In the context of Don Dodge’s recent blog on Paul Graham and YCombinator, I wanted to highlight a similar initiative here in Europe called SeedCamp. Inspired by YCombinator and the OpenCoffeeClub, Seedcamp will be a week long event in London, September 3-7, for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts.
The mission of Seedcamp is to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in Europe by providing the money, mentoring and media to help propel forward great ideas. At the end of the week, Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% 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.
The list of companies participating in Seedcamp has been detailed on the Financial Times’ TechBlog.
There are many leading entrepreneurs, VCs and advisors contributing to Seedcamp. Microsoft’s UK team will be there too – offering mentoring and advice on how to leverage the Microsoft platform and Windows Live APIs in order to build best of breed, next generation businesses.
Lars Lindstedt from the UK Emerging Business Team will be participating as well – providing advice on the “Working with Corporates” panel. I’ll be there heckling from the crowd! ;-)
