On December 6th, we held 2011’s tenth and final Seedcamp event in Paris, kindly hosted by Orrick. This time around, we had 19 fantastic teams from 11 countries – including 6 from France taking part in the event. After an intense week, the full team has returned home to London. Here we share the highlights of the event with you and introduce the latest team to join the Seedcamp family!
Introducing a new family member
Archivme takes care of invoicing and budgeting, and lead by a driven team we’re sure they’re going to rock 2012.
Masterclass
Here at Seedcamp we’re experienced fans of Eventbrite, and use it ourselves to organise Seedcamp’s events. We were honoured to be joined by Renaud Visage, co-founder & CTO of Eventbrite, who gave an inspirational talk about building a multinational business while remaining in France, and the challenges that this approach created. It was especially interesting to hear about the different phases of the business, from starting off with only a handful of people to raising more than 80 million dollars.
Mentors
We had some truly awesome mentors with us in Paris. We always ask teams to give feedback on the mentors they meet during the day – here are a few of the comments from Paris:
- Frederic Lardieg: “Fantastic feedback, he was the only person who asked to test the product during the session. His focus really opened up the discussion and added great value to the business…thanks!”
- Colette Ballou: “Great energy and helped us a lot, her input will save us a serious time and money, absolutely amazing.”
- Florian Meissner: “Excellent input, challenging but also listened, he took the time to come back twice in the day with advice, totally awesome!”
- Scott Sage: “Good mentoring, but even more important: he was actively talking to companies outside the sessions too. His passion is endless and progressed our thinking on a number of fronts.”
Le Camping and Startup Bus
After a long and intensive day of mentoring and networking we were ready for beers and pizza! Le Camping hosted us in their awesome offices (located in the old Paris Stock Exchange). The beer flowed thanks to 360 Capital Partners, and the party went off with a bang. A number of old Seedcamp friends – in town for LeWeb – turned up, and later in the evening the Startup Bus stopped by. We created an impromptu panel and everyone listened to what the ‘Buspreneurs’ had been hacking on whilst touring Europe. Most of the presenters were still giddy from finally being on solid ground, nevertheless several pitched impressive startup ideas.
Finally, here’s some thoughts on the Seedcamp experience from a team’s perspective:
The final Seedcamp event of the year is taking place in Paris on Tuesday (tomorrow!), and we’re very excited to announce the 20 participating teams:
- Bluefields.com from London, UK – sports teams, organised and engaged.
- Dashmin from Paris, France – Google Analytics for your internal data.
- DidThis from Zurich, Switzerland – action logging: log what you do, share it and compare with your friends.
- digitalfibr from Paris, France – Archivme: get all your internet invoices, household bills or mobile expenses in just 3 minutes.
- DynaCloud from Enschede, Netherlands – automates any virtual (data center) environment, reducing license fees and employee costs and increasing scalability.
- Fellody from Zurich, Switzerland – a flirting/dating platform that matches people by their taste in music.
- Helpr from Zimbabwe and USA – one customer care portal to make your customer care and support needs dead simple.
- Human Record from Sofia, Bulgaria – the marketplace for vintage images. We help media and publishers conveniently buy images, and we enable libraries, museums and private collectors to monetize their collections online.
- Infogram from Riga, Latvia – a web based infographic and data visualization tool for online news portals. It’s a simple way to make professionally designed, interactive infographics in just a few minutes.
- Jottify from London, UK – an online community that allows people to share, discuss and sell anything they have written.
- KLEENK from Montpellier, France – a platform where researchers create “smart” connections between scientific publications, and discuss these connections with the community.
- Livesheets from London, UK – spreadsheets are still based on accountants’ books of grid paper. They are blunt, rigid, and overcomplicated. We are creating an alternative, which is visual, powerful, and intuitive.
- Modelo3 from Lisbon, Portugal – transforming how we deal with taxes in Europe with an insanely easy to use service that gets your taxes done with the best refund in less than 10 minutes.
- Neexer from Paris, France – building a team is painful. You have to hire the best people in order to succeed. Neexer provides premium tools to discover these gems.
- Phonoblaster from Paris, France – let your friends and followers go to a web page and listen to the same music you’re listening to, right now.
- Pinpoint from Taganrog, Russia– the easiest online tool to share information that is linked to a specific location on a map.
- PLAYTOUCH from Paris, France – a casual Play2Win gaming service (Play to win prizes) available on any internet device.
- Shall I Buy from Belgium, Netherlands – an iPhone app that helps you get instant shopping feedback from your friends before you have even left the store.
- SlickFlick from London, UK – a mobile app platform for telling stories with photos, where you can make & share them in seconds or view while on the go.
We are really looking forward to spending a day with these fantastic teams, joined by over 90 of our famous mentors. We also look forward a masterclass by Renaud Visage of Eventbrite.
Once the day is over the networking will continue, startup style, with beer and pizza at Le Camping, based in the beautiful old Parisian stock exchange, courtesy of 360 Capital Partners.
