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!