At Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv Reshma Sohoni, CEO of Seedcamp moderated a lively and educational panel discussion featuring (left to right in the below picture):
Discussion immediately turned to the economic crisis portraying a positive, optimistic outlook. Comments drew attention to:
Product was the next topic of conversation. Tal Barnoach kicked off with some proverbial words of wisdom, “Don’t sell Pizza and Falafel in the same restaurant”. Focusing on one core competency is obviously a clear element of Tal’s restaurant choice.
There was also general agreement that it is key to launch your product early and iterate to best match your customers’ key requirements quickly.
Saul Klein emphasised the importance of metrics and referred to the definitive text on the subject, Dave McClure’s Start-up Metrics for Pirates. He stressed that you need to know what you are measuring and why, this will provide a criteria for success and builds confidence with investors who want to see measurable progress.
Gigi Levi emphasised that you should keep a close eye on your customers’ behaviour, he elaborated thus:
What do investors look for in a team/investment?
Tal Barnoach likes to see a team interested in a long term investment and a product with a key selling point for the user. He also advised teams to improve their presentations by making them an emotional experience, addressing the needs of the user.
Gigi Levi is interested in seeing smart teams who know their market. He wants them to be able to name ALL their competitors and demonstrate why they are better!
Saul Klein encouraged teams to leverage the investors, as at an early stage they should be a key member of the team. Use them to open doors to countries, hires, scaling and crucial expertise.
Avichay Nissenbaum recommended that it isn’t worth talking to investors until you have polished your pitch talking to everyone else. You should also take references from your investors to check what they are like to work with.
Thanks to all the panelists for taking part!
Our Mini Seedcamp tour this year has made a great start in Tel Aviv, with super strong and impressive teams and quality mentors. We could not have done this without the likes of Yaron from the.co.ils for all his support finding teams and mentors, Liat and the IDC Herzilia for hosting the event and connecting to teams, Ezra for showing us what makes Israel tick, and all the mentors and teams for attending. A massive thanks to all!
Now to the winners…they are, (drum roll):
Clear Applications
Devunity
SimilarWeb
Besides the benefits of the Mini event itself, all 3 teams receive the following:
• All 3 teams are invited automatically to the Mini Seedcamp of their choice in Paris, London, Warsaw, Slovenia, Berlin or Helsingborg, to further connect them with other like-minded teams and broaden their entrepreneurial scope
• A special bundle of Amazon Web Services credits
We’ll be posting a full trip report shortly, which will include some interesting stats, general overview of the events, with a focus on the panel discussions.
Thanks again Tel Aviv!
To connect Seedcamp with the Tel Aviv entrepreneurial community we have teamed up with the.co.ils for a cocktail party!
All local innovators, entrepreneurs and experts are welcome and can sign up for community tickets here. It will be on Wednesday night from 19:30 at Uptown in Tel Aviv Old Harbor.
Never to be one to shy away from social occasions, Seedcamp will be hooking up with the Tel Aviv Entrepreneurs Meet-up on Friday morning for some coffee. Come join us by signing up here
First off, we’d like to thank all the start-up teams who applied to the Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv event, the ideas and quality of the submissions was impressive to say the least! And so, after many hours of judging nearly 75 applications, we are happy to announce some of the final 20 teams that will be participating in Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv on 29th January 2009, taking place at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. We ‘re very excited to be meeting and working with the teams in person next week…and also that we’ll need to bring at least an SPF 15!
The lucky teams confirmed so far are:
We will keep updating this list, so watch this space!
It was quite interesting to see a mix of later and early stage teams that applied and we stayed in tune and chose a mixed group of start-ups as well. Some companies that are starting to get a lot of traction in Israel aren’t quite household names here in Europe and so we hope to provide these emerging companies with some good links into Europe. For the earliest stage companies, we did see some similar hot sectors as we recently saw with the Seedcamp teams, such as real estate, gaming, and tools and products for improving the development environment.
We can’t wait to get over there and be dazzled by the talent…and see what penetrates through the SPF 15!
As we start etching our way across Europe in 2009, Paris will be our next destination on our Mini Seedcamp tour de force. We were so impressed with the web tech start-up talent from France in 2008, which saw the likes of Stupeflix going on to be a 2008 Seedcamp Week winner, that we decided to come back for more. This time, Mini Seedcamp Paris is extending its search and inviting fresh and fantastic talent from beyond France to include Spain and the Benelux region. By doing so, we hope to unearth even more promising start-up teams that are itching to break through the surface and build a kick-ass business.
Following on form, Mini Seedcamp Paris will put 20 of the best early stage web tech start-ups from the region face to face with over 50 industry leading and highly experienced entrepreneurs, investors and developers from the region and across Europe to participate in a day of mentoring, panel discussions and presentations.
The teams will benefit from engaging with and listening to esteemed mentors and industry leaders from product designers and marketing specialists and venture capitalists to serial entrepreneurs. Through a series of interactive panel discussions and informal 1:1 sessions, the selected teams will gain invaluable insight and a solid foundation to help kick-start a viable business in Europe today. Not to mention being inspired by fellow entrepreneurs and a chance to broaden their scope within the European start-up ecosystem.
The teams will again be invited to apply for Seedcamp Week in September 2009 held in London, whereby 20 teams are selected from around the EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for start-ups. Along with this, Seedcamp may also invest locally into a start up team that has an exceptionally winning formula.
With 2008 coming to a close, we’re getting very excited at the prospects of the New Year and even more excited that the first stop on our Mini Seedcamp tour de force next year will see us tapping into the web-tech talents of Israel…and happy that that we might grab some winter sunshine to boot!
Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv will bring together 20 of Israel’s best early stage web tech start-ups with over 50 industry leading and highly experienced entrepreneurs, investors and developers from the region and across Europe to participate in a day of mentoring, panel discussions and presentations.
Participants include Saul Klein of Seedcamp, Yaron Orenstein of the.co.ils and Tovi Riegler of SAP Labs to name but a few. From product designers to venture capitalists and marketing specialists, they will share their knowledge and experience to help the selected teams put together the foundations of a viable business. The teams will benefit by listening and spending time with the mentors to get feedback, ask questions and learn as much as possible from their collective experiences. It also gives the selected teams a chance to get to know other entrepreneurs and be inspired by each other.
The teams are then invited to apply for Seedcamp Week in September 2009 held in London, whereby 20 teams are selected from around the EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for start-ups. Along with this, Seedcamp may also invest locally into a start up team that has an exceptionally winning formula.
Israel has a strong reputation for technological start-ups and by hosting a Mini Seedcamp in the region we hope to extend the entrepreneurial ecosystem further, increasing ties with Europe, so that talented teams of entrepreneurs can take the leap and start world-class businesses.
Investor Day during the Seedcamp 3 months is one of the two major milestones 11 weeks post Seedcamp Week for the teams to show how they have progressed on the relationships and company development that was accelerated during Seedcamp Week. Just like Demo Day, we were positively impressed by how the teams are maturing, developing their products, and moving confidently in the face of the obvious challenging times ahead.
The day brings together the Seedcamp companies and investors together for update, debate, and feedback.
Some key updates were:
Here is a quick summary of what the teams presented.
uberVU have made great progress developing their product which maps the conversational web. It targets the gap in information between Google Alerts and media monitors. They have excited power bloggers, PR professionals, and the Thomson Reuters film crew who have been following them around
Basekit’s demo has the power to knock socks off. A simple web creator with massive potential as it creates dynamic sites or “mashups”. All calls were for launch, launch, launch! Private beta will go up January so sign up at www.basekit.com
Kyko is still in stealth mode but credit must be given for achieving the most on the least amount of money (and Aly isn’t a hacker). Watch this space for a beta launch in January as well
Soup helps you express yourself. Their Tumblogging platform has a strong following across Europe and pays special attention to user design. They are up and running so create your own soup.io and you’ll probably be as addicted as us. Launching in Polish very soon and other languages after.
Stupeflix have invested in the technology to make their web based professional video product the best on the market for their target consumers. The product is showing strong early interest as they have their first customer
Toksta’s social chat plug-in is a great solution for social networks and other such sites looking for time-saving easy as copy and paste implementation. In their pitch they provide a clear differentiator from competitors. Look out for some major announcements in January
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