August 29, 2007
The search for Europe’s answer to Google
A search engine for hot concert tickets and a social networking site for silver surfers are among 20 fledgling web businesses selected for a week-long entrepreneurship bootcamp that its founders hope will spawn Europe’s answer to Google.
Seedcamp, which starts on Monday, is billed as an intensive series of events, run by investors, entrepreneurs and experts in marketing, finance and human resources, aimed at equipping European high-technology start-ups with the skills to grow into multi-billion dollar companies.
Saul Klein, who is on Seedcamp’s executive team, said: "We want Seedcamp entrepreneurs to build the next Google. We want European kids to believe that they can succeed from Riga, Istanbul or Hertfordshire."
The 20 participants were chosen by a panel of venture capitalists from about 270 start-up teams from 40 countries. They will get free advice from successful entrepreneurs, professional advisers and executives from Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
On Thursday the teams will pitch for investment to the venture capitalists, which include DFJ Esprit, Balderton and Index Ventures.
The five winning start-up teams will each receive €50,000. They will then stay in London for a further three months, when they will pitch their business to oother investors and demonstrate their technology.
The list of participants includes Buildersite, an online marketplace for tradesmen that founder Ryan Notz wants to become "the Ebay for construction services".
Mr Notz, a former stonemason, started his business in Bristol with £50,000. He applied to Seedcamp in order to help raise further funding and learn from other people in the same boat as well as those with much greater experience in internet businesses.
"It will be really interesting to hear about other people’s business ideas," he said.
Other participants include, Debatewise, an online discussion group, Maple and Leak, a social networking site for the over-50s, RentMineOnline, a Dutch site for renting things, and Tablefinder, a Swedish start-up whose mission is to aggregate all the world’s bookable restaurants in one place.
The FT is a media sponsor of Seedcamp, and we’ll be blogging from the event next week and publishing video interviews with some of the participants and mentors.
Update: Here is the full list, as provided to us by Seedcamp organisers. Some do not yet have live websites:
ArtFlock.com (UK) - ArtFlock.com aims to be the foremost online destination for the sale and promotion of original art and craft by the worlds’ freshest artists and makers
Avenue7 (London, UK) – Community for teenage girls to talk fashion with their friends
Buildersite (London, UK) - Buildersite is a web-marketplace for construction services. We aim to provide homeowners and tradesmen with the largest and most trusted venue for transacting business online
Content Syndicate (Dubai, UAE) - Helps content providers and buyers commission, distribute, buy and sell content, that’s exclusive, customized and personalized for their requirements
Debatewise (London, UK) - Debatewise will enable people to compare the collective wisdom of one side of a debate with the collective wisdom of their opponents, to help them make up their mind about anything
Facecontact.com (Moscow, Russia) - Facecontact.com is a simple and effective tool for referral tracking and reward administration for referring job candidates, clients, investors and other prospects
KillSushi (Cadiz, Spain) – Currently in stealth
Krogos (Bucharest, Romania) – Software development
Kublax (London, UK) - Online personal finance management service
Maple and Leek (London, UK) - A social networking site aimed at inspiring like minded over 50s to build an online community of friends and fellow explorers
OpenEra (UK) - Online real estate information systems provider and the developer of the new and exciting Reavia portfolio collaboration service
Picolex (Paris, France) – Currently in stealth
Price Delivered (London) - The place for consumers to discover and share genuine bargains
Project Playfair (Edinburgh, Scotland) – Applying the concept of hypertext to numbers to track how they flow through an organization
RentMineOnline (Amsterdam, Netherlands) – Online rental marketplace
The School of Everything (London, UK) – A marketplace for independent teachers and classes in anything and everything
Tablefinder (Sweden) - Tablefinders’ mission is to aggregate the world’s online bookable restaurants through an awarding and open community
Tickex (London) - Tickex is a search engine for tickets to live events - concert, theatre and sports. In one search, Tickex aggregates results from all the major primary and secondary brokers
Wall Street Docs (Frankfurt, Germany) – Currently in stealth
Zemanta (Ljubljana, Slovenia) - Zemanta provides content intelligence platform for automatically enhancing content to make it web-ready










Tablefinder a finalist in SeedCamp London - The search for Europes answer to Google
We are really looking forward to the week at SeedCamp in London. I believe that even IF (!) it possibly will not find the next Google , something good will come for everyone attending. Tech Blog at Financial Times wrote a piece on the event announcing …
Posted by: Tablefinder Official Blog | August 30th, 2007 at 8:56 am | Report this commentwe are all looking forward to it!
Posted by: andraz | August 30th, 2007 at 12:40 pm | Report this commentGreat startups. My favorite?
Zemanta for sure. What they are doing is truly remarkable and it might mean every text on the web will become really interactive.
Good luck guys
Posted by: Tomaz | August 31st, 2007 at 8:39 am | Report this commentGreat Ideas when properly executed, and not regulated or taxed to death will sell regardless of who owns it.
Why pray tell do Europeans as a group have to be motivated by a need to counter any/everything American?
Thankfully Germans, Italians, and Japanese built great cars (Benz, Prius, etc), and the Beatles conquered America without a jealousy motivated approach.
Posted by: Paul Obembe | September 4th, 2007 at 1:31 pm | Report this commentIn reply to the last persons comment. It is my understanding that some of the seedcamp mentors and organizers are US citizens, who look for fresh ideas in north America (including Canada) as well as many countries in Europe. None of the seedcamp businesses are motivated to crush the American market, so it is unfair to judge them by a supposed bad comment of a paper. Nearly all of these ideas are original and in no way ‘counter’ anything that is in America already.
Posted by: Charlotte | September 11th, 2007 at 11:15 am | Report this commentAs for the comment about Goggle, I take it as looking in adoration and respect at something so simple yet brilliant and teaching Europe’s young people to think big and better.
By the way check this company MDFI. Their stock is set to increase because of their association with Apple iphone and Complete Care Medical. Find more about this company and stock http://www.growurmoney.com/medefile/
Posted by: gowri | September 12th, 2007 at 12:46 pm | Report this commentHi,
Here are some really interesting company’s, that all deserve to be on this list. How ever I think many good companies where ruled out as well, so here is my little suggestion:
Adicate.com is a company that gives the small and medium size businesses the opportunities to by ads on large web sites. Our patent pending system allows the advertiser to create their ads online, and book their ads based to time (at this point we have the option to choose hours). But in our next version we will have the opportunity to choose days, weeks and even mouths. We launched our system in January 2007 in Norway, and deliver our system to basically all marked leaders in Norway and Sweden. We are at this point on our way in to the UK marked.
HAVE A GREAT DAY.
Regards
Posted by: Tom Hammerborg | November 12th, 2007 at 2:51 pm | Report this commentTom
I am Mr Iribs Kola a certified lender who give out loans to interested co-operate bodies and
Posted by: iribs | November 12th, 2007 at 4:12 pm | Report this commentindividuals.we also give out personal loans,housing loan,creditloans student loan etc.We give out loan with low interest rate.we give out both short and long term loan. We are efficient,dynamic and reliable
Interested person’s should reply via my E-mail iribskola@gmail.com .