At last Friday’s Seedcamp ‘Demo Day’, the Seedcamp 7 showed off what they’ve been working on for the past six weeks. We saw some great progress and equally interesting comments from the mentors who came along for this web show-and-tell.

A quick progress update

• The main progress has been on the companies’ products, which now show an increased focus on their customers’ demands.
• We saw encouraging sign up and retention analytics.
• And some companies already have clients wanting to implement and pay!

Comments from the Advisors

The mentors who came to Demo Day gave our start-ups some indispensable feedback for taking their ventures forward. But much of their advice applied not only to our Seedcamp 7, but is also valuable to anyone running a tech company at the moment.

Seedcamp week, back in September, coincided with the collapse of Lehman’s Brothers and the start of a massive shake-up of the world’s financial system. Inevitably, the financing of tech companies has been affected and surviving the downturn has been the focus of much of our mentors’ advice. This is what they had to say about how to stay ahead of the game…

• Getting investment just got harder.

We are now in a buyers’ market and start-up valuations are likely to fall. This is because investors’ reckon it’s going to take longer for them to get their return.

• Your start-up company will be best positioned if it can:

1. Minimise burn rates and be as effective as possible with spending. You will achieve more without needing new funds and it will impress investors by demonstrating that their money will be worked hard.
2. Make money! Running a profitable company puts you in a much stronger position when it comes to funding growth simply because you don’t need the money.
3. It’s all about your product, so make sure you focus on it! As was commented, the ‘land grab’ is over, so worry less about market share, just make sure you have the best product released as soon as possible.

Al