Klein: The new Simon Cowell?
It's been an ongoing refrain among the European dotcom community that it's pretty tough going if you're an entrepreneur with a good idea. Where's the support? Where's the money?
There's no doubt that Europe has a lot of potential, but hasn't always delivered. Step in Saul Klein - venture capitalist, former Guardian columnist - who has joined forces with a few other people to set up Seedcamp, a week-long incubator project in the UK this September.
Twenty projects will be invited to the camp, and at the end of the week five of them will receive offers of €50,000 funding for a 10% stake in the company. A talent show for startups!
Seedcamp admits that it draws on principles set by Idealab and Paul Graham's YCombinator programme among others, but is principally focused on ideas from around the continent. A slideshow presentation over at Saul's blog explains Europe's position: good broadband penetration, higher-than-average advertising spend, companies like Skype and Last.fm able to exit profitably while services like Betfair, Lovefilm and Joost, show that Europe can change the game.
I suppose you could think of it like, erm, "Europe's Got Talent". For geeks.
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