This time last year, we held the first Seedsummit in London. The idea behind it was to help to create a forum for active European seed investors to connect and establish a stronger more cohesive network to support entrepreneurs. Now 12 months later – we are ready to take the wrappers off Seedsummit.org.
Recently, Seedcamp has been sharing lots of news about growing our team and adding firepower for our international platform. We have a stronger foundation to help the companies and founders that are at the stage where Seedcamp is a good fit. We have always helped Seedcamp companies gain access to further capital and so many other entrepreneurs have always reached out to us frustrated at how difficult it is to identify true seed stage investors in their local regions and across Europe or US with whom there is a fit.
Enter Seedsummit.org. Like Nivi and Naval’s excellent AngelList, we aim to be a resource to connect entrepreneurs and local seed investors looking to find each other. The investors on Seedsummit.org are qualified, active in seed and they are looking for deals. While we don’t have the density of either the VC or angel money available in the Valley, there is still an emerging group of very active seed investors in the markets that Seedcamp is local in, from Union Square to Mumbai.
Given many Seedcamp companies raise their post-Seedcamp funding from these very investors like Jeremie Berrebi, Sherry Coutu, Alex Hoye, Stefan Glaenzer, Dave McClure and Robin Klein, we have gotten to know our fellow travelers well. Seedsummit.org is a first step. As with Seedcamp, we will look to all of you to help us iterate and make sure we can serve entrepreneurs and investors best in their quest to find the right partners. So, please do have a look and play around and feed back to us as much as possible.
There is a dedicated space for both investors and entrepreneurs on the site. We will be adding more useful features and content soon, along with connecting with our friends in other places putting together a similar platform. But we hope this is a very helpful start for all of you to get better connected and funded.
In addition, we will host two full Seedsummit events for active angel and seed investors this year. The first will be taking place in January, right after our just announced Seedcamp London. Following our first North American Event in June, we will host a Seedsummit in New York City aiming to connect Seed investors across the Atlantic. We are looking forward to a great 2011, and Seedsummit.org will be a large part of it!
We also want to point out our technology partner Lateral, who helped us out with the development and review of the site. Ciprian and his team are an important part of the inception of Seedsummit, we are looking forward to working together on the future changes to the site to develop an even greater experience for both investors and start-ups.