We’re pleased to announce that TechCrunch has partnered to support the launch of SeedCamp in Europe. Inspired by YCombinator and the OpenCoffeeClub, Seedcamp will be a week long event in London, September 3-7, for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts.
The mission of Seedcamp is to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in Europe by providing the money, mentoring and media to help propel forward great ideas. At the end of the week, Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% stake in each of final five teams and provide ongoing mentorship and support for three months in preparation for the companies’ formal rounds of financing.
Applications are due August 12th.
TechCrunch and the Financial Times are the exclusive media partners for Seedcamp. We’re supporting Seedcamp because we believe that it will help incubate some great new products from young entrepreneurs in Europe, and we’re enthusiastic to provide exposure to this new initiative and expand our editorial coverage internationally. We have no financial interest in the venture.
The idea for Seedcamp came from Saul Klein in a post earlier this year looking to energize the European startup community. Participating VCs and advisors include Index Ventures, Atomico Investments, Atlas Venture, Balderton Capital, TAG, Forsyth Group and Brown Rudnick.
We’ll also be hosting a TechCrunch Meet-Up one night in London during the week of Seedcamp. More details on that to follow.
It is sad that this type of event has to be continent-based instead of globally based. Why should any acknowledgment of innovation be limited by a geographical boundary.
So who pays for the party?
Great news. If only you could hold this event slightly later, perhaps in earlier October. Energetic and refreshing students from all over the world would have congregated as university terms begin then (LSE and Imperial College are located in London). You could do with that extra involvement/interest by youth.
Mike : Com on yaar - u people shld held some camp like this India also
- there are lots of hard working / dedicated Young people hear with gr8 enterpreinal ideas … !!
The Next Web Conference is also one of the partners of Seedcamp. Two of the Seedcamp winners will get a chance to do a showcase on The Next Web Conference 2008 for the highly web savvy audience.
See also:
http://thenextweb.org/2007/07/.....-next-web/
I started the Houston OpenCoffee Club after corresponding with Saul and I’m certain that he has the passion, capability and experience to make this a very successful event. In some ways it’s similar to the recent http://www.startupweekend.com itself sponsored by the Ycombinator-inspired group in Colorado called http://www.techstars.com.
I hope that SeedCamp produces interesting, useful and eventually profitable companies and that it acts as a catalyst to do this type of event in other places as well.
Seedcamp is great news. I’m co-founder of a startup in the UK and there really are very few resources around for entrpreneurs in Europe compared to what’s going on in Silicon Valley.
I for one will be making evey effort to attend the Techcrunch meetup in London.
Very interesting - we definitely need more events like this in Europe/UK!
annoying logo.
annoyingly refreshing heh - I like the logo…
how exactly is TC helping?; (1) night stop by? , and this post and (1) more?
- I guess its not a bad start.
Is this some sort of campaign for finding good web developers that will be hired in techcrunch? Or is it just an expansion that has led to Europe?
Here’s a question that I’ve been thinking about recently: As more and more companies form that don’t charge their clients anything, but instead earn revenue from advertisements, how is the economy going to continue to run? Will there be enough advertisers to pay for all of the companies that are not charging but provide important services?
not really surprised that this concept caught on…10K for 10% of a company is a hell of a bargain. Especially when you get to pick the top 5 ideas out of a pool of 20, and the 20 probably come from a large enough pool too
Mike, can we apply to this if I have applied to TC20?
I guess TC20 is more high profile so if you accept us there we won’t need seedcamp, but if you don’t then may be we will get a fair chance of getting some exposure at seedcamp.
BTW, we monitor our severs, and so I far the TC20 didn’t pay us a visit. How come?
They really need to add a namecamp function to stop all these great ideas/startups from choosing stupid domain names.