This is a Guest Post by TraitPerception Co-founder and CEO, Juan Cartagena
For the original article click here.
I just attended a Q&A session with Eric Schmidt (Google´s Executive Chairman and former CEO) today at Google Campus in London. There were about 150 people, all of them young entrepreneurs who want to change the world in one way or another. I felt really humbled and honored to be there, with all those bright people, at the second row, listening to one of the main changers of our world (in my opinion to the much better), over the last 10 years.
I will write on a different post this week the key learnings I got from Eric. Today however I would rather write about how lucky I feel to have my work space at the ecosystem created by Google Campus with Seedcamp. I can condense it in 3 reasons which will lead to my thesis.
1. Environment:
Before being accepted at Seedcamp my cofounders and I worked from home and met at a Cafe in Madrid every couple of days to catchup. We met as many people the first 5 months as we can meet in 2 weeks here. But it´s more than that.
The space is brilliant. Lockers, kitchen, tablefootball, pooltable, 6 meeting rooms, full wall-size whiteboards (gotta love that)… and still spaceous and quiet. I have been to a few co-working spaces which look like contact-centres. Uncomparable. This place fosters creativity, and I am quietly and happily writing this post at 9pm knowing I can stay as long as I wish.
Moreover, the UK has made enormous efforts to foster entrepreneurship from a legal and fiscal point of view. It takes a couple of days to file a company and costs near nothing, no capital growth tax on your stock options as an entrepreneur, and the same for the SEIS program for angels investing in UK companies.
2. Being at the Google Campus
Sign up at the Startup Digest London and every week you get a list of the best startup events in London. 70% are here at Google Campus, including hackatons, drinks, presentations, workshops, pitching sessions, etc. In only 3 months this has become the heart of the Startup scene in the UK. I don´t think there is a better place in the whole of Europe to catapult your business, gain visibility and meet the right people.
Today I attended this presentation with Eric, but last week I also attended a Q&A with only 20 people with Google´s CFO Patrick Pichette (key learning from him was “VCs give you money for you to spend it, so spend it quick” which made me smile). How crazy is that.
Furthermore, being in the centre of London has opened me many doors in terms of general coverage and PR, access to decision makers of international companies and investors, and CEOs of other companies. I could not dream of having such exposure from Madrid. And inviting those people to meet at Google Campus is also cool for them which makes it even easier to get meetings. Firstly, because they can meet other startups, secondly because many have not yet seen the Google Campus and they are curious, and thirdly because it´s just in the center of the City. Is there possibly a better location?
3. People in the building:
It´s not just Google´s execs walking around, it´s everyone. The IQ per capita of the people walking into this building is ridiculous…Click here for the full post
Repeat their success Do you share the same energy and passion as Frédéric della Faille, co-founder and CEO of Checkthis, the new ‘Instagram of social publishing’, whose team recently closed an impressive $910k seed round after having won Seedcamp London in January? Or, are you going to discover the US market landscape as Bluefields is currently doing with 500 Startups,
If you are ready to expand and build your service or product, go ahead and apply to Seedcamp London, as Checkthis and Bluefields did only a few months ago. Applications close at 11.59pm BST on Wednesday, 18th July. The winners of this event will get the final exclusive places at our annual flagship week in September, Seedcamp Week. This is a priceless opportunity for all our teams to refine their pitches, win new customers, form partnerships and, of course, attract further investment. The epic schedule will allow our teams to meet over 400 mentors over five days, ranging from product experts to corporates, and there will be a massive demo day finale.
Masterclass Seedcamp’s Chairman and serial investor, Saul Klein, will be hosting a masterclass on telling stories and engaging the audience via narratives, which will give several insights on how startups can use various techniques for marketing. There are many different methods that can be used, such as engaging with world-leading brands, politicians, and, of course, the media.
Mentors: Here is a small teaser to the mentors you’ll be meeting if selected
Sponsors
We are fortunate and extremely grateful to have 10gen, SoftLayer and Yammer as our event sponsors for Seedcamp London. It’s fantastic to have each of these on board, working towards hosting an epic event.
Apply Now Make sure you do not miss it: articulate your company’s vision and your progress and apply to become the winner of Seedcamp London, which will be held on August 7th.
Originally Posted on The Next Web.
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Carlos Eduardo Espinal and Scott Sage. Carlos is a Partner at Seedcamp, an early stage mentoring and investment program based in Europe. Scott is an Associate at DFJ Esprit, a leading cross-stage venture capital firm that invests from seed to late stage in European technology and media companies.
Historically, when deciding where to base their first US office, a European startup’s decision basically came down to the Bay Area or Boston – depending upon which customer segment they were serving. Up until recently, New York was nothing more than a fly over state or, at the very best, a satellite office with a small sales team.
So why are some of Europe’s hottest startups now opening up their first US office just on the other side of the pond in NYC? Why are investors increasingly coming to NYC to find the newest and most innovative start-ups? These are the questions that we’d like to address in this post.
To begin with, let’s look at the main reasons why start-ups are finding establishing a presence in NYC increasingly attractive:
Due to these compelling reasons, we believe investors are increasingly taking notice of start-ups that are based in NYC or moving to NYC from Europe.
However, it’s best to hear why NYC is so important from Entrepreneurs directly. In the words of some founders, NYC represents a key hub because:
“New York and London are deeply connected as financial centers, most of our partners operate in both locations from our perspective. The predominance of financial technology companies in the region maintains a pool of resources with deep understanding of finance. Also this maintains an ecosystem of financially oriented Angel Groups and VCs.
“There is an extremely fast-growing start-up culture that is increasingly attracting more talent from the top schools in the country located in the NY to Boston region and away from other industries. It has been much easier to attract talented interns from Ivy League schools like Princeton for us. The start-up scene is also very diverse and seems to be in perpetual party mode.”
– Cenk Ipeker from Bilbus
“If your clients are media and advertising agencies or publishers then it’s the only place you need to be. I mean, pretty much everyone in these industry, who is not based in NY (or doesn’t have an office there) is a niche player; NY is trying hard to beat SV in attracting start-ups, so newcomers from Europe that chose NYC over Silicon Valley are praised (which can give you easy PR).
“Everything works 24/7 (food, Fedex’es, subway), which is in sync with how startups operate, and time difference (especially to London) is bearable especially for the early birds. I would say that if someone has figured out their business model, has the product, engineering team somewhere outside of NYC and targets agencies, publishers or finance companies then NYC is a great place to come to scale the business.”
– Jay Kazanins from Campalyst
“NY City is like Tallinn, Estonia – fast, lean and very aggressive. SF was too slow for us. Key points for us are: great labour law, low tax, easy to hire, and cheaper tickets between Europe and NY.”
-Kris Hiiemaa from Erply
“New York has recently become the centre of advertising technology and has some of the world’s leading mobile companies such as PlaceIQ, Mojiva and of course Foursquare.”
– Alex Raham from StrikeAd
“To really have successful sales, they need to be American. I.e. your customers really want you to have an office with US sales staff who speaks their language”.
– Josh March from Conversocial
“In terms of the latest developments in electronic trading, NYC is the largest target market for us so setting up an office here was always on the cards.”
– Justin Amos from Redkite
In conclusion, we believe NYC has become a key hub for European start-ups looking to maintain a link back to their mother country and wishing to manage distributed teams while having great access to the resources that the North-eastern corridor of the USA has to offer. Additionally, we expect to see an increasing number of cross-Atlantic investments occurring over the next years which will bode well for the European start-up ecosystem overall.
[Disclosure: Bilbus, Campalyst and Erply are Seedcamp portfolio companies, StrikeAd, Conversocial and Redkite are DFJ Esprit portfolio companies]
Image credit: Rainy City
Carlos Eduardo Espinal is a Partner at Seedcamp, an early stage mentoring and investment program that engages start-ups through monthly Seedcamp Events, where entrepreneurs present their companies, network, receive mentoring, and compete for investment by Seedcamp. Yearly, Seedcamp invests in about 20 companies. Scott Sage is an Associate at DFJ Esprit, a leading cross-stage venture capital firm that invests from seed to late stage in European technology and media companies. Members of the DFJ Esprit team have experience of investing in over 200 companies and generating strong returns for investors through building valuable companies alongside the founders and management teams.
Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island and Liberty Island, Manhattan, in New York County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Next Tuesday, we’ll be hosting our second Seedcamp in New York. Last year, we were very impressed by the quality of the companies that came to the event. 20 teams wowed us with their products, pitched, got access to the best NY-based network of entrepreneurs, investors and mentors; and out of them, 4 became part of the Seedcamp Family!
We cannot wait to meet this year’s selection and have been delighted by not only a strong demand from European-based companies but also from North America.
Please meet the 2012 New York teams, play with their products, and see what they’re up to:
• Ambio, Skopje, Macedonia – is your location magazine; an application where you can discover & experience great moments around you • BeatTheBushes, Moscow, Russia – is a new lost and found web service and mobile platform • CloudConfidence, Philadelphia, USA – is a SaaS-based solution for comprehensive monitoring, management, and real-time analytics for cloud resources • Codetique, Lexington, KY, USA – provides a simplified way for doing collaborative code reviews online • dacelab, Kuopio, Finland – build a social cloud app in minutes. No programming needed • dish.fm, San Francisco, USA – lets you find the best dishes in any restaurant with confidence • Fiverun, San Francisco, USA – is the social catalog for retailers: showcase your products, connect your customers. • GetGamers, Riga, Latvia – is an advertising network for gaming sites • Grabalanguage, Sofia, Bulgaria – is a media platform that allows users to learn foreign languages while consuming the content they love • Humanvest.co, San Francisco, USA – is a reliable kickstarter for equity • Kula Magazine, San Francisco, USA – turns any blog into a beautiful mobile app • Mobeelizer, Cracow, Poland – is cloud sync for your mobile apps; multiplatform with offline abilities • OneLobby, Halifax, Canada – is a social network for conference attendees, raising conference organizer’s attendee, sponsor & exhibitor sales • Opbeat, Copenhagen, Denmark – defining web ops • Poutsch, Paris, France – is a free social tool to express and collect opinions online • Socialrithmic, Seattle, USA – helps marketers easily identify what, when, and where to post on Facebook and Twitter • Storybox, New York, USA – Imagine and create your story. An inspired journey and visual journal of self-expression • Thingz.biz, Oxford, UK – lets you and your household contents insurer keep track of the cost of your belongings • Universal Privacy Register, New York, USA – is an international digital consumer registry and validation service safeguarding privacy, social preferences and data
For this event, we have built a master class around the theme “how to build and run a successful community”. We will be joined by some outstanding community managers from very different industries: • Meghan from 10gen will share insights into how the company is building a community around the open source products • Rachel from Tumblr will share how the micro-blogging platform successfully verticalised their community management efforts • Kevin from General Assembly to talk about the development and growth of a powerful offline community in New York.
Once again our gratitude goes out to Google for their endless support in hosting us for the second year in their beautiful New York offices and ensuring this year’s Seedcamp will once again be a huge success. We are proud to have 10gen as our Event Sponsor as well as The Next Woman as Event Partner for this Seedcamp event. Finally, we would like to thank our yearly sponsors Bizspark, Qualcomm and Paypal for their ongoing support.
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