It’s difficult to imagine where Seedcamp will be in five years time but we are looking forward to being along for the ride. Congratulations to Saul, Reshma, Carlos and the Seedcamp team.

 

Five years of Seedcamp – Delivering for Europe’s First Time Entrepreneurs

September 21, 2012 By Carlos Eduardo Espinal1 Comment and 23 Reactions

At Seedcamp, we’ve been working with entrepreneurs since 2007, when Facebook opened beyond universities and Twitter launched at SXSW.

After four years of scouring Europe’s capitals of entrepreneurship, and raising the visibility of unknown gems like Croatia, Estonia, and Slovenia, in 2011 we made a conscious decision to focus all our energies on what we care about most: the first-time internationally-minded entrepreneur.

What we’ve seen in the last 5 years is what these entrepreneurs really want is: excellent delivering of business advice, an international network to plug into, validation to rise above the noise and access to the smartest capital in the market to grow their businesses.

Last year, we announced a raft of new initiatives and services, designed to deliver on this promise. While there’s a lot of noise in the sector, we focus on results and we believe that we’ve really delivered over the last 12 months. Here’s how:

Building the world’s best network of startup advisors

• Since 2007, Seedcamp has built a global network of 2,000 world class mentors in every core tech hub and startup discipline that an entrepreneur would need to get their business off the ground.
• 500 top-ranked mentors joined us in London at Seedcamp Week – plus another 400 top ranked mentors met with teams during our 4-week annual US roadtrip.
• This year we have held 10 Seedcamp events in Barcelona, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, Prague, Tallinn, Tel Aviv and Zagreb.
• At these events, we have mentored nearly 200 startups from 35 countries (from over 2,000 applications across 70 different countries).

Offering incredible access to the world’s largest and fastest growing tech companies

• In addition to this amazing network of advisors, we’ve doubled down this year in our relationships with businesses who can extend the Seedcamp network and add significant value to Seedcamp investments.
• We’ve extended and deepened our long-term relationships with tech giants like Amazon,Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Paypal and Qualcomm.
• We’ve partnered with the new breed of tech giants like Yandex.
• We’ve added insurgents like 10gen, Softlayer and Yammer to the Founders Pack (which has tripled in size to £150k of value).
• We’ve deepened our important relationships in the Valley with 500 Startups and AngelList.
• We’ve extended our geographical reach with Garage48 (with Repairy, MightyFingers,Qminder, and Campalyst all coming through their program) and today we are announcing a partnership in India with the new GSF Accelerator.

Delivering on amazing practical value to entrepreneurs

• Best space in London (and the Valley): Every startup needs a roof over their heads. This year we moved to Google Campus in London, in the heart of TechCity, and Seedcamp teams have started to join us there. This year also saw the first recipients of the Founders Visa we worked on in 2011 with the UK Home Office. 500 Startups has also provided a landing pad for our teams that go to the Valley.
• Red Carpet 4 week US roadshow: We take Seedcamp teams to the most high profile investors (Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, Khosla, Matrix, NEA, USV), companies and founders (Idealab,Foursquare, etsy, Linkedin, Twitter) in New York, Boston, San Francisco, the Valley, LA, San Diego (Qualcomm), Seattle (Microsoft, Amazon) and Austin (SxSW).
• Seedcamp’s “Founders Pack,” which enables teams to extend their runway, has tripled in size: We now offer €150k worth of services to help teams lengthen their runway (free hosting, free accounting, free analytics, free legal, etc) and grow their base (Google Adwords, Facebook).
• Continuous Learning: Every month we host 3 day learning sessions where rockstars like Eric Ries and Sean Ellis offer tactical and specific advice to Seedcamp teams on how to build their businesses.
• Access to Big Customers & Big Challenges: We host quarterly events to expose startups and big organizations like AXA, Barclaycard, HSBC, Nielsen, NHS, RBS, Unilever, and Vodafone to each other.
• An eye on the details: Our standard Series Seed investment documents, which we created to save startups money, have been endorsed by 30 leading investors and advisors. They are now in active use in 8  countries and our Founders Collaboration Agreement is in use globally.

Ivy League track record of providing access to capital and building real businesses

• Since 2007 we have invested in 73 companies in 25 countries.
  • 75% of these companies have raised follow-on funding of more than $70m
  • These companies have created over 800 new jobs
  • Two exits in 2012: Crashpadder (Airbnb) and Rentmineonline (Realpage, NASDAQ: RP)
• So far in 2012, Seedcamp has made 18 new investments from 12 countries:
  • We made our first investments in Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Switzerland and Ukraine
  • We made return investments in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Israel, Spain and UK
• Over 50% of Seedcamp’s 2012 class has raised further capital before Demo Day from investors like Betaworks, Lerer, 500 Startups, Index, SV Angel, Tony Hsieh and some of our 2011 class raised money from Atlas, IA Ventures, Max Levchin, Errol Damelin, David Yu and Sherry Coutu.
• Together with the UK government we have:
  • Worked on developing 50% tax relief for angel investors in startups
  • Hosted an Olympics Global Super Angel Summit with Ariel Poler (Valley), Martin Varsavsky (Madrid), Fabrice Grinda (NYC), Yossi Vardi (Israel), Rajesh Sawhney (Mumbai) andSasha Galitsky (Moscow)

2013 … Stay tuned!