Portfolio

Portfolio

Monday, September 12, 2011

TAG commits another 250K Euros to extend runway for Seedcamp companies


Seedcamp is obviously in our bones at TAG, but for a little colour,  
I remember:

  • brainstorming the concept while it was a twinkle in Saul and Reshma’s eye
  • being on the first Board with Mattias, Sara, Paul, Sumon and Jason
  • pitching to new investors and writing the first cheques to Seedcamp I and II
  • funding Zemanta, MyBuilder and Kublax in 2007; Toksta in 2008; Erply in 2009 and Editd in 2010
  • going to Mini Seedcamps in Ljublianga, New York, Tel Aviv, Paris, Copenhagen
  • working closely on Seedsummit and the latest Term Sheet program

So we love Seedcamp - that's a given.

But having just spent the week at Seedcamp in London, its clear that the Seedcamp platform and network has moved to a new level and finally there is also serious capital available.

But most importantly the latest group of Seedcamp companies are totally inspiring by:

  1. the progress they have made,
  2. the scale of their ambition
  3. the amount they have achieved with little to no money.
Seedcamp has never shied away from the fact that to build something great takes time - and to building an ecocystem takes decades.

We still have a long way to go in the markets we operate, TAG is not ready to buy a tracker (and also we are fundamentally "stock pickers").


We’ve had our successes and failures at TAG, that’s part of investing and its especially so at the earliest stages. However, we are inspired by the progress we’re seeing - especially from Eastern Europe - and want to make sure that at least some of this year's 20 teams will have at least double their run-way and be able to take some more time to develop the right product, find the right customers and discover which investors share their vision and values.

So we are offering €50k as a convertible loan to 5 teams from this week’s Seedcamp in order to help extend their runways further and look forward to contributing in a small way to the continuation of their journey from seed to start-up to superstar.
As frequently happens, Techcrunch got a sniff and published this offer here:
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/seedcamp-week-2011-meet-the-finalists-the-winners-and-one-good-samaritan/
We would of course invite any other investors - European or otherwise to join us in this funding - this is a promising group and they deserve our support



Here are some edited highlights of Seedcamp Week.

  1. Daily Video Highlights: 
  2. Some of the news coverage:
  3. Seedcamp announcements:



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1 comment:

  1. Kelly Brough4:18 am

    Robin, thanks for a great update on last week's seedcamp. Delighted to see how it's progressing.

    ReplyDelete

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