Well, Seedcamp would like to find out, and to do that, and thanks to our event sponsors, The London Business School, Facebook, and .me Domains, we’re going to be running our first seedhack event on September 23rd-25th at the London Business School campus. We plan on bringing companies, startups, and developers together to find out if something great will come out of it. It’s for the community and it’s totally free to attend and participate (space permitting).

READ THIS UPDATE: We’ve just posted the event’s FAQ. 

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST: Registration for the inaugural Seedhack is now closed, however register your interest here and we’ll let you know when applications for the next Seedhack event open. 

How will this work?

The schedule of events is outlined further below, however the rough idea is as follows:

On Friday, everyone will meet up to hear some talks led by company leaders who will either talk about problems plaguing their industry as a whole or their company’s value chain in particular. The idea is to catalyze thinking around how we could, in aggregate, solve these problems. However, you are more than welcome to hack around any industry, topic, or idea you may have. Our confirmed speakers so far include Vladimir Oane, founder of Ubervu, on Big Data and Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, founder of Patients Know Best, on Technology in Healthcare

Shortly after the talks, we will have a brief overview of some of the other companies that are attending and have APIs which could be of use for the development of any of the ideas that people may come up with. We plan to have these engineers around throughout the weekend to help out with any integration issues.

Once all presentations are finished, we will have some networking time for people to freely discuss any ideas with the speakers or others before presenting any potential ideas to the general group. We will then have two Idea Presentation and Discussion sessions. During these sessions, people with ideas will present them to the whole audience and then people will join these individuals to form groups to discuss and work on the idea before having an opportunity to perhaps move to another group after a second set of Idea Presentations 30min later. Ideally, teams are made up of no more than 5 collaborators and involve folks from different disciplines to result in a fully fleshed out project.

Once teams have been formed for the evening, everyone is free to either stay at our location or move anywhere else to work on their idea for the Sunday presentations. On Saturday, we will have mentors around to answer questions around business and API related issues.

Lastly, on Sunday, we will be having our presentation event where all companies will showcase their efforts.

The format for the weekend will be:

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Start	End	Duration	Description
10.00	10:30	00:30	Coffee
10:30	12:30	02:00	Hacking
12:30	13:00	00:30	Working lunch – Time to complete final touches
15:00	16:00	02:00	Pitch training and presentations
16.00	16:30	00:30	Wrap up

Who Should Apply?

The purpose of this event is hopefully to create new, really innovative startups and product & solutions. As such, if you are an idea person, a developer, or have some skillset that is useful for a new company, then you are the right person!

However, please note that this isn’t an event designed to cater to existing startups that want to hire developers, please go to our friends at the Silicon Milk Roundabout for that. Additionally, if you are already employed, but want to start a new company anyway, just make sure that you are not bound by any non-compete or other intellectual property limitations.

Our Event Sponsors:

There really isn’t anything you need to prepare beforehand. Just make sure to bring your own laptop to the event and any other materials you think would be helpful for you.

But I already have an idea!

If you already have a recent idea for a startup you’d like to bring to the table, that’s great. Be ready to share your idea openly so that others can choose to join you in a group to work together. Bring any materials that would be helpful in explaining it, such as a presentation or mockups.

BUT: please be open to alterations, pivots, and any other changes to your original idea, as this is what the open form of the event is all about.

Can I just attend?

Well, we’d love to have as many people attend, but unfortunately space is very limited. As such, we will be accommodating signups on a first-come-first-serve basis. If we can’t accommodate you, we will let you know over email as we approach the date.

In addition, we will have to make sure to have the right ratio of developers, designers, and business folks there to enable startups to be formed. We will try and make sure to enable as much participation as possible, of course.

I don’t have any tech skills, can I still join a team?

We don’t expect everyone to be on the development side, but be aware that you may not necessarily have a guaranteed place within a group either. Ultimately each group will decide what skills they need.

Where can I work from? Can I work from home over the weekend?

You can work from anywhere, but you’d miss out on half the fun if you weren’t at the venue. Plus, there’s Pizza. Everybody loves Pizza.

What if I don’t come up with an idea?

If by Friday evening you haven’t come up with an idea to pitch, you are more than welcome to join another group that is looking for help.

What if I don’t manage to join a group on Friday?

If you neither have an idea to pitch to others, nor you manage to join another group to help with their idea, you can either work alone on an another idea that you may come up with the next day or you can always donate your time to Charity Hack which takes place not too far away in Richmond.

If I can’t make it to this Seedhack, can you let me know about the next one?

We will be announcing future Seedhack events across many channels so its unlikely you will miss an announcement. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and to keep an eye out on our blog, too.

What if I want to pitch my current Company’s idea?

The idea behind Seedhack is to create new companies. As such, we are looking for people to come up with ideas over the weekend, rather than pitching an existing company’s idea (unless you really only came up with it relatively recently and want to share it with others).

As noted above – be ready to tweak, pivot, and change your idea over the course of the weekend, too.

What if I’m already employed but just want to come to hack?

We would prefer that you didn’t unless your company was really cool with you creating a startup and leaving them.

What if I want to present my Company’s API to the community?

That’s great – get in touch with us about what you would like to pitch and please have an API engineer available throughout the weekend. You can reach us on our website:

http://www.seedcamp.com/contact

or twitter via:

@seedcamp @sc_seedhack

What if I want to come to Seedhack to hire developers?

Seedhack’s not the place for that. Please go to Silicon Milk Roundabout instead because it’s an awesome forum for just that.

What if I am turned away at the door or via email because of capacity?

We will be having a first come first serve selection and will make sure to get the right mix of people in the room.

Do I have to pay anything?

Not as of now. Our generous sponsors are taking care of all the costs. Say thanks when you see them!

Am I going to get fed?

It’s no gourmet. We should have snacks though (pizza).

How good is the internet connection?

Our hope is that it is good enough for anything short of everyone streaming videos at the same time. Please leave your torrents at home.

If we come up with something over the weekend, who owns it?

The team members do. It’s all up to you what you will do with ownership, etc, but to make it easier, we will have some suggestions for documents that will make sure everyone is rewarded fairly.

Is there a Seedcamp investment for the winners?

Nope. This event is just to get your company off the ground and running.

Is there any kind of award for the winners?

Other than recognition from your peers, no – but if you build a company out of the idea, the world is yours.

Can I bring friends?

If they can participate, sure they can sign up themselves as well, but not just to observe.

Can we come as a group?

See above.

Will my idea be treated confidentially?

It’ll be very hard for your idea to be treated confidentially as you will be discussing it with your other group members, mentors, and API owners. Everyone is there to build great things so professional etiquette is observed.

Can I take a shower?

Yes and no. Yes you can take a shower, no, not at  the venue.

Can I sleep over?

The venue will be open 24 hours, so if you want to hack around the clock Bill Haley style, feel free!

What else should I do?

Tell others about it, tweet, blog about your idea, get early feedback, find out who else is coming… and if you’re really adventurous, go ahead and see who the API partners are to get thinking about the possibilities.

Having first visited Ljubljana in 2009, we had high expectations in terms of the quality of the teams we’d be meeting. Could they live up to they hype of Vox.io and Zemanta? We got off to a great start arriving in the picturesque city of Ljubljana with blue skies and sunshine. IBM kindly hosted us in their cool new office building. Alongside our twenty teams were over 80 awesome mentors, the startup community spirit blew us away. Our mentors who joined us were as international as our teams coming from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, UK, Germany, France, Turkey and Fred Destin who probably traveled the farthest from Boston. Twitter was going mad as the presentations started and the buzz continued throughout the day. Fred delivered his great new prezi on a company’s life cycle – a fantastic reference for any startup to look through with recommend sites and readings.

We’ve also got the full length version of the presentation recorded for your viewing pleasure.

Teams were visibly exhausted by the end of the day and all welcomed a well-earned beer whilst Mike Butcher did a humorous impromptu presentation on how and perhaps more importantly how not to deal with the press. We rounded the day off in the City Hall where we were welcomed by the deputy mayor, then on to one of Ljubljana’s many great bars for further networking.

We have a long list of sponsors to thank who made us so welcome all of this possible: The Business Angels of Slovenia, D.Labs, ISKRATEL, netokracija, RSG Capital and our very own Vox.io and Zemanta helped us to get the day on the way and were great supporters of Seedcamp Ljubljana.

New Seedcamp Family Members

We’re proud to have another superstar Slovenian team join us:

Oust.me is a gaming layer across geo location services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. According to founder Matevz life is a game, and we look forward to taking that game to the social networks!

And from Estonia…

Sportlyzer from Estonia is an automated online training advisor that composes customized training plans. They are extremely ambitious and we are exited to be involved with such a visionary founder.

We want to thank everyone involved; teams, mentors, press, and of course the volunteers helping us make this happen.

Contrary to common believe London does not vacate during July/August: we received a record number of applications from teams all over the world to participate in Mini Seedcamp London. Quality is firmly on the rise and it was once again a mammoth and challenging task to select only 20 of the teams to join us.

Next week these 20 teams will meet over 90 of our absolute best mentors – all across the board from experienced entrepreneurs, Europe’s best VCs and most active angels, to tons of experts from all aspects of the startup business.

For our panel on: ‘From Biz Dev to M&A – working with large companies’ we will be joined by Anil Hansjee, (Ex Google M&A EMEA), Martin Ott (Moneybookers), Tom Allason (Shutle) and Glyn Britton(Albion). This will certainly make for an interesting debate, as we will dive into various war stories of how large corporates can and should (and have and shouldn’t) work together throughout the life cycle of a startup.

Below is a synopsis of the teams who’ll be rocking Mini Seedcamp London next week, hopefully you’ll agree with us – a very fine selection indeed:  

• CityMapper from London, UK, builds apps that involve movement in cities, for example BusMapper
• ComodIT from Liège, Belgium, a new approach to IT operation based on a descriptive language. Enabling a simple tool, with an intuitive web UI, that solves all the day-to-day needs of your company.
• ContactUsPlus from London, UK, notifies the website when customers have not been responded to or are unhappy with the response. .
• Crowd from Paris, France, brings ubiquity to the world until we figure fully-fledged teleportation out by letting you see & share what is going on right now, anywhere.
• CubeSocial from Basingstoke, UK, is a software for time-starved professionals to win business through social media.
• Earningscast from London, UK – are socializing the earnings call and making it easy for consumers to access this media.
• EnergyBob from Munich, Germany, knows when you will be back home and will set the temperature to be at a comfort level in time for your arrival.
• Farmeron from Osijek, Croatia helps farmers across the world to manage their farming data online and to do farm performance analysis using exciting statistics.
• Fractal from London, UK, is a web based service converting any HTML into compliant email designs that render the same in all major email clients.
• GNERGY from Sofia, Bulgaria, an app which helps home owners improve the energy efficiency of their homes
• iubenda from Bologna, Italy, allows anyone to generate a privacy policy for their website, without needing a lawyer.
• Myows.com from Singapore, a global copyright management and protection app that helps creatives generate evidence while they work.
• OpenSignalMaps from London, UK, provides accurate and independent mobile phone coverage maps
• replydone from Vienna, Austria, an intelligent prediction engine finds relevant email text from your old replies and prepares suggestions you can use as answer.
• RolePoint from London UK helps companies find the most talented candidates through their employees’ professional networks.
• SNTMNT from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, analyzing and predicting stock price movement based on online buzz.
• StorkUp from Troon, UK, creating the ultimate crowd-voted new baby list, and combining it with super-accurate price comparison.
• TransferWise from London UK is a peer-to-peer currency exchange that’s a better way to exchange currency by cutting out banks and other middlemen.
• Travelstormer from London, UK, is a collaborative travel planner for groups. It focuses is on decision-making, group itineraries and expense tracking.
• UntapTV from London, UK installs the red button on your mobile phone and rewards you for watching TV

Also, please do not forget to tell your friends we are still looking for an awesome intern to join our team – It’s a great opportunity to work with Europe’s best startups, investors, and mentors!