Ponieważ wiele osób jest zainteresowanych kolejną edycją Seedcamp 2008 poprosiłem Reshmę Sohoni (CEO) o kilka słów wyjaśnienia czego można oczekiwać po kolejnej odsłonie, dlaczego europejskie start-up’y powinny atakować rynek amerykański i jak wygląda współpraca z wygranymi projektami z poprzednich edycji…
Z Reshmą miałem już przyjemność przeprowadzić mini wywiad przed Aulą w TVN oraz TMT. Obecnie wszyscy chętni na Seedcamp mogą składać wnioski do 10 sierpnia. Szczegóły na blogu Aula Polska. Jeśli macie jakieś pytania, problemy z wypełnieniem wniosku – zgłoście się do mnie (artur małpa revolver.pl) a ja przekieruję Was do odpowiedniej osoby. Śpieszcie się! Czasu został mało!
AK 74 – Reshma, Seedcamp idea seems to expand rapidly. What do you want to do in next 1-2 years?
Reshma Sohoni – True. It’s amazing how the brand has built and how well most of the SC ’07 companies are developing. In the next 1-2 years we want to refine the model more, prove some successes from our 3 years of investing, and actually to put more money to work in the early stage.
Along with this look for some announcements of how we are investing outside the main Seedcamp event. So, it’s a great opportunity for early stage teams all across Europe to access funding through Seedcamp beyond the main Week. We are already seeing our platform of bringing and helping build the ecosystem working. So, we’ll do more events and raise the bar on entrepreneurship in Europe
AK 74 – Let’s talk about CEE markets. US economy is now in trouble – do you agree that maybe it is the time for more aggressive promotions of european start-ups? Perhaps weak dollar is the best way to conqure western markets?
RS – The dollar is weak but so is the economy and so is therefore the world’s largest group of consumers. Consumption is key so I do agree that we can leverage Europe’s strengths, the Euro, and definitely be more aggressive. But it is important to ensure the US consumer is included in these solutions. Plus it’s important to keep thinking about how to solve problems and dislodge incumbents with better solutions.
Not just to think of it from a pure economic standpoint. The weak economy in the US is a strong reality check and maybe the ROW is not as dependent or singularly tied to the US but lasting economic weakness in the US will have a domino impact everywhere and isn’t really good for anyone
AK 74 – What do you expect from Seedcamp in this year? Can we see any brilliant new services or hair wigs products?
RS – We do expect to get more complete/whole teams applying (strong technically and business-wise). We keep sounding the horn on this all across the 15 or so cities we’ve traveled. Along with that message we keep saying over and over again we want ambitious new ideas solving real problems addressing large market needs.
So, we’ve set that challenge. We do expect to see less me too ideas and more unique concepts. Again, the applications will tell if these messages have been taken on board or not
AK 74 – Do you have feedback from selected teams? Do you know what is going on with Kublax, MyBuilder, Tabelfinder, Rent Mine Online or Zemanta?
RS – Absolutely, we continue to support and work very closely with each of our SC ’07 winners. Just follow the story of Zemanta (a CEE company). That’s really a prototypical team and company we’re trying to attract to Seedcamp. Ambitious, super techie, really balanced, articulate, incredibly hungry team. Kublax is in the Fin Svcs space and so it’s no easy feat to launch what they are doing.
They’re plugging away, have raised capital, and are in private Beta right now. MyBuilder is realizing Revenue, the site is improving all the time, have raised money, and have a huge partnership with an offline giant as well. RMO, Hypernumbers, and TF are moving along as they’ve had to adjust their models, go through some growing pains. But they continue to move forward as they are incredibly passionate about what they are building.
