Seedcamp Zagreb: What Does a Seedcamp Event Look Like to a Participating Startup – Mash.Me’s Story
Tuesday June 12th marked the day Seedcamp Zagreb was held in the capital of Croatia. One of the leading startup events on the “old continent” was held at the – and got together 19 regional and international startup teams with around 70 mentors from all around the world, including .Me’s marketing lead Natasa Djukanovic and yours truly. I talked to one of the startups, Mash.me, about what the event was like for the most important participants, the startups seeking advice.
The individual Seedcamp events are a way of the incubator of the same name to find startups to include in its program. Each startup gets 50.000 pounds of investment as well as participation in Seedcamp’s mentorship program that has proved very useful to some of the region’s top web and mobile companies such as GIS Cloud, Zemanta and Vox.io.
Seedcamp Zagreb, like other events such as the Berlin one, was organized into two parts: the first part of the day was dominated by pitches by all the startup teams that lasted for a few hours after each of the teams got the chance they were looking for. To meet with a couple of mentor teams, get some input and get some advice. But I’ll let Mash.me’s Skarica brothers tell you more:
What did you learn at Seedcamp?
We learned a lot about monetization, and intelectual prooperty issues with the characters we would use (from fictional characters to actual people). Also, in talking to the mentors we realized everyone will use mash.me differently. 🙂
What kind of advice was most helpful?
Not advice as such, but a recurring question “why would the users come back”. That question gave us an idea to expand mash.me beyond just an application for creating video content.
What would you describe the event like?
Excellent 🙂 Interesting talks, interesting people, interesting ideas. Simply, an excellent atmosphere of everyone trying to help each other.
How did you prepare for the event?
We closely examined who will be mentoring us, and prepared a list of general questions, as well as questions specific to the individual mentor. We would recommend them to come prepared, as that way you get better advice. It is quite useful to use the last few minutes of the session to get a general opinion about the project, as that’s the way to step out of your “frame” and get a fresh perspective.
Why do you think others should participate?
For the advice about their projects and the people they will meet. You get advice from people who have been there and faced the same problems, but also from people from completely separate areas who can give you new and different perspectives. We not only met incredible people at the event, but we were amazed with whom they managed to connect us to.
Seems that Seedcamp Zagreb was a useful event for Mash.me and the other startups that participated. Now lets just hope they all use the experience to create successful businesses… 🙂
