After the successful search for a mentor for Chloe Holding of Habinki here on thenextweb, I have been approached by several young entrepreneurs in London, looking for a mentor themselves. One of them is Dom Fendius, founder of Stitsh.com. Read the eight questions and answers below to let me know!

1. How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?

The idea for Stitsh.com came up when I left my job in the city last year. I’ve always wanted to start my own business and fashion is something I’ve been interested in for a long time. When I look for new clothes I like to use other people’s style as an inspiration, and will often look at what people are wearing on the streets or in photos online. I thought it would be brilliant to combine this with the power of the internet and allow people to be inspired by photos of stylish people and instantly buy the clothes they like.>

2. How far are you with the start-up?

We’ve just launched the website and we’re now embarking on spreading the word about the site. It’s a very exciting time and so far the feedback has been
great.

3. What is your goal with the company?

Ultimately we aim to make Stitsh.com the number one fashion destination on the web, where people go to find a new style on the street, buy clothes and discuss fashion. We’re also working on other aspects of the site which will make it a more complete fashion service. What’s also very important to us is to have fun whilst we do this, and hopefully this is reflected in the site.

4. What were your biggest development challenges and what can start-ups learn from them?

A big challenge for me has been trying to master all the different aspects of the start-up process. In other words the operational side, design, technical, marketing, PR, legal, financial etc. Clearly nobody is an expert in every area, and I think it’s important to know when you need external help from people who know more than you do. That said, I was so passionate about the idea that I always believed I would overcome the challenges.

5. Who are your advisers?

Depending on what advice I’m after, I’ll speak to a number of people. For practical business advice, I speak to my mother who runs her own machine tool business.

6. Why do you need a mentor, for which activities and for which period of time?

I need a mentor to give me advice about growing a company in the internet/retail space. Ideally someone who could give me practical advice from a position of experience. This could just be for the short-term, but I would hope to develop a long-term relationship with somebody.

7. What type of mentor you think would you benefit from?

From somebody who has set up successful online businesses and who is enthusiastic to help those starting out. Someone who is inspirational and experienced and doesn’t mind answering the phone every now and then to give advice.

8. What does the mentor gain from mentoring you?

I‘m an enthusiastic listener and keen to learn from someone with experience. I’d like to think that if I find the right mentor it could be the start of a meaningful professional relationship with the potential for future collaboration. Plus I’d hope that many successful entrepreneurs would enjoy sharing their experience with someone who is hungry for their knowledge and
keen to act upon it.

Interested? Leave a comment below or drop Ernst-Jan a line.

If you’re running a start-up and haven’t heard of Seedcamp before, you’d better take a minute now to read this article. Seedcamp is a much-applauded week-long program for young entrepreneurs from the Middle East, Africa, and…, Europe. That means you can participate as well. From September 15 through 19, London calls you.

So why should you go? At the end of the week – filled with workshops and presentations-, Seedcamp will invest up to 50K Pounds for a 10 percent 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. Last year’s winners included Zemanta, an excellent blog service we use at The Next Web as well.

CEO and co-founder of Seedcamp is Reshma Sohoni, who used to be a banker at 3i. Her business partner is Saul Klein from Index Ventures. They raised capital from a number of informal investors last year.

As the editor in chief of The Next Women, I’m glad to see that the advisory board has many female internet heroes: Sherry Coutu, an early stage investor, Sara Murray, founder of Buddi.co.uk, Bindi Karia of who runs the UK Startup Accelerator Programme of Microsoft and Lori Vokes, Operation Director of Cisco.

If you feel you’re a bright young mind with a game changing start-up, you have the change to be one of the twenty start-ups to participate in the program. That is, if you make it through the application procedure. Not ready yet to go all the way to Seedcamp? Then try the Seedcamp event brite taster events. Here you may find the right team mates that get you going!

During another show, called SHE, female entrepreneurs will be interviewed about their ambitions and careers. Marianne van Leeuwen, founder of Sisteract.eu and undersigned will present the program.

All programs will be available on the web (YouTube) and mobile as of October 2008.

How did you find the response for the request for a mentor?

“I found the mentoring trial interesting, but also incredibly time consuming and I have found it hard juggling a lot of priorities at the moment.”

What did you get from the mentorship till now?

“I think that one gaines a lot of experience and information from every conversation that one has. Certainly just hearing about people out there who have done something similar and lived to tell the tale is incredibly valuable. I certainly enjoyed hearing about other entrepreneurs and the businesses they have managed to establish.”

Are you in contact? How, by phone, text or in person?

“I do think is that to build a lasting relationship you need to meet people and connect with them on a personal level. So I don’t know if I will keep in touch regularly with any of the mentors that I emailed, although I would definitely keep in touch now and again when I wanted to seek some advice or if I encountered a problem in the field of expertise that they were specializing in.”

Did you chose a definite mentor?

“On a more philosophical note the process taught me that finding a mentor is not as easy as I had thought. You need to find someone that you relate to on a deeply personal level, who has come from a similar background as you and has been motivated for similar reasons as you have and has overcome the problems that you find the most challenging. You also need to find someone that you genuinely admire and respect for what they have done and want to emulate and I think that is very hard when you have not met the person and are not familiar with their achievements.

I suppose if I had found someone that had set up their own fashion or lifestyle brand that I knew of that I would have felt more inspired, but perhaps these people are too busy!”

Can you recommend it?

“Anyway, I did enjoy the process and really appreciate being able to be involved – it has taught me a lot!”

Note: There are some 10 mentors who have indicated that they want to mentor startups, leave a comment if you want to get in touch.

This week a new media campaign around the negative representation of female CEO’s in The Netherlands will be introduced. And you know what? It will use the social web to its fullest. Female Internet Hero Shula Rijxman, Chief Commercial Officer at IDTV, is the brain behind the idea. In short: the CEO will become a SHEO and will be brought to life and as a consequence the negative representation will become positive representation!

First, a guerilla marketing action is planned, which is – by the way – not so guerrilla when you announce it first. During this wild action, parking spots of companies’ VIPS’s will be ‘reserved for SHEO’s’. After that, some traditional advertising will take place presenting the SHEO to the public. Also, at airports SHEO business lounges will be opened. Lastly, drama series will be produced about the worklife to the top of 3 SHEO’s.

Internet will come into play in combination with these drama series. At social networks like Hyves, Linkedin, Facebook, Xing and the one you have, these three SHEO’s will submit their profiles. And so they will be brought to life. If you want to contact them, an editorial board will impersonate the SHEO’s and answer your questions.

A similar campaign of Campari in which a fake social network profiles attracted about 3,000 friends was described recently at ReadWriteWeb.

Question – red flag – comes to mind how many people on the social networks are actually ‘fake’ and only there for purposes of advertising campaigns, tests or just for fun. How many of your friends and business partners at your social networks only exist on paper and were just an invention by an advertising executive?

Is this a development that is desirable? Please lend me your thoughts.

Note: Instead of creating a non-existing SHEO, why don’t we call upon all the women CEO’s to add to their profile SHEO?

Yesterday, I read in the press that Queen Elisabeth has urged Kate Middleton, Prince William’s bride to be, to get a proper job. Without having decided exactly what she wants to make a career in, so the story goes, she won’t be a viable candidate to take over the Queens position next to Prince William in the future. Her current work is obviously not a serious job according to the Queen. The Queen believes in a modern Monarchy and feels very strongly that the Royals should be leading by example.

Kate announced last September that she was giving up her job as an accessories buyer to become a photographer. She has been working and taking pictures for the website of party company Party Pieces since. That company was founded by her parents, Micheal and Carole Middleton in 1987 and is the UK’s leading online and catalogue party company.

That makes Kate the daughter of a Female Internet Hero, co-founder Carole Middleton. And when Kate takes over the company as a CEO, she will be a Female Internet Hero herself, and thus, leading by example. Just what the Queen wants. But before that, Kate may need some work experience in other internet companies.

I am sure there are many companies interested, but I would love to have her on board in one of my ventures. So the question is: Kate, how can I get in contact with you to offer you a job in the Internet Industry? To offer you the possibility to become a role model als Female Internet Hero yourself?

Or maybe you, as readers, know someone who knows her and so on? I am curious to know whether the six degrees of separation works in this respect? Anyone?

Last week I attended two events in Amsterdam specifically aimed at women. What I took from those events as a message is interesting for men and women. At Diversity, a network event for professional women, female Internet hero Nancy McKinstry held a very clear and interesting lecture about her Wolters Kluwer, which generates 50% of its turnover of 3.4 billion from online products.

She concluded that because of macro trends affecting the information industry, all Internet and media companies need to deal with diversity. In 2025 Internet users will be diversified, mainly consisting of female information users and aging information users. And they use the information in a different way, other than all the white, geeky, male, young Silicon Valley whizkids may think! So try to get inside the brains of these women and senior citizens, try to understand the information gathering and buying habits of these groups.

A solution to the issue is to support this notion of diversity and to let those target groups jump on the band wagon of the Internet companies by letting them become part of the team. A company like Apple understands this trend; it may be the reason why it has appointed Andrea Young of Avon, the beauty power house to its board.

Another company which may have seen the start of a light in this issue is Microsoft. After my comments about the Dev Days and their lack of female speakers, I was invited to a small Women in Technology booth that was set up this year for the first time to try to meet the 2% women that visit this event. Female Internet hero Astrid Hackenberg, founder and CEO of Class-A and Jacqueline van der Holst of Avanade were invited to welcome other, younger developers, let’s assume the female CTO’s of the future. Here too, the notion of data being used differently by a diversified group led to solution of a diversified team.

But are enough internet companies taking this diversity trend into account in setting up their team?

Visibility is a major thing for start-ups, and one thing to be able to get that is to pitch your company in an event or for an award. Winning an award means media coverage, some times real money and access to investors. There are several competitions in which a start-up can submit its business. Strangely enough, there is no website which lists them all in an overview.., so I had to do some research on the web in order to come up with the following suggestions.

I want to create a complete list of awards here. So if you know of any other awards, please comment on this post so I can add it to the list.

Upcoming competitions

• Accenture Innovation Awards – Dutch companies in media, entertainment or communication that started in the last 3 years can participate.
• The Strands awards – competition for early stage international startups in the area of recommendation technologies with a very appealing price of $100.000.
• CNET Networks UK Business Technology – this competition has some 17 prestigious awards for UK business technology innovators. Final deadline to submit applications is May 31, 2008, but maybe it is enough to become the IT Community Hero of the Year.
• The Startup Awards major competition for UK start-ups in October 2008.
• Vodafone Mobile Clicks for mobile start-up companies to develop new, innovative, creative and technically viable mobile internet products and/or services. Date to be submitted June 25, 2008. Awards during Picnic in October 2008, Amsterdam. Awards of Euro 100,000.
• Google Android Competition, with total monies available of USD 10,000,000.
• Web Marketing Web Awards, in 96 categories, including best websites, to be submitted till June 15, 2008.
• Startup Awards in the UK, including the Online Startup of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year. Deadline entry 4 th July 2008.
• London Technology Fund Competition, for potentially high growth seed, start-up early stage technology companies, based in London. Price from 100,000 till 1M Pounds sterling. Deadline 30th June, 2008.
• DEMO GOD AWARDS and the DEMO People’s Choice awards.

Completed competitions

Make sure you set your agenda for next year awards.

• Blackberry Women in Technology awards – Female internet hero Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute was named the BlackBerry outstanding woman in technology, while Beatriz Alonso Martinez of Avid Technology Europe Ltd was awarded the ‘Best use of technology within the multimedia industry by a woman’.
• The First Women Awards – UK competition created to acknowledge women who are pioneers in business. Female internet hero Fru Hazlitt, former Managing director, Yahoo UK and now CEO of GCap Media, was one of the price winners in the past.
• 2008 Fast Growth Business Awards – Margeret Manning, CEO of award winning digital communications agency, Reading Room won the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008.
• Broos van Erp Price, A Dutch ICT competition with an award of euro 50.000.
• UK Internet Industry Awards
• The Webby Awards, recognizing outstanding Websites in 65+ categories!! Ans also a Webperson of the Year. The Oscars of the Internet.
• Startup Camp, arranged through Speed Geeking sessions during the Camps in SF, London, with an impressive attendee list.
• Plugg Start-up of the Year Award, with the European Focus on web 2.0
• Innovation and Technology awards for Swedish startups.

Tech conference competitions

• Crunchies Techcrunch awards
• The Next Web Awards
• Women 2.0 Business Plan competition – took place at the recent Women 2.0 Conference and Pitch Night in San Fransisco.
• Web 2.0 Expo – Keep an eye on the blog to check for awards during the Web 2.0 Expo editions in New York and Berlin.
• PICNIC Green Challenge 2008 – is your start-up doing something to stop climate change? Enroll in this competition.
• Seedcamp, who at least once a year, brings together Europe’s top young founders and a world class network of mentors in one place.

It may be pretty good that Sharon Bigger, Wendy Braver, Pamela Fox of Google , Jennifer Kilian, Lisa Parks and Aimee Stewart have signed up with 95 male developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers and entrepreneurs, for a speaker session at Where 2.0. But in a conference ‘that brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry’, you think that women are more interested.. Indeed, ” why women cannot read maps’ has been a bestseller for ages.

However, in order to speak at a conference, one should submit a paper or proposal. So it is one thing for women to sign up at Geekspeakr, a great website by geek Brenda Wallace, and to show that you are a great speaker or knowledgable on a certain subject. But the next thing to do is to think about a specific topic for a session, a workshop or keynote and to schedule some time to write down your proposal.

Take Developerday at the Microsoft campus end of November 2008. The organisation calls for speakers to submit topics that they would like to talk on – first-time speakers or experienced trainers are equally welcomed. Then the community will vote on-line for which sessions they would like to see happen on the day and from that the agenda will be decided. Many proposals have been already submitted. However, a women speaker has yet to act.

Generally, conference organizations provide you with guidelines on the target audience, the length of a topic and how in-depth the session should be, such as in the Gilbane conference.

Some tips for writing a good proposal for a good talk, which I read at an upcoming hosting conference:

• Keep it free of marketing
• Keep the audience in mind: are they technical, professional, and already pretty smart?
• Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? What knowledge should people have when they come to the talk?
• Give it a simple and straightforward title: fancy and clever titles make it harder for people to figure out what you’re really talking about
• Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won’t be able to cover everything. Make sure your talk is focused and not too widely targeted.
• Explain why people will want to attend: how will the talk impact their business? will they be able to apply the principles immediately?
• Explain what you will cover in the talk in as much detail as possible

So go ahead and good luck!

Already twice at London Coffee Meetup, I have come across female founders of internet startups who would love to have a mentor. Somebody who gives them some guideline without further ado. So I decided to set up an experiment.

Are there any readers of The Next Web who are willing to act as mentor for Chloe Holding? She’s the founder of the very early stage startup Habinki. Read the questions and answers below and let me know!

1. How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?

It was more a question of ‘What did I want to do with my life?’ than finding a new business idea, and starting up a bikini/travel company was exactly what I wanted to do. I had always wanted to set up a business and I had a passion for travel and retail, and it just took a little bit of inspiration to figure out how to make that into a great business.

2. How far are you with the set up of the start-up?

I have secured funding via a loan with the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme backed by the government, I have incorporated the company, developed the branding, and begun marketing and selling my brand. The bikinis are on their way from Brazil to arrive in June and the website is currently in development.

3. What is your goal with the company

I want to create a brand which young people associate with and are inspired by. I can see many opportunities in the future in terms of developing new product lines and focusing more on the travel industry, in terms of places to go ‘in your bikini’.

4. What was your biggest challenge during the development process?

Without any doubt the biggest challenge so far has been to make the decision and find the strength of mind to do something very different, which your peers, friends and family may not understand or support. It was about realising that I wanted to do this so much that it actually didn’t matter what anyone else thought, or what advice people gave me, and that the faith and passion I had for building businesses was strong enough to set out on a path on my own. I think part of the definition of being an entrepreneur is to do what everyone else says ‘will never work’.

5. Who are your advisers?

My close friends, a core group of girls (and a few boys) who have shown a real interest and passion for what I am doing. They have offered advice, often on a daily basis, on some tricky issues, and I hope that in the not-too-distant future some of these people will come and work for the business.

6. Why do you need a mentor, for which activities and for which period of time?

I would like someone who has been through a similar experience of setting up a business from scratch, and who has been successful. I would be interested in any kind of communication that would be convenient for them. Even an email exchange every couple of weeks or once a month would be great, or even just to have the opportunity to talk on the phone for half an hour as a one-off, so that I could talk through some core-issues. I think about raising capital, and how to expand, or…. recover from a major business crisis. It would also be useful to gain recommendations of advisors, software, consultants to use.

7. What type of mentor you think would you benefit from?

Ideally someone who has built a consumer retail business, but more importantly someone that has set up a business from absolutely nothing and knows how difficult it is to raise capital and live on nothing but air.

8. What does the mentor gain from mentoring you?

I think that the ideal mentor would enjoy doing this as they would enjoy helping someone embarking on a similar venture as they had. In the future I would be keen to do the same. However, on another level, a successful businessperson and investor may be interested in financing small businesses or may be interested in gaining access to a network of young entrepreneurs and listening to their business ideas.

Interested? Leave a comment below or drop Ernst-Jan a line. I hope the experiment will be a success!