The Forsyth Group – Executive Search

Congratulations to our client 23snaps with their first mover advantage.

23snaps, one of a number of mobile apps that target parents who want to share photos, videos and updates of their children within a private social network, has flicked the monetization switch today. It’s launched an on-demand printing feature within the app to let users turn their uploaded photos into a physical printed product — both photo books and individual prints.

Available for both iOS and Android, as well as a web-based version, we’ve previously described 23snaps as like a Facebook for families, even down to its look and feel.

You begin by setting up profiles of your children in the app and optionally adding your partner, who can also have posting privileges, as well as any other friends or family members you want to privately share content with. You can then upload photos, enter height and weight measurements at various stage of your child’s development, and add status updates to record those special moments, which will be enjoyed by close family and friends but might otherwise be considered as over sharing within an uber-social network like Facebook.

This content then shows up in your news feed and the news feed of those who you have chosen to share with. In addition, those friends and family members receive real time mobile or email notifications when you add a new update. To that end, 23snaps says that photo and video uploads have an engagement rate of 90% (meaning that on average, 90% of a user’s connections will in some way engage with every piece of content they post), which it claims compares to Facebook’s 10% engagement on an individual’s posts. In addition, the average open rate of 23snaps email updates is said to be 70%, while the startup has passed 1 million items shared since launch.

More details on how the new printing feature works: Users tap the print button and choose to print individual pictures or a photo book comprised of selected pictures, specific collections or favourites. They then choose to have their photos and albums sent to themselves or directly to friends and family. The “high quality” photo book (worldwide) starts at a minimum of 24 photos for £15 and prints (U.S. and UK-only) start at £6 for 20 photos.

Based in London, 23snaps was founded in January 2012 by Ivailo Jordanov and Yury Tereschenko. Jordanov was previously Head of Product at Espotting, a search service acquired by Findwhat in 2004. He also co-founded Zoomf.com, later acquired by UK newspaper Trinity Mirror. In 2009, he joined financial company Avans.bg in Bulgaria, where he still serves as advisor and board member. Tereschenko and Jordanov also both later co-founded the UK shopping company Styloko.

January 25, 2013 By Vincent Jacobs

We’re kicking 2013 off with a big bang! Next Wednesday and Thursday we are back in London for the first Seedcamp event of the year and it’s twice as big as before. Applications closed at a new all time high, hundreds of startups from across the globe eager to be part of the Seedcamp Family.

We have over 70 of our best UK and international mentors signed up to attend and mentor the teams on Wednesday. The winners of the event will join current Seedcamp companies on the Thursday at Demo Day where they will have the opportunity to present to a room full of investors.

One of the key points of mentoring is the identification of techniques and approaches that can help improve the day to day of building products, shipping code, and building a business. With that in mind, we are proud to have Devin Hunt of Dex.io and Lyst share his insights in a Masterclass on “Sketching Better Products”.

Please meet the teams that will be taking part in Seedcamp London and take a look at the great companies they are building:

Actual Reports, Tallinn, Estonia – A document generation platform combined with an easy-to-use editor and time-saving API for the developers.
Babelverse, London, England – The universal speech translator, powered by humans.
Before You Die, London, UK – A social bucket list that facilitates action & reminds you how extraordinary life can be.
Carambla, Ghent, Belgium – Develops apps to help parking owners and cities drive traffic to available off-street parkings.
GateMe, Tallinn, Estonia – A revenue-generating event management platform for nightclubs – OpenTable for nightclubs.
HitMeUp, London, UK – Outrageous promotions going on around you right now.
hull, Paris, France – A full stack social platform as a service. Build social apps with open, reusable components.
Kinopto, London UK – Kinopto are going to change the way the world watches films at the Cinema.
Little Eye Labs, Bangalore, India – Creators of little eye, the performance analysis and productivity tool for Android app developers and testers!
Maily, Brussels, Belgium – Your kid’s first email.
minubo, Hamburg, Germany – A curated, web-based BI solution for eCommerce merchants with the most sexiest front-end.
Planvine, London, UK – Provides accurate and comprehensive event information which is powering what’s on guides across the globe.
RecommendCare, London, UK – Helps you make the right care choices through recommendations from people like you.
Saeker, Worcester, UK – Health & Safety managment in the Cloud.
Sellplex, London, UK – HootSuite for selling on multiple e-commerce platforms with IFTTT-like functionality. “Upload once, sell everywhere.”
SilverPush, Delhi, India – Real-time Analytics backed platform for targeting & retargeting on mobile.
Social Significance, London, UK – Application for hotels to monitor their ranking in the search results on travel websites.
Subscrib, London, UK – A service that enables brick-and-mortar merchants to sell value-added subscriptions and learn about their customers.
Toast, Berlin, Germany – Helps you find great gift ideas by collaborating with close friends.
Together, Gothenburg, Sweden – Making the web a sharable experience in realtime.

Our gratitude goes to our event partner, Thomson Reuters, for their support and for hosting us in their office on Demo Day. We would also like to thank our event sponsor, SoftLayer, who are sponsoring the drinks on Wednesday and of course not forgetting our yearly sponsors; Google, Microsoft BizSpark, Qualcomm Ventures and Paypal.

Be sure to follow our blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts to follow the event on the day!

Our visit to Paris was the last trip for the Seedcamp team in 2012. After 10 successful events all across the world, a huge US Trip in the spring, and an amazing Seedcamp Week in September, it turned out to be the picture perfect finish to the year.

Our friends at Orrick hosted us, like in the previous two years, at their beautiful Paris office. Besides great teams from all over Europe, we had an impressive line up of successful mentors – no doubt because of leWeb happening just after. We heard well polished pitches by all teams in the morning, and jumped straight into a Master Class by three Seedcamp founders who shared insights and secrets of their entrepreneurial journeys.

Philippe Laval, the founder of the successful address book update service writethat.name, shared how the company moved from a broad offering of various email services to their current laser sharp focus based on a religious concentration on customer feedback and tracking. Nicolas Steegman, the founder of video editing service Stupeflix, talked about his approach to hiring and building the company: the company only hired the absolute experts in their field and focused on maintaining a very good cultural fit. Andreas Klinger, cofounder of Lookk‘ took a different approach: his highly entertaining talk covered some do’s and dont’s from his experience and was a good way to reflect on a lot of critical decisions that are relevant for many startups.

The afternoon was spent in mentoring sessions – as always, highly engaging and with a clear focus on connecting the startups with the world’s best startup mentors, investors, and entrepreneurs. Some of the highly rated mentors of the day were Jeff Clavier (Softtech VC), Jim Franklin (CEO, Sendgrid), Gabriel Hubert (CEO, teleportd), David Bizer (HackFWD), Steven Willmott (CEO, 3Scale), Ivan Farneti (Partner, DHTV), Colette Ballou (Founder, BallouPR), Craig Forrest (ex Apple). In total we had more than 100 participants on the day.

Three new Seedcampers

Out of the teams that attended, we were especially intrigued by a few companies that we selected for subsequent investment. We made a total of three investments out of Seedcamp Paris. All these companies are joining us in London at Google Campus and will be part of the US trip to Boston, New York, and the Valley in spring 2013:

• § knowable.org, Berlin, Germany – a social network for makers. We were impressed not only by the vision Simon and Emanuel have for their target group of makers, tinkerers, and hackers, but also by their speed of execution on the product.
• § tldr.io, Paris, France – the Web, summarized by people. The team around Stan, Charles, and Louis took a great concept of the web and developed it further. If you use the product today, you will already see summarised content around the web – we’re sure the need for this will only increase in the future.
• § Unifyo, Cambridge, UK – helps customer facing employees to get 360 degree customer profiles inside any website while browsing. Ben is a well rounded entrepreneur and has built a product that can already be used in lots of circumstances – we’re excited be part of the journey.

Thanks for all the support!

Our gratitude goes to our event partner, Orrick, for their support and for hosting us in their Parisian office. We would also like to thank our event sponsors, SoftLayer and Yammer, who make it possible for us to host such a great event, and of course not forgetting our yearly sponsors: Google, Microsoft BizSpark and Qualcomm Ventures. Sendgrid graciously stepped in as a sponsor for the evening drinks organised by teleportd, and made sure the evening went well, too.

Last but certainly not least, we want to thank the mentors who took part in Seedcamp Paris for their time and hard work of getting the companies on track with their products, strategy, and fundraising efforts. Not just at Seedcamp Paris, but throughout the year, we are incredibly grateful for your support.

THE KERNEL THURSDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2012

The second of The Kernel’s discussion breakfasts, in partnership with Forsyth Group, was a great success.

This morning, The Kernel, in partnership with our friends at Forsyth Group, hosted the second in a series of six exclusive discussion breakfasts.

Guest of honour and Mashery chief executive Oren Michels spoke about the significance – and pricing models – of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses with a hand-picked audience of 25 investors, entrepreneurs and experts.

A general discussion followed, fuelled by a full English and lubricated with mimosas for those brave enough to get merry with us at 8 a.m.

Conversation at The Kernel’s discussion breakfasts is strictly off-the-record.

We’re also announcing today that the next Kernel discussion breakfast will take place in February, on the subject of “gaming and gambling”.

The breakfast is timed to coincide with the ICE conference in London. We’ll release more information about it in the new year.

We expect to host chief executives of some of the biggest gaming and gambling companies on the planet, along with investors who are active in the space.

We’d like to thank Brett Putter and Forsyth Group for their support and our guests for coming along and sharing their insights.

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!

Seedcamp Events in the past 3 months

3 months. 3 events in Zagreb, New York and London. Thousands of applications from over 65 countries. 60 passionate teams getting mentored. Hundreds of high quality mentors and 4 investments. These are the numbers that make Seedcamp stand out as the leading micro-seed investment and mentoring programme.

A recap of Seedcamp London

As always, a great calibre of entrepreneurs pitched their products to a very diverse pool of mentors – ranging from founders and product and marketing gurus, to institutional VCs and angel investors.

We opened the day with a unique masterclass hosted by Saul Klein and Chris Riley. They both shared their knowledge on the importance of storytelling, and Chris, who was the brain behind the brand strategies of Nike, Apple, and Twitter among many others, also gave insightful advice on how to engage the audience via narratives.

We have received some extraordinary feedback and wanted to share these comments as they truly capture the day:

‘Best Seedcamp I’ve ever been to. The stakes have been raised with the quality of companies and teams. It also had a great set of mentors there, which is just as important for the companies. Logistically, it was the best run Seedcamp I’ve been to, which shows the experience on the team and the energy was much higher than usual. I came away feeling hugely thankful to the Seedcamp team.’ Scott Sage, DFJ Esprit

‘Good atmosphere. Well run day. Quality of teams high. Masterclass of an excellent calibre. Having Chris remind young teams about some of the really important “brand” needs for a business chimed well with my own background and agenda. An excellent day.’ Richard Fearn, The Friday Club London

‘This was my first attendance at Seedcamp as a mentor and I thought it was a fabulous event and a great opportunity for startups to get feedback on their go to market plans and meet relevant contacts. I also thoroughly enjoyed the masterclass.’ Sarah Gunderson, Yammer

The winners

We had a record number of applications for these events, so all the teams were immensely proud to be selected. We were very impressed by their shared enthusiasm, drive and ambition – a really positive atmosphere throughout the whole day at each event.

Despite the fierce competition, three teams from Seedcamp London really won us over, as did one from our Zagreb event. In one month time – along with 15 other Seedcamp teams – they will participate in our annual week-long event: Seedcamp Week. This is a priceless opportunity to showcase their growth and build relationships with 400 individual mentors over the course of 5 days.

So, who are the winners?

BRANDiD – Winner of Seedcamp London – London, UK
What: BRANDiD is a clothing subscription service that learns what you like: built for men, not fashionistas.
Why: This is the kind of consumer company with the real potential to go viral, especially with ‘their engaging approach and depth of understanding of their market’  according to Elliot Conway, VP of Pentland Group.

poq Studio – Winner of Seedcamp Zagreb – London, UK
What: poq Studio makes it possible for SME fashion retailers to get their own mobile commerce apps.
Why: Vukašin Stojkov added that ‘the straightforwardness of both the business model and the product itself gave me the confidence that they’re capable of greatness’.

Rawstream – Winner of Seedcamp London – Malta
What: Rawstream boosts employee productivity and secures your network against internet malware, with ROI measured in days.
Why: We were impressed by the disruptive potential of this compelling product, wrapped up in a really simple proposition. ‘A relevant industry experience and a pragmatic approach makes them a truly promising startup’ according to Sanjay Kaler from GFI Software.

TRData – Winner of Seedcamp London – Kiev, Ukraine
What: TRData sells professional financial platforms for getting, collecting and analysing data from difficult financial markets.
Why: Rachel Evatt from Skyscanner underlined that ‘If TRData’s product is as good as they make out, then they could be placed to rip apart the financial data market, similar to how salesforce.com did to enterprise CRM.’

Thank you to:

Everyone who attended our three events in Zagreb, New York and London respectively.
All teams who participated in the events, eager to drive their business forward and were challenged by the mentors’ comments. We would like to thank all the mentors, who gave us their precious time during these summer months to share their expertise in order to help startups map out their future road to success.
Last but not least, we would like to extend our thanks to our generous event sponsors, who in every city hosted us like kings: 10Gen, SoftLayer, Yammer,CRANE and the CEED. And, of course, we can’t  forget the invaluable contribution of our yearly sponsors Microsoft BizSpark, Qualcomm, Paypal and Google, who support Seedcamp on an ongoing basis.

What’s next?

If you’re a startup wanting to get involved in the Seedcamp action, then applications are currently open to:

Seedcamp Budapest taking place on October 25th. See here for further information about the event and how to apply.

Stay tuned for our coverage of our annual flagship event in September, Seedcamp Week, which will finish with a Demo Day where our companies will showcase their progress to Europe’s top VCs and angel investors. We promise, it will be bigger and better than ever!

THE KERNEL MONDAY, 11 JUNE 2012

The Kernel and Forsyth Group are hosting an invitation-only networking breakfast about ‘big data’, featuring Datasift founder Nick Halstead, with five places reserved for Kernel members and the Kernel 50.

Big data is probably the most important trend in technology today, but, because it doesn’t have a sexy user interface, it’s generally ignored by the tech press. In the first of a series of invitation-only breakfasts, co-hosted by Forsyth Group, The Kernel aims to redress the balance.

We will bring together 20 influential players in the technology industry to discuss the implications and future of big data businesses. The breakfast will take place at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, 3 July in Central London.

Five places at the breakfast have been reserved for Kernel subscribers and members of the Kernel 50.

To apply for a place, please complete the form.

TECH RECRUITERS, PART III: ‘HOLDING THE FORT’

MIC WRIGHT FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 2012

In part three of The Kernel’s tech recruitment industry exposé, Mic Wright reveals the firms you can trust: those the technology industry has told us they regularly use with success.

We’ve so far given the impression that recruitment is an industry in the way gun-running or collecting burnt scraps of pornography you find in the park are industries. But there aresome good firms out there. And we want those people to get the credit they deserve.

In the course of this report, we have spoken to chief executives, CFOs, start-up founders, contractors and investors in the UK and identified a set of firms who were spoken of highly. In this final part of the report, The Kernel speaks to them and their clients.

“It’s all about hiring the person, not the firm, who you trust to do a good job for you,” says Ben Tompkins of Eden Ventures. “It’s incredibly hard to position your early stage company to a VP-level candidate at Google, Microsoft or Salesforce and you need someone you trust to do it well. The best headhunters go on to build a relationship with the company and can end up doing a lot of senior level hires across multiple years.”

Here are the firms The Kernel has identified as ethical players in the recruitment industry:

Forsyth Group is the oldest and remains, according to many, the most prestigious executive search firm in the business. By a clear margin, it is the firm recommended most highly by venture capitalists. Testimonials to Forsyth are extensive and impressive. Alliott Cole of Octopus Investments says: ”Understanding the culture and the skills of the existing team, knowing when to challenge and when to listen, and how to prioritise hires, is critical.

“Being able to draw on someone who has worked closely with founders for many years, knows how important it is to deliver – often within unrealistic deadlines and budgets – and who also seeks to build an enduring relationship with every company, makes introducing Forsyth Group to our teams an easy decision.”

Simon Edelstyn, European managing director of Outbrain, had similarly good things to say this week: “I have worked with the Forsyth Group a number of times over the past five years. Over the past six months, they have helped me build out our European operations, hiring senior executives in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and the Nordics. I am very happy with the quality of candidates they seek out and their communications in keeping me informed on progress. I will continue to working with them as we continue to expand our team.”

“Getting a deep understanding of the cultural dynamics of a company is critical to the successful placement of a candidate and recruitment firms often don’t recognise the importance of this,” according to Rosemary Forsyth, a child psychologist by training who is the founder and general partner of Forsyth Group.

“As an executive search firm, we bring over three decades of experience working with VC-backed, high-growth emerging technology companies. We have always focused on and invested a lot of time in understanding the cultural DNA of the company we are working with. A candidate who brings the skills and experience the company is looking for and also fits with the team’s culture has a significantly greater chance of adding value to the organisation – especially when the going gets tough.”

Congratulations to our four new investments

Antavo: travelling all the way from Hungary, this ambitious team showed an impressive promotion building platform for SMEs to market their offerings on various platforms – a slick product with big potential.

Bukit: Sarah lived through the bad experiences of having personal debt and was fed up with the status quo. That’s why she founded Bukit, which allows consumers to settle their debts through a new platform.

MightyFingers: absolutely rocking HTML5 gaming engine performance; our first 100-per-cent Latvian team is certainly going places.

Sayduck: a fantastic usage of Augmented Reality bridging the gap between online and offline retail experience by helping customers visualize real world items in their environment (Via Sayduck’s app, Carlos is able to hold a virtual table below). This Finnish team impressed us with their dynamic approach to rolling their solution out to market.

In the may 12^th edition of  Wired our Managing Partner wrote 7 pointers on how to hire great talent.

1. Exploit your network for potential employees or referrals before considering using a recruiter. Great businesses are built on great referrals.

2. Think about and create an attractive company culture. Understanding and building a robust cultural DNA for your start-up will help you hire and retain the best candidates.

3. When making a hire ask yourself: “Would I enjoy spending 8 hours next to him/her on a long-haul flight?”

4. Try to hire executives with past start-up success. They will understand the requirements of a rapidly growing company. They also will help you avoid the mistakes they made or experienced.

5. Do not hire executives who don’t fully understand the demands of a start-up company.

6. Locate your business as close to the talent pool as possible. If this is not possible, be prepared to entice the right candidates to your location, or relocate.

7. Hire slow, fire fast. The right employee can help you grow rapidly, even exponentially, but the wrong candidate can set your company back twelve months. Work out why they weren’t suitable before you make your next hire.