SeedCamp: finding the next European (and Israeli) internet champions
Saul Klein just launched a new great initiative after OpenCoffee (the European equivalent to iDrink), SeedCamp.
It is a very early stage program dedicated to spot and finance young internet projects in Europe and in the Middle East, Israel included.
Seedcamp is an intensive week long event held in September in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA.
We've set it up to provide seed funding and world-class connections for startups. September 2007 is the first group of startups we will look at for funding. We are planning to have such an event annually.
We will be holding an open application available online. Based on this, we will select up to 20 companies to participate in the event.
The idea is simple, if your project is selected you will be given 50kEuros of financing and additional mentoring and media support to prove your concept during 3 months. If it works you become eligible to an A round with prestigious VCs part of the program. For 50keuros you will give 10% of your company. Not cheap but worth if you are very young entrepreneurs and have no access to seed money (i have seen many guys in that configuration in Israel)
This is a different approach to our Internet lab where we finance projects with more money and over a longer period of time (9 -18months). But this is a good complementary approach and that is why i decided to support it and try to help promote it in Israel. Indeed SeedCamp is searching project also in the Middle East
I was offered by Saul Klein to help some of the selected startups during the mentoring process which i accepted gladly
In addition TechCrunch is exclusive media partner of the event (with the Financial Times).
If you are interested in being part of this program you can apply until the 12th of August
This idea is actually the model of Y combinator in the US which claims more than 50% success rate and produced great websites such as reddit. Justin TV, Zenter (google documents), Loopt, Kiko (that was sold on ebay) and many more.
The success of ycombinator is much due to the big exposure every project they fund gets in the media. The hype is well worth the small investment.
Posted by: Nir Ben-Dor | 23 July 2007 at 04:10 PM