July, 2008 : Seedcamp

Last night Seedcamp and The Accelerator Group welcomed Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures for a dinner here in London. Fred, as anyone who’s been following his blog will know, is on something of a Grand European Tech Tour, and we were happy to help him end his first day in London surrounded by the founders of 15 London startups.

Topics of conversation included: hosted processing and storage vs. true cloud computing, the question of whether European entrepreneurs receive a “black mark” from failure, where to base development, whether to expand monetization efforts geographically at the same pace as user adoption, the advantages of targeted local startups that seem to fend off even the biggest global juggernauts, the early-stage European funding gap, and the knock-on effect of having not only the founders of successful startups seed new ventures, but their early employees as well.

One topic of special note that came up was how having your idea validated can ease any number of processes and open doors – something close to our hearts at Seedcamp. We’ll follow up with a separate post on the topic shortly.

Yesterday also marked our first Tech-Dating event, as mentioned here earlier. While I was at the aforementioned dinner I’m told it was a success. We’ll have some additional details of that to come as well.

Seeing as Seedcamp Week 2008 is only a couple months away now we thought you might want to have a look at our footage from last year. Hopefully it should give a good sense of what goes on and just how intensely stimulating the experience can be.

Seedcamp Week 2007 from Seedcamp.

Featuring panel appearances by: Anil Hansjee (Google) Arvind Desikan (Google) Ben Holmes (Index) Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com) Charlie Muirhead (Nexagent) Christian Heilmann (Yahoo!) Danny Rimer (Index Ventures) Dave Brown (Microsoft) David Rajan (Oracle) Donna Sokolsky (Sparkpr) Gustav Sderstrm (Yahoo!) Klaus Hommels (Benchmark) Kristof Fahy (Blackberry) Lars Lindstedt (Microsoft) Marc Samwer (European Founders Fund) Martin Varsavsky (FON) Matt Jones (Dopplr) Mattias Ljungman (Atomico) Max Polyakov (IDE Group) Michael Jackson (Skype) Mike Shaver (Mozilla) Nic Brisbourne (DFJ Esprit) Niklas Zenstrom (Skype / Joost / Atomico) Richard Morross (Moo) Robert Hamilton (Google) Robin Klein (The Accelerator Group) Sam Sethi (BlogNation) Saul Klein Scott Gallacher (Sky) Simon Guild (formerly MTV Europe) Sonali De Rycker (Atlas) Stewart Townsend (Sun) Tim Stevens (BT) Tina Baker (Brown Rudnick) Toby Rowland (king.com) Tom Coates (Yahoo!)

And, of course, interviews with some of our participating teams: ArtFlock.com Avenue7.com buildersite.co.uk Content Syndicate: Words on Demand Debatewise Facecontact Killsushi Krogos Software Development Kublax Financial Technologies Ltd Maple and Leek Maxicheque OpenEra Systems Ltd Playfair Price Delivered RentMineOnline Tablefinder AB The School of Everything Tickex Wallstreetdocs Zemanta

With about four weeks left to submit for Seedcamp Week 2008, I wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who’s helping us get the word out all over the world. Please continue to blog, Twitter, and Digg the news so as many people as possible hear about Seedcamp and have the chance to submit.

Already looking forward to September!!

Mike Butcher at TechCrunch Jonathan Moules at the Financial Times Simone Brummelhuis at The Next Women Blog Matt Jukes at Quick Pint Farhan Rehman at Farhan’s Life Fred Destin on the Fred Destin blog

Spain

Afonso Miranda at Wwwhatsnew Carmen Lopez at Ojointernet

Germany

Cam Basman at Sprechblase Cem Basman for Startupweekend Jochen Krisch at Exciting Commerce

Poland

Chris Kowalczyk at Aula Poland

Ukraine

Denis Dovgopoliy on the Denny Dov blog Hudvin’s Weblog

Eric Eldon at VentureBeat

Since we opened the gates to Seedcamp 2008 we’ve been fielding some questions about the program and its application process. As there’s likely to be overlap amongst potential applicants we thought those of you who’ve had similar questions but not the time to ask them might still benefit from hearing the answers.

Does Seedcamp have any age restrictions?
We have no age restrictions for Seedcamp necessarily, but we do require that applicants be able to work full-time on their business for three months here in London if they are selected as one of our winning teams. That would rule out student-aged groups who are not able to take time off from their studies.

Must entrants already have formed a legal company?
We don’t require that you’ve incorporated or any other legal formalities. In fact, that’s something on which we can advise the winning teams.

In what stage of development should our product be? Are we applying too early? Too late?
It’s hard to define exact boundaries, with all the variables at work. Our general advice is that you should at least have something to show for your existing effort: ideally an alpha/beta product or solid proof-of-concept, but if not then at a minimum a video demonstration or something equally illustrative which shows off your idea in action.

Once you’ve reached that point then the decision of whether you’re too far along is up to you. Different applicants will have different motivations for applying and thus different consequent definitions of what constitutes “too far”. You may have a fairly mature product and no need to look for immediate funding but still desire access to Seedcamp’s extensive and deep advisor network. You may already have a beta site with minimal operating costs and a large passionate user base but want three months in which to devote yourself to its growth without distraction. Or you might be running a side business on the weekends with a growing client roster and want to turn it into a full-time pursuit. In each case of these cases, and more, teams might be in a relatively advanced stage of development but still benefit. The choice is yours – think hard about what you hope to gain from Seedcamp.

Is this a regional competition or are applications accepted from all over the world?
Seedcamp is open to entries worldwide, from the hallway across from our offices to our geographical antipode (a charming patch of the South Pacific ocean approximately 1000 kilometers south-east of Christchurch, New Zealand), from the largest megalopolises to the smallest rural hamlets.

That said, there are two important considerations which are related to your location after the competition:

Seedcamp looks for ideas and businesses with global potential. You can of course start out focusing on a particular region but if that’s where your plan ends it may not be right for Seedcamp.

For several reasons we do stipulate that teams come to London not just for Seedcamp Week in September, but for those that win also the three months following it at a minimum. Of course part of the program is that the expenses for those three months are covered, but it’s still an undertaking to move halfway around the world cost aside.

If either of these conditions aren’t right for you then you may want to consider some closer alternatives. If they don’t pose a problem we look forward to seeing your application.

As Seedcamp has been going around Europe, besides the refrain heard by Mike Butcher of Techcrunch , we hear over and over again that business and tech skilled people are having a very difficult time finding each other. Seeing this need combined with the fact that Seedcamp season is upon us, we’re putting together a few events to help teams get in shape. The first is Seedcamp Tech-Dating, organized by Antony Evans (a Seedcamp aspirant and a MBA transformed developer in training)…

Successful start-ups require a diverse set of skills in the founding team, but the truth is that most people know lots of other people who are good at the same things as they are. Developers need business people to help refine their business plan, business people may have a brilliant idea but no idea how to execute it technically (yes, we know the outsourcing model doesn’t work!!) and everybody needs it to look good.

Finding people with complementary skills to put together a kick-ass team is tough, which is why we came up with the idea for this event. Much like speed-dating, Seedcamp tech-dating will give you the chance to network with developers, designers and the biz-dev guys. You will have three minutes to pitch yourself to the other groups, share who you are, what you are great at and why you want to do a startup. At the end of the evening there will be time to sink a few beers and you tell us (confidentially) who you felt a connection with and if they match up with you we share your contact details.Then its up to you to meet up, figure out if you guys can really work together and off you go!!

So if you want to do a start-up, and are looking for team-mates, this is the place to come to.

Registration (its free) takes place on eventbrite:

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