The great and the good of Europe’s internet industry came to London today to give their blessing to Seedcamp, a week-long course to give fledgling businesses a fighting chance to make it big.

Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype, the global internet telephony business, Marc Samwer, founder of Alando, the German online marketplace now sold to eBay, and Charlie Muirhead, co-founder of Orchestream, the internet security business, shared the opening panel debate about getting started in business.

Seedcamp itself is a start-up venture with big aspirations. Saul Klein, its founder, told us that he has funding to run repeat its London incubator event several times over the next few years and said he would like to stage Seedcamps in other European cities.

You can see our video from the first day, including interviews with Zennstrom, Klein, and several Seedcamp finalists, here.

A debate has already started on the web about whether this is the right way to stimulate entrepreneurship in Europe, a continent more famous for long holidays than dynamic new businesses. Should not other things be done to change the cultural attitudes that prevent risk taking in the EU?

This is to forget that incubators, the model that Seedcamp is trying to ape, are an American idea and have worked very well on that side of the pond.

There also appears to be concern that the continent that gave us the Eurovision Song Contest does not really know how to create meaningful competitions.

Judging from the elevator pitches that each of the 20 Seedcamp participants had to make today, there is a lot of work to be done before each has to pitch for some real funding on Thursday.

Like the Eurovision, where Israel has competed and won, Seedcamp also appears to have stretched the definition of European. In Seedcamp’s case this meant including Content Syndicate, a media business based in Dubai.

But are these really problems? Firstly, Seedcamp is meant to be a place for novice entrepreneurs, so you expect them to be far from perfect on their first day.

Secondly, the fact that Seedcamp has not restricted itself to purely European businesses is not a bad thing. Why should Europe have a monopoly on good ideas after all? Is it not better to show those with a good business idea that they can get support for their venture within the EU?

We will see over the next few days what Seedcamp can do to hone entrepreneurial talent.

September 3rd, 2007 in Seedcamp | Permalink