The Start-Up Competition at the London Web Summit brought out a GREAT and very inspiring line up of young hopefuls (outshone only by the 4 and 6 year olds learning to code in the CodeDojo – that was pretty amazing).
There were 150 applicants shortlisted to the final 20 who all gave passionate pitches of their companies to a panel of five industry experts. The line up included:
- Seedrs
- Uberlife
- Planvine
- Nurph
- ClickSlide
- Boxcryptor
- Blottr
- Tweek
- 180km Limited
- CrowdIPR
- Six3
- Achoo
- WorkFu
- MarketYou
- TestCloud
- DeadSocial
- Gauss
- Pipe
- Arnav
- BusyFlow
Winning the competition by a long shot however was Seedrs who took home a £50,000 convertible note, legal and advisory services, and £14,000 in hardware from HP…prize money worth £100k - not bad for a day’s work! Quite a fitting prize too, as Seedrs is a company trying to democratize funding by crowdsourcing it.
It allows individuals to invest as little as £10, and as much as £100,000, in startups that use its platform. They then handle the administrative tasks, making the process manageable for all parties. Seedrs is looking to help startups raise just £100,000. According to the company, 'A vast number of entrepreneurs need £100,000 or less to take their 'first step' before launching or seeking later-stage capital. For most entrepreneurs – including highly-talented ones – this is the toughest capital to access.' That issue is what they are setting out to fix.
The company had already raised nearly £1,000,000 prior to their London Web Summit win – we’re sure the exposure will be great for this innovative model and we’ll be keeping an eye on their progress with interest!
