August 30, 2007

SeedCamp Finalists Chosen; Battle To Final Five Next Week

Michael Arrington

33 comments »

seedcamp.pngSeedcamp, a European Y Combinator-like seed fund and mentoring program, has announced the final twenty candidates for funding. Next week, five of the twenty startup ideas will be funded, each receiving €50,000 to build out their business. We are one of the media sponsors of the program.

In all, 240 applications were received from 40 countries.


SeedCamp Finalists

Company

Location

Description

ArtFlock.com

UK

ArtFlock.com aims to be
the foremost online destination for the sale and promotion of original art
and craft by the worlds’ freshest artists and makers

Avenue7

London, UK

An online community for 12
- 17 year old girls to share ideas on the latest fashion trends &
products, as well as their own personal styles

Buildersite

London, UK

Buildersite is a web-marketplace for construction services. We aim to provide homeowners and
tradesmen with the largest and most trusted venue for transacting business
online

Content Syndicate

Dubai, United Arab
Emirates

Helps content providers
and buyers commission, distribute, buy and sell content, that’s exclusive,
customised and personalised for their requirements

Debatewise

London, UK

Debatewise will enable
people to compare the collective wisdom of one side of a debate with the
collective wisdom of their opponents, to help them make up their mind about
anything

Facecontact

Moscow, Russia

Facecontact.com is a
simple and effective tool for referral tracking and reward administration for
referring job candidates, clients, investors and other prospects

KillSushi

Cadiz, Spain

Krogos Software Development

Bucharest, Romania

Software development
boutique

Kublax

London, UK

Online personal finance
management service

Maple and Leek

London, UK

A social networking site aimed at inspiring like minded over 50s to
build an online community of friends and fellow explorers

OpenEra

UK

Online real estate
information systems provider and the developer of the new and exciting Reavia
portfolio collaboration service

Picolex

Paris, France

Project Playfair

Edinburgh, Scotland

Our game is hypernumbers which will do to numbers what hypertext did
to text

Price Delivered

London, UK

The place for consumers to
discover and share genuine bargains

RentMineOnline

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Trusted online rental
market

The School of Everything

London, UK

The place to come to find
independent teachers and classes in anything and everything

Tablefinder

Sweden

Tablefinders’ mission is
to aggregate the world’s online bookable restaurants through an awarding and
open community

Tickex

London, UK

Tickex is a search engine
for tickets to live events - concert, theatre and sports. In one search, Tickex
aggregates results from all the major primary and secondary brokers

Wall Street Docs

Frankfurt, Germany

A provider of a
sophisticated web-based document automation solution for complex capital
raising transactions with a feature set tailored to the needs of issuers and
banks

Zemanta

Content intelligence platform to automatically
enhance content, making it web-ready

  • Sphere It

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Comments

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  1. Jay

    WTH? Why are a bunch of the links on TC blue instead of black? Looks gross.

  2. Michael Arrington

    yeah, we’re fixing that.

  3. Jay

    Ahhh, my eyes feel better.

  4. Mario Ruiz

    Hi Michael,

    I browsed almost all of them and only Zemanta is kind of a new idea.

    The others are just more of the same. For example Tickets will compete with thefind.com. The worse is Krogos. They are a software factory.

    Maybe if you explain little more, we get it.

    Mario Ruiz
    @ http://www.oursheet.com

  5. Michael Arrington

    Mario, I haven’t seen them yet, just going through them now. The key will be to focus on the five finalists next week. More then.

  6. Marino

    If these 20 startups are the best out of 240, then Europe is way behind the USA in startups.

    BTW. I’m from Europe.

  7. Rajesh Shakya

    Congratulations Guys! This is definitely a step move on the journey of entrepreneurship. You are lucky enough.

    Rajesh Shakya
    http://www.rajeshshakya.com
    Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!

  8. jb

    several look like euro takes on u.s. ideas. could still be hits even if not globally novel.. europe’s a big market.

  9. Reshma

    Actually, Krogos works under the name Urbee and they are creating a mobile application that works like a web service providing city guide info. So, we probably should have described the company better to Techcrunch. As Mike said… you’ll have much more clarity end of next week!

  10. Peter Cooper

    This is a pretty key step, and will help placate some of those who have been whining about the lack of similar developments in Europe.

    Rather sad that only 1 in 9 of the English ones is outside of London! People wonder why British work tends to be so samey.. but it’s no real surprise when 95% of the industry lives and works in the same (dull) town.. I sold Feed Digest, by the way, so perhaps in a few months I’ll be back on the wagon with another startup from the rural idylls of the merry old land!

  11. Antonio Leonforte

    I was just anxious to see who did pass the first selection stage at seedcamp, as we did not. I think that many of the selected team might definitively have some killer technology under their belts, it’s really difficult to understand that from a one-line business descriptions.

    Krogos, for instance, might have proposed a good platform to remotely manage the off-shore development process… sure if they were selected just for the idea of “developing software offshore” that would be just insane from my personal (possibly biased) point of view.

    However I have to admit it’s quite a pain to discover that “An online community for 12- 17 year old girls” scored better than us. But it might also be a kind or relief, I don’t know really.

  12. mathew johnson

    content syndicate definitely sounds like the most useful/interesting to me. all of the others sound pretty ho-hum

  13. Dragos

    Hi Michael,

    Krogos involvement with Seedcamp is urbee - a mobile application in a calendar format with city guide info. The actual krogos.ro link has nothing to do with the actual day-to-day company, we were just too lazy to change the website since a few years. :)

    I would appreciate if you could make the changes - thanks.

  14. Darren Stuart

    Congratz to all I hope there are some winners in there.

  15. Michael Arrington

    Dragos - these are the official names and links as supplied by seedcamp. If there’s an error, the company should fix it with them.

  16. Cyrille

    Do you known what Picolex do ?

  17. JohnN

    They looked ok. Nothing grabbed my attention though.

    And I am from Europe

  18. Marino

    JohnN, I totally agree with you.

  19. Gonzo

    The sites are just a sketch of what’s going to come. These are all seed stage startups and the text provided by SC is not complete and misleading.

  20. Alberto

    Just a comment: KillSushi is presenting Tagmore to Seedcamp http://www.tagmore.com

  21. The Dude

    anyone know what KillSushi is all about?

  22. Prasun

    Oh ! Where’s my India?

  23. Eugene

    Just wondering… do they cover expenses for teams from places that are far away from London?

  24. Abhishek

    Yea, where’s India? Somebody start a Ycombinator in India, pLz…

  25. Rm

    It is a bit funny how none of the teams are from the USA, you would think they would get some people from here. We do have the all mighty silicon Valley. From what I see it looks like the people/teams are from the same area, if they were already in place why haven’t they done the startups already.

  26. FR

    I was just talking to a friend today about how so much money is going into the same old thing, and copycat apps. This shortlist just confirms it!

    There’s so much innovation going on out there that’s under the radar.

  27. Tom Adler

    Hi!

    1.) Interesting - none from US, India - but then isnt this targete at EMEA start-ups?

    2.) I definetely see 2-3 entrants making serious money - the real estate start-up; ContentSyndicate.com - publishers will lap it up and the table finder idea good for the hospitality industry. Rest are all ‘cute ideas’; couldn’t find a serious monetary angle; or there are too many clones.

    I guess, execution, money, processes, team, backing is 90%. 10% is idea.

    Good luck to all finalists!
    T

  28. mario_KND

    It actually is aimed at European-startups. I am rather wonder why there is only one from Germany!
    I hope it is due to limited publicity of seedcamp in Germany and not due to the lack of innovative ebusiness-ideas…

  29. Mark Sorsa-Leslie

    Hi,

    We do have a live site, but it seems to be have “lost” somewhere between TechCrunch and Seedcamp. For more information on OpenEra and our Reavia product go to http://www.reavia.com

    BTW the first day of Seedcamp was a blast. We are loving every minute of it!

    t:M

  30. Philip Wilkinson

    So - what do you reckon chaps - set up a UK / European business then launch in the US - or vice versa?