Seedcamp - Day 5

Seedcamp Day 5 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp - Day 4

Seedcamp Day 4 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp Day 3

Seedcamp Day 3 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp - Day 2

Seedcamp Day 2 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Seedcamp day one

Seedcamp 2008 Day 1 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Looking Forward to Seedcamp 08

One of the highlights of my year - without a doubt - is Seedcamp. The one week of mentoring, networking, working, learning is really exhilarating.

Seedcamp is itself a start-up and its formation, evolution, development and growth is not unlike many of the start-ups in which I have been involved.

In my view, Seedcamp is destined to become a significant brand in the technology world. A founder with amazing vision (Saul), strong backing and goodwill from almost all the leading players in the industry and a brilliantly determined and smart CEO (Reshma) is a pretty good cocktail.

As was made clear last year, Seedcamp is not all about the relatively small amount of funding which the winners receive, it is designed to provide a publicity platform, an incredible network and some intensive and expert mentoring to the 20 or so finalists.

Every day this week, Seedcamp will be featuring highlights of the day on their site. Check it out.

The blog too has loads of interesting stuff - I particularly liked Michael Orland's post on the Zeitgeist:

It read in part: "Our 2008 application zeitgeist post exactly one month ago generated some attention, which is why when it was suggested we do a follow-up for our finalists I was a little hesitant. There's a fine line between a useful device and a gimmick, and I feared we might stray into the latter territory. After actually performing the analysis though, I see there are some interesting contrasts: "mobile" has dropped off the top of the "what are you creating?" list to be replaced by "travel", "advertising" is less of a top-line panacea (and yes, we realize the tautology of "revenue" as a way to make money - thankfully it was substantiated a bit more than that), and Amazon has replaced Google as the cloud solution of choice. There are other differences as well - which is why I'll cease my yammering and leave you to draw your own conclusions."

You should read the whole article.

As Michael acknowleges, its a bit of fun ....but ...interesting to see what teams are building and what the judges thought was going to be most successful.

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Koodos makes the top 10 Apparel sites in the UK!

Retail Week list the ten most visited 'Apparel and Accessories' websites in the UK for the week ended August 9th, 2008.



The data was supplied by Hitwise.
They are:
Next.co.uk market share 6.61%
asos.com 4.99%
topshop.co.uk 3.00%
riverisland.com 2.67%
newlook.co.uk 1.92%
mandmdirect.com 1.54%
mothercare.com 1.48%
dorothyperkins.co.uk 1.40%
koodos.com 1.13%
jdsports.co.uk 1.08%

Interesting to note that only ASOS, M&M and Koodos of the top 10 are pure web businesses - all the others have extensive exposure on the high street with hundreds of stores each.


Consumers are clearly interested in the Koodos proposition of great international brands (about 120 of the world's top brands are now represented on the Koodos site)at heavily discounted prices. Especially in these credit crunch times.
See examples like Prada .... private sale coming soon.
The Koodos blog which features fashion and celebrity gossip is also getting noticed and helping to develop the brand's authority and establish its fashion credentials.

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Stardoll is UK's top kids site - Nielsen Survey

The rich functionality and continued focus on fashion has paid off handsomely for Stardoll. Mattias and his team have continuously evolved the simple idea of dressing up dolls in a virtual environment in a sophisticated and intelligent way.
This is a community which is really engaged and interacts.
And Stardoll is now truly a global brand.
With 20m members worldwide and still growing strongly its not surprising that a new Neilsen survey of kids sites puts Stardoll at No1 for under 12's
Ahead of Club Penguin, Nickelodeon, Lego, Cartoon Network and the like, for proportion of audience under 12 Stardoll's challenge was always going to be monetisation.
Stardoll has approached this intelligently too. Revenues come from the sale of virtual clothes, gifts, scenery as well as from sponsorship and advertising - all in an integrated and non-invasive way.

Following an extensive beta test of the service during which 50,000 customers were served, Wonga.com has now launched. Wonga offers a new source of fast credit, without the long-term commitment associated with bank loans, overdrafts and credit cards.
The premise is simple, the customer inface clear and easy but the technical execution extremely complex.

Wonga is offering a service that could not have been provided pre-internet. Loan applications are processed in real time and, if approved, funds are transferred to the customers account within minutes. Its about as close to instant cash as it can be.

The service does not compete with Bank Loans, Hire/Lease Purchase or other larger amount finance packages - initial loans are restricted to just £200. When might one want a Wonga loan?
The service has been designed to appeal to anyone who experiences the occasional ‘Wonga moment’ - such as an urgent time-sensitive purchase, an unmissable social event, emergency repairs or a shock bill.
Errol Damelin, founder and CEO of Wonga, has a neat way of positioning it. "we're not the cheapest way to borrow money, but we provide a service that's much faster, more convenient and flexible than anything else out there. It's much like a black cab, which might not be an economical way to get around on a regular basis, but you get a fantastically fast, convenient and secure service on the occasions when a bus or tube won't do."

The central ethos of the company is openness and simplicity. The customer is informed of the cost in a clear way and is able to choose precisely how much they want to spend. Like in many other service industries, the Wonga customers are willing to pay a premium for a high level of service and the instant response which only it can offer.

The back end processes and the number of 3rd party integrations needed to make this all so simple for the customer has been anything but trivial. Wonga uses a sophisticated and proprietary credit decisioning system to assess every application -its only interested in lending to people whom they believe can reasonably afford to repay their loan without undue financial stress. All these features are in contrast to many internet or high street lenders who offer little or no flexibility, few or no credit checks and large fixed fees.

Errol explains: “Banks and other lenders are weighed down by tradition and complexity. People have come to expect rigid terms, realms of paperwork and slow decisions - particularly in recent times with the increasing pressures of the credit crunch. So a frequent reaction to our service has been amazement at the speed of our process."
Wonga also operates a trust system, similar to community-orientated sites like eBay, whereby new applicants are initially limited to borrowing up £200 but can increase their credit limit by using the service responsibly over time.

Errol and his partner, Jony Hurwitz, have a number of further innovations to the Wonga service in the pipeline which promise to add more value to Wonga customers soon.

Wonga employs 37 staff in London with a development team in the Ukraine, and is backed with venture capital from Balderton Capital, TAG and Kreos Capital.

Read the Guardian article which features an interview with Errol for further information.

Oh yes! Almost forgot. The company has also won a string of awards (including "entrepreneur of the year" from Credit Suisse sponsored National Business Awards, SE region) and been shortlisted for others.

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MyBuilder starts building

Ryan Notz applied to Seedcamp 07 with his Buildersite plan(since relaunched as MyBuilder). He came all the way through and got his funding and with it many column inches of publicity. Like the piece in the Observer. Ryan's presentations at Seedcamp will be remembered for the obvious passion and sincerity that he displayed for his project. His own experience as a Stonemason and his intimate experience of the way in which the building trade works and what a nightmare it generally is for consumers, has guided the development of the business. He has chosen the success-fee marketplace approach rather than the lead generation model believing that it particularly attractive to both buidlers and consumers because unlike the lead generation sites, MyBuilder is able to retain their builders through both the good and the tough times. Lee Dryden, a builder registered on the site says: "This site is great. I paid for lots of leads with another site and didn't get any work at all. I'm more than happy to pay MyBuilder's fee when I get work -it's fair!" Ryan says that the approach works better for consumers too. "If you want to find a great builder, you need a lot of choice. A lead generation site can only put you in touch with builders who have bought your lead. Worse, they can only sell your lead to a few tradesmen (or they'll get an even bigger drop-out rate). Consumers prefer to choose their builder based on feedback, distance, skills, qualifications and experience, rather than simply those who buy their lead. MyBuilder gets around this problem by providing an open platform where consumers can search the entire database of over 10,000 tradesmen, and tradesmen can look at and enquire about all the jobs (currently at 1000 a month and growing). It ensures a better match, with satisfied customers that come back, and tell other people about the site. The network effect with this model is powerful, and it also enables MyBuilder to publish search results of both live jobs and registered tradesmen, which helps implement valuable partnership deals." Key to MyBuilder's 'go to market' plan has been the partnership with Travis Perkins (including Wickes) who joined Alex Hoye, TAG and others in a post Seedcamp funding round. A major PLC with sales exceeding £3bn, Travis Perkins is a leading company in the builders’ merchant and home improvement markets, and is a main supplier to the building and construction market, one of the largest industries in the UK.
The Mail on Sunday covered Travis' investment in MyBuilder here.

Seedcamp Momentum Builds

There are 3 weeks left to get your application in to this year's Seedcamp in London.
If you are not yet convinced of the benefits or unsure of whether you qualify, check out Seedcamp and read Saul's recent post.

Part of that post read:
"At Seedcamp you know that if you apply and get through to the main week in London from Sept 15-19th just some of the folks you'll get to hang out with and get feedback from include:

the founders behind some of Europe's biggest recent exits like Niklas Zennstrom and Michael Birch plus the key folks behind MySQL, Lastminute, Last.fm, Buy.at, Plazes, Kelkoo and Zyb
the founders of some of Europe's most promising next generation businesses like Seatwave, WAYN, Moo, Spreadshirt, Lovefilm, Huddle and GlassesDirect
some of Europe and Israel's best seed and venture investors; including Atlas, Balderton, Amadeus, Index, Atomico, Northzone, Eden, DJF Esprit
experts in product, marketing and technology from Google, MySpace, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Sun and Oracle
folks from Techcrunch, LeWeb, FOWA, O'Reilly and the FT
plus we'll even throw in some specialists in startup legals and recruiting ;)

It's pretty intense - check out some of the content from last year. But its a lot of fun and pretty useful to the winners.

It's worth applying anyway though - lots of last year's teams who didn't make it told us how useful the application was in helping them to focus and articulate what they were trying to build."

Seedcamp is now established, thanks to the drive and energy of Saul, Reshma and the many others in the community who support it, as one of the prime engines for the start-up ecosystem in Europe.
The recognition it has received across the tech world is remarkable given its short history. Certainly those at the heart of the startup world in the US are looking at Europe in a different way - partly because of it.
During my month in SF and the valley I met a number of people keen to come over and support Seedcamp. Validation from Fred Wilson certainly helps too.

Fizzback tops them all!

In the month in which lots seem to have happened with TAG companies, Fizzback's winning Supplier of the Year to the Retail industry must take the top spot. Retail Week - the leading journal for Retailers runs something called the European Retail Solutions award. Fizzback won the award in the Best Use of Technology in a Hospitality and Leisure environment for their work with Bourne leisure which enables Instant Customer Feedback via a variety of channels including SMS, email and voice. This would have been almost expected given the innovative solution it offers for this environment, but to go on to be the overall winner of The Supplier of the Year - against competition like BT, NCR, Torex, Bazaarvoice etc was some achievement for a company which only launched its service less than 2 years ago. Their work with Marks and Spencer was also shortlisted. This important award comes shortly after being awarded 'cool vendor' status by Gartner. Fizzback was included in the list of "Cool Vendors" in the “Cool Vendors in CRM Customer Service, 2008” by Michael Maoz & Ed Thompson” report by Gartner, Inc. Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn't do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology). The report covers vendors that offer innovative approaches and technology for improving the customer experience during service interactions. The report highlights the primary importance of the customer experience and begins “Businesses expend tremendous amounts of money and energy on marketing and sales, yet lose customers by providing inferior service experiences.” Fizzback enables companies to have meaningful conversations with their customers via mobile devices. The journey begins with customer feedback at the point of experience, initiating a two-way dialogue that builds customer engagement, and ultimately drives advocacy. A unique artificial intelligence engine lies at the heart of the Fizzback system, driving large volumes of customer conversations at a low cost. Instant, tailored responses are provided to the customer, and front-line employees are alerted to take relevant action. Through an interactive dashboard, executives have a real-time insight into the 'voice of customer', including mission critical metrics such as net promoter score and propensity to defect. Fizzback is one to watch - as Fred predicted in Feb 07. Fizzback is backed by TAG and Advent Venture Partners

Some recent press coverage on Fizzback: Retail Week Customer Service Manager The Retail Bulletin Mobile Today

An Illuminating Month

As regular readers will know I very seldom muse on the 'state of the nation' or other lofty and worthy subjects. I leave this to the philosophers and commentators in our ecosystem. My posts generally relate specifically to TAG companies. Excuse this piece but it seemed necessary after spending almost a month in the 'theatre of dreams' which is the Bay Area of San Francisco. Normal service will be resumed soon.

A month in San Francisco and 37 meetings has given me some real insights into what has made The Bay Area of San Francisco - or more precisely, Silicon Valley the technology crucible for the world. Its instructive to look at which of the elements are replicable elsewhere and which are uniquely SV.

Key elements:
1. Culture: emanating from the gold rush 1848 when the surge of prospectors arrived from all corners of the world, the ethos is liberal, open, diverse, multi-cultural and the sense of opportunity is pervasive.
2. Lifestyle: the weather helps as does the natural beauty of the bay, the ocean and the mountains.
3. Size: The city is surprisingly compact, the population relatively small, the valley is accessible by 2 fast moving freeways and once there of course parking is plentiful, immediately outside the relevant office. All this makes for intensive interaction, there is a high concentration of tech start ups with easy accessibility to one another. The tech industry is extremely important to the city, the region and even the state. Its a significant driver of economic growth and activity.
4. University: Stanford is a major factor – its school of entrepreneurship is focused towards making engineers into entrepreneurs. Some of its programmes [eg Prof Tom Byers' Stanford Tech Ventures Programme and the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Course] are turning out some of the best new entrepreneurs around. Just another example of the focus on Entrepreneurship is The Mayfield Fellows Program (MFP) which guarantees an automatic summer job at a start up. The Mayfield Fellows Program (MFP) is a nine-month work/study program at Stanford University designed to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the techniques for growing technology companies.
5. A very active angel community and an informal‘investor club’ capable of rustling up a $1m seed round with a few phone calls in an hour. More angels are joining this community every time there is a significant exit or a group of Google execs cash in their options.
6. Of course, lets not forget that the US is still the largest market in the world - for most products and services. This is a fundamental factor.

All above factors attracting some of the best and brightest in the world.
Including a number of Europeans. Brits, French, Scandinavians, Spaniards etc.. Many in the Euro ecosystem wonder how one competes with all this. In my view its a not a matter of competing its a matter of creating.
Its also a case of Europe joining the global ecosystem and not seeing itself as separate. In the old economy it was a zero sum game – for every winner there were losers. In the New Economy we are thinking about creating or reinventing markets, disrupting old and inefficient methods and processes.

We in Europe can certainly play our part. Here are some of our fundamentals:
1. Creativity: Home to and heart of some of the great entertainment (eg music) and advertising industries. Great literary traditions. For the new web companies – which are global in reach and capital efficient - content, design and style is becoming ever more important (aren't the Apple style gurus all Europeans?)
2. Core engineering education: High standards pertain all over Europe - lacking in commercial and entrepreneurial sophistication - but with strong engineering traditions.
3. Low cost, highly efficient development capability across eastern Europe and easier access to India.
4. London – the most culturally diverse city in the world - with multi-lingual resources. Europe generally tends to have a more global outlook from day one - knowing that the home markets are small(er). Look at Israel - not much is developed for the home market - much has been world beating.
5. More advanced mobile technology and infrastructure than the US.

Things for us to work on:
Collective effort needed. - Create centres of excellence – shared working spaces - Develop further the great networking and learning hubs: Seedcamp, Opencoffee, conferences, first Tuesday. - Stimulate, encourage, help the Universities create world class entrepreneurial education programs and enable them to share the economic advantage.
Stimulate and encourage more cross pollination with US companies - both East and West Coast.
We can learn a lot and gain easier access to their big markets by partnering or locating commercial operations there.

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Imbibing the spirit of the Valley

From Tuesday, for the rest of the month of June, I will be based in San Francisco. I am hoping that by stretching the day, it will be business as usual for me in the UK (except for face to face meetings) while I meet with partners, entrepreneurs, VCs, Angels, bloggers and folks at Stanford.
Already, the openness and generosity of spirit of people I hardly know has been very encouraging. Rob Young at First Round Capital has offered me a place to camp; Scott Rafer, Lance Cottril and others have made a number of key introductions and the diary is filling up.
TAG does have a number of investments on the west coast and naturally visiting them and meeting with some of the great co-investors we have there will be enlightening.
The companies based on the West Coat (incl 2 in LA) are: Mashery, Lookery, Spotrunner, 60 Frames,OpenX and Academia.
In addition Zemanta and Dothomes have recently made strong forays into the markets there and are considering establishing presence.
There is much to read about the ecosystem that has been developed in the Valley and many other cities are attempting to emulate that special 'sauce' they apparently have. I figured a month may give me some insights.
[A really interesting book dealing with the PRE-web period which describes the way in which Silicon Valley took over from Route 128 - Boston is Regional Advantage by Annalee Saxenian]

Zemanta - enhancing content for thousands of bloggers

Zemanta is more than just an exotic start-up from an unlikely source. They were one of the Seedcamp winners of 2007. At the time the Zemanta founding team of Bostjan Spetic and Andraz Tori - read about them here - moved their entire team (5-6 folks including a biz dev guy who knew the ropes quite well) to London for 3 months and brought the same attitude of complete dedication in going for the total win. They used every opportunity Seedcamp gave them to expand their network, they knew exactly what they wanted and who they wanted to meet.
One of their meetings was with Scott Rafer (Lookery) (who sold Mybloglog to Yahoo) and Oren Michels, of Mashery, who have helped them ever since.
Now Reuters have done a video piece on the company, helping further raise its profile and new releases of the software and new partnerships will be announced soon.
One to watch - and to use, if you create content.

Bostjan and Andraz have hired Bostjan's brother, the experienced Ales to head the company and he has been spending lots of time on the the West Coast, East Coast, all coasts spreading the Zemanta words and striking partnership deals.
Best of luck chaps!
Zemanta is backed by Eden and TAG.
PS: I will be spending the month of June in San Francisco and hope to do my little bit for Zemanta while I'm there.

Reminder: There is exciting stuff happening in Europe

This piece by Reuters is a reminder to the tech investment community that there is good tech innovation coming out of Europe.
Saul's interview draws attention to Seedcamp and the other initiatives.
Lets hope that the current slowdown and change in general investment sentiment does not filter down too strongly to the start-up zone where companies still need decent length runways to establish themselves.
Despite the lower cost of getting tech companies off the ground and the measurable and effective marketing routes available, great companies will still take time, effort and capital to build build them. Patience and persistence is called for.

Have fun spotting fakes - with Koodos

Go to Koodos for authentic top brands at great prices.

Moo wins a Webby

Congratulations to Richard and the team at Moo for being nominated in the retailer category and winning the people's voice Webby award in the services category.
Moo is only one of 5 website winners from the UK this year - the others being: FT, Wagamama, Transport for London and the Discovery Channel.



Its great to win awards from knowledgeable and eminent judges but getting the most votes from an admiring (or loving, in the case of Moo) public is the real accolade.

See what Moo's customers think of the award.

Dopplr meets Mr and Mrs Smith

Dopplr is a service created for frequent travellers who belong to the same social, business or industry network.
If you travel a lot to conferences, meetings or otherwise its amazing how frequently you find that someone in your network happens to be in the same city at the same time - or perhaps you'd miss by a day or two.
The Dopplr site was built early last year and
about 500 heavy travelers from technology and media companies were invited to
road test the software. Since the Dopplr users were logging thousands of air
miles a month, the site quickly became the place for wired
globe-trotters, many of whom are now hooked on checking each others'
movements.

The site is now open but of course permission
to view another member's itinerary is by invitation only.

The service has attracted a lot of attention including a nice piece in Time magazine and is now being adopted by some large corporations as a way of optimising 'face-time' between their wide travelling executives.
Now Dopplr have added a superb, fully integrated partnership (through to booking) with the Boutique Hotel group - Mr and Mrs Smith.



The Hotels recommended by Mr and Mrs Smith may not meet everyone's budget but the direction which Dopplr are going is clear - great functionality for the user and smart monetisation of a super service.
Great job, guys!

OFT Clears LoveFilm Amazon merger

Yesterday the OFT gave the go-ahead for LoveFilm and Amazon to merge their DVD rental operations. Whilst most people expected this, it was by no means a 'slam dunk'.
The OFT said that while it had competition concerns about the merger, which will control 90% of the online DVD market, it concluded that LoveFilm had no incentive to worsen its customer proposition because of the competition it faced from an array of other providers of video content.
LoveFilm in the UK and Netflix in the US have once again demonstrated the power of the web to disrupt well established and entrenched business models - in this case the Video Rental stores.
Lovefilm's CEO Simon Calver says the high street film rentals market has "completely imploded" with 50 per cent fewer stores trading today than two years ago as consumers continue to flock online to hire their movies.
Speaking at the First Tuesday 'Retail Revolution' event in London this week Calver said there are simply more attractive options online for film fans, with the internet now accounting for 45 per cent of the total rentals market, as it provides a platform for more choice, greater convenience and better value-for-money.
Although LoveFilm will have 90% of the DVD on-line rental market after the merger, the OFT clearly recognises that the next disruptive wave could be coming from downloads and other VOD channels.

Read previous TAG posts connected with LoveFilm