Fresh from our whirlwind tour of the dual technology wellsprings of the United States (that’s New York and The Valley in normal English), we take a look back on our eleven, hectic, revealing and thoroughly valuable days with Seedcamp in America.

It’s late morning and Dave and I step blearily out of the subway, into the soft murmur of a clear and fresh winters morning in Time Square.  To Londoners, all things are relative.  Friendly policemen point us to our hotel, friendly hotel staff point us to the elevator that takes us to our 43rd floor room.

The view from a few hundred feet above Time Square

Jonny arrived in the evening and once out and about we, like our Platogo friends were offered tickets to a nearby comedy show,

Comedy sales person – “Hey! Do you guys like great comedy?!”

JS – “Sure, but is the humour of a kind that a British person might appreciate?”

Comedy sales person – “Sure!  The drinks are free!”

JS – “Well if you need to give away drinks then it can’t be that good”

Comedy sales person – *blank stare*

JS – “I guess that’s our answer”

So we took our cynicism off to a series of bars, sang karaoke (Park Life by Blur) and created our own comedy with drinks that were not free.

For Saturday, read Friday with more vodka.

Sunday featured three miraculous recoveries, exploration of an amazing city, rain and views like this:

Rain and cabs in New York

Seedcamp in New York actually began on Tuesday with presentations at the Google offices in Chelsea Market followed by mentoring.  We then moved on to the Apple offices for lunch and finally to the Meetup HQ.  Everywhere we went we pitched and demonstrated to packed rooms filled with the best and brightest.  Their feedback was enthusiastic, invaluable and incredibly generous.  For instance standing there for 20 minutes discussing the finer points of metadata on the web with someone like Stowe Boyd was priceless (and indeed, free).

Now I say it was ‘generous’ but every meeting we had in the States was with people who willingly gave up their time, feedback and contacts for no other reason than the will to help.  We were told this is how people are in the US tech community and we weren’t disappointed.

The New York portion of our trip ended with a trip to Getty Images and a delicious lunch accompanied by CEO Jonathan Klein’s story of how he turned Getty from an idea into the success it is today.

The hours we spent with him were more than generous – it was a real privilege.

Our (and Kukunu’s) flight to San Francisco was late, which made our arrival later.  By the time we were checked into our hotel it was almost 3am which was a mere 5 1/2 hours before our day at the Googleplex – a one hour drive away from the hotel.

Seedcamp in San Francisco and The Valley was like New York, only much more so.  While we didn’t get to gauge the progress of Google’s anti-gravity research, we did get to spend hours with some superb mentors and panels.

In the end we were left with the impression that the The Valley is not the most dominant area for web innovation by chance.  It is so because its culture of endeavour and creativity pervades every level and every mind it houses; funding is available for the best minds and ideas and not just the more obvious bets, gambles are taken and lost, risks only sometimes rewarded.  But that is part of the process – learn what works and learn what doesn’t work.  Failure is another step in success, entrepreneurship is synonymous with camaraderie, value to the customer comes before financial success.  A contemporary is not a competitor but a friend to be helped.  Everyone we met had the same mentality; how can we help each other.

This culture is self-fertilising; it pulls the best from around the world thereby reinforcing its own dominance.  On a superficial level you might call it a brain-drain, but in an industry that is by definition global, we all benefit (well, possibly not the UK Treasury but would we trust them to spend it wisely anyway? )

The challenge for the rest of us; Europe and to a lesser extent the East Coast of the US is to infuse ourselves with that same culture so that we can have our own self-perpetuating machine for turning talent into action.

It’s people like Saul, Reshma, Stephanie and Alasdair with their stellar work on Seedcamp that will get us there, but they can’t do it on their own – it is the rest of us, the entrepreneurs, developers, evangelists and journalists who need to help.

We need that same mentality at every level – the focus of innovation and risk.

We already have the template to follow…

We are happy to say that we’d like to invite your team to Seedcamp Week, the week of September 21st, here in London.  More details to follow

And thus, the end of September became altogether more exciting.

Excitement which morphed into a sort of fraught tension which accompanied our inability to find accommodation other than the disconcertingly named “Generator” which promised ‘nightly entertainment until 3am’, a ‘chill out room’ and dormitories.

To my great personal regret I even posted a request for accommodation on Gumtree, which considering we are going to be a classified ads site with the express intent to crush them mercilessly, stuck in my throat.  Thankfully, if not a little disconcertingly, the replies I got all had suspiciously similar formats; emails in the style [Surname][Forename][random number]@hotmail.com and repeated requests for me to prove I was ‘genuine’.  Gumtree had failed both in providing us with accommodation as well as stealing all our worldly possessions (including the Advertag source code).

Eventually though we found a decent place within walking distance of Seedcamp although we were compelled to provide IT Support to the hotel’s owners before we could get the promised wireless.  Sadly, there was little we could do to improve their dot matrix printer.

Preparation

Although Seedcamp officially started on Monday, the organisers provided a presentation class on the Sunday headed by the rather excellent Annette Kramer.

The problem was that we were expecting this class to help us write our presentations and hence we didn’t actually have a presentation to give.  Thus, when each team was asked to stand up in front and give their presentation, ours was somewhat organic in nature.  Although the feedback was very useful, we still had an awful lot of work still do to before we could give the presentation.

A presentation that would take place in front of a couple of hundred assembled judges, investors, industry experts, press, mentors and television cameras.

9am the next morning.

Next up: Part 5 – Monday, 2am

How do you prepare for presentations?  How do you go about booking hotels at the last moment?  How many people in your family still think you job is “fixing computers“?  Express yourself in the comments below!

The Seedcamp interviews were to be conducted on 9th September and our designated time slot was the oddly precise 17:06.  We were asked to be at the venue near Oxford Street half an hour before with our presentation on an otherwise blank USB stick.  The only other instructions were to “Turn up at the right place and time”.

Our idea of attack was simple; we walk confidently into the room, make eye contact, smile and introduce ourselves, perhaps crack a light-hearted joke and then gently work into delivery of the presentation itself having engaged both personally and emotionally with everyone in the room.

Reality bestowed an alternative experience on us.

Waiting outside the judgment room we were models of zen-like serenity; I, fascinated in their fish tank and the number of wireless routers they seemed to have.  Jonny nonchalantly ambling around the area mulling over potential answers to inevitable questions and Dave, reclining on a beanbag thumbing through e-office, faux-literature.

Our little bubble of tranquility was in marked contrast to the poor gentleman who emerged from the judgment room immediately before us.  His cracked smile worn through a veneer of perspiration spoke of the realisation of a greatest fear.

The people we really felt sorry for though were the judges.  Forty, ten minute interviews in a single day could not have been much fun and the scene that greeted us was one of office squalor; twenty or so people crammed round a table designed for half as many and a room twice as large.  Coffee cups outnumbered notepads and the haphazard arrangement of chairs suggested a fruitless jockeying for personal space.

To their credit, the room did not smell like one might have feared.

We were ushered to the far end of the room and before I had changed from the action of ‘walking’ to one of  ’standing’ I had a controller thrust into my hand, accompanied with a warm smile and the word, “Go!”

I neatly ignored this and took a moment to compose myself, made sure that Jonny and Dave were comfortable, made eye-contact with everyone whose head was not buried in some form of Apple product and began.

Could you move?  You’re standing in front of the screen

I’ll spare you the details of the presentation, suffice to say it was greeted with attention for the most part and some not inconsiderable laughs (intentional).  The questions showed a surprising amount of both interest and understanding from about half the room and that we left with people’s hands still up was pleasing.

Emerging into the early evening of Wednesday in the West End, we generally felt we had portrayed ourselves and Advertag about as well as we could have expected for a first time out of the comforting cloak of stealth.

Good stuff guys.  Let’s put it this way; if we don’t get to the final, they will have twenty, really good companies

Our key learnings were:

• Regardless of what you are told, always take your time and only start when you’re ready.
• Don’t assume the people you are presenting to are as excited in your subject as you are.
• Enjoy the questions!  They aren’t trying to ‘catch you out’, this is your best chance to convey your knowledge and enthusiasm.

Next up: Part 4 – Success & Hotels

Ever pitched to a room of VC’s?  Ever had that dream when you’re standing in front of a room of people and realise you’re naked?  Comment about it below!

The news that our Seedcamp application had succeeded was something of a mixed blessing.

Certainly the congratulatory email began promisingly enough:

Congratulations on being one of the 40 teams selected to come to London for the Seedcamp shortlistings!

But then:

Each team has 10 minutes with the judging panel: 3 minutes for the presentation and the rest for Q&A.

Three minutes to explain the beauty, elegance and power of what we had built followed by a grilling from a judgement panel.

Handily though, not only had they  provided us with an example Powerpoint deck but also a conference call where we could talk to Seedcamp co-founder Reshma Sohoni and ask questions about the format of the presentation and the sorts of questions that will be asked.  It was here that I made a potentially critical error of judgement.

Having studied the six slide example I noted that nowhere did the example company (previous winners I might add) mention how they planned to make money from their venture.  I toyed with the idea of keeping my mouth shut but as is typically the case I could hold my tongue no longer:

JS – Hi, Jonathan from Advertag here, just a quick observation;  nowhere in the example presentation did they mention how they planned to uhh… make money.  I was under the impression that potential founders were rather fond of that part.

SC – Yes, that’s very important!  Please put in how you plan to make money!

The sense of a competitive advantage dissolving away was affirmed no more than an hour later when a dedicated email emphasising the absolute importance of monetisation was received.

Nevertheless, we were quietly confident that we could deliver something concise and engaging.  The questions might be tough but we felt we had answers.  After all, Jon and I had spend the last two years ruminating over Advertag, the technology and it’s ramifications.

Still, to make Advertag’s first outing a room full of VC judges would certainly be termed ’straight in at the deep end’.

Our key learnings were:

• Showing that you have at least thought about how you will make money is every bit as important as you might think.
• Presentations don’t have to follow a set structure as long as you cover the important points; who you are, what you’ve got, the market, competitors and how you plan to make money.
• Conveying the essence of something in 3 minutes when it took a year to build is a great exercise.

Next up: Part 3 – The First Round Presentation

Ever been in a situation when you know you should say something, you don’t want to say it but end up saying it anyway?  The comments are for debating such things and more!

There is a late night food dispensary near King’s Cross who pride themselves both on the greasiness of their chips as well as the redundancy of both words in a beverage they serve called “hot chocolate”.  Even so, it is a fine place to write out presentation cue cards in the small hours of the morning.

I can also bear witness to a strange, late night congregation of dozens of DayGlo-clad workmen outside Kings Cross train station in what can I can only surmise is the midnight summit of the country’s most work-averse foremen.  Even so, they seem to have enough phantom work to occupy themselves so as not to mind a strange person with cue cards walking back and forth, rehearsing a presentation and ranting about “semantic” this and “learning system” that.

Thus, the preparation was complete for our ominous ‘first up’ slot on the Monday morning introductory presentations.  I’ll spare you the details of our presentation, suffice to say it was greeted with attention for the most part.  Indeed if you want to see it for yourself (with the actual visual portion of the presentation out of frame) you can do so by clicking here.

Seedcamp itself is a mixture of networking, seminars, mentoring sessions, parties, foods of varying quality and coffee of one, less distinguished quality.  The mentoring sessions were particularly intense with feedback ranging from the baffled and skeptical to the thrilled and enthused.  Luckily our proportion of the latter outnumbered the former and, with the “are you a platform or a destination” point, formed the bulk of opinion.  But the mentoring was much more than just feedback; each session had half a dozen people who had been there and done it.  Or funded, advised and cajoled people who had.  Every area of experience you could wish to draw on from last years finalists and serial entrepreneurs to VCs and Silicon Valley’s Geeks on a Plane, were there eagre to pass on their opinions, constructive criticisms and passion.

Our key learnings were:

• Being forced to explaining what you do, twenty or thirty times over the course of three days is draining and very useful
• Everyone sees things differently – as long as you’re not deluding yourself you’ll be able to discern the good advice from the bad
• Almost everyone likes to help, all you have to do is ask

(a future post will address, in depth what we learned from the actual three days of seminars and mentor sessions)

Next up: Part 6 – The Finale

Were you part of the mysterious midnight gathering of foremen at Kings Cross?  Or maybe a discussion about Seedcamp is more appropriate… either way, get commenting below!

Dave, Jonny and I had been working on our semantic, tag-based, emergent, faceted, search and listing technology for almost a year before we seriously contemplated actually showing it to anybody.

Like most people who have poured their time, money and souls into a venture of their own, we were as petrified of someone stealing our idea as we were that someone would say our idea was not even worth stealing.

During the Business Plan writing process, which is an ongoing, continually self-reflective process, we realised that the one thing we didn’t have (excluding a live site, customers and weighty funding) was validation; seeing whether someone with no vested interest would see what we see in our idea.

It was also around this time that we found out about Seedcamp – essentially a sort of European Y Combinator; a competition for EU web start-ups.  And what first drew us to it was the application form.

The word ‘comprehensive’ just about covers it and the prospect of having to answer the questions posed, was itself appealing.

• Let us say you have 15 seconds to pitch your business. Can you describe your business?
• How will you make money? What’s your business model?
• Planning for the worst is a key to great success. Think hard: what might go wrong?
• What is your favourite movie of all time?

Sure they seem obvious questions but when you’re in the process of turning a complex concept into technical reality, dealing with design, usability, programming issues, APIs, branding, content acquisition and a slew of other considerations that actually constitute the process of creation, such questions are easily neglected.

Yet we actually had answers to each.  Over beer, GTA4 or strange YouTube videos, Jonny and I had developed a sort of intuitive understanding of how we would make money, the current and future team we would need, what we would be in 6, 12, 24, 100+ months time and how we might get there.  It became clear though that actually putting this down on paper and having the prospect of other people challenging these assumptions was as necessary as it was disconcerting.

So we read the rules, read the Seedcamp blog, looked at previous finalists and set about an application that at one point swelled to some 8,000 words.

Our key learnings were:

• Never sell yourself short – talk up your experience, your networks and your team;
• Make sure the passion for your concept shows through in every paragraph;
• Think about the core message you are trying to convey. Is it your team’s strength, is it your research behind the concept, is it that your idea has already been validated by paying customers – then make sure that is reinforced in any relevant answer;
• Think about other great things you would want anyone interested in your concept to know. Write it all down separately and then see if any of those messages fit into a question. This is a great way of ensuring you don’t leave anything important out.
• Go through multiple drafts; if you truly care about your idea and the Seedcamp opportunity, your attention to the questions will shine through when your application is read by someone else.

Having deliberated long and hard over what our favourite film was (an Aliens/Hudsucker Proxy double-bill) and detailed how we planned to crush Craigslist (in the nicest possible way), we sent the Advertag application a day before applications closed.

Seconds later it was forgotten and we were back playing with an emergent, tag-based search technology.

Coming soon: Part 2 – The Preparation

Did you submit a Seedcamp application?  How was your experience?  The comments await your spam links opinions!