Seedcamp Budapest Pitch Training
October 24th 2012
We celebrated our 5th birthday this year and after investing in two teams at Seedcamp Budapest, we hit another great milestone: exceeding 75 investments.
We arrived in the beautiful city of Budapest on the 24th of October and headed straight to ESSCA. Here we met with the 20 selected teams and spent a few hours together preparing for the big day ahead.
On the 25th of October we hosted the day at Corvinus University, a great iconic building and perfect setting for the event. We were joined by a hugely international group of mentors, some old faces and others new. All shared a passion for disruptive technology and wanted to share their experience, knowledge and network with the ambitious entrepreneurs in the room.
We kicked off with a warm welcome from our Event Partner; Peter Záboji, Founder of the EEF, welcoming everyone to Hungary and later by Rupesh Chatwani, from the EBRD, our generous Event Sponsors. The 20 teams did us proud by delivering concise 3-minute presentations, keeping the buzz high in the packed auditorium.
After a short networking break, Klaus Hommels (early investor in Skype, Facebook, Xing and Spotify), took to the floor. He shared his thoughts on the investment landscape comparing Europe, China and the US. The key message was to think big or you’ll never get big, something that resonated well with the audience -and a key takeaway for some of the participants from less developed startup hubs.
The rest of the day consisted of mentoring, the key value add for the 20 teams. Over 60 mentors from varying backgrounds worked to catapult the selected teams onto becoming the next generation of European Titans.
Comments from the mentors present:
- “I was officially ‘mentoring’ for the first time and found it a very valuable experience to change the perspective and reflect – besides getting the opportunity to meet passionate entrepreneurs, help them realize their dreams and wrap my head around their ideas. Thanks a lot for the invitation!” – Fabien Topfstedt, schnee von morgen
- “Very well organized, great venue, surprisingly solid startups among the candidates. Really enjoyed giving my input as a mentor and hope to get another swing soon!” – Michael Kamleitner, Die Socialisten
- “Great eco-system developing – teams, angels, investors!” – Rupesh Chatwani, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
Winners
The quality of the 20 selected teams was at an extremely high level and we’re very proud to welcome 2 new teams to the Seedcamp Family:
Daniel Hastik, Co-Founder said “Seedcamp Budapest was a great way to get extended business/technical feedback on our produce and value proposition through effective and intensive mentoring sessions. We’re proud to be part of the best known European tech seed investment programme”
Futurelytics is working on solutions that allow companies to target their existing customer base more effectively. We fell in love with the team and solution because it ticks all the boxes: a group of incredibly smart people with a clear vision of the market, combined with an easy to use product that identifies the customer’s pain head on.
Daniel, Miroslav and the team are some serious statistics buffs, and this is exactly what makes Futurelytics work. We are really happy to have them join Seedcamp and can’t wait to have them with us at Campus in London.
Stealth
We also invested in a second company out of Seedcamp Budapest – one which we’re equally excited about. As the team is still working hard on their product, they prefer not to be mentioned by name… we’ll leave it at they really know what they’re doing. Stay tuned for a future update about this one.
“The Seedcamp event was amazing. Budapest is definitely underestimated as a startup hotspot, keep an eye on that. For us as a startup, it was the perfect opportunity to expand our network, get feedback to our product and fundraising plans. Seedcamp is the ideal partner to reach our next milestone and push our business to the next level!” – Co-Founder of the second company
Thank you
We’d once again like to thank our generous Event Sponsor EBRD for making this possible and a special shout out goes to Peter Záboji who was instrumental in bringing Seedcamp to Budapest. We’re incredibly grateful for his efforts in boosting the local startup scene and the relentless planning and organising that he took upon himself to ensure that Seedcamp inaugural Budapest event went down with a big bang! Here is what he has to say:
“Seedcamp in Budapest was a big boost for the startup community in the entire region!
Also, we gave the VC capos an opportunity to learn best practice mentoring. It was a true win-win for Seedcamp and EEF!”
We look forward to hopefully returning next year.