Seedcamp Week is our quarterly flagship event. Ambitious startups from across Europe are invited to join Seedcamp and our network of investors and mentors. Throughout the week the startups present, network, and receive feedback on their product. At the end of the week a number of the startups are selected to receive investment from Seedcamp and are welcomed into the family.
On Monday 2nd February more than 20 ambitious startups joined us at Campus London to participate in the first Seedcamp Week of 2015.
We kick Seedcamp Week off with Seedprep, so after some short introductions each founder presented their startup to the Seedcamp team and the rest of the group. It was particularly important to receive crucial feedback at this stage so that when they presented throughout the week, no mentor would be left unsure what the startup does and what they’re looking to gain from the week – whether that’s to receive advice on a particular issue or to build up their network.
Fortunately, by the end day the teams were feeling much more prepared and ready for the week ahead!
One of the startup founders presenting to the group.
On Tuesday we introduced the startups to some of the Seedcamp investors. The investors provided valuable feedback on their presentations and delved deeper into the details of their business model. It was both an opportunity for the startups to identify any weaknesses and for us and our partners to assess whether the teams were ready to join the Seedcamp programme.
Seedcamp Partner Carlos Espinal welcoming the mentors on Wednesday
Wednesday and Thursday are the most intense days of Seedcamp Week, as we open our doors to over 250 or Europe’s finest tech startup mentors; from the founders of household name companies, to experienced executives with backgrounds in Marketing, Product, and Finance.
Each Mentor Day provides the startups with the opportunity to showcase their startups and receive valuable feedback on every area of their business.
One of the startups presenting to the audience on Mentor Day
Wednesday began with each startup presenting to the audience of Product-focused mentors. The startups did a great job – the hard work of Monday’s Seedprep paying off. A particular highlight was Cronofy’s introductory line… “We’ve got the API for time.”
The presentations were followed by a special fireside chat with Moo.com founder, Richard Moross. Moo have played a pivotal role in contributing to the growth of London’s tech startup ecosystem, so it was a real honour to have him join and speak with us at Seedcamp Week.
Richard shared with us his 10-year journey of turning a small design-focused business card producer into a global success story that saw him awarded an MBE. The key point was, as they grew they never lost their focus on design and UX. It’s what made (and still makes) them stand out above the competition.
Reshma and Carlos spoke with Richard afterwards to find out some of the key learnings and advice he had for today’s aspiring startups. You can hear Richard’s advice in a podcast here.
Seedcamp’s Dave Haynes speaking with Moo.com founder Richard Moross
Seedcamp is a close-knit family, so when it came to lunch there was no better company to help us out than Shoprocket, who themselves joined us having successfully participated in September 2014’s Seedcamp Week London – thanks, guys!
Refuelled, the mentoring sessions began. For the rest of the afternoon, three whole floors of Campus London were abuzz with conversations about how to reach that pivotal product/market fit, and how to secure their first paying customers – amongst many other things!
One of the mentors advising a startup during Mentor Day
After the intensity of a full afternoon gleaning every bit of insight and advice they could, the startups and mentors headed over to our friends at Runway East to unwind with drinks and music. Of course, none of the startups missed this opportunity to network!
Startups and mentor networking at Wednesday’s party
We can only assume hangovers were avoided as all the startups made it in the following morning for Day 4…
Thursday’s Mentor Day was all about investment and finance; more than 100 investors from the top global funds and leading finance executives watched the startups nail their final presentations – the improvement over Monday’s was impressive.
Divide‘s co-founder & COO Alex Trewby joined us to tell the story of how he built the Android-focused company before selling to Google as recently as late last year. Carlos and Dave caught up with Alex afterwards to record a podcast about his journey, delving deeper into the challenges faced growing, scaling, and selling a company.
Divide co-founder & COO Alex Trewby speaking to the audience
After a networking lunch, the second afternoon of mentoring began. Often finance isn’t a startup founder’s strongest skill, but this Seedcamp Week included many fintech startups who were quite comfortable speaking about the financial side of things. It was great to hear so many enthusiastic conversations between the founders and mentors.
More mentoring during Thursday’s investor Mentor Day
Week complete, we all excitedly headed over to our friends at Second Home where we were welcomed by founder Rohan Silva for a big party. A huge thank you was given to all our mentors and sponsors who helped throughout the week, and to the startups themselves who were an absolute pleasure to host.
Rohan Silver speaking to the audience at Second Home
The announced teams will be joining us as of next week, and we can’t wait to help them grow into the billion-dollar global companies they can be!
If you run a disruptive startup with global ambitions, we want to hear from you! View our events page to apply to the next Seedcamp Week or meet with the Seedcamp team in advance. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest news. Best of luck!
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures speaking at Seedcamp Week Berlin (Dec ’14)
Are you an ambitious European startup working on a disruptive and globally-scaleable idea? If so, we’d love to invite you Seedcamp Week Berlin to spend three days with our team and our network of mentors. Apply here for the chance to join us.
Seedcamp Week is primarily about assessing whether your startup is ready to join Seedcamp. If it is, you’ll receive our investment. But that’s just the start of your journey… you’ll have access to our learning Academy, one-to-one sessions with our mentors, and a vast network of contacts at your fingertips. And you’ll have it for life – we’re here to support you through every phase of your journey, from prototype to IPO.
That said, Seedcamp Week can be an incredible opportunity for any startup…
Investment: One of the key reasons startups attend Seedcamp Week is for the opportunity of receiving Seedcamp investment (take a look at last year’s Berlin investments here). But while that investment will undoubtedly benefit your startup, Seedcamp Week is about so much more…
Mentoring: We’ve invited over 100 Seedcamp Mentors from across Europe to join us in Berlin. The mentors all have vast experience in areas across Product, UX, Sales, Marketing, and other areas. Many are investors, so you’ll also meet some of Europe’s top Angels and VCs – good connections to have! They’re at Seedcamp Week to help address any questions you may have about your startup. Many relationships have been formed in the past, leading to some mentors becoming investors and even the COO of previous Seedcamp Week startups!
Networking: There will be plenty of opportunity to meet and talk with all the mentors and investors at Seedcamp Week. You’ll be able to speak to them throughout the day as well as at our evening parties.
Masterclass: Learn from the best. At previous Seedcamp Week’s we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming Innocent Drinks founder Richard Reed, Union Square Ventures Partner Fred Wilson, Just East CMO Mat Braddy, Moo.com founder Richard Moross, and Divide co-founder Alex Trewby (to name a few!) This year’s Seedcamp Week Berlin will be no different – we’ll be announcing our special guest shortly.
Take a look at our application guide and follow us on Twitter and Facebook to see what we’re looking for, what teams get out of the experience, and what you can do to improve your chances to win a spot at one of the most prestigious and rewarding tech startup events in Europe.
Taking the time to fill out the application comprehensively is key, and clearly communicating your idea and the strengths of your team is really important for consideration.
When you’re ready, click here to apply for Seedcamp Week Berlin. Good luck!
We’re excited to announce our investment in the following startups who attended Seedcamp Week London. They’ll be joining the Seedcamp family as of next week – congratulations, guys!
It means we’ve now invested in over 150 startups since 2007. We couldn’t be more thrilled. We’ve watched the European startup ecosystem grow over the last few years and it’s been incredibly exciting to see the quality of Seedcamp Week applications improve year after year. A big part of it is due to our amazing network of investors and mentors who give their time helping companies from around Europe, so we’d like to extend a big “thank you” to them!
Since launching our new fund we’ve been actively making seed investments as well. We were thrilled they could join us and are pleased to officially announce they’ve also joined the Seedcamp family:
Finally, you may remember this startup as one of the teams that joined us at Seedcamp Week Berlin in December. Well, we’ve been keeping it quiet, but we’re also finally able to share the exciting news that Gamewheel did indeed join us and has been working in stealth for the last few months:
We’re incredibly excited to welcome the new startups to Seedcamp HQ and help them grow into the billion-dollar global companies they can be.
If you run a disruptive startup with global ambitions, we want to hear from you! View our events page to apply to the next Seedcamp Week or meet with the Seedcamp team in advance. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest news. Best of luck!
You may remember the first reddit AMA we held back in July ’14. It was a great experience and proved popular, receiving almost 90 questions. So we promised to do it again – which we did, earlier this January.
This time Carlos was joined by Dave (business development) and Tom (investment manager) who were on-hand to help answer any questions that came their way. It was a good job too, since the 2-hour AMA turned out to be even more popular that last time – generating 130 comments, almost 50% more than last time. It seems redditors are really interested in accelerating startups!
Fortunately the ‘AMA-Team’ were at the top of their game and managed to get through the vast majority of questions.
Thanks to reddit’s up-voting system we’ve been able to sort the questions by most-popular. Interestingly, these focused mostly on financial issues, suggesting that there’s some work to be done sharing knowledge in this area within the startup community.
So let’s do that. Let’s share some knowledge. Here are the top five AMA questions, as voted by the redditors!
The most popular question asked how founders manage their burn rate before closing their first seed round.
Dave replied, saying that while Seedcamp’s investment can help with living costs it’s a good idea to save up before embarking on your startup so you have a longer runway before needing to raise further investment.
The next question asked how a single founder should go about raising money to hire a team.
Dave again stepped in to answer this one. He said that while Seedcamp does hire single founders, it helps to be a technical founder since you’ll find it easier to build your prototype. From there, applying and receiving an invite to Seedcamp Week could lead you to meet your next hire.
The next question asked if Seedcamp invests in startups with a physical product focus, whose overheads are often higher than software-focused startups.
Dave answered again… he said that Seedcamp has invested in several physical product-focused startups over the years, and while they are typically more capital-intensive, Seedcamp companies go on to raise an average of $1.6m – hopefully enough to cover any storage/warehousing/logistics costs!
The next question asked which traits make successful startups… successful.
Tom stepped in to answer this one. He said that above-all, Seedcamp looks for people with a positive attitude; they can inspire their team and use setbacks as a learning opportunity, helping their business grow stronger. Carlos added that his blog post on the subject goes into more detail.
The next question asked which startups Seedcamp had funded at the top of its investment range.
Carlos answered this one. He shared that Seedcamp had made several larger investments recently, including Property Partner who are democratising property investing.
Many more questions were asked and we encourage you to take a look over on the reddit AMA.
We’d like to thank everyone who took part; the question submitters, the commenters, the up-voters, the Twitter sharers… thank you! We’ll be back to answer your questions again soon.
The office is abuzz with energy… it’s Seedcamp Week! 22 exciting startups have travelled to London from as far as Hong Kong to spend the week presenting, learning and networking with over 200 of Europe’s top investors and mentors.
It wasn’t an easy task selecting just a handful of the hundreds of applicants that applied – in fact, this was one of the highest-quality groups of applicants we’ve seen – but we’re confident we’ve picked a strong group and can’t wait to see how they progress throughout the week! Each startup is working on an ambitious and disruptive technology, spanning a broad range of sectors including FinTech, eCommerce, EdTech, Media, and Analytics.
Our seed fund allows us to invest in later-stage startups too, so we’re thrilled to announce some new investments who are going to be joining us for Seedcamp Week.
During the next few days these promising startups will present their companies to the Seedcamp investors and over 200 of Europe’s top mentors, advising in their areas of expertise; from Product to Finance to Marketing and beyond.
They’ll also hear two insightful masterclasses; Richard Moross (Founder & CEO of Moo.com) will be speaking about growing Moo into an internationally-recognised brand, and Alexander Trewby (Founder & COO of Divide) will share his journey growing Divide up until its recent acquisition by Google.
Of course, we couldn’t do this without the support of our amazing Seedcamp Week partners; Campus London who will be providing the space for the week, our friends at WhiteStar Capital, and Runway East and Second Home where we’ll be holding our renowned after-parties!
Look out for a very special announcement in the coming weeks, as we’ll be investing in some of the participating Seedcamp Week startups.
If you’re a startup founder interested in applying to Seedcamp, applications for May’s Seedcamp Week Berlin will be opening on Monday 9th February. So check back at our website for the official announcement or keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook for details.
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