Garage48 Tartu winner Qminder became part of the Seedcamp family last week after winning a Mini Seedcamp event in Prague. Qminder is the second team from the 48-hour hackathon to join the prestigious startup accelerator program in a short period of time.
The Garage48 Foundation and Seedcamp announced a partnership earlier this year after Campalyst, a Garage48 born startup, won the Mini Seedcamp competition held in New York. The partnership allows Garage48 to send one team from a Garage48 weekend directly to one of the many Mini Seedcamp events held across the world. Winning a Garage48 event does not, however, automatically guarantee a spot in a Mini Seedcamp event. All of the participating teams are given four additional weeks to work on their idea. According to Garage48:
Experience shows, that most of the teams are highly motivated and ready to go on after the weekend. Enthusiasm might last couple of weeks. Teams stick together and are actively working on the project. The change becomes between 2 and 4 weeks after the event, when people realize that there is actually no big progress made compared to the weekend, the idea doesn’t look so sexy anymore and do not produce so much adrenaline and endorphins as it used to and daily work/life becomes a priority again. You will find tons of faults and reasons why it will not work. If you haven’t made big progress within 4 weeks after your first prototype, you have to take some drastic measures or stop fooling yourself, you are not up for the task. There are teams, who come trough this. These are the teams, who can compete on global level.
The final selection for the Mini Seedcamp event is based on the four-week performance of each team. Qminder’s victories at both Garage48 and Mini Seedcamp speak volumes about the Garage48 concept. The foundation’s partnership with Seedcamp appears to be off to a great start.
