We are taking some of the Seedcamp winners of 2010 and 2011 on our now annual road show to the USA in March 2011. With a total of 14 companies, we will tour both East and West Coast, and end up at SXSW to meet up with the rest of the international tech scene.
We will start off the trip on the East Coast, visiting two of the most important tech hubs, New York and Boston, where we will also host 2 Seedcamp-format mentoring events to mix and mingle with local entrepreneurs, investors, and product experts. The New York event will be hosted by our friends and sponsors at Google. The Boston event is going to take place at the Hubspot offices (with a lot of help by our friends from Atlas Ventures).
After a weekend break in Tahoe, we will spend the second week in the Valley, visiting, amongst others, Facebook, 500startups, the Google headquarters, various VCs, and meet the tech scene of the valley. We will host mentoring events at Google and our friends at i/o ventures. We will also go to the Northwest to visit two giants of tech – we will see both Microsoft and Amazon Headquarters, to get inspired by what was built in only the last decades.
The grand finale will be at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where we will probably end up exhausted, happy, and with pockets full of business cards – a Seedcamp on the road, with loads of new friends and contacts to be made.
Want to see the map of our trip, companies and people we are meeting or Seedcamp Winning Companies, that are coming with us? Our detailed trip page is just a click away.
Again and again, as you can read from the recaps of our
previous events in Tel Aviv – we are impressed by the quality of startups coming out of Israel. This year, we’ve been especially surprised by the high quality of consumer focused startups, their understanding of their customers, and the global approach to big markets.
We spent the day at the
Afeka College of Engineering, who were kind enough to host us for a second time after 2010. With the support of Alon and his team and the additional help from our
sponsors (
Rosen Law and the
ESOP trust company in particular) and Yaron at the
thecoils. After the company pitches in the morning, we had a great panel on UX and Design, and how traditional development work is changing towards a more user centred approach.
Noa Bichovsky (
Brioid), Ishay Green (
Soluto), Yaniv Golan (
lool.vc), Giora Kaplan (
Wix), and Ron Gura (
the Gifts Projects) discussed the particularities of companies coming from Israel, and how they can and should build world class products that can compete on a global level. Some interesting tidbits were shared on hiring new product managers and designers: besides letting hires design a new features, the panel agreed on two simple tests to get a first impression: “look at the shoes and the business cards – these two things tell you more than a phone interview”.
From an organisational perspective, topics like design thinking and other more academic structures seem to be creeping into the work place. Some participants even shared that their companies had up to a third of the whole workforce focused on UX and Design of new products – an interesting metric to look at.
Our selection of mentors for the afternoon sessions ranged from experienced super star entrepreneurs to the best private and institutional investors in Israel. The turn out was impressive, and after the mentoring sessions kicked off, it was almost impossible to stop the discussions between teams and mentors. We reconvened in the evening to wrap up the day, gather feedback, and announce the next item on the Agenda: a special edition of
Tech Aviv, focused on the current state of early stage investing in Israel.
The get-together was basically an overview of the top active early stage investors in Israel, and the panel discussion was incredibly open and honest. If you have time,
go here to see a video of Jeremie Berrebi (
Kima Ventures), Saul Klein (
Index/
Seedcamp), Eden Shochat (
The Junction), Yair Goldfinger (
Angel Investor), Yaniv Golan (
lool VC), and Guy Gamzu (
Angel Investor) sharing their views on the Israeli market, their own experience, and some interesting deals.
In the closing session of Seedcamp Tel Aviv, we have asked the audience to help us identify the most liked start-ups of the day, by popular vote. The top five teams as selected by mentors and fellows were:
- AllWeSea from Tel Aviv, Israel – Global sailing smart-phone application and destination website.
- CelluDrive from Haifa, Israel – Innovative smartphone-based sw service that grants peace-of-mind to the parents when their kids are on the road.
- Fireplace from Ramat-Gan, Israel – Social blogging platform for people who are tired of their old, abandoned blogs and want their friends to be their audience.
- Jifiti from Modiin, Israel – Gift giving platform that enhances the gift giving experience, while returning the selling power to local stores.
- Wibbitz from Tel Aviv, Israel – Turn existing static web content into interactive visual experiences.
Time is really flying by here at Seedcamp. It has only been a month and a half since the beginning of 2011, and we already have 3 new amazing companies on board and a new Mini Seedcamp event in front of us (16th of February). This time we are going to Tel Aviv, and, as proven by our two recent portfolio companies, Ineze and Sparkeo, we are super excited about the Israeli entrepreneurial environment.
We have seen a record number of entrepreneurs submitting applications for the event in Tel Aviv this year; with many different sectors of the online software market, the fast growing mobile sector and new social technologies being well represented.
But without further ado – below we are happy to announce the participants for our Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv 2011:
- AllWeSea from Tel Aviv, Israel – Global sailing smart-phone application and destination website.
- armodello from Israel & US – Mobile application for finding, visualizing, sharing and buying furniture and home design items.
- CelluDrive from Haifa, Israel – Innovative smartphone-based sw service that grants peace-of-mind to the parents when their kids are on the road.
- Dopa Music from Ramat-Gan, Israel – Background music streaming service customized for each website & application.
- Finz.it from Herzelia, Israel – Social promotion widget toolbox which enables online retailers to connect their site to social network in the best way possible.
- Fireplace from Ramat-Gan, Israel – Social blogging platform for people who are tired of their old, abandoned blogs and want their friends to be their audience.
- Flakkes from Rehovot, Israel – Apps which enable users to rate and interact with online banner ads.
- In.Sites Media – My Webees from Sde Boker, Israel – Offering long tail websites a simple, low cost and effective way to increase exposure and drive more traffic to their web site.
- Jifiti from Modiin, Israel – Gift giving platform that enhances the gift giving experience, while returning the selling power to local stores.
- LightBurner from Zur Igal, Israel – Helping people to turn their hobbies into hard cash. Simply send your digital media to LightBurner and start earning. Photos, video, graphics, and music.
- TAKO Technology from Herzilya, Israel – Convert any application into a web page and embed those applications in any existing website such as Facebook/LinkedIn and even search engines.
- Wibbitz from Tel Aviv, Israel – Turn existing static web content into interactive visual experiences.
- Weeeve from Tel Aviv, Israel – Assembling photos & videos taken by everyone during the event into a developing visual story.
UPDATE – We are happy to add another company to the above participants:
- Tap2Print from Caesarea, Israel – Print orders directly from the mobile phone/tablet – anywhere in the world.
Founding teams will be mentored by a few of the most prominent names in the Israeli and European start-up community. Some have already been
mentioned in our previous post; below are 11 more stars that are coming to advise the teams:
We are very grateful to our event (below) and permanent sponsors that have helped us make this event possible:
We can not be more excited about our last week’s event in London. 20 start-ups from 9 different countries came to London and presented their upcoming products in front of a selection of 90 mentors. Teams’ progress and quality exceeded our expectations and mentors did a great job advising entrepreneurs where to move and what should the next steps for their young ventures be.
How did it look like & what did participants have to say about it?
“… for me and for our Mob1serv team it was a vast experience, probably 1 year’s progress jump achieved in half week.” – Taras Filatov, Mob1Serv – Seedcamp London Participant
” Last week’s one day event in London reinforced Seedcamp’s status as Europe’s leading start-up catalyst.” – Maximilian Claussen, Earlybird – Mentor at Seedcamp London
Who are the Winners of Seedcamp London?
There were three participating teams that really immpressed us with their dedication and the progress they have shown so far. Thus, we are pleased to welcome them to the Seedcamp family:
GrabCAD – from Tallinn, Estonia – CAD engineering services marketplace that connects engineers to companies and people with engineering needs.
Psykosoft – from Tours, France – Online photo-painting application of its own providing natural media brushes and totally unique tools.
Vox.io – from Ljubljana, Slovenia – Free voice & video calls over the internet, straight from the browser.
What comes next?
Our three London winners are already fully on board and are coming with us to the now annual Seedcamp US Trip. Accompanied by the Seedcamp Winners from 2010 they will meet and network with the elite of the US tech scene in all the biggest hubs (New York, Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco) and finish it off with attending the SXSW conference.
In the meantime, we are busy preparing everything for our next Mini Seedcamp events that will take place in Tel Aviv, Berlin, Nordics, New York, and other tech hubs around the globe. We can’t wait to meet and help a few more promising entrepreneurs make their early stage businesses big and global!
After the thrill ride of Seedcamp London 2011 slowing down, we are quickly approaching our next stop – Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv (16th of February). It is going to be our 3rd consecutive stop in Israel (reports from ’09 & ’10) and we have been more than satisfied with the quality and progress we see from the local teams. Moreover, we now have 2 Israeli companies in our portfolio (since autumn of 2010) – Ineze and Sparkeo. Thus, we are hoping to meet more great Israeli companies soon – applications are still open!
We’ve got an incredible batch of mentors coming to see and guide the 20 finalists of the event:
Go here to apply to Seedcamp Tel Aviv – to allow for more applications to come in by the end of the week, we have extended the application deadline until midnight on Friday the 4th.
If you are still undecided whether to apply for the event, check out some of the great feedback and press Seedcamp got lately:
Image by Seedcamp Photos via Flickr
