This summer has seen some interesting blog posts from the venture capital community on the “rise of the super angels” – seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve cashed out and are reinvesting in the next generation.
Seedcamp, the European investor and events programme, is a big part of that story. Next week will see the fourth Seedcamp week in London, with 23 young companies jostling for up to €50,000 in investment and expert mentoring in what’s been dubbed the “X Factor for startups”.
But the increasingly active angel community means that Seedcamp has found itself facing competition too.
“We’ve never had our companies have this much interest in funding before Seedcamp week,” says Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp’s chief executive. “Some of these companies are just showing really good traction really early on. That is attracting the investor community.”
Established London VCs such as Index, Atlas*, Advent and Balderton are now jostling with newer funds such as Notion Capital (formed by Ben and Jos White, the founders of Messagelabs), White Bear Yard (co-founded by Stefan Glaenzer, former executive chairman at Last.fm) and Atomico (Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Kazaa/Skype fame).
London’s startup ecosystem – ranging from Huddle’s DrinkTank to the range of startups residing at Moo Studios and the new Techhub work space on Silicon Roundabout – is helping to nurture a healthier supply of companies for them to invest in.
Ms Sohoni says the quality and quantity of European tech startups – often compared unfavourably to their American peers – is improving all the time.
Seedcamp, which has run mini-events all over Europe, is seeing an increasing diversity of entrants, with the finalists including 23 companies from 19 cities, in 16 different geographies.
“Everyone says it’s hard to raise money, but a lot of these companies have had real interest already in bigger rounds of financing,” she says. “We haven’t seen that before Seedcamp week historically.”
Seedcamp remains a useful launchpad for new companies and a good way to spot emerging hotspots.
Ms Sohoni identifies three trends among this year’s finalists:
- Fashion, as designers, retailers and brands look to technology to accelerate production or pick up new ideas. Editd crunches web and trend data for forecasting and visualisation, Garmz provides crowdsourcing for designers, while Profitero provides “competitor analysis” in fashion and retail.
- Big data, making corporate, geographical or governmental information more accessible and digestible. Seedcamp finalists playing here include GIS Cloud from Croatia and Berlin’s Uberblic.
- Product discovery and comparison, through Hypezoo’s product news and search platform, Ineze’s “smart comparison engine”, Nuji’s social shopping service and FinanceACar, a way to compare alternative financing such as leasing when getting new wheels.
Other Seedcamp finalists range from social-media tools for brands (Tigerlilly) and secure online document storage (iSigned) to restaurant ordering systems using tablet computers (Visionect) and a service for employees to rate their team leaders (Getagreatboss).
The full list of 2010 finalists is on the Seedcamp blog. The FT will be there from Monday.
*Correction: as Azeem pointed out via Twitter, Atlas is no longer making new investments in London.
