We’re at it again. One of the 2 biggest marquee events (the other being Seedcamp Week) is coming up – our annual US trip, which will take our team and the recent Seedcamp companies (the March 2011 – Feb 2012 class) on a whirlwind tour of the United States’ startup and technology world.
Last Saturday we left London with about 20 Entrepreneurs, meeting more of them in New York City to kick off the first leg of our tour. In total, we are bringing along 19 companies (you can see a description of all of them here) to meet the best and brightest entrepreneurs, the most successful investors, and the most important startups and tech companies.
Where are we going?
- Kicking off in New York from Saturday 18th until Wednesday 22nd
- staying in Boston from Thursday to Saturday 25th
- in San Francisco and the Bay Area from the 25th until the 6th of March
- Visiting Seattle on March 7
- Flying to San Diego and Los Angeles on March 8 and 9,
- and wrapping things up in Austin at SXSW until March 13th.
Why are we going?
As mentioned on our website, the goals for the annual US trip are threefold:
To learn and be inspired
We are holding mentoring sessions along the usual Seedcamp format in 4 major cities along the way. In New York, Boston, San Francisco and Mountain View, we will bring together around 50 to 60 of the local superstar entrepreneurs and investors to meet with the Seedcamp companies in brief mentoring sessions; sharing their experience, insights, and connections. This is a great opportunity to mingle with some of the most important startup builders in America, and make invaluable connections.
On top of the mentoring sessions, we are visiting some of the most important technology companies. We will be at Microsoft, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook, AOL, eBay/PayPal, Qualcomm… not only to build connections inside these organisations, but also to learn from their successes and mistakes, and to experience the culture they have built.
The startups we will see include Twitter, Foursquare, 10Gen (the makers of MongoDB), our own Zemanta and ERPLY, bocoup, Stackexchange, Tumblr and Etsy – and that’s only the East Coast.
To get some business done
We have learned in the past years that the connections to the US do not simply come from emailing and Skype calls, but much more so from spending time in the right places with the right people. Some of the earlier Seedcamp alumni like ERPLY, Zemanta, Rentmineonline, Vox.io, and Farmeron have already shown what the jump to the US makes possible.
The amount and nature of the meetings and events are designed to provide the largest amount of serendipitous shoulder rubbing™ – hopefully resulting in as much success in terms of deal making as before. Especially the West coast part of the excursion will bring us to the offices of the most active venture firms, and will without a doubt bring the pitching skills of our teams to the highest level.
The investors who are hosting us along the way include 500Startups, Andreesen Horowitz, AOL Ventures, Greylock Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Idealab, Index Ventures US, New Enterprise Associates, Union Square Ventures, S23P, Siemer VC, and SoftTech. Add to those the many investor mentors at the events, and in 4 weeks you can wake up a sleepy Seedcamp entrepreneur at 5am and hear a perfectly polished pitch.
To have some fun and make new friends
Yes, it is somewhat of a class trip. We are all entrepreneurs, so a certain scrappiness is always part of the plan. Our teams are the happy first guests of the Startuphouse in San Francisco, where we’ll probably be able to shoot the first startup edition of Big Brother. We already know a lot of the friendly people we will meet on the way – but most certainly, by the end of it, we will have made many new friends.
Stay up to date with us
We have built this beautiful Tumblr to document our day to day over the next few weeks. You will see photos, videos, blog posts, and of course other social media exhaust from us, the teams, and our friends along the way. You can follow it here, and you will also be notified if you follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
You can of course always get in touch with us if you are interested in being part of a mentoring session, or evening events.