This is a guest post written by Yalim K. Gerger, Founder of Formspider, our Event Partner for Mini Seedcamp Istanbul on the 30th of April.
”If the whole world was a state, Istanbul would be the capital of it.” – Napoleon
Throughout its 3000 year history, Istanbul has hosted kings, sultans, queens, presidents, popes, an UEFA Cup Final, a historic Champions League Final, World Basketball Championships, Formula One Racing, Guns N’ Roses, Madonna, Michael Jackson and James Bond…Yet this global city has not, to this day, hosted a single Seedcamp event.
This is about to change.
On April 30th, the inaugural Mini Seedcamp Istanbul event will be held at the ITU University Maslak Campus KSB Auditorium.
Turkey has a fledgling startup community with over 200 companies registered on AngelList. Its ecosystem of entrepreneurs, VC’s, incubators, mentors and angels is growing quickly. There are plenty of national and international success stories such as Yemek Sepeti, Gitti Gidiyor, Markafoni and Peak Games to encourage and signal to everyone in the community that a very bright future can be real and achievable.
Seed capital with international mentorship and networking opportunities is the missing key element for our young local startups with global ambitions to succeed. This is why the Mini Seedcamp Istanbul event is very important for our ecosystem and why we’re very excited to be a part of this inaugural event.
So without further ado, below are the list of amazing startups that are selected to participate in the first Mini Seedcamp Istanbul:
Beware, they might just disrupt the market you are in.
Yalim K. Gerger Founder Formspider
In 2013, we are holding four full blown Seedcamp Weeks which will give founders across Europe the biggest possible exposure, high quality mentoring, and the possibility to join the Seedcamp Family.
Seedcamp Week Berlin is next on the schedule, and in less than a month some of Europe’s best Entrepreneurs, Operators, and Investors will join us for a week of events in Germany’s Capital. We have some great mentors and investors signed up – as you could see on Twitter today, they’re looking forward to meeting some great startups from across Europe.
Mentoring day, taking place at The Factory, will include Entrepreneurs, Product and Marketing experts, and some of the best operators across the German and European startup scene. Some of the people included are Christian Hernandez, David Noel, Jason Goodman, Paul Jozefak and Christian Thaler-Wolski – these are mentors the Seedcamp teams have consistently rated extremely high, and thus we are happy to have them on board again.
Seedcamp Week will also include a Demo Day taking place at BDMI, where we will showcase the best teams we saw at Seedcamp Berlin, and some of our earlier Seedcamp teams who are currently fundraising. For investors, this is a great way to catch up on the progress of teams they already know, and to meet new teams from Seedcamp Week Berlin. The top investments funds will be represented and we already have great names signed up to attend including investors from Index Ventures, Point Nine Capital, Balderton Capital, BDMI, Earlybird, DFJ Esprit and T-Venture (Investors: let us know if you are interested to take part).
The selected startups will already meet the Seedcamp Team on Sunday to get prepared and ready for the week at The Wye. Monday will see investment interviews, during which the participating teams will pitch to the Seedcamp Team and investors for inclusion in the year long Seedcamp Program.
In the past and coming weeks, Mini Seedcamps are happening all across Europe – from Belgrade to Tel Aviv, from Istanbul to Amsterdam, and in Kiev and Stockholm. Out of these local events, we will invite teams to participate in Seedcamp Week Berlin. Mini Seedcamps are a new and exciting way for us to travel to local entrepreneurship and startup hubs and meet lots of companies close to home. We bring along some of our teams who share their Seedcamp experience, and engage with the local mentor and investment community to increase visibility and access for the teams taking part.
Startups can also apply directly to Berlin and get selected through the traditional application process – if you already know about Seedcamp and know what to expect, this is a straightforward way to engage. You can apply now and work on your application until the deadline on Sunday 21st, midnight.
We are very thankful for the Seedcamp Sponsors; Google, Microsoft BizSpark, Qualcomm Ventures and PayPal Developer and our Event Partner in Berlin, BDMI, who make this event possible. Without them, Seedcamp couldn’t travel the globe and do all that we do for entrepreneurs. We would also like to thank our venue hosts in Berlin; The Wye, The Factory and BDMI.
We have done many Mini Seedcamps in times past, but this year we have shifted to a slightly different format which allows the Seedcamp experience to travel to more places than ever before. Our new format emphasises local outreach for both companies, mentors and investors. We believe that by bringing everyone from the ecosystem together, we can jointly, with our local supporting partners, find the most exciting companies and help them have a direct on-ramp to the Seedcamp experience. Having such immense support from the local ecosystem allows us to really help the presenting companies get access to great local mentors and as soon as possible expedite their company’s development.
To that end, our first Mini Seedcamp in Belgrade was a resounding success. Royal Family support of a startup event is never a usual thing, but at our recent Mini Seedcamp Belgrade event we were fortunate to have the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Serbia, as well as the Ambassador of the UK in Serbia, attend our event and hear the local startups present their ideas. In addition to the Royal Family and Ambassador, we had experienced local mentors including Bal Balaji, Boris Krstović, Ivo Špigel, and Rumen Iliev attending and providing feedback to the presenting teams.
During our event, we covered various topics that the attending companies had a chance to debate, including what makes a company attractive for investment by high growth investors, how companies can leverage local ecosystems, and how to scale beyond a local geography into global markets. During our panel discussion we had Bal, Boris, Ivo, Seedcamp alumni Tomaž Štolfa and Ivan Aksentijević highlighting their experiences, war stories, and best practices on how to achieve all these and various other topics about startup growth.
As Mini Seedcamps always include a chance to pitch and receive feedback, we were excited to see such high quality startups attend and really take away some actionable feedback from our feedback panel on how to scale further. For details on the presenting companies for the Belgrade event check out our guest blog by start.it
After pitching, the companies received feedback from the panel, but during our networking breaks, from the other mentors in the audience as well.
We look forward to meeting many more companies at our Mini Seedcamps in the year ahead and as ever we will endeavour to help them find the right support locally, as well as gaining access to the Seedcamp team and our wider family. Below is the upcoming list of events make sure to get involved!
Campus is celebrating its one year anniversary and the celebrations will be ongoing throughout the whole of April. As part of the celebrations all Campus Partners will be organizing events to showcase their work for those in and around London who still don’t know what happens at 4-5 Bonhill Street or who are curious to learn more.
We’re very proud to call Campus home and are eager to show the wider startup community who we are and what we’re up to. On the 18th of April, Seedcamp is taking part in the many activities included in the celebrations and we’re bringing a taste of our bread and butter to residents and the wider startup community, with SeedPeek.
First up, Carlos Espinal, Seedcamp Partner, will have an informal chat with the founders of two Seedcamp teams that climbed their way to Seedcamp HQ on Campus’ fourth floor. Subscrib and Planvine, both startups were “Made in Campus” and grow from the ecosystem that is being built here. Subscrib’s founders met at Central Working in the basement back in September and Planvine moved to Techhub the day that Campus opened. Both these teams joined the Seedcamp family after winning Seedcamp Week London back in January and they’ll be sharing their stories and experiences.
After that we’ll be hearing from another success story, this time an outcome from our other endeavours at Campus: Seedhack. The winners of the last edition of our very own hackathon, Relist, will be here to talk about how they went from a weekend of full-on coding and brainstorming at Seedhack, to an actual startup. They still work downstairs at Central Working everyday. Since they got a wildcard at Seedhack for our next Seedcamp Week in Berlin they now eager to show us their progress and how they’ve evolved.
Finally we’ll be joined by the founders of a company that went through the Seedcamp program back in Seedcamp’s first years. They’ll be able to share their success story and how Seedcamp was a key stepping stone in their journey to success.
This is a guest post written by Alex Covic for start·it, our Media Partner for Mini Seedcamp Belgrade on the 5th of April.
In case you’ve missed the news, the inaugural Mini Seedcamp Belgrade will take place at a very special venue – the Royal Palace, on April the 5th. The event will coincide with the biggest startup event of the season, the Startup Standup event which takes place day later, on the 6th.
Seedcamp is almost unanimously recognized as the most important seed fund in Europe, and event in Belgrade will be held in the revamped, “Mini Seedcamp” format, in partnership with SEE ICT and Startit.
Belgrade is the first stop in their 2013 European tour, and we are positive that Seedcamp’s visit will have a big impact and help to further ignite the Serbian startup community – which is definitely gathering momentum and picking up pace.
Startup Standup will also double as the Demo Day & Graduation event of the first class of Startup Academy – a majority of which have also been selected to pitch at the Mini Seedcamp. This is a unique opportunity for young entrepreneurs and founders from the locale (and a few other places, more on that below) to get some invaluable feedback from Seedcamp’s mentors and investors.
Hopefully, some of them will also get invited to the Seedcamp Week in Berlin, where they will get a shot at the big prize – the acceptance into Seedcamp’s prestigious programme, an an initial seed investment of up to 50.000€.
A total of nine startups will pitch at the event – seven from Serbia, and one each from Croatia and Romania.
The first Mini Seedcamp in Serbia is organised in partnership with SEE ICT with the support of Crown Prince Alexander II Foundation for Education.
For fresh updates regarding SEE tech startups follow Start·it on Twitter.
The Hemony carillon of the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam was installed in 1656 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We’re setting quite a few ‘firsts’ this year and it’s still only April! On the 24th of April we’re heading to The Netherlands for our inaugural Mini Seedcamp Amsterdam. The Netherlands has been on our ‘must visit’ list for a number of years now so we’re excited to have finally set a date.
As the event is proceeding TNW Conference commencing 25th April, lots will be happening in the ‘Dam. All the great people drawn to the conference will hopefully be able to join us for the half day event and meet some of the most promising startups from the region.
Our local champions encouraging us to take the short hop across the channel have opened all doors to ensure we’re well taken care of. Our event partners are HenQ, the Seedcamp investor from Amsterdam, and SoftLayer, who has been a strong supporter of Seedcamp since they expanded to Europe. Our longstanding mentors from YA! and ACE have also proven invaluable in helping us get set up.
The event is taking place at the beautiful Zuiderkerk and we’ll be joined by various members of the bustling Dutch ecosystem, our friends from Microsoft BizSpark and many more Seedcamp friends who’ll be in town that week.
This year we’ve introduced multiple ways to join the Seedcamp Family and applying to local events is a great way to get shortlisted to attend one of the four funding events per year, the Seedcamp Weeks in Berlin and London. Next up is Seedcamp Week Berlin in May (startups can apply directly to Seedcamp Week events, or get shortlisted through participation in Mini Seedcamps).
If you’re a startup keen to join us in Amsterdam on the 24th of April, make sure to complete the short application form via AngelList. The deadline is the 15th of April.
If you’d like to join us as an attendee on the day please sign up here via Eventbrite.
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