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

August 29, 2007 4:09pm in Uncategorised | Comment