Lessons for entrepreneurs at Seedcamp
The motivating force behind Seedcamp – the early stage tech investor and events programme that got underway today in London – is to bolster the European technology community.
Alongside better-known deals like AOL-Bebo and Ebay-Skype, the $700m sale of internet security firm MessageLabs to Symantec in 2008 is one of Europe’s biggest recent exits, and its two founders were on hand to share their experiences.
Seedcamp and the rise of Europe’s super angels
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.
Mark Zuckerberg friends David Cameron
Last time Facebook met a UK government minister, it was enduring tabloid hell after a 17-year-old girl was murdered by a man she met through the social network.
Today saw what seems to have been a much more amicable meeting.
Mark Zuckerberg, who began his trip to Europe yesterday at a London Facebook “hackathon”, this morning met with David Cameron, the prime minister, and Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for culture and media.
Londoners justify queuing for an iPad on day one
Who needs another shiny rectangle in their lives?
Plenty of people, if the queues outside Apple stores worldwide was anything to go by.
I was at Apple‘s London flagship shop on Regent Street this morning to ask people why they’d waited for hours to splash upwards of £429 on an iPad:
Atlas Ventures pulls back from London
The London technology community was dealt a blow on Tuesday when it emerged that Atlas Venture was planning to move its European operations to Boston. All new European investments will be co-ordinated from there, and Fred Destin, the London-based partner who has backed companies like Seatwave and Dailymotion, will be moving across the Atlantic this summer.
Other London-based partners, Christopher Spray, Graham O’Keefe and Regina Hodits will remain in London but only to service existing investments. They will not be involved in bringing new companies in to the portfolio. Which means that, as exits eventually arrive for the likes of Seatwave, these portfolio managers will have less of a role, and Atlas is likely to be slimming down further.
Silicon Roundabout: Is this the heart of the UK’s new dotcom boom?
Move over Silicon Valley. New York’s Silicon Alley is a Web 1.0 relic. And Cambridge’s Silicon Fen is just SO pre-crunch. Now Silicon Roundabout is staking its claim as the new tech start-up hub of the moment.
Previously known as the busy junction where London’s Old Street meets City Road, Silicon Roundabout is not the most salubrious of locations for budding entrepreneurs. But a coalescence of young web and tech companies in EC1 dates back to dotcom days. Alongside cheaper rents and a surfeit of bars, tapping into that experience is part of the area’s appeal for many of its newer residents.
Many will be hoping to follow the example of local hero Last.fm. The online music community was bought by CBS for $280m (£140m) last year, one of the largest UK web company buyouts of recent years.
“Old Street was a seemingly unlikely place to build a web company when we came here six years ago, but there’s no doubt it’s now becoming a hive of tech activity,” says Martin Stiksel, Last.fm’s co-founder. “The noise, vibrancy, and underground attitude of East London certainly rubs off on you, and inspires fresh perspectives – something I think all these start-ups share. It’s a million miles from sterile, air-conditioned Silicon Valley, literally and metaphorically.”
Right on Silicon Roundabout is Moo.com, which prints business cards based on photos from sites such as Flickr or Facebook, and other real-world products based on virtual content. One dotcom survivor is Moo’s chief technology officer, Stefan Magdalinski, who previously founded UpMyStreet, a local information site, and TheyWorkForYou.com, which helps UK voters find out more about their MPs.
Moo’s founder and chief executive Richard Moross also has a keen eye for a bargain – netting offices for a fraction of local rates because they’re due to be demolished in coming years – and “knows how to throw a party”, according to Matt Biddulph, a neighbour and CTO of Dopplr, a travel site. Indeed, Moo’s summer party last Thursday was abuzz with chatter about the newly anointed Silicon Roundabout, coined last week by Biddulph on micro-blogging service Twitter to describe the “ever-growing community of fun start-ups in London’s Old Street area”.
“For me it’s all about the community here,” Biddulph told the FT. “We moved in because our friends did too.”
He says Old Street appeals because it is away from the throngs of shoppers in Soho, where (for instance) Bebo is based, but near enough to the City and the West End for meetings with financiers or media types – as well as the cheaper areas of east London where shoestring-budgeted entrepreneurs may live. Plenty of hip cafés with free WiFi such as Shoreditch Old Station and Coffee@Whitecross Street are on hand to caffeinate developers.
“Critical mass comes from network of people,” says Biddulph. “There were some really interesting companies here in first dotcom boom, and a lot of the companies here are having their second time around. I’m at my first start-up, so it really matters to me to have people around who know how put a business together – and how to find cheap office space.”
The Dopplr CTO has plotted his fellow Roundabouters on (what else?) Google Maps to lend credence to the idea (see http://bit.ly/siliconroundabout). But Silicon Roundabout’s claim to be the heart of the London tech scene is already being challenged by Huddle, a provider of online collaboration software who is building a similar concentration of talent in Bermondsey Street, South London. Huddle, Moo and Dopplr are all involved in mentoring at Seedcamp, a London event which aims to foster the next generation of European entrepreneurs.
“There are two or three competing camps starting,” says Alastair Mitchell, Huddle co-founder and chief executive. “But competition is good. We’re all trying to grow this community.”
(Thanks to Matt Jones of Dopplr for the photo)
UPDATE February 1, 2011: The FT has revisited the Silicon Roundabout phenomenon in this feature examining the government’s “East London Tech City” initiative, including a video from the streets of Shoreditch. A further article on the area’s entrepreneurs will be published soon.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
