seedcamp

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

2009-07-07T00:38:00.024+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!

Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana Winners!

2009-05-15T17:11:00.009+01:00

Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana saw 20 of the best early stage startups from all over the region participate in an action packed day of mentoring and presentations.

A popular vote decided the three winners who are (in alphabetical order)... Shoutem, Viidea and Yasmo Live.

For the first time this year at a mini event we selected a team to come directly to the interviews for Seedcamp Week in London - this was Viidea. Their success really is a testament to the high quality of teams we saw from the region.

Mike Butcher, Editor of Techcrunch Europe gave a fantastic talk on dealing with the media - we hope to get this online ASAP as it is knowledge every startup should know.

We have already seen some great blogs ( http://bit.ly/15hFx5 http://bit.ly/aLsEG) and tweets about the proceedings (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sclj). Also watch Slovenian National TV for special reports on Monday and Tuesday, read Delo on Monday for an interview with Reshma, and Dnevnik should be publishing an interview with Robin Klein (TAG) in a few weeks!

Thanks to all our sponsors, supporters, mentors and teams. A special thanks to Zemanta for being our hosts, making it all happen, and showing us a good time Slovenian style!

Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg Winners

2009-05-06T20:17:00.005+01:00

Yesterday saw the 20 tech savvy finalists present their companies, listen to the excellent seed investment focused panel discussion moderated by Wivan-Kristina Sandberg from Rapidus, and also be mentored by over 50 of the best mentors from the Nordics and Seedcamp’s wider European network. Arctic startup posted a fab roundup here.

But who were the three winners!?

Congratulations to Kvittar, Myfi.net and Peerialism who won our participant led vote and are receive the accolade of being Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg winners.

At Seedcamp we like to think that all the teams were winners as they got to participate in the Mini Seedcamp – as a testament to this check out the hundreds of really positive tweets http://bit.ly/10ctI http://bit.ly/ishRx

Thanks to all the mentors, teams, sponsors, supporters, and local hosts Jonas Lundstrom from SHIP, Kåre Moberg from the Oresund Entrepreneurship Academy, and Joachim Samuelsson from Biomain who has been a key supporter of Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg.

Mini Seedcamp Berlin – Last chance on the Mini Seedcamp tour for web-tech talent to apply!

2009-05-04T10:42:00.015+01:00

While Mini Seedcamp Berlin marks the end of the official Mini Seedcamp tour, it also marks the beginning of preparations for the big Seedcamp Week coming in September and so we are calling on all web-tech, mobile and software talent from the DACH region, Italy and throughout Europe to apply to Mini Seedcamp Berlin and increase their chances of validation and exposure for Seedcamp Week.

Mini Seedcamp Berlin will be held on 9th June, at the Berlin School of Economics. Seedcamp was in Berlin last year and we were very impressed by the startups, in fact two teams, Tosksta and Soup, went on to be Seedcamp Week 2008 winners! So, we are encouraging strong, quality startups from the DACH region to apply including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and thought we’d extend the invitation to Italy too. Continuing our open door policy, any EMEA-based startup with the next big web tech idea can also apply.

We are looking for strong, quality startups that have the talent, drive and capacity to fully embrace the opportunities that participating in a Mini Seedcamp 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. Mini Seedcamps are not a conference, but a programme that provides an entrepreneurial ecosystem of support to strengthen and catapult your ideas into a viable business.

Check out our blog posts, videos and follow us on Twitter to see what we’re looking for, what teams get out of it and what you can do to improve your chances in winning a spot at one of the most prestigious and rewarding startup programmes in Europe today. Spending the time to fill out the application comprehensively is key and communicating to us clearly your idea and strengths of your team is critical for consideration, so no skimping here!

Mini Seedcamp Berlin will connect 20 top quality, early stage web tech startups with over 50 regional and European esteemed, sought after and highly experienced entrepreneurs, investors and developers that will blow your socks off. From the likes of our own Saul Klein, Oliver Beste of Founderslink, Lukasz Gadowski and Christophe Maire, entrepreneur and Head of Maps & Explore Unit, Nokia Services.

Through an interactive panel discussion and informal 1:1 sessions, teams benefit from engaging with and listening to a variety of distinguished mentors and industry leaders from PR, HR, product development, business development, marketing to name but a few. All at the top of their game – all there to help you.

You 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.

Our goal is always to help as many great startups as we can to have that initial capital to kick-start their business and, of course, to make the most relevant relationships possible. As such, Seedcamp may also invest through the Mini Seedcamps or the teams may be invited to apply for the Seedcamp Week in London in September 2009, whereby 20 teams are selected from around the EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for startups.

Applications are now open and close at midnight on Monday, 25th May 2009. For full details, updates and how to apply go to the mini site.

20 hopeful teams get ready to embrace Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana

2009-05-04T10:03:00.014+01:00

As we gear up for the final stretch in our Mini Seedcamp tour, we are happy to announce the final 20 teams for Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana taking place on May 14th at Tehnoloski Park Ljubljana. The region produced some of the most early stage ideas we’ve come across yet, with a show of promise that Seedcamp can’t wait to support and nurture. The teams have promising technical talent and we are looking to challenge them to develop innovative and globally addressable solutions. We look forward to encouraging the emerging entrepreneurs, many who applied from Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Vienna, Austria, Bosnia Herzegovina, Zagreb, Italy and even the UK.

And here are the lucky 20:

Activis d.o.o.
BENS - Buinac & Co., k.d.
Brihten
ComfortClick
Elaphe
FM Virtual
LiveNetLife
Longnet
Mala radionica interneta d.o.o.
Nexus d.o.o.
Ocean 4D
seekda GmbH
ShoutEm
Symbolya
Viidea d.o.o.
Vilango
Wondeer
www.mojmag.com
Xohana
Yasmo Live

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.

We look forward to meeting all of the teams face to face and to help them lay the foundations to launch a kick-ass startup. 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 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.

20 Top-Notch Nordic Teams make the final cut for Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg

2009-04-28T10:16:00.011+01:00

Our first ever Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg attracted a variety of interesting ideas from rich media and cloud computing, to rich interfaces and a few mobile ideas well. With the majority of applications coming from Denmark and Sweden, we also had a few notables from Norway, Finland, Israel and Estonia as part of our final top 20.

And so without further ado, here they are:

1Calendar
ambadoo
AskYourWorld.com
Blazing Red
bluewalks
Goodway
Kvittar
Link-Republic
Myfi.net
Nudge
Önders et Gonas
Peerialism
Red Apple Apartments
Sagastream
Senseboard AB
Tailorbet
The Cloudo Company
whynot
Witsbits AB
YubiTech

The 20 teams will converge on 5th May at the SHIP in Helsingborg, where they’ll be able to show us what they’ve got and engage with distinguished mentors and learn from 50 local and European industry movers and shakers including VC’s, Investors and product specialists in HR, PR, Product and Marketing.

We can’t wait to see you all in Helsingborg and remember teams - prep, prep, prep!

Business models for startups

2009-04-22T13:19:00.007+01:00

Yesterday was another great start-up day in London as we spent the morning getting to know the 5 winners of Seedcamp London a little bit better and in the afternoon, headed to Techcrunch Geek 'n Rolla . Out of the 350 in the audience, probably 70-80% were early stage startups so we knew we had to deliver a relevant message to this group particularly. The speakers were mostly local startups (Ian from Songkick and Lesley from Hubdub and experienced founders and advisors like William Reeve and Fred Destin and I think that's what made the presentations so powerful. This means that from a speaker point of view, we had to deliver useful and significant value and knowledge, and from the audience point of view, we could relate and trust the speakers. This is one of the secret sauce elements that drives momentum in the Valley ecosystem and I am immensely pleased to say, we are seeing that same momentum here in London. The quality of the presentations I saw were excellent, succinct, and very useful.

I gave a 15 minute presentation on Business Models for startups. As per request, here it is below. My main objective was to spend as little time talking about Advertising as possible, and to give a lot of examples of emerging companies and success stories of bigger companies that utilize the business models that best leverage the customer and the value proposition by the company. Here are a few key takeaways:

Talk to other startups - learn from each other. Share best practices and those horror stories
Find your "best fit" - don't just throw out buzzwords b/c they'll impress someone. What model fits the long term growth of your company and meets customers' view of the value you are delivering
Think through the biz model early on. It not just focuses you on the viability of the business but focuses you on the customer/user and what value you're bringing to them
Talk to other startups :-)

What I'd like folks reading this to do is provide more examples in the comments of startups that are using each of these models and off course feel free to list others that aren't here. I was not trying to be exhaustive in my list. Am sure your co-startups will appreciate any advice

| Get your Presentation Pack

Mini Seedcamp London Winners!

2009-04-20T21:51:00.005+01:00

Today's Mini Seedcamp London was simply awesome. A packed out day with almost 100 mentors, 20 teams, and a busy Seedcamp team bringing it all together.

Without further ado the winning teams are:
CityOdds Ltd
GymFu
Patients Know Best
Sentry Wireless
Timetric (Inkling Software)

Tomorrow they will be presenting and answering questions from Seedcamp's investment committee who will consider making an investment. Check the blog soon for an update on how that went.

Thanks to all our sponsors - Sixdegrees, UKTI, Microsoft, Orrick, NESTA, Sun, Brown Rudnick, and Robert for flying all the way from Warsaw to be our photographer!

Mini Seedcamp London Attracts Teams From All Over

2009-04-16T17:23:00.005+01:00

The most recent crop of Mini Seedcamp finalists show that while the venue may in based in London, not all the teams who applied are. In the final 20 are teams from France, Ireland, Lithuania, Denmark, Romania and Estonia!

Our message is loud and clear – teams can apply to ANY mini Seedcamp.

London is clearly a popular hub. We have seen a surge of mentors and teams express interest in attending the event. Monday is going to be an exciting day – keep check on the blog for updates.

We will be encouraging mentors and teams to attend OpenCoffee on Tuesday morning so why not come and join in? Sign up here http://www.meetup.com/opencoffee/

Top 20 Teams for Mini Seedcamp London

2009-04-14T15:28:00.009+01:00

With a record-breaking number of applications for Mini Seedcamp London, we are very happy to finally announce our top 20 teams that will be strutting their stuff to an esteemed group of mentors on 20th April 2009 at NESTA.

The quality and diversity of the submissions was superb, with our Seedcamp twitter page peppered with positive tweets and excitement from our mentors on the teams.

Without further ado, our 20 chosen teams are:

Art and You
Boxed Ice
Brainient
BraveNewTalent.com
CityOdds Ltd
Comufy.com (Chootta Ltd)
CovertCandy
GymFu
Imagga Bulgaria Ltd.
iPlatform
jobwhizz.com
Lila.io
Lovestruck
Patients Know Best
Plink
Sentry Wireless
sfeed
Timetric (Inkling Software)
VouChaCha

The teams will have a chance to show off their talent and engage with distinguished mentors along and learn from over 70 top European industry movers and shakers including VC’s, Investors and product specialists in HR, PR, Product and Marketing.

We look forward to meeting the teams face to face and being impressed by the awesome line up of web-tech talent and mentors the region has to offer.

The message is reaching its audience

2009-04-07T12:51:00.007+01:00

It's a great feeling when you're working hard to get a few messages across and you reach a point when you can see your target market starting to pick them up. As Seedcamp grows up, we've been evolving our mission and our communication and it's taking hold.

We've been positively astounded by the over 100 applications submitted to the Mini Seedcamp London and from the wide distribution of countries where they are coming from: Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Estonia, Denmark, Romania, Hungary, France, Gibraltar, Russia, and even Australia. Thanks for the interest and good luck to all teams. The competition will be fierce and that's a great thing!!

Diversity is great and we've been encouraging teams that no matter where they are that they should apply to a regional mini Seedcamp that fits them best in terms of ease of reach, timing for their business, and market they are going after
A French team that came to Tel Aviv, a Romanian team to Paris, and the Estonian, Hungarian, and Lithuanian teams that drove 6 hours to Warsaw all would agree that they benefited enormously. And they have impressed us with their drive and passion

It's not just about the money. Seedcamp is even more benefical for the network it opens up to you and the immeansely valuable practical advice you get. You can't buy that kind of attention and focus from such a relevant and experienced group
Increasingly, as teams presenting at Mini Seedcamp share with us, they'd off course like to win and get funded, bu they're there to be challenged about their business, product, model, and off course to get that extra boost of confidence that 30-40 very bright people vetting your idea can give you.

So, we'll keep pushing these messages and thanks to the 60 teams from all over Europe and Israel that we've already met in 2009 and who've helped us spread this message. To those who missed this round, please apply to Helsingborg or Ljubljana in the next few weeks.

We’re on a mission - Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana applications now open!

2009-03-30T09:18:00.006+01:00

The Mini Seedcamp mission continues with applications now open for Mini Seedcamp Ljubjana being held at the wonderful Tehnoloski Park Ljubljana on 14th May 2009. We are encouraging strong, quality startups from Slovenia, the Balkans and surrounding regions to apply, including Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia. Continuing our open door policy, any EMEA-based startup with next big web tech idea can also apply.

With local startup Zemanta being a Seedcamp Week 2007 winner, we are very excited about coming to the region and seeing what the local web tech talent has to offer. We are looking for strong, quality startups that have the talent, drive and capacity to fully embrace the opportunities that participating in a Mini Seedcamp 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. Mini Seedcamps are not a conference, but an entrepreneurial ecosystem of support to strengthen and catapult your ideas into a viable business.

Check out our blog posts, videos and follow us on Twitter to see what we’re looking for, what teams get out of it and what you can do to improve your chances in winning a spot at one of the most prestigious and rewarding web tech events in Europe today. Spending the time to fill out the application comprehensively is key and communicating to us clearly your idea and strengths of your team is critical for consideration, so no skimping here!

Mini Seedcamp Ljubjana will connect 20 top quality, early stage web tech startups with over 50 regional and European esteemed, sought after and highly experienced entrepreneurs, investors and developers that will blow your socks off. From the likes of our own Saul Klein, to Ales Spetic and Andraz Tori of Zemanta and many more.

Through an interactive panel discussion and informal 1:1 sessions, teams benefit from engaging with and listening to a variety of distinguished mentors and industry leaders from PR, HR, product development, business development, marketing to name but a few. All at the top of their game – all there to help you.

You 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.

Our goal is always to help as many great startups as we can to have that initial capital to kick-start their business and, of course, to make the most relevant relationships possible. As such, Seedcamp may also invest through the Mini Seedcamps or the teams may be invited to apply for the Seedcamp Week in London in September 2009, whereby 20 teams are selected from around the EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for startups.

Applications are now open and close at midnight on Monday, 27th April 2009. For full details, updates and how to apply go to the mini site.

Wozaik gives great advice on pitching, post Seedcamp Paris

2009-03-26T10:12:00.009Z

Rodolphe Ardanton from Wozaik, who were one of the Mini Seedcamp Paris winners in February this year, wrote an amazing Seedcamp feedback blog post and more important, what they gained from it to improve their "art of pitching".

For all the future startup hopefuls applying to Mini Seedcamps or beyond, this is a must read!

About pitching (or the complete Seedcamp feedback)
by Rodolphe Ardant, posted March 24th, 2009

I think it is time to write our feedback on the Seedcamp day. Seedcamp was a really unique event as it provided us the opportunity to meet more than 50 experts in our field (entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, consultants…) and to be challenged on our vision. We have had dozens of insightful and relevant feedback on our product, our business model, our strategy… but I think that the best practice we experienced there was the “art of pitching”.   

The coffee pitch
The day started at 9:00 am at the Microsoft Technology Center. We were welcomed by a small breakfast and got the “team” flag stuck on our chest. Tagged like that, we had no other solution than to experiment our coffee pitch.
The goal of this one is to awake your future audience (coffee is there to help you!) to get its attention during the coming elevator pitch. It is also the occasion to practice and correct your first mistakes (hoping that your target won’t pay to much attention to it due to the early hour).

The elevator pitch
On the stage, you have 5 minutes (and no extra sec) and you want that these 60-70 people to remember you during the whole day (and even longer!), and get a good opinion of you and of what you do. The challenge is even harder when they already heard about 18 other start-ups and had no break for almost two hours. You should definitely practice a lot for this one.

The lunch pitch
Now, if you got it right, people remember whom you are and what you do. They have in their head the single message you wanted to pass them (that you and your startup rock) during the elevator pitch, and they come to you to get deeper information. The lunch pitch is a difficult one: you have to keep talking and pitch your interlocutors, while trying to grab food everywhere to refill your batteries. If you fail eating at this time, you won’t make it until the end of the day…but it is the opportunity to have a privileged contact with the people that felt the most interested in your project.

The mentoring pitch
During the rest of the day, we had four mentoring sessions with a panel of 5-10 advisors. 40 minutes shared between two teams to pitch and ask for advice. You better get prepared also for this one, knowing who are the people you are talking to. The difficult but most interesting part comes from the questions. You have to be prepared to answer specific questions on your business, and believe me; these people are smart and quickly point out the strength/weakness of your project. You better perfectly know these points to get as much as you can of these short discussions.

The restroom pitch
Time to fresh up… but it is likely that the very famous guy you unsuccessfully tried to talk to during the whole day is the one washing his hands next to you. You cannot miss this opportunity…pitch him!

The wrap up pitch
The day is almost over, it is 9pm and your throat feels like dry paper, having pitched the whole day. You feel exhausted, and these cups of champagne seem to be the definitive answer to your throat issues. You think you have succeeded, as you have been among the five winners. But it is not over yet. The wrap up pitch is the opportunity to gather the feedbacks of your day pitches. It is also the moment when you can engage in more passionate discussions, being more deconstructed and show that you might also be a pleasant and sympathetic person.

The investors pitch
The day after, we were asked to pitch in front of the Seedcamp Investment Committee. OK, it seems that they liked our service and the team, but the question here is “should we put money in this project?" Of course they want to go deeper into your product, understand the problem you are trying to solve and the solution you propose, understand where you are in your development road map and what and when do you expect to launch. But they are also very interested on the value that their investment would procure: what are your expenses, your funding history, and how much do you need their money. You get into much further detail here than you did before, and have to be pretty convincing, as you will be highly challenged.

The TechCrunch pitch
We were then invited to pitch during the TechCrunch talk held in La Cantine during the afternoon. It was almost the same format as the elevator pitch. However we only had 3 minutes to present Wozaik. This is a “media” kind of pitch; the goal is to convince potential users. They must feel that you are building the killer app and must be eager to test your product. I think the success of this kind of pitch should be an exploding beta invite queuing list.

So how to pitch?
Even if we had an extensive two days to practice pitching, I am still a young beginner pitcher (and I must confess that most of the time Vincent was pitching). However, in a discussion with Laurent Chiozzotto, we agreed that a good early stage pitch should answer the 5 following questions, in this order:

What problem do you solve?
Who will use your service?
How do you solve the problem? (Your product/service)
Why are you doing this?
And finally, who are you?

We are definitely going to follow this advice to prepare for Mini Seedcamp Berlin pitches!

The search is on for quality Nordic startups to apply for Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg

2009-03-23T13:15:00.021Z

Nokia, ABBA, IKEA, LEGO, and saunas are just a few things the Nordics are famous for. There’s also a great pool of web tech talent mustering in the region and we can’t wait to dip into it.

Applications are now open for Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg, being held at the über cool Helsingborg SHIP on 5 May 2009, along with the help of Øresund Entrepreneurship Academy. While we are on the lookout for teams from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, we encourage any EMEA-based startup that is ready to wow us with your product or idea to apply.

We are looking for strong, quality startups that have the talent, drive and capacity to fully embrace the opportunities that participating in a Mini Seedcamp 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. Mini Seedcamps are not a conference, but an entrepreneurial ecosystem of support to strengthen and catapult your ideas into a viable business.

Check out our blog posts, videos and follow us on Twitter to see what we’re looking for, what teams get out of it and what you can do to improve your chances in winning a spot at one of the most prestigious and rewarding web tech events in Europe today. Spending the time to fill out the application comprehensively is key and communicating to us clearly your idea and strengths of your team is critical for consideration, so no skimping here!

Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg will connect 20 top quality, early stage web tech startups with over 50 regional and European esteemed, sought after and highly experienced entrepreneurs, investors and developers that will blow your socks off. From the likes of Joachim Samuelsson of Biomain along with these notables:

Hampus Jakobsson, Co-Founder & VP Business Development, TAT
Hjalmar Winbladh, CEO, Rebtel
Martin Gren, Founder and Board Director, Axis Communications
Sam Aston,CEO, Epsilon Information Technologies
Thomas Weilby Knudsen, Manager Partner, NorthCap Partners

Through an interactive panel discussion and informal 1:1 sessions, teams benefit from engaging with and listening to a variety of distinguished mentors and industry leaders from PR, HR, product development, business development, marketing to name but a few. All at the top of their game – all there to help you.

You 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.

Our goal is always to help as many great startups as we can to have that initial capital to kick-start their business and, of course, to make the most relevant relationships possible. As such, Seedcamp may also invest through the Mini Seedcamps or the teams may be invited to apply for the Seedcamp Week in London in September 2009, whereby 20 teams are selected from around the EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for startups.

Applications are now open and close at midnight on Monday, 19 April 2009. For full details, updates and how to apply go to the mini site.

New Twitter Name - seedcamp

2009-03-19T18:03:00.002Z

It's one of those things... sometimes you get so deep, it's difficult to get yourself back out. But we're doing it, we're moving our twitter account from @Seedcamp_News to @seedcamp . So, sorry to the many of you who have to re-follow us, but hope you won't mind too much. What I like is the story behind how we got the name back. So humor me will you!

A good samaritan who apparently had our @seedcamp name on twitter one day emailed us out of the blue and just handed over the name. He thought (rightly) we could do more with it than he could. In an age of ridiculous demands on prices for URLs, it's reassuring to see some kind folks out there in the Internet mist. So, now we're all well aligned between all our Flicr, Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, web identities. Feels good to have the house in order.

And all this time I thought I actually had the @seedcamp name and just didn't know which email address I signed up on. I racked my brain for weeks trying to figure out what brain cell I was using when all this went wrong. I was encouraged and tempted to contact Biz Stone to see who in the world (oops, maybe me) had the name but gotta admit, I felt my request a bit small in the grand scheme of things and so waited and waited for divine inspiration.

Luckily, that kind person did get in touch with us. So thank you to him again! And pls do follow us on @seedcamp on good ole twitter.