideas into a viable business.

To really get your head around it, check out highlights from Seedcamp Week 2007/2008. Our blog posts, videos and following us on Twitter are also great way to stay connected during the run-up to Seedcamp Week and beyond.

Our own Reshma Sohoni says, “The beauty of Seedcamp is that a start-up can fill his or her Rolodex in one day with quality business contacts that it would normally take five years to build. We want to help entrepreneurs experience the whole rainbow, not just the pot of gold at the end.”

The very best of luck to all the teams applying, we can’t wait to see what you have to offer! For more information on Seedcamp Week and to apply click here.

Seeding ideas for Seedcamp 2009

2009-07-03T12:05:00.006+01:00

Now that twitter is awash with chatter about the opening of applications for Seedcamp Week ’09, we thought we’d put in our 2c about a few sectors we believe are worthy of startups tackling. As we’re all about seeding, I stress that these are a few thoughts to get you guys talking/working. We encourage and duly welcome the many other crucial problems you are working to solve. Also, just working on these does not take place of having a strong team and convincing us of your ability to execute and deliver a great product or service!

I asked a handful of investors, thinkers, and entrepreneurs what are some critical areas where they can see startups being in the right position to offer solutions and having the capacity to go at it on their own. Here's 3 I'll start with and continue next week.

Marketplaces - this is one area that is actively being invested in by both early and late stage investors and the next evolution is starting to happen. First-time marketplaces like referrals and builders are emerging as the recession puts pressure on cutting costs and moving things to digital as quickly as possible. And older online marketplaces are moving on as well, including social media, real-time search, and other advances that take them to the next stage and eek out ever more efficiences and customer satisfaction. And as I've presented in the past, there's real money to be made here.

Presence and location – There are a myriad of point solutions and so many channels as to confuse the most savvy amongst us. We'd like to see startups tackling the challenge of bringing this into one holistic solution - with presence, device, and location awareness all rolled into one along with the ease of choosing the channel to interact whether it be twitter or sms or facebook.

Identity control management - Again, the challenge here is to bring this all together but we'd like to see more complete solutions around identity theft, privacy, and access control. I worked in M&A 10 years ago and this was still an issue. In all things security, there were too many point solutions and a few software powerhouses that usually just picked off these companies. And integration always proves hard. We'd like to therefore see more complete solutions.

So, if you are a startup and you think you've got some of these challenges cracked, we look forward to reading your applications for Seedcamp Week '09.

I'll be continuing next week with more seeds of thought so I encourage you to comment here or write to us directly at info@seedcamp.com or apply next week with your own killer startup ventures.

New Seedcamp Forums!

2009-07-02T14:31:00.005+01:00

http://forums.seedcamp.com

After the previous forums, using the now abandoned Beast Forum technology, began to suffer massive amounts of obscene spam attacks a unanimous decision was taken to replace them with up-to-date technology.

Although we didn't do badly with the old forums (I added word filters and post censors to the ruby source code) these ones should be much easier to secure and maintain.

You will need to re-register with the new forums.

What other future developments can you hope to see? Quite a lot over the next few months. I've been hard at working fixing, fonting, and fudging the old Application System into the New Application System. In a strange case of the-early-bird-missing-the-worm syndrome, people have been applying before we've opened the system for submissions! They must be really keen to attend the "APPLICATION TEST JUDGING" event that's being hosted at 0:00:00 on 1st January 1970.

Seedcamp startups nominated for TechCrunch Europa Awards

2009-06-26T17:11:00.006+01:00

TechCrunch Europe is on a mission to report, analyse and support the EU technology startup ecosystem. It is therefore timely that they have recently announced the Europa awards to honour the best startup talent going.

Seedcamp travels Europe seeking and supporting the best early stage startups and are proud to see many of these nominated for awards. Below is a list of Seedcamp teams vying for a Europa, so go on, vote for them!

Best European Web Application Or Service
Kublax (Seedcamp Week 07)
ShoutEm (Ljubljana 08)
Squareclock (Paris 08)
Stardoll (Seedcamp Week 07)
Stupeflix (Seedcamp Week 08)
Toksta (Seedcamp Week 08)
TripWolf (Seedcamp Week 08)
Twidox (Berlin 08)
Watzatsong (Paris 08)
Yoose (Seedcamp Week 08)
Zemanta (Seedcamp Week 08)

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Asgoodas.nu (Berlin 09)
BaseKit (Seedcamp Week 08)
Boxed Ice (London 09)
Clear Applications (Tel Aviv09)
Devunity (Tel Aviv 09)
Kvittar (Helsingborg 09)
PaperC (Berlin 09)
Peeralism (Helsingborg 09)
SimilarWeb (Tel Aviv 09)
Scred (Seedcamp Week 08)
Soup.io (Seedcamp Week 08)
Studdex (Berlin 09)
Vooch (Berlin 09)
VouChaCha (London 09)
Wozaik (Paris 09)

Best Social Innovation
Decisions For Heroes (Seedcamp Week 08)
School of Everything (Seedcamp Week 07)

Best Enterprise / B2B Startup
Programeter (Warsaw 09)
Yasmo Live (Ljubljana 09)

Best Mobile Startup
GymFu (London 09)

We are also proud to announce Reshma Sohoni (CEO of Seedcamp) and Saul Klein (Chairman of Seedcamp) are both up for nominations in the Best Investor Personality category.

See you at the awards ceremony…

We couldn't have done it without our Seedcamp Supporters

2009-06-24T11:25:00.006+01:00

As our Mini Seedcamp 2009 tour has ended and we start gearing up for Seedcamp Week in September, we wanted to reach out and send a special thanks to all of our Seedcamp Sponsors and Supporters who have helped us achieve great milestones in building the entrepreneurial ecosystem across Europe in 2009.

Without their hard work, dedication and belief in the Seedcamp programme, we'd probably be pitching tents across camp sites in Europe and attracting wildlife, instead of holding Mini Seedcamps in uber cool and prestigious venues and attracting the best web-tech talent Europe has to offer.

And so, in order of the Mini Seedcamp tour we would like to send our heartfelt thanks to:

Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv:
The.co.lis.
IDC Herzliya

Mini Seedcamp Paris:
Elaia Partners
Ballou PR
Cap.digital
Microsoft
Orrick
Sun Start Up Essentials

Mini Seedcamp Warsaw:
The Agora Center
Aula
Future Invest
Gazeta.pl
Imago Public Relations
SID Banka
Sun Startup Essentials

Mini Seedcamp London:
NESTA
Microsoft
Six Degrees PR
Sun Startup Essentials
Brown Rudnick
Orrick

Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg:
Arctic Startup
City of Helsingborg
Cloudberry Communications
Kullaflyg
MINC
Navet
Öhrlings Price Waterhouse Coopers
Joachim Samuelsson, Biomain
Setterwalls
SHIP
Swedish Startups
Oresund Entrepreneurship Academy

Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana:
Club of Slovenian Business Angels
Poteza Ventures
Eagle Ventures
Futura PR
netokracija
RSG Ventures
Sun Startup Essentials
Technology Park Llubjana
Videolectures.net
Zemanta
UKTI

Mini Seedcamp Berlin:
bwl24.net
gruenderlexikon
gruenderszene
Berlin School of Economics and Law
Microsoft
Schwartz PR
Sun Startup Essentials
UKTI
VC Magazin

We have met many amazing teams and mentors along the way and we hope to see and work again with you next year and beyond!

uberVU launches API - ContextVoice

2009-06-18T12:35:00.007+01:00

The guys at uberVU have been uber busy launching their API, ContextVoice. Besides drawing some attention to their launch, we think it's important for other startups to take note of the approach as well. The team noticed that much of the attention and interest was in other companies wanting to use their API and so they listened to their users and created a dedicated service that addresses customers' needs much more directly and they did this with great efficiency. Instead of clinging to a way of doing things they liked, they've adopted an approach that delivers to users what they most want. Good luck uberVU!

ContextVoice is an API that tracks comments from social sites around a URL close to real-time. If a certain story, picture or video gets shared on social sites, we get the mentions and comments from those social sites around that specific story, picture or video. For people familiar with uberVU, it allows you to do everything uberVU does, just as an API, so you can use the data inside your own app. (More about the service here)

But why should you care? As conversations make up a larger part of the Web, a lot of Web services want to tap into people's conversations. Disqus is using ContextVoice to give their users social comments around blog posts. GReactions is using ContextVoice to get social comments around stories in Google Reader. Some other companies want to use ContextVoice to build analytics on top of the data, mash conversational data with financial data and sell that to their customers.

The use cases are many, but the infrastructure to do that yourselves is very complex, costly and time consuming to develop. That's why we have a free offering of 5000 API calls/day that startups can use to prototype applications without the hassle of building web crawlers and conversational engines on their own.

For more help on figuring out what you can do with ContextVoice and how to go about implementing your ideas drop them a line at hello@contextvoice.com.

For more on the launch announcement click here.

Mini Seedcamp Berlin Winners

2009-06-10T10:22:00.008+01:00

Mini Seedcamp Berlin was a huge success yesterday at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. The 20 teams learned from some of Europe's leading entrepreneurs and innovators including Alexander Ljung, CEO of Soundcloud, Oliver Beste from Founders Link, and the angel investor Stefan Glaenzer.

So who won!

asgoodas.nu
PaperC
Platogo
studdex

TechCrunch have written about all the teams here
Check out the hive of activity at the Seedcamp on twitter.

Thanks to Stephanie and the E.Factor crew for hosting an afterparty so good that the police ended proceeding sometime after midnight.

Seedcamp would like to thanks all the supporters and sponsors of the event. Special thanks to our hosts Oliver Beste, Christophe Maire and Prof. Sven Ripsas of the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Mini Seedcamp Berlin Top 20 Teams shows our Mini Seedcamp Tour ’09 will go out with a bang!

2009-06-01T13:38:00.025+01:00

With teams applying from as far as Turkey and Greece to snap up a place on the Mini Seedcamp programme, final teams hail from Austria, Germany, Romania, France and Poland. With Mini Seedcamp Berlin being the final hub of our whirlwind Mini Seedcamp ’09 tour, we are excited to announce the final 20 teams for Mini Seedcamp Berlin taking place on 9th June at Berlin School of Economics and Law. With trends towards mobile apps, education consolidation and social media, it looks to be an interesting and rewarding day for all. With Seedcamp Week coming up in September, we are looking forward to challenging the teams and working closely with them on the day to help steer them in the right direction and build long lasting relationships in the European entrepreneurial network.

And here are the lucky 20:

asgoodas.nu
CashCollie
cloudControl
Conangel
earthfaves
Elefanta.pl
mapegg
MediaViews
MendMyPC
mission:entertainment
Move&Play
PaperC
petsicon
Platogo
Softicator
studdex
TaskWriter
vooch
TwiMarket
Wozaik

The 20 teams will be engaging with distinguished mentors and have the opportunity to learn and network with 50 local and European industry movers and shakers including VC’s, Investors and product specialists in HR, PR, Product and Marketing.

The Mini Seedcamp programme is aimed at recognizing fresh web-tech, software and mobile talent from across the EMEA and to help immerse these teams within the European entrepreneurial ecosystem that will help them build a viable and sustainable business in future.

Remember teams, preparation is key and will help you get the most out of Mini Seedcamp. We urge you to once again watch our videos , follow us on twitter and read blog posts from past winners to gain advice on how you can squeeze every drop of knowledge and learning from the awesome set of mentors you’ll be engaged with on the day.

Media from Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana

2009-05-20T16:21:00.016+01:00

Last week's Mini Seedcamp in Ljubljana saw some great content created which we wanted to share with you. This includes photos, talks about getting media coverage, winning Seedcamp and building global tech companies - read on to check it out.

At the OpenCoffee in conjunction with www:h held at the eclectic meetup space/computer museum Kiberpipa prior to the Mini Seedcamp, Dragos from UberVU gave an insightful talk on How to Win Seedcamp.

How To Win Seedcamp

View more presentations from Seedcamp .

You can view the video from that talk and one by Reshma, Seedcamp's CEO, talking about how to build global tech startups below.

During the Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana, Mike Butcher from TechCrunch Europe gave a great talk on dealing with the media. Thanks to Video Lectures you can now watch it in it's glory including the accompanying slides.

Mike Butcher, Editor of TechCrunch Europe - Dealing with the Media

There were also some keen photographers in the audience such as Hannes a. Schwetz, thanks to him for taking these great snaps.

How we love to see teams grow!

2009-05-19T14:04:00.005+01:00

Seedcamp 2008 finalists 'Decisions For Heroes' launches to today, with a software programme aimed to help 999 rescuers across the board to make better decisions that will save more lives.

Identifying that better decisions save lives, the software Decisions For Heroes was created to monitor response readiness, team availability, valid qualifications, and experience. Armed with a laptop and internet connection, 999 responders can record the details of their rescue operations and training exercises.

The software automatically performs analytical charting, draws heatmaps, and benchmarks reports to outline areas of strength, weakness and expertise, and organisations are granted the ability to share data and perform paperless reporting between their teams. Easy-to-generate statistics can be used to observe patterns, educate potential casualties, and reduce accidents in a community....click to read more.

Congratulations Decision For Heroes!