Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg was held today in the Southern Sweden together with Öresund Entrepreneurship Academy. The region is growing and has an active ecosystem of entrepreneurship and startups, suiting well the Seedcamp initative. The event gathered 20 excited startups and over 50 mentors from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and England.
The day was kicked off with five minute pitches by the teams, and included buzz words such as cloud computing, crowdsourcing and smartphone applications. The pitches were overall above the average, but as Tommy Ahlers, a mentor from ZYB, reflected, the early stage startups preferably need to focus on the concept rather than trying to present a business plan.
The pitches that got the best response from the audience:
- Nudge, a SMS reminder service for patients to take their medicine in time, had the best execution in presentation.
- Whynot, an Estonian startup offering a twitter-like dating service using SMS, presented the most passionate pitch and brought in the most laughs.
The Panel
A panel discussion was held after the lunch with six industry heavy weigths Martin Gren (Axis), Thomas Weilby Knudsen (NorthCap Partners), Hampus Jakobsson (TAT), Reshma Sohoni (Seedcamp), Jørgen Thorball (XOventure), and Daniel Blomquist (Creandum).
“If you can’t do a hockey stick in Excel, you can’t do a hockey stick in real life” – Thomas Weilby Knudsen
The panel delivered some great insights in selecting board members, choosing a venture capitalist and focusing on the metrics, a very valuable advice to a startup. Anders Fredriksson, one of this years mentors and the winner of Seedcamp 2007 has written a good post on metrics.
The Winners
The Seedcamp Helsingborg was “a friendly” competition but doesn’t quarantee a direct qualification for the third Seedcamp Week held in London this fall. The three happy winners, all from Sweden, were presented right after the four hours of mentoring sessions:
Kvittar.se – A digital solution for all your receipts. The team includes founders from both the Pirate Bay and Bambuser.
Myfi.net – A cheap, high speed and unlimited mobile broadband in all inner city areas.
Peerialism, Advanced P2P technology that utilises networks resources more efficiently.
The Mini Seedcamp Helsingborg was very well organized and the Wifi worked flawlessly. The startups and mentors we talked to found the mentoring sessions both useful and a good experience.
Big heads up for the guys from The SHIP, Öresund Entrepreneurship Academy and the Seedcamp Team for a great event! See you next year!
