Originality can be over emphasized – we love to prize innovation, but sometimes the best ideas come from around the block. Just ask Microsoft where they came up with DOS, Google where they thought of Adwords or even Apple where they came up with the mouse.
Maybe its better to think about inspiration rather than innovation.
So just in case you thought we were doing something original with the whole Seedcamp model, we should be clear from the start that this whole notion of intensive support for young Internet companies is not new. We’re not innovating, we’ve been inspired.
We’re inspired to try help the next generation of young European technology entreprenuers create world-beating businesses.
We’re inspired because we believe that Europe finally has the right combination of talent, capital and role models to build killer companies.
We’re inspired, because we agree with Paul Graham and Brad Feld that young developers have the world at their feet and with Josh Kopelman that today’s world of open source web applications means the price of failure is low.
We’re inspired because even when it was so much more expensive to accelerate a web business, still some great businesses were born from: Idealab (Overture, Citysearch, Picasa and Commission Junction) and eCompanies (Lowermybills, Boingo, Jamdat and Business.com).
So if you and your team are thinking what’s stopping us becoming the next Larry & Sergey, stop thinking and start building your business.
We want to help. Yes, with seed capital – we all have to pay the bills.
But mainly, we think we can help by giving you the confidence to think big and giving you access to the connections you need to build a great business.
If you qualify for Seedcamp, you will spend a week surrounded by the best and brightest people in the European startup scene – not just people who’ve done it before but your peers as well.
We have no more excuses in Europe not to create big, world-beating businesses – come on, inspire us and show us what you can do.
