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:
- Partnerships – giving companies a head start to set-up shop in the best tech hubs in the world and enabling ecosystems across EMEA to connect better into Seedcamp
- Experts in Residence – offering even better on-going advice and support to teams and better opportunities for our mentors to get more involved with the success of the founders
- AngelList and evolving Seedsummit – even better access to seed funding
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.
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