Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 19th September 2008
1 COMMENT 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
This week 22 startups came to London to Seedcamp to get advice of European celebrity web mentors. Seedcamp can be compared to Startup School by Y Combinator. The startups get a crash course in marketing, funding and tech.
Seven companies are selected as winners and receive a €50k investment for a minority stake.
Congrats to:
uberVU: Tracking comments on your social media content (a The Next Web 2008 startup as well)
Kyko: Casual gaming inside MSN / Live Messenger
Basekit – Make building complex webapplications easy.
Soup.io – Personal publishing on the web made easy
Toksta – Provide instant messaging systems for social networks
Mobclix – iPhone analytics
StupeFlix – Smart video slideshows from photographs
Thanks to Anders Fredriksson for updating via twitter.
Hmmm… Robert Gaal of Wakoopa has been mentoring four of the seven winners. Wondering what influence he had on the jury decision… Robert?
Written on 29th July 2008
2 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
We’ve blogged about Seedcamp before, the program that aims to provide a catalyst for Europe’s next generation of entrepreneurs. Seedcamp’s CEO, the charismatic Reshma Sohoni, sent word that the deadline for the applications is rapidly approaching. If you’re a EMEA-based startup looking to engage with an impressive number of investors and mentors for an entire week, you have less than two weeks to submit your application (more specifically until August 10).
And why should you do this? Well, if you’re one of the lucky 20 startups to get selected, you’ll not only spend a week in London with some of Europe’s top minds, but you’ll also be eligible to receive seed funding to the amount of €50K each (for 5 teams, in exchange for a 10% stake). Seedcamp does not require preferred stock, board rights, or other rights often required by institutional investors.
If you win, you have to be prepared to spend 3 months in London, where you will be ‘helped and nurtured’ so you can grow your product and or business with the aid of a whole battery of advisors.
You can apply here.
Update: totally missed that Jemima Kiss outlined some of the people who are participating in this year’s Seedcamp over on the digital content blog from The Guardian. The line-up includes names like Michael Birch (Bebo), Martin Stiksel (Last.fm), Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com), Niklas Zennström (Skype), Martin Mickos (mySQL), Kevin Comils (Buy.at), Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google), Tommy Ahlers (ZYB / Vodafone), Matt Bidulph (Dopplr), etc.
Written on 17th July 2008
3 COMMENTS
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
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!
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
