Today Saul Klein, chairman and co-founder of Seedcamp, the pan-European programme for early stage startups, blogged a long post about Seedcamp’s structure and history. But over the last few weeks I’ve been meeting Saul to tease out, over long conversations, where Seedcamp is at and where it’s going.
The debate is an important one, in part because Seedcamp, as the only Pan-european YCombinator-style organisation, now has a position that is largely unmatched at this level. That is at once a great thing for Europe – afterall, there was nothing else like it before, and Europe really needed a pan-European Seed fund which could also educate young startups. It’s also a potential challenge both for Seedcamp to explain how it operates – after all, despite its laudable openness to date, let’s not forget it’s a business – and for those that want to sit outside the burgeoning Seedcamp ecosystem.
It’s been a big week for European entrepreneurship, what with 20+ startups emerging at Seedcamp and Dopplr getting picked up by Nokia (or does it just feel that way since I’m here with GeeksOnAPlane for the first time in four years?).
In any case, Seedcamp’s six winners were announced earlier today. If you’re not familiar with Seedcamp, it’s a startup mentorship and funding program for European entrepreneurs that shares basic tenets with US-based Y Combinator and TechStars, among several others. I had the opportunity to sit down on Wednesday with Seedcamp founder Saul Klein and ask him about a variety of topics ranging from the idiosyncrasies of European entrepreneurship to Spotify, smart energy, and the real-time web. In addition to founding Seedcamp, Klein is a partner at Index Ventures and a founding partner at The Accelerator Group (TAG).
A transcript of the interview follows below.
Seedcamp, the European-wide programme for tech startups, has opened its annual week of supercharged mentoring for its final list of 20 startups.
There are other startup programmes and competitions in Europe but Seedcamp seems to have cornered the market in that scare resource: smart European tech CEOs who can mentor new startups.
Put simply, if you’d thrown a grenade into the Costa Coffee at University College London today much of the tech startup scene in Europe would have been wiped out. Which would be a pity. But back to the startups: What are the trends this year?
Seedcamp – the rolling European startups programme which started out as an annual competition and which has morphed into a pan-European network of mentors, investors and startups – will today announce it’s list of startups that have made the cut for Seedcamp Week in a fortnight’s time in London. But at a press conference in London CEO Reshma Sohoni and Chairman Saul Klein also gave out some fascinating data which (and I checked) we can share with you now, prior to the list announcement shortly. [Update: Here's the list].
The data points are interesting because they show the trends in how tech companies are being formed from the primordial soup of Europe’s startup scene and which trends are emerging.
Washington D.C. based LaunchBoxDigital, a Y Combinator-like startup incubator that will invest small amounts of capital in very early stage startup ideas, is now taking applications for their first program. They’ve also raised their own first round of funding – $250,000 from Jonathan Miller (former CEO, AOL), Reed Hundt (former FCC Chairman), Raul Fernandez (CEO Object Video) and Chris Schroeder (CEO HealthCentral).
LaunchBoxDigital says they’ll invest $15,000 – $30,000 in six to ten startups, in exchange for 4% to 8% of the equity. Founding teams must spend the summer in Washington D.C. to participate in a twelve week incubation program. Applications must be received by March 14, 2008.
The model is based on the much emulated Y Combinator, which has now funded dozens of startups. London based SeedCamp and Colorado based TechStars have nearly identical business models.
We are hosting a party in central London next week on Thursday, September 6 to support the Seedcamp event and to announce some TechCrunch UK news.
Most of the spots are reserved for Seedcamp attendees, but we are opening up 100 tickets to the public as well. To discourage no shows, we are charging a £10 fee per ticket, which will be donated to charity. Tickets are available here. There will be plenty to drink (and we’re working on food), and we’ll be giving away a ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch20 conference.
I will be flying in to London for the Seedcamp event and to attend the party. Hope to see you there.
We are taking a limited number of sponsors to offset the cost of the event. Email Jeanne Logozzo for more information about sponsoring the party.
Seedcamp, 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
|
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.
