We’re excited to introduce Seedcamp Firsts, the definitive guide to the all-important first steps in company building brought to you through first-hand experiences and lessons learned from the brightest minds across the Seedcamp Nation.
The power of the Seedcamp Nation comes from the incredible breadth of experience that’s been lived across it. We want to open up this hard-won knowledge and insights from the exceptional founders we’ve backed to our Experts Collective, Venture partners, and our core team.
Our ultimate goal with Seedcamp Firsts is to help support the next generation of exceptional entrepreneurs navigate those critical first steps in building a business.
Check out our growing, multi-media Seedcamp Firsts content library:
1. ️ The founding story of Maze. How to test, explore and validate your first product ideas as an early-stage startup: The first edition of Seedcamp Firsts features Jonathan Widawski, co-founder and CEO of Maze, a Seedcamp-backed growth-stage company on a mission to democratize product research. In conversation with our Venture Partner Devin Hunt, Jo explores everything from prioritising what to build, and when, to how to evaluate customer input in product development decisions.
2. ️ How to first kickstart your content strategy and its power as a key differentiator: Learn all things content from Raphael Allstadt, Co-founder and CEO of tl;dv, and Tom Bangay, Senior Director of Content & Community at Juro – the masterminds behind the companies’ content strategies – from why content was first determined to be an essential part of the business and shaping the early strategy to execution measurement and key learnings for early-stage founders. hosted by Natasha Lytton, Head of Brand and Network at Seedcamp.
3. ️ How to set up customer support and operations as an early-stage startup: Our Head of Brand and Network, Natasha Lytton, speaks with one of our fantastic mentors, Rona Ruthen, about setting up customer support and operations in early-stage startups. Rona is one of the best people to learn from on this topic following her experience scaling Fintech unicorn Monzo among other well-known startups, including Curve, a Seedcamp portfolio company.
4. ️ Scaling Customer Operations: Change is the only constant: In Part II of our Seedcamp Firsts series on customer operations, Rona Ruthen and Natasha Lytton delve into the hyper-growth stage of company building. Rona shares her lessons and experiences scaling operations across various roles, including VP of customer operations at Monzo, where she helped the company grow from 1 million to six million customers. Learn why communication, clear goals, and single-threaded leadership are essential and how to get buy-in from people across the company.
5. ️ Making big bets as a DeepTech startup with Victor Riparbelli, Co-founder & CEO of Synthesia: Victor Riparbelli, co-founder of our portfolio company, Synthesia, speaks with our Venture Partner, Devin Hunt, about making big bets, how to get comfortable with long-term product decisions, and learning from mistakes.
6. How to Lay the Foundation For and Implement Your First Strategic Partnership: Our mentor and executive at portfolio company, Elliptic, Elsa Said-Armanet shares her best insights on how to select a strategic partner, prepare and carry out your first negotiation, and measure the results of the collaboration.
7. How to Build Your Early Engineering Team. Part I: Sourcing Engineering Talent: Our Expert in Residence, David Mytton, shares his hard-won insights on how to build your early engineering team. In Part I, David focuses on sourcing engineering talent, from writing a compelling job ad to defining your selection criteria and identifying the right channels to reach out to potential candidates.
8. How to Build Your Early Engineering Team. Part II: Selecting Engineers: In Part II of his piece on building your early engineering team, our Expert in Residence, David Mytton, walks you through the five stages of selecting engineers.
9. How to set up a fully remote and distributed team. Lessons from Maze and Gitlab – April Hoffbauer, VP of People at our portfolio company Maze, shares her insights on how to think about and build a remote, fully-distributed, and asynchronous team from day one. Tune in or read more here.
10. How to create and scale an iconic community. Lessons from Sorare – Our Partner Sia Houchangnia chats with Dan O’Kelly, an early Community Lead at Seedcamp-backed fantasy sports unicorn Sorare. They cover all things community building, including: the importance of community in building a fast-growing startup; founders’ key role in setting up the vision and building the foundations of an authentic community; the early tactics Sorare used to build their community, and more.
11. How data relates to building a great product at your startup. Candice Ren’s lessons from Bumble and 173Tech – Candice Ren, Co-founder of 173Tech and a member of the Seedcamp Expert Collective, talks with our Venture Partner Devin Hunt about how data relates to building a great product at your startup. Candice, who contributed to building Bumble’s data analytics function and team, explains the importance of understanding and utilizing company data effectively in startups. She provides insights into establishing Northstar metrics, user journey analytics, feature analytics, data dictionaries, and strategies for effective data sharing among teams.
12. How to A/B Test Product Changes and Set up Good Data Science Practices – In a follow-up to their Seedcamp Firsts conversation on data, our Venture Partner Devin Hunt and Candice Ren, Founder of analytics agency 173Tech and a member of the Seedcamp Expert Collective, dive deep into A/B testing and good data science practices.
Stay tuned for future editions!