Seedcamp Roundup

by Rob Stokes

I’m mildly hungover and feeling pretty sleepy today after the Techcrunch party in London which rocked into the wee hours of this morning. It was held with the joint purpose of re-launching Techcrunch UK and celebrating a successful week of Seedcamp.

In a nutshell, for those of you who don’t know, Seedcamp is an Incubator which brings together 20 of Europe’s top Founders and Venture Capitalists in a week long session of idea sharing and mentoring and culminates in the awarding of 5 VC grants. I was invited as one of the mentors.

Mike Arrington has the full round up of the party here.  I will however sum it up by saying this: a Penthouse in Soho with a never ending supply of fantastic food and booze… the perfect recipe for my nasty little hangover, but what a great night!

Techcrunch also announced the Seedcamp winners this morning. I was part of the judging panel and although we decided on them all last night, we were all under a strict embargo to keep it hush, hush until this morning (so Techcrunch could get all the Google juice ;)).

Full details are over here, but in short the winners are:

• Project Playfair
• Kublax
• Rentmineonline.com
• Buildersite.co.uk
• Tabelfinder.com
• Zemanta

Each of these young companies will receive 50 000 Euros and will spend 3 months in London with the Seedcamp team. In my opinion the latter part of the “prize” is potentially worth more than the cash (considering some of the brains that are involved in Seedcamp).

You will notice that there are 6 companies on the list despite the original intention of only awarding the VC funding to 5. This unprecedented decision came about because quite honestly, all 6 deserved it.
And let me tell you, the judging process was beyond thorough. Not only did it take twice as long as we expected, but we made sure that every voice of agreement or disagreement was heard and subsequently voted on. At the end of the day I think the right 6 were chosen and more importantly, a huge amount was learnt for next year’s Seedcamp.

From my side it was truly an incredible experience. I got to spend the day amongst awesome people with some SERIOUS brain power. I learnt so much about so much. It also made me realise what a great community I am a part of in the technology industry. People are so open with their time and ideas and the whole industry benefits and moves forward faster as a result.

Here’s to next year!

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