We continue to operate like a start-up – think like one, behave like one and want to stay like one but to do all this we need to be supported by visionary investors and advisors ourselves – so we would like to announce further fundraising into Seedcamp
New Investors
Back in September 2010, we announced the closing of Seedcamp’s second fund.
Seedcamp is unique in the fact that we raise money to make investments over the course of 3 years and that we invest every month of each of the 3 years. Being this active means we can’t take 1 or 2 years to raise a fund and then invest that capital. We raise funds as quickly as we invest them.
In fact since September 2010 we’ve invested in 29 startups and we have also closed new investors into Seedcamp. Seedcamp’s fund is now at €5M and today we’d like to announce some of the newest investors.
Joining our existing investors:
are our newest investors:
We are extremely excited to welcome our newest investors from all over EMEA and the US, especially because they believe in Seedcamp as a truly pan-EMEA program. They, alongside us, will mentor and support the already diverse mix represented by the investments Seedcamp has made in startups from 24 different countries.
We look forward to them playing as active a role in the evolution of Seedcamp as our current investors have.
Advisory Board
We would also like to announce several plans which enable us to strengthen our value proposition to entrepreneurs further. We have set up a world class Advisory Board for Seedcamp where recognized leaders across multiple disciplines will work closely with us over the next year on processes and plans to best support Seedcamp and EMEA’s best startups. They all share a passion for helping build EMEA’s best startups. We are looking forward to work with and learn from them. This is an initial list of our Advisory Board members for 2011-2012
As we are in business to identify, support and develop the best pre-seed stage founders and businesses, we are always pushing our proposition to founders to the next level. As such we are announcing some key initiatives in the following areas:
500 Startups and Seedcamp Partner in the Valley
There is increasing evidence that companies are going global faster all the time and teams are spread across multiple continents from the very start. Startup hubs across the globe share common ground no matter what the distance. We strongly believe in breaking barriers and borders and that Seedcamp can play a role in further assisting in improving the chances of Seedcamp companies to get to the next stage.
We have always talked about the importance of building bridges into the US and since 2008, we have been doing an annual roadshow to the US to meet potential customers and investors. This has resulted in bringing on US investors alongside EMEA investors for companies like ERPLY, LOOKK (Garmz), Grabcad, EDITD, Zemanta, and others. We have since realized the continued value of space and mentoring as key elements for setting up part of these companies’ operations in the US. Given these needs, we considered the best ways in which to partner with our US based friends.
It was important to us to work with a partner that shares our vision for working together across geographies to help give the startups a leg up and someone we knew well. Seedcamp announces the first such partnership in the US with 500 Startups. 500 Startups has already invested in 3 Seedcamp companies (ERPLY, Brainient, and LOOKK) so they know us well and we are very excited what Seedcamp companies setting up in the Valley can learn in their environment. With this partnership, Seedcamp companies that need to be in the US quickly will have a much stronger landing pad than if they had to do it by themselves.
“500 Startups is a global seed fund & incubator — we’ve already invested in 3 SeedCamp companies, and we keep coming back for more,” said McClure. “Our experience bringing international startups to the US is a great match for SeedCamp startups, by helping them improve their product & marketing efforts, as well as making introductions to Silicon Valley mentors and platform companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, & PayPal.”
Watch this space for future partnership announcements in the US and globally. If you want to partner with Seedcamp please read on here!
Event Partners
As we have grown over 4 years, it just proves harder and harder each year to visit every single place that deserves to be a Mini Seedcamp city. And with the rise of a number of events EMEA-wide and regional ecosystems building their own technology clusters, we felt it was time to tie these ecosystems more strongly together. So, we are sticking to our 1x event per month but we are also working with startup events that will feed into the regional Seedcamps. Winners from these events will receive a spot in the relevant regional Mini Seedcamp. These events brilliantly ignite the seeds of entrepreneurship and we can help continue these nascent ideas and founders by giving them access to a crucial next step, to start to build the idea into a business.
Seeing one of Seedcamp’s most recent winners, Campalyst, came out of the Garage48 event inspired us to formalize the route from a hack weekend or startup competition to startup. Watch this space for more event partnership announcements across EMEA and globally.
For the list of our Partner Events please visit our partnership site.
Expert In Residence Program
Strengthening our core with partnerships will deliver a breadth of additional firepower to the startups beyond our small Seedcamp team. It is important at the same time to help Seedcamp startups build and strengthen their own core as well.
We have been watching as startups have met a few hundred mentors through the Seedcamp process (opening the relationship door) and then brought on several of these mentors as Advisors into their businesses. We have seen just how effective and momentum driving it is to have top notch Advisors for the business early on. While this evolution of a relationship from a 1-day mentoring event to a longer term advisory role has been happening naturally in some Seedcamp startups, we felt it would be useful for both Seedcamp startups and mentors to standardize this. If you look at the great technology businesses that have been built, novice founders have time and again had a handful of expert Advisors helping them on their long and often difficult journeys.
As such, we are implementing an “Expert in Residence” program that will actively work to match up Seedcamp startups with Advisors. This program will enable those mentors that want to work even more closely with the startups to do just that. We will be providing guidance to both the startups and experts on how to setup the Advisor role and any documents they will need to formalize such a relationship.
AngelList and Seedcamp Partner in the US
As we’ve strengthened our presence in the US for Seedcamp companies, we are doing the same for companies that apply to Seedsummit. AngelList and Seedcamp are partnering together to enable more of the EMEA founders and investors to connect and raise funding more easily. “We’re big fans of Seedcamp and their startups. How could we not do this? We’re going to work together to help startups in Europe connect with investors locally and abroad.” says Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList.
Seedsummit has grown well in the last couple of years and the group is making important strides in coming together often which helps to build mutual trust and in policy making across EMEA. Seedsummit will continue these activities. In partnering with AngelList, we are also now able to leverage an incredible marketplace connecting startups with investors. Working with such a dynamic platform and bringing our deep network across EMEA engaged more fully with AngelList, we believe will make AngelList even more valuable for EMEA startups and investors. We are very excited to be partnering with AngelList.
It’s incredible how we come to break every one of our own records this year – more applications then ever to our events, more mentors, more investments, and more financing coming to our portfolio. 2011 was a great year so far, and our yearly Seedcamp calendar is coming to a phenomenal end next week: We’ve been working on Seedcamp Week 2011 since a couple of months ago, and it will be, in one word, awesome.
Seedcamp Week is where the best of the companies we have met throughout the year are coming together to meet the absolute cream of the crop of the European and international startup scene. We have three days of mentoring with the most important industry experts, entrepreneurs, and investors, which will enable the Seedcampers to take their companies to the next level. This year, we have also added a large Demo Day, which will show off the companies to Europe’s most important Investors. We can’t wait for the kick off on Monday, and are looking forward to see everybody again.
So – who is taking part in Seedcamp Week 2011? Twenty amazing teams from all over the world, which we have gotten to know throughout the year:
Another record to be broken this year is the number and level of mentors who will come to Seedcamp Week to extend their knowledge, network, and industry insight to the companies. We will have a total of more than 400 of Europe’s most important founders, investors, product, tech, marketing gurus, and industry experts signed up and can’t wait to meet them all. It would certainly go beyond the limits of this blog post to list them all, but amongst others, teams can expect people from companies such as software and internet giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Qualcomm, eBay, Twitter, Yandex, Asos, AOL, Nokia, Skype, Rackspace, founders of awesome startups like Soundcloud, Wonga, Spotify, DataSift, Mind Candy, FON, Moo, Livebookings, Groupspaces, successful Seedcamp companies like myBuilder, EDITD, Ubervu, Zemanta, LOKK, ERPLY, and many, many more. Of course, the top European investors will also be in attendance, as will the press, bloggers, and startup community at large.
In addition to the mentoring sessions, Seedcamp Week is always a huge learning forum for everyone in attendance. This year, we will have some amazing talks like the founding and growth story of Yandex, the Russian search giant (delivered by cofounder and CTO Ilya Segalovich), learnings from the startup roller coaster at FON (Martin Varsavsky joining us from Spain), insights into product development at Mozilla (by Mike Shaver), a big UX workshop from Enrique Allen of 500Startups for the companies. As before, we will film the talks and make them available through our blog and website – this year in cooperation with our Business Partner, the Tech City Investment Organisation, part of the UKTI.
All of this is only possible because of our generous sponsors, who support us year round and for Seedcamp Week. Qualcomm is our Seedcamp Week sponsor this year, and we are very happy to have them supporting the European startup community. Microsoft Bizspark and Google continue to support us, as do the Founders’ Sponsors – with many generous offers to the Seedcamp companies directly. We are also very thankful to Imperial College for hosting us this year – both the Coputing Department and the Business School went out of their way to accomodate us, and we think it will be a perfect match for the biggest Seedcamp Week ever!
With Seedcamp Week around the corner, it is with great excitement that we open applications for Mini Seedcamp Prague today. We will find the first companies for the Seedcamp class of 2012 in October.
As always, we will have awesome Europe’s internet technology mentors invited, mentoring the participating 20 startups, giving their feedback to improve chances of success, and networking like crazy. Applications are open – go here and apply to let us know about your company and team. The deadline is 28 September, and as we’ve seen time and again – it’s a good idea to finish your application early, so you don’t have to rush it on the last day (or even through the night).
Prague is in a great location to attract founders from all over Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. If you are working on a company or cool product in Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, the Baltics, you are in the right place. Judging by the quality of applications for Seedcamp London in July (and Ljubljana in June), the Balkan states will also supply a large part of applicants, as will France and the UK, as we’ve come to expect. After all, it’s just a short flight away, and the mentors will be from all over Europe.
We’re partnering with Startupyard and TechSquare, and Seedcamp Prague will be sponsored by Credo Ventures, White & Case and Google.
This will be our second visit to Prague and if it follows the trend of our other 2011 Mini Seedcamps the quality of teams and mentors simply gets better and better with each visit. Then of course there is the fact of the Seedcamp Investment, year-long support, and access to the founders’ pack of offers from our Seedcamp Founders Sponsors.
Find out more about our process on our new website, read up on how to prepare a kick ass application, and make sure to apply on time for Seedcamp Prague – Deadline is 28th September
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