Please keep Seedcamp going. It is beneficial to the whole European ecosystem and was one of the highlights of our startup experience.

1/ Mentors expose themselves to young entrepreneurs and get some ideas, get a kick out of helping, extend their network with other mentors. If your concern is that this is all a crowdsourcing scam for the benefit of the investors, are you kidding ? Atlas Venture put sthg like £250K in the fund to make it happen alongside others, this has no impact on our fund return under any scenario. If an initative like this has no money, it’s not real. Sure I am hoping Seedcamp does decent investments, but because it will show WE CAN PRODUCE GREAT COMPANIES, not because it’s going to make any difference to the $385M Atlas Venture VIII fund. do the math. The time invested in helping Seedcamp would not come close to justifying the investment.

2/ 50K to attend ? No, there is no fee involved. Source ?

3/ Conflict of interest? Judging session at the end is a closed session. Which still means there are 25-odd people in the room with a transparent voting system. Some companies are clearly at the top, others at the bottom. For the ones in the middle, it’s a culture of “champion and challenge” i.e. some people make the case for and some against. Healthy debate ensues, sometimes heated. Votes get counted again, and so on. There is no dominance from venture firms, e.g. Oliver Beste or Sean Park were quite passionate and vocal. There is always a potential for conflict of interest but the broadly distributed nature of the voting system is an effective control. BTW the primary investors in Seedcamp companies are probably Eden Ventures; they were not an initial founding member but they have leveraged Seedcamp well to source investments, and we thank them for it !

As for gigLocator versus Songkick, there are also people who believe the CIA had planted explosives in the Twin Tower. Beggars belief huh ?

4/ Is the closed investor day detrimental? The closed investor day is probably the single privilege awarded to the investors; they get an early and privileged look at the final article. But the Seecamp exposure goes way beyond that event. Ask Seedcamp companies if they feel they got a raw deal. They can get incredible access and learning very quickly. They get unique exposure. By the Way, if you feel like you have seen a gem in mentoring, nothing stops from funding them BEFORE they get to final pitches, right ?

I also think the legal point is misguided — these are braindead simple terms, as is suited to microseed investments.

You can always nitpick for flaws, but I think you are trying to hard. For once, a non-governmental for-profit initiative that plays a transparent game, and you get all upset because one session is closed to you ? C’mon, we are all bigger than this !

Although we were not selected as one of the final 5 ventures, the week was an astounding experience and I consider us fortunate to attend. I recommend that all tech start-ups with a big vision apply for Seedcamp next year.

The calibre of the mentors was impressive and the quality of their feedback during the mentor sessions was valuable.

When I presented on Friday afternoon, there were mentors in the room who were not VCs… it was a small room. I’m not sure if they sneaked in. If only Seedcamp investors were invited to judge, I would understand it and accept the obvious reasons why.

I’m glad the organisers made sure no one walked in whilst we presented.

1. If I understand correctly, then you want mentors or those otherwise directly involved in the week to understand the set up. Specifically, the investment side of things. Fair enough.

2. All start-ups will have to face legal issues at some point. Yes, it sucks when you don’t have money to pay legal fees but that isn’t Seedcamp’s fault. Teams applying to Seedcamp presumably knew that there would be legal stuff at some point.

3. Interesting. It doesn’t take long via the website to find that Seedcamp will invest €50k in the winner with a stake between 5-10%. (http://seedcamp.com/pages/weeks_program). Not sure what info the mentors are actually looking at though. As Kristoffer says, there are many Seedcamp teams that don’t ‘win’ but have probably made useful connections and do quite well out of the week.

4. I guess we might not understand each other here. The current set up of talks appears to make sense to me (unless I’ve misunderstood).

AC

Seedcamp is a business so it’s obvious they want something out of the whole process, just as any investor would. I see no problem whatsoever having to then pitch for a closed set of people who finally make that decision.

To be honest we need more Seedcamp level activity in Europe, not less. Getting started is hard enough as it is.

Q1: of course it’s relevant – if the whole point of seedcamp is to be an investment fund, then it needs to be transparent in how it works if it wants others to join in

Q2: The feedback everyone has been giving me is that they can’t afford to get the legal terms looked at by any professional. It’s hardly fair that they have to understand and sign up to a series of terms – kind of reminds me of X-Factor! Also, the companies would benefit the most by being able to have other investors pitch money in a competitive environment along with the seedcamp offers, would it not?

Q3: I’ve spoken to 15 mentors about this and every single one of them said they didn’t realise there was a closed fund working in the background. Each of them thought they were helping “seedlings” grow and nurture as a company, not that it was benefiting a group of investors. If this is made very clear on the seedcamp website and in the communication sent to mentors – I’d like to see it

Q4: No idea what you’re talking about there. An earlier argument was that anyone can attend the presentations on monday to see the start-ups – but they are 10 mins top with very little detail – nothing like the professional pitches given on “closed thursday”

For Q1. Is this really relevant? I thought it was clear that Seedcamp invests in companies and raises that money from others. The deals there may be as diverse as the number of people involved and I don’t see how knowing that will aid the discussion.

For Q2. Tricky question. Seedcamp want teams who will take the investment. Teams will rightfully want to know all the T&Cs in advance. As long as the communication on this is clear between the teams and Seedcamp then it’s fine. If there’s no legal commitment made in advance then why would Reshma want to publicise the fact that teams could easily pull out at the end of the week? I don’t think that helps their program at all. As I said, as long as the teams and Seedcamp have an active and open dialogue about this then it should be fine.

for Q3. This is related to Q1 and has as many different reasons behind it. It’s no secret that Seedcamp invests and hopes to make a return from those investments. All the mentors should already know that and they still choose to take part. As for Q1, I don’t think this question aids the discussion.

for Q4. This question may be relevant but perhaps not the specific info you’re asking for (quality, length, detail etc.). I think it might be helpful if the intent and purpose of the presentations were clearer since that seems to be the source of confusion. In fact it may have been answered already somewhere.

Overall, I think you should take up Reshma’s offer of a coffee/chat and then you’d be free to post another comment with what you’ve learned.

I had thought from your original post that you were a “Seedcamp mentor” at the week and were asked to leave, but Reshma’s comment suggests that you weren’t.

Why were you there? Were you attached to one or the startups, or mentoring privately for one, or were you let in as an interested potential investor?

I’m presuming one of the three, as I know people who fall into the ‘other’ category weren’t let in, otherwise I would have been there too!

1: What does it take to be an investor in seedcamp? What is the criteria and what benefits do you get?
2: Do the seedcamp companies have to take the investment if they win?
3: What is the incentive for mentors to contribute – do they know that at the end of it, the advice is beneficial to the seedcamp fund as they’re the ones who get to make money out of the start-ups?
4: What is the difference between the presentations done on monday and the ones done on thursday – in terms of quality, length, detail…?

I’m not taking a side. I am however, very keen to learn more about the workings of Seedcamp so I can see where the synergy could be when it comes to htt://angelsden.co.uk