seedcamp on SWiK

The Zeitgeist shows

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:30:03 -0700

This is a picture with a lot of impact. This was from Seedcamp. The question asked was “What tools will you use?”.

Mårten pointed this out to us at the opening speeches at the Sun Database Group Developer’s Meeting. Its interesting to see what technologies are used. MySQL is by far, the most popular database server that all startups seem to use (though to be fair, I see CouchDB and PostgreSQL there too). PHP is about the most popular language (followed closely by Java, then Ruby). Its amazing to see what kind of technologies people are using to build the companies of tomorrow.

Find out more about it, at the Zeitgeist redux on the seedcamp blog.

The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:15:25 -0700

Editor’s note: For the sake of accuracy, we have replaced the edited questions and answers with their unedited version (save for some minor stylistic changes). We sincerely apologize for any confusion.

This week Found|READ interviews software entrepreneur Paul Graham, co-founder of the influential startup incubator, Y Combinator.

Since 2005, Y Combinator has seed-funded 250 founders and over 45 startups including Justin.TV, RescueTime, Weebly and Zecter. Many other “YC shops” have quickly achieved liquidity events, among them Reddit (Condé Nast) and Auctomatic (Live Current Media). Fresh from Y Combinator’s fourth annual Startup School ‘08, Graham talks about the competition, various success factors, and how Y Combinator picks its winners.

F|R: What is the mathematical function from which Y Combinator
takes its name, and why did you choose this?

Graham: It’s a function that builds recursive functions without them needing to have names. The Y Combinator is one of those things that seems miraculous when you first encounter it. You wouldn’t necessarily have expected such a thing to be possible. We named the company after it partly because we thought it was such a cool concept, and partly as a secret signal to the kind of people we hoped would apply.

F|R: How quickly can you now tell whether a startup will make it? And what are the key characteristics that indicate potential success to Y Combinator?

Graham: We can never tell for sure. No investor can. But we are trying hard to get better at predicting.

I think the key quality is determination. The founders who do the best are the type of people who just refuse to fail. Most startups have at least one low point where any reasonable person would give up. That bottleneck is the reason there are so few successful startups. The only people who get through it are the ones who have an unreasonable aversion to failing.

F|R: I know you’re not a fan of Y Combinator copycats (TechStars, Y Europe, Seedcamp, BoostPhase, Basecamp etc.) but what is it about the original Y Combinator model that distinguishes it from these copycats? What aspects of your model cannot be copied and how is Y Combinator positioned to succeed where these others may not? Or, has you opinion changed, do you think your model be replicated and is that a good thing for entrepreneurship?

Graham: There are a few things they haven’t copied correctly, but really it’s not our model that distinguishes us. It’s the people that make the difference — not just us, but the 250 or so founders we’ve now funded. The amount of knowledge accumulated in all these heads is remarkable.

F|R: I read that when you call Y Combinator winners, the founders have only five minutes to accept. (”If people turn us down,” he says, “as far as we’re concerned they’ve failed an IQ test.”) Have startups turned you down? Are there any that have turned Y Combinator down and still gone on to succeed with a liquidity event?

Graham: You’re confusing two separate things. The reason people are supposed to decide quickly whether or not to accept is that they already know everything except the percent we’ll ask for. They’ve already seen the deal terms, and they already know as much as they’re going to know about YC before actually working with us. So they should already know when we call what percentage they’d be OK with. Since all they have to do is subtract one integer from another, five
minutes should be enough.

The “IQ test” quote refers not to how fast they have to decide, but the amount of equity we usually ask for. In the median case it’s 6 percent. If we take 6 percent, we have to improve a startup’s outcome by 6.4 percent for them to end up net ahead. That’s a ridiculously low bar. So the IQ test is whether they grasp that.

There was one startup that turned us down because they received an acquisition offer during the weekend when we did interviews. It was a pretty good offer. I’d have taken it in their position, and
they did. But other than that I don’t know of anyone who turned us down and went on to succeed. There have only been about three others who turned us down.

F|R: For practical purposes, how did you determine the 12-week term of each Y Combinator class? Why is three months the right amount of time, but two too few, or six months too long to properly “incubate” these startup ideas?

Graham: We discovered it by accident. When we first started YC, we began
with a summer program. We were trying to learn how to be investors, so we invited college students to come to Cambridge and start startups instead of getting summer jobs.

Now we’re looking for founders who consider the startup as a real job, not just a summer one. But we kept the 3-month cycle because it is a good length of time to build a version 1. Some startups may not be able to launch in such a short time, but they should all be able to build something impressive.

F|R: What is the ONE thing founders can/should do to increase their odds of succeeding in the Y Combinator “American Idol-meets-WIRED” competition? Is Andreessen right that “the market” matters more than the idea, the tech, and even the talent?

Graham: Get good co-founders. You can’t change who you are, at least not in a short time. And the idea doesn’t matter to us as much as the people. So the best thing any individual can do is find good people to work with.

I think Marc may be right that market is the biggest determinant in the outcome of successful startups. But that’s not unrelated to the qualities of the founders. Smart people will find big markets.

TechCrunch/Seedcamp Party Next Week In London

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:08:52 -0700

We are hosting a party in central London next week on Thursday, September 6 to support the Seedcamp event and to announce some TechCrunch UK news.

Most of the spots are reserved for Seedcamp attendees, but we are opening up 100 tickets to the public as well. To discourage no shows, we are charging a £10 fee per ticket, which will be donated to charity. Tickets are available here. There will be plenty to drink (and we’re working on food), and we’ll be giving away a ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch20 conference.

I will be flying in to London for the Seedcamp event and to attend the party. Hope to see you there.

We are taking a limited number of sponsors to offset the cost of the event. Email Jeanne Logozzo for more information about sponsoring the party.

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SeedCamp Finalists Chosen; Battle To Final Five Next Week

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:08:55 -0700

Seedcamp, a European Y Combinator-like seed fund and mentoring program, has announced the final twenty candidates for funding. Next week, five of the twenty startup ideas will be funded, each receiving €50,000 to build out their business. We are one of the media sponsors of the program.

In all, 240 applications were received from 40 countries.

SeedCamp Finalists

Company	Location	Description
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	An online community for 12 - 17 year old girls to share ideas on the latest fashion trends & products, as well as their own personal styles
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, United Arab Emirates	Helps content providers and buyers commission, distribute, buy and sell content, that’s exclusive, customised and personalised 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	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
Krogos Software Development	Bucharest, Romania	Software development boutique
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
Project Playfair	Edinburgh, Scotland	Our game is hypernumbers which will do to numbers what hypertext did to text
Price Delivered	London, UK	The place for consumers to discover and share genuine bargains
RentMineOnline	Amsterdam, Netherlands	Trusted online rental market
The School of Everything	London, UK	The place to come to find 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, UK	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	A provider of a sophisticated web-based document automation solution for complex capital raising transactions with a feature set tailored to the needs of issuers and banks
Zemanta		Content intelligence platform to automatically enhance content, making it web-ready

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TechCrunch Partners With SeedCamp Europe

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:48:47 -0700

We’re pleased to announce that TechCrunch has partnered to support the launch of SeedCamp in Europe. Inspired by YCombinator and the OpenCoffeeClub, Seedcamp will be a week long event in London, September 3-7, for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts.

The mission of Seedcamp is to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in Europe by providing the money, mentoring and media to help propel forward great ideas. At the end of the week, Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% stake in each of final five teams and provide ongoing mentorship and support for three months in preparation for the companies’ formal rounds of financing.

Applications are due August 12th.

TechCrunch and the Financial Times are the exclusive media partners for Seedcamp. We’re supporting Seedcamp because we believe that it will help incubate some great new products from young entrepreneurs in Europe, and we’re enthusiastic to provide exposure to this new initiative and expand our editorial coverage internationally. We have no financial interest in the venture.

The idea for Seedcamp came from Saul Klein in a post earlier this year looking to energize the European startup community. Participating VCs and advisors include Index Ventures, Atomico Investments, Atlas Venture, Balderton Capital, TAG, Forsyth Group and Brown Rudnick.

We’ll also be hosting a TechCrunch Meet-Up one night in London during the week of Seedcamp. More details on that to follow.

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