Seedcamp Reflections
BaseKit is proud to announce that we have been picked as one of the final 7 teams to receive investment from the guys at Seedcamp. The journey at Seedcamp week 2008 was a seriously intense one. Talking, Listening and evaluating our position and product on all sorts of levels. We’ve rubbed shoulders (and sometimes knocked heads) with the best in the industry and received some awesome advice.
For anyone that is considering Seedcamp in the future, then apply! The experience and knowledge you will get being surrounded by such inspirational people will help you develop your product / idea exponentially.
We have accumulated our experience from the week and go into day-by-day detail. Nothing will compare to actually being at Seedcamp, but we hope this will give you an insight into our experience and what can be gained by being part of this fantastic event. Enjoy!
Day O – Introductions
We arrived in London on the Sunday and booked straight into The Generator – our abode of the next week (by the way, if you’re visiting the UCL Campus in Russell Square, we recommend this is a good place to stay). After the initial settling in, we headed down to UCL for Day 0 and introductions at Seedcamp. On the way down, we bumped into Luke from ThoughtTrail (Great guy! Looking forward to seeing his idea blossom) and made our way into the lecture theater on the 1st Floor for Day 0 briefing.
We meet the Seedcamp Team; Reshma, Michael and Alidair, who went through the schedule for the week ahead and presented us with our mentors (we had some great mentors!).
Part of the introduction to the Seedcamp week was each team had to give a 5 minute presentation about their product. So Lizzie Blake of Essential Basics went through with some presentation skills and tips.
She talked about killing nerves by remembering that we know our businesses inside out. If anyone can talk about our cool product, it’s us! It probably didn’t help though that she added that people make a decision if they like you or not within the first minute (just so happens to be the time that you’re the most nervous as well! No pressure then!).
Lizzie went on to talk about what investors want to know when you are presenting / pitching your idea. These points are:
- What the problem you’re trying to solve?
- What is the solution?
- What is the market size?
- Who are your competitors?
- Why are you different?
- Who is in the management team? – Be specific about the skills each member has and why they are valuable.
- How much do you want to raise? – Maybe not so important for Seedcamp Week but definitely for later ventures into the VC and Angel world.
- What the Business Model is?
Other points that were discussed were remember the story / make a flight plan and rehearse all the time! That way you can’t go wrong. Also, rehearse in front of other people, not just the bathroom mirror.
The best part of Lizzie’s presentation was her E.M.O.T.I.O.N.S game. This is an exercise to help your story telling technique. You choose an emotion for each of the letters in E.M.O.T.I.O.N.S and work your way through each whilst telling a story. For example, the group choose, Excitement, Melancholy, Orgasmic (yes, we actually had to tell part of the story orgasmically!) then worked our way through a story touching on each emotion. Thomas from Yoose jumped up on stage and gave his version of meeting a girl at a house party which provided much entertainment!
Great session!
We rounded up and worked out the order of the presentations for Monday morning. We were second up. Thankfully, we’d done some preparation for Introduction Presentations and were raring to get up on stage.
We spent the next 2 hours practicing in the lecture theater (Do this! It helped us relinquish nerves and mentally plan our movements). Pretty surprised that no one else was around doing the same thing.
Day 0 was long with the traveling and presentation practice, so we caught an early night (okay! It was around Midnight! But it was early for us) to prepare for the week ahead.
All images from Flickr
