Although the year is winding down, we are busy preparing Seedcamp on the 25th of January in London. We are working hard to make the event an even better Seedcamp experience for both the entrepreneurs and mentors alike. On top of it, we are seeing seeds of our last years’ work (Seedcamp’s expansion to new geographies), as teams have been applying from all over the world. Therefore, we are set for an outstanding and trully diversified entrepreneurship event at Nesta‘s London premises.
If you are an aspiring entrepreneur still considering applying for the event, then check out entrepreneurs’ impressions from our previous events to make your decision a little easier:


“You realize you can take ideas so much further. And with the help of Seedcamp network – you know you can do it.”


“Really really good, it was really constructive.”


“Using the network that Seedcamp provides, is going to make Wordy a really really good business!”

Eager to see and read more about Seedcamp? Besides this blog, there are various other resources on the site (video section, wiki, presentations, etc.) and they are there to help you get even more familiar with what we do. But not only that – they are also a great way to learn from the experience of Seedcamp related entrepreneurs and mentors all with a mission to help you get your business off the ground.

Apply to be part of Seedcamp on the 25th of January – deadline for applications is the 12th of January.

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This time last year, we held the first Seedsummit in London. The idea behind it was to help to create a forum for active European seed investors to connect and establish a stronger more cohesive network to support entrepreneurs. Now 12 months later – we are ready to take the wrappers off Seedsummit.org.

Recently, Seedcamp has been sharing lots of news about growing our team and adding firepower for our international platform. We have a stronger foundation to help the companies and founders that are at the stage where Seedcamp is a good fit. We have always helped Seedcamp companies gain access to further capital and so many other entrepreneurs have always reached out to us frustrated at how difficult it is to identify true seed stage investors in their local regions and across Europe or US with whom there is a fit.

Enter Seedsummit.org. Like Nivi and Naval’s excellent AngelList, we aim to be a resource to connect entrepreneurs and local seed investors looking to find each other. The investors on Seedsummit.org are qualified, active in seed and they are looking for deals. While we don’t have the density of either the VC or angel money available in the Valley, there is still an emerging group of very active seed investors in the markets that Seedcamp is local in, from Union Square to Mumbai.

Given many Seedcamp companies raise their post-Seedcamp funding from these very investors like Jeremie Berrebi, Sherry Coutu, Alex Hoye, Stefan Glaenzer, Dave McClure and Robin Klein, we have gotten to know our fellow travelers well. Seedsummit.org is a first step. As with Seedcamp, we will look to all of you to help us iterate and make sure we can serve entrepreneurs and investors best in their quest to find the right partners. So, please do have a look and play around and feed back to us as much as possible.

There is a dedicated space for both investors and entrepreneurs on the site. We will be adding more useful features and content soon, along with connecting with our friends in other places putting together a similar platform. But we hope this is a very helpful start for all of you to get better connected and funded.

In addition, we will host two full Seedsummit events for active angel and seed investors this year. The first will be taking place in January, right after our just announced Seedcamp London. Following our first North American Event in June, we will host a Seedsummit in New York City aiming to connect Seed investors across the Atlantic. We are looking forward to a great 2011, and Seedsummit.org will be a large part of it!

We also want to point out our technology partner Lateral, who helped us out with the development and review of the site. Ciprian and his team are an important part of the inception of Seedsummit, we are looking forward to working together on the future changes to the site to develop an even greater experience for both investors and start-ups.

As you can tell from some of our recent news here at Seedcamp (new people, new money),we’ve been focused on changes that allow us to reach more entrepreneurs around the world. Today we’d like to share a couple more updates and release our 2011 calendar, kicking off with a Seedcamp event in London next month.
Seedcamp London, 25 January 2011
We’re excited to start the New Year with a full day Seedcamp on January 25th, where 20 teams will descend on London for a day of intensive mentoring and networking. Applications are now open, and we’re already excited to see some of the things you’re building, making, and developing. We’ll be back at NESTA offices in the city, where one of the first Seedcamps took place in 2008.

Seedcamp-2010Image by Seedcamp Photos via Flickr

The usual rules apply – we are looking for technically focused teams with great ideas and big ambitions, with a stellar team and a product to show off. After seeing an incredible number of applications for our last Mini Seedcamp in London, we can’t wait to see what this year brings. If you want more information, check out the dedicated page for Seedcamp London. As a team, be prepared to spend a high-powered day with some amazing mentors from the European and international tech scene, providing important introductions and insight that will accelerate your business ‘by months, if not more than a year’, as we heard from a recent Seedcamp participant.

More investment opportunities
As you’ve probably noticed, Seedcamp has been expanding in terms of number of events each year, and number of companies that we invest in. There are so many great businesses being built that we want to change our structure so we can officially back innovative businesses throughout the year, not just after Seedcamp Week in the fall. What this means in practical terms is that three Seedcamp events will be added to the calendar, following which we will evaluate investment opportunities immediately. The first of these will be the Seedcamp London in January mentioned above.
In accordance with this new decision process, we will extend our support for companies coming to London year-round, hosting lunches and dinners, inviting industry experts, and holding office hours. All of this will be possible with our extended team and the experience we have built over recent years of running Seedcamp. We are excited to be taking these steps to fund more entrepreneurs, be timelier in our decisions, and thereby build an even stronger ecosystem.
Our calendar for 2011

We are also taking the wraps off our 2011 calendar today, which includes the addition of some new destinations – like New York, where we are going in June. We wanted to share the schedule early so you can start planning, but this means that dates and locations aren’t finalized in every case. We’re excited about the expanded geographic reach of our program this year and the opportunity to revisit some of our favorite places in Europe.
Connecting different geographies is a big part of building an ecosystem, and we really love the diversity we see (16 different countries were represented at Seedcamp Week this year). As you can see, we are making a great leap forward, so we are extremely excited to see how the year develops!

We look forward to seeing you on the road next year!
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Reshma’s thoughts on Seedcamp Mumbai:
Mumbai, meri jaan! Having first looked at seed investing in the Indian subcontinent 10 years ago, I was very curious to see how entrepreneurs and ideas had evolved and improved. Seedcamp Mumbai showed us a great diversity of the new generation of Indian and Sri Lankan entrepreneurs who are tackling both problems very specific to the Indian infrastructure and that are fully global from Day 1. Both types of ventures are critical as they address unmet needs at different scales.
We were hosted by MET, which is a network of colleges and has a few thousand students with ambitions to build their own successful businesses. We were also hugely grateful for the help from all our partners and sponsors, especially the Mumbai Angels, Nexus Ventures, IDG Ventures, the Morpheus, Sherpalo, Springboard Ventures, and Microsoft Bizspark. Logistics in India is harder than one ever plans for and we were fortunate to have these organizations’ support.
The teams gave their presentations in the morning. In 10 years the confidence and hunger of the entrepreneurs has definitely increased, there are more founders coming from more parts of India, and the support ecosystem is much more experienced and numerous.
We then kicked off the mentoring sessions and a panel of no-holds barred entrepreneurs and investors. The energy in the room really hit a high pitch the rest of the day. A lot of the ideas leverage mobile adoption and growth of the market but as broadband penetration starts to grow faster now, we should see more next generation web ideas coming to bear. This was the view of the panelists and it was in evidence with the web companies focused on disintermediating the rental market, Groupon clones, and other types of e-commerce. These ideas are tried and tested in high broadband markets in the west and now finally it looks to be the right time for them to take off here.
The day ended with a wrap-up session, which turn out differently depending on mood and location. The founders gave similar feedback to what we often hear including some good feedback on how to improve the next session. But the mentors comments really stood out because they were similar what we used to hear 2-3 years ago when we first started Seedcamp. There was a lot of advice for the founders to go away and do much more analysis of competition and building differentiators, to dream big but execute based on realistic assumptions, and a host of helpful tips on presentations/pitches.
All in all a truly valuable day for these entrepreneurs who don’t get a chance to engage with such an ecosystem in their own cities/regions and for mentors who got a chance to see ideas all in one place from all over the subcontinent.
Winning teams at Seedcamp Mumbai
There were three teams that stood out in particular at Seedcamp Mumbai. The following three are the winners of Seedcamp Mumbai:

Seedcamp is exploring yet another part of the world this week. This time we are heading to India (Mumbai, to be specific). So on Saturday, 4th of December, we will meet with the 20 most promising young startups of the region; all-star mentoring groups will be working hard to make the day worth remembering for participating companies.

We are thrilled to see the very high quality of applications – indeed, a record number for a new geography – from very different industries ranging from online to mobile to some phone-based offerings. We are also proud to see applications and finalists from all over India and beyond, spreading our reach as far as Sri Lanka.

The 20 finalists for Mumbai are:

We are looking forward to see all teams on the 4th of December at MET, who graciously offered to host us. In addition, we are proud to say that we have partnered with some of India’s most active early stage investors to get Seedcamp Mumbai on the way. Mumbai Angels, Nexus VP, the Morpheus, Sherpalo and Springboard Ventures have helped out with the organisation and getting the word out in India. In addition, Microsoft Bizspark, Springboard Ventures, and IDG Ventures are supporting us as sponsors.