Some last minute tips for Seedcampers
As finalists at the 2008 Seedcamp I thought it might be useful for today’s Stockholm Seedcampers to share some tips from lessons we learnt then, and over the years.
- Talk to other Seedcampers. While, in theory, we are competing against each other, we are also in it together. Several contacts we made during Seedcamp Week have lasted throughout the years and have helped to push us onwards in our own quest.
- Show your product! I cannot stress this enough. It makes the world of difference to people understanding what you do, and convincing them you are able to pull it off. Even if you only have mockups or a prototype, it is still worth showing it.
- Mentors are not gods. You will get conflicting advice and it is your job to work out what is valuable for you.
- Not being a winner at Seedcamp is not the end of the world. There are many reasons why you might not win, but if you don’t, learn from the experience and keep pushing forwards. If you truly believe in your vision, nothing can stop you.
- Entrepreneurs are the toughest critics. Basically entrepreneurs only believe their own idea rocks. They will give you advice, but can also be very harsh. This is also why sharing your idea is rarely a problem. Entrepreneurs have better things to do than to steal it.
- Open your product to the public before Seedcamp. You will get some media attention, so use it if possible! This time we will not be able to do that, but don’t do as we do …
- Have a full array of questions in mind beforehand. You will meet people from many different backgrounds. You are not there to pitch and make them ‘get’ your product, or for the off chance of investment. You are there to learn and make contacts.
- If you have a big vision, and want to pitch it, make sure your actual product is relevant or links to that vision. It should, in effect, implement that vision. It might not have all the features, but it should make that vision a reality. If not, you will only confuse people, and it may be better to de-emphasise the ‘big vision’ for now.
- Show your personality. That can be quite scary, and it’s easy to hide by being a robot. That will limit your success. There are no need for gimmicks, but personalities and emotion are more memorable.
- If you’re not willing to accept the Seedcamp terms, you are wasting their time, and yours, and you’re not being very fair. Better use your time with something else then.
We Never Give Up (we were accepted to Seedcamp!)
As some already know, the Scred team is currently busy working on a very unique and ambitious new product. We’re using all the experience gained from running Scred.com and putting out something truly outstanding.
Back in 2008 we had the huge privilege to take part as finalists in Seedcamp Week. This was a week long mentoring session in London with hundreds of investors, media representatives and fellow entrepreneurs. It was probably the one thing that pushed us furthest in our ideas and ambitions and taught us a lot about what we are doing. Several hundred ideas applied, and were narrowed down to 40, and then 20 finalists selected for that week. We were one of the 20. We weren’t one of the final 7 winners, although we deeply desired to be, but it was still an experience I would recommend to anyone.
As proof of that we applied again with this new product. We weren’t even sure this was possible, and had to email Reshma Sohoni, CEO of Seedcamp, to see if we could take part again as previously successful finalists. With the permission given to go ahead we prepared our application once more, digging out some of our old answers from 2008. Some time later, we got the news: we have been accepted!
The system has changed a bit. Now teams are expected to apply via Mini Seedcamps, which are organised in many locations around the world. From there some are, we believe, selected for Seedcamp Week, or even as winners directly (ie. investment). For what it’s worth, I think this is a better system.
The odds are, of course, against us. Only a handful will receive investment through Seedcamp. Some of those will become huge successes (and obviously some non-winners will become huge successes too). We will do whatever we can to become one of the Seedcamp winners this time. We want it, and are hungry for it, but that means doing an excellent job presenting our case against teams from many countries. Explaining it in a clear and coherent way, and demonstrating the business case to be sound. We’ve been there. It’s an uphill struggle and I won’t say we weren’t hugely disappointed not to make it all the way to the end last time. But we are here, as entrepreneurs, to take every chance we can get.
Everyone who has supported us: keep your fingers crossed and, if you’re in Sweden, be sure to come and meet with us. And if you haven’t applied to Seedcamp: shame on you. I know many Finns did not. That will be your loss.
We are looking for a world-beating designer
Scred is currently in the process of building a brand new highly disruptive product, using the lessons learnt from our existing service and understanding of payments and finance. We are looking for the next Jonathan Ive, of the web UI world, to join us as a core member of the team building the look, feel, design and even logo of this new consumer-facing product.
While we don’t require you to have loads of experience (although it helps), you absolutely must have the ambition and the vision to become one of the best designers in the world. This is not a normal job. This is actually building something completely new and never done before.
As a startup we cannot offer company cars, tennis courts and slides dropping into our cafeteria. We cannot promise mansions, ferraris and diamond bracelets overnight. What we can give you is a chance to change the world, to be part of a story and, hopefully some day, immense rewards. We will offer a reasonable salary and obviously stock options will be available for the right person.
You should have impeccable design, usability and styling skills, with a sound understanding of technology such as HTML and CSS. Other coding talents are a plus.
What we are *not* looking for:
- Someone who does not want to be the absolute best at what they do.
- A person unable to operate within a tightly knit team environment.
- A person who cannot act independently with their own ideas and concepts, or who lacks the ability to think out of the box and innovate.
- Someone who is just there to do a job. We want you to be a core member of our team.
Our office situates at the top floor of the iconic Cable Factory in Ruoholahti, Helsinki, Finland. We are surrounded by culture, events, artists and vibe, and we encourage you to visit galleries and to become inspired by what goes on around here. The product being developed will be revealed later.
Get in touch with Kristoffer Lawson (setok@scred.com / +358-40-7312273) to introduce yourself if it seems like you’re the person we are looking for.
Cool. This is article ’242′.
Social Entrepreneurship with Onnistamo 2011
It’s been a while since we’ve been posting on this blog. Reasons have been many, including my own megalomanic side project, The Travelling Salesman, where I travelled to every single Nordic university city to talk to startups and write about them. It resulted in over 13000 kilometres of driving a Land Rover Defender, for 50 days, through 5 countries, over a week at sea, and in the winter, with temperatures lower than -20C. Many thanks to our main sponsors, Microsoft and Nokia Qt for making this a reality, as well as the many other companies, people and organisations that helped! And yes, the finances were tracked with Scred.
Many things have been taking place with Scred. We are working on a complete rehaul of the service, based on prior experience, and that is just simply taking a lot of time, but the result will be pretty damn amazing.
Naturally Scred, and our sister product, the Finnish ticketing service Fläbät, are still running while we do this work. Last year we grew past 3000 groups, started the process of our first government grant (from TEKES) and with Fläbät had tens of thousands of euros move through in ticket sales.
So it’s great to mention we are kicking off the year with another cool event using Fläbät, Onnistamo 2011. It’s a combined conference and unconference on social entrepreneurship. It’s put together by HUB Helsinki and Syy. On Friday guests include Anni Sinnemäki, from the Ministry of Employment & Economy, and representatives from the main parties taking part in a panel discussion. The unconference is held at the lovely Hanasaari location.
If you’re in Finland and social entrepreneurship is your thing, definitely check it out. And don’t forget to get your tickets 
Who else wants a ticket to the AltParty?
AltParty is the biggest digital art festival in Finland, if not in the whole of Europe. Founded a decade ago by Scred‘s founder Kristoffer Lawson (a.k.a. Setok), it hardly numbered a hundred people at the start. Ten years down the line the festival is massive: it runs for three days and occupies all of the humongous hall of the Cable Factory.
Every year demosceners, coders, computer enthusiasts, digital art appreciators and curious public flock Ruoholahti to indulge yet again in what the festival has to offer. Exhibitions, presentations, competitions with excellent prizes and even fun activities for families with young kids revolve around digital culture but are themed differently every year.
From dreamy-eyed star-gazers to astronomers to top-notch scientists space exploration and space technology continues to capture people’s minds and emotions. Unfortunately, though, the topic has been unduly neglected by the media and society in general for almost 20 years. This year’s AltParty aims to bring attention back to the open space with a ‘Space, The Forgotten Frontier’ theme. If you’re interested in space or digital art or simply want to visit one of Finland’s coolest events this autumn you should definitely drop by!
The event will take place between 22nd-24th October and you can follow the example of many and buy your tickets now. Ticketing service for the event is powered by Fläbät.fi – Scred’s up-and-coming new product that offers a dead-simple solution for ticket sales. Mobile Africa is using Fläbät too but it’s not just big events like these two that can benefit from the service’s simplicity and affordability. Small and medium-sized events would definitely find it handy. If you’re arranging an event and are looking into ticketing services - get in touch and we could arrange a special deal for you Otherwise, stay tuned for Fläbät’s official launching party!
Scred Shop Updated
Despite the sweltering weather and burning desire to escape to a summer cottage in the middle of nowhere, Scred team got some good work done this July. One particular item that I’d like to highlight is the updated Shop feature. The function used to cause some troubles in the past but is now repaired with a shiny new look.
Any group that needs to sell something online and keep track of the process would find Scred Shops quite useful. Your student group wants to collect membership fees or your theater association wants to sell tickets easily? Create a registration in the ‘Registrations’ tab and it would automatically appear as an item in the shop. Put the link of the shop on your website for all members to see and use in an instant. Your charity wants to sell ribbons to collect funds? Add that directly to your shop with a fancy picture of the ribbon and start selling! While you’re busy sending the items to your customers, Scred is automatically tracking transactions, managing inventory and generating reports.
All that software is still free but you’d need to chip in 1,5% from each transaction on top of PayPal fees. So for every €5 of ribbon you sell you’d need to cough up a mere €0,07 to Scred. Let me know if you can find an easier and cheaper solution for your webshop!
The RAN
In my search for ways to improve Scred service I will connect with our target groups by meeting them and talking about what they do and how they deal with internal financing as a group. This is the first of a series of posts that will be out throughout the summer where I explore the pains and sorrows of book-keeping and accounting, or rather how to avoid them, and Scred’s high and low points that we can build on or fix.
My first guinea-pig is a Finnish indie rock band called The RAN. They shared with me some of their history and what solutions they currently use to track and share finances within their group.
The RAN
Two Turks, two Finns and a Russian – the RAN is a multinational band that was started back in 2007 as a ‘family business’. Can and Ali, the founders of the band, knew each other from family relations but on top of that they both liked making and playing music. They found two more band members online via Muusikoiden.net and were later joined by a guitar player.
The RAN describes the music genre they play as post-punk revival. ‘Music is big part of our lives: we practice quite a lot but our minds are busy with music everyday’ – says Can. The band borrowed their name from a Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet Ran who was expelled from the Ottoman Empire for his communist views. While neither communist nor in exile, Ali and Can still sympathized with the longing for home that inspired a lot of N.H.Ran’s work. That and the fact that The RAN sounds cool and can mean loads of different things is why guys chose this name for their band.
The finances
Small Indie bands in Helsinki do not earn shiploads but they still need to keep track of the money they make and spend as a band. The RAN used to have a manager who helped them with that but he quit due to the lack of time and guys had to start sorting out band’s finances by themselves.
Band members prefer to settle payments informally, quickly and as easily as possible. A pretty useful solution for book-keeping is Google docs, though it still takes a lot of manual input and additional work. The RAN agreed that Scred offers another solution that makes accounting easier and helps keep track of finances over time, though the user interface needs modifications (Scred team took notice and the work is in full swing to fix that).
Check out The RAN’s upcoming gig on June 22nd in Club YK (Pohjoinen Rautatiekatu 21) http://bit.ly/dtdsG8.
Listen to and comment on The RAN’s music here or find them on facebook.
Mobile Africa
‘Mobile is booming in Africa. Entrepreneurship and unconventional thinking is booming everywhere.’
This year Europe’s largest happening on mobile opportunities in Africa is organized in Helsinki, Finland, on September 30th, 2010. This event will bring together 500 mobile professionals from small and large companies as well as public trade organizations from European and African markets. If you work or are interested in mobile industry this event is a must!
Registration is now open. Early bird tickets can be bought throughout June for €70, in July-August they’d cost you €95 and if you purchase them in September you’d have to pay €150. Note: if you register 2+ people from the same company you get a 15% discount per ticket!
The event is organized by Mobile Brain Bank which is a non-profit open network of mobile entrepreneurs and professionals. It was founded in August 2009 and has organized many events around Finland and abroad to connect people, brainstorm and share ideas on mobile entrepreneurship.
Ticketing system for the event is handled by Fläbät – a new service created by Scred. The service is in public beta and has already helped many event organizers in Finland to handle their ticket sales. Fläbät takes pride in being extremely simple and easy to use since it’s stripped off any extra hassle, hidden costs or long confirmation and waiting time. Hard to believe – try it out when buying your Mobile Africa ticket!
Wrapping up StartupJam Baltics
In the heart of the old town on a beautiful sunny weekend over 50 people sat in dark rooms glued to the projector screens typing away on their laptops. That was the StartupJam Balticsheld in Vilnius on the last weekend of May.
Our colleagues from the Baltics managed to put together a cool (un)conference that attracted people from Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and even Belarus! In addition to informative workshops we got to know some appealing start-ups in the region. Below is a
short description of some of the presentations from the event.
Tiklist.lt
This local start-up supports local farmers by selling their goods through an online shop. It’s a great example of how to help farmers and deliver organic locally-grown food to people’s homes.
Nebula 44
This ambitious start-up is building an exciting browser-based online space strategy game with a plethora of cool features. The game is in open beta at the moment and creators are promising $25 worth of gaming items if you join and test the game now. The launch is said to be early this summer so grab your chances while you can!
Manodrabuziai
This website helps you sell and swap clothes and accessories. Currently it is oriented only for Lithuania but expansion to UK and Germany are on the way.
While there are a few websites out there that help you exchange and sell things (some Finnish examples being Netcycler and Huuto.net), it’s interesting that this start-up chose to cover one niche only – clothing and accessories. We’re eager to see their progress!
Humanway
This Polish start-up is offering a platform for recruitment that claim to greatly reduce the cost of hiring. They cooperate with existing job boards and use other channels for promoting job offers (careers page, social networking platforms etc.).
BalticReports
Many foreigners do business and live in the Baltics but there is a lack of information and news in English, which makes it hard to invest into local markets. BalticReports is the only online news bulletin in English that reports from the Baltic region with the help of professional journalists. They have experimented with different business models and are currently in search of new ways to monetize online journalism.
Framedy
These innovative guys from Latvia offer ‘the simplest photo-sharing on the web’. Your profile won’t be linked to that of anyone else’s and there will be no ads on your page. They claim it’s ‘so easy – your grandma could use it’. While the service would be free once it’s launched, you’d need to pay $9 to test the beta version unless you get an invite.
…and there were more start-ups present! Best of luck for all of them – it’s exciting to have a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.
P.S. Taking a roadtrip from Helsinki to Vilnius definitely rocks!
Indie film “Snowblind” & wreckamovie.com use Scred
In a first step of what will hopefully be many, the great online tool for community sourced indie films, Wreck-a-Movie, and Scred have worked together to bring out an integrated web shop for the fantastic indie film production, Snow Blind as part of their funding process.
Go to check it out, purchase a few frames of their film, and participate in their project, or set up your own at Wreck-a-Movie.
This is something that is really exciting as it brings together two excellent products into something even greater. Of course, this is just the beginning.
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