Seedcamp’s winners have just been announced. They are:
uberVU, from Romania, which brings together comments about a company, topic or blog post which are distributed all over the web: “We are building a conversational graph.”
Kyko, from the UK, which is still in stealth mode, but will launch in a few months.
Basekit, from Wales, which uses an easy drag-and-drop approach to building web applications. “Other website creation services lack depth.”
Mobclix, the only Seedcamp finalist from Silicon Valley, which provides analytics for iPhone applications. “Advertisers want to reach the iPhone demographic, developers want advertisers. We want to be the bridge between these two gaps.”
Soup, from Austria, is a ‘tumblelog’ which can act as a scrapbook for your favourite YouTube videos or links, or aggregate your own “lifestream” from other publishing sites. “We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people to publish stuff online.”
Toksta, from Germany, which lets social networks and dating sites add on-site chat within the browser. “If you don’t have real-time communications on your site, people will leave to use IM applications.”
Stupeflix, an automatic slideshow generator which was born out of a feature on a tourism site. We generate video in fractions of a second or minutes instead of hours and can run using much less servers.” The founders hail from French search engine Exalead and video site Dailymotion.
Each will receive up to €50,000 in funding, in exchange for a small equity stake, as well as access to business, legal and PR advice over the next three months.
Oliver Beste of FoundersLink, an early stage investment group, who was also an investor in Seedcamp itself, had words of encouragement for the 16 other finalists who didn’t win: “Even if it doesn’t work the first time, keep trying, because then you are an experienced entrepreneur, not a loser.”
Part of Seedcamp’s aim is to promote the European entrepreneurial environment. Mr Beste said: “Europe has enough consultants, Europe has enough investment bankers but Europe doesn’t have enough risk takers. You are those risk takers. You are needed to be role models for others, because you show them something they don’t even think of in Europe.”
With a second year under its belt, Seedcamp is still a start-up itself. Founder Saul Klein of Index Ventures said that he and Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp’s chief executive, will be “doubling down” on the mini-Seedcamps which have brought entrants from all over Europe this year. So Seedcamp will be in London, Paris, Berlin and Kiev again next year, but is also planning to expand into Stockholm, Warsaw and Tel Aviv.
For video interviews from this week’s Seedcamp, go to www.ft.com/seedcamp
