Saul was just speaking at the Web 2.0 Conferencein Berlin today on the topic of today’s state of European startups and funding.

I recently sent a note to all the Seedcamp companies urging calm and patience in light of volatile market conditions. Saul gave similar advice and thought I would put it below as well

Main points I’d like to reiterate are: My top 3 tips for doing that 1) Focus, focus, focus and don’t let the volatility distract you. Focus on product development and your vision of the problems you are trying to solve

2) Have a legitimate plan of how you are going to bring in Revenue and how quickly you can get to break-even

3) Continue to work hard. It’s a 24-7 game as we know. Reach out to mentors, advisors, everyone you believe can help. Worst someone can say is No!

Good luck and keep growing!

Enhanced by Zemanta

At the beginning of September, we selected our 23 finalists who made it to Seedcamp week. But we received several hundred applications, so what about the rest? This year, for the first time, we gave teams who didn’t make the cut individual feedback based on the judges’ comments. The goal is to give some constructive points to shape your product/company going forward and to help make sense of the selection process

While digesting and processing the judges’ comments, I noticed some trends. And here they are, along with some suggestions on strengthening your applications be it for Seedcamp or other presentations

“They are entering a very crowded space”
Our judges are experts on web business, so if you are starting a social network, search engine, shopping comparison site etc, they’ll know you’re up against multiple dominant competitors. The best way round this is to demonstrate knowledge of the space: acknowledge your competitors and then tell the judges why you’ll succeed anyway. If you don’t identify your competitors, the judges will – make sure they understand how you can compete and win.

“Is this a big enough market?”
The judges may not be familiar with your target market (academics, gardeners, etc), but need to know that it is large enough to sustain a thriving business. Be honest, and tell the judges how big you think your market really is. And don’t just say that it’s everyone who has a computer..!

“I don’t understand their proposition”
Some applications fell at the first hurdle – the descriptions were incomprehensible to the judges and so it’s pretty impossible to move past that point. To succeed, your proposition needs to clear and to the point. Using demos, prototypes, can all be an effective ways of illustrating your idea.

“Can they really pull this off?”
If the judges don’t believe the team has the ability to execute, even a strong rest of the application is rendered less credible and weak. So, wow the judges with previous project, prototypes you’ve developed, your hacking pedigree and/or a party trick.

“Where is the business?”
Several judges diagnosed some propositions with ‘feature-itis’, don’t forget a cool feature doesn’t make a company! Make sure you know what the pain your product solves is and how you’ll make money from it. Then, just remember to tell the judges as well!

“if you really believe in the idea, prove me wrong”

If your application got knocked back for one of these reasons, don’t give up hope! If you can work your way round the problem in a convincing way then you’re probably onto something. Tell us about it in your next application!

We welcome feedback on our feedback, so comment below, twitter (mentioning Seedcamp), or email feedback@seedcamp.com.

Al


Jonathan Moules, enterprise corespondent from the Financial Times, filed some video reports from the last three days Seedcamp Week which are now available on their site.

I’d embed them directly here but don’t see an easy way to do so unfortunately. I offer a meager screen-grab instead.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Seedcamp wrapped up over 2 weeks ago and we are now in the middle of helping the Seedcamp 7 ramp up their businesses over the next 3 months. A lot is being thrown at them. They’ll have to focus and work extremely hard. We’ll twitter about the key takeaways from the various events, dinners, etc.

On another note, the Sept-Dec time-frame is always busy and this year is no exception. The European tech community has organized several good events to help the start-up ecosystem grow and succeed in the coming times.

FOWA is next week on the 9th and 10th. There are a variety of topics, all of which talk about taking web applications to the next level, from enterprise to cloud computing, and talking about scaling apps. Another good event is Blogcamp CEE 2008 October 17-20th which focuses on new media and online start-ups. For those making the trip to Kyiv, it’s a great chance to explore CEE internet markets. Up to 80 sessions delivered in 5 parallel agenda tracks will provide an exhaustive description of Eastern European online scene. Towards the end of October, the 21st-23rd, we’ll be returning to the Web 2.0 Expo which is the definitive gathering in Europe for anyone interested in Web 2.0 technologies and their increasing prevalence in the lives and work of the broader consumer and enterprises.

And that’s just October. As always, do come say hi to us at FOWA and Web 2.0! Look forward to seeing many of you again.

We’re happy to announce our seven Seedcamp winners for 2008.

You can also read our official press release (PDF).

As you can tell from the length of that list we’ve exceeded our original target of five teams – by 40%. Stretching our rules that far is a clear signal of just how strongly we feel about this group.

It’s been a productive week for everyone involved, official winners or not. It’s also been a long one – which explains why you might already have read about the Seedcamp Winners on TechCrunch UK before we could post them here – but the thought of working with every one of these teams is keeping the excitement level at a permanent high.

We’ll have some thoughts, reflections, and recaps of the week overall a bit later, after all of us hibernate for week.

A quick list of items lost during our rather intense week:

The avocado has been appropriated and the passport remains missing.

Seedcamp Week 2008 Day 3 Highlights

The theme for our third day of Seedcamp Week was “scaling” – not only how do you plan for and react to expansion of your technology, but also your business as a whole. With that aim we assembled a group of technical experts and seasoned investors – often perceived as somewhat of an “oil and water” mixture (no clear answer for which group has the dubious honor of being oil) but in the right setting perfect compliments to each other.

The morning panel was moderated by Matt Biddulph of Dopplr, who was joined by Stefan Magdalinski of Moo, Toon Coppens of Netlog, James Aylett of Tartarus, and Simon Willison, co-creator of Django. The group discussed in-depth the criticality of a medium-term plan vs. the folly of a long-term one and the importance of using the right measurements to determine the necessity of scaling – something that would be reiterated later in the day.

Immediately following that our teams mostly broke into small groups to start their last day of mentoring, while the women in attendance stayed behind to discuss issues relevant to their existence in a male-dominated field – the start of a hopefully ongoing series of talks.

Next the attendees (teams and mentors both) had the chance to listen to Dave McClure’s fantastic Startup Metrics for Pirates presentation, which harkened back to some of the earlier morning mentions of mandatory measurement.

Dave then handed it over to our afternoon panel on investment, moderated by Tina Baker from Brown Rudnick and featuring Charles Grimsdale of Eden Ventures,
Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures, Robin Klein from TAG, Andrew Weissman of Betaworks, Anil Hansjee of Google, Tal Barnoach from Speed Up, and Andy Hart formerly of Ask.co.uk. Fred Destin of Atlas Venture also made a cameo as audience inquisitor extraordinaire.

Finally our teams had another mentoring session for several hours and returned for a quick wrap-up and preparatory advice for their Thursday presentations, where they’ll have to incorporate all they’ve learned during the week.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Copyright © 2019 Seedcamp

Website design × Point Studio