VC Perspectives

The Seedcamp season is in full swing with events happening around the world. For the Nordics, this year’s event is held in Copenhagen May 27.

One of the mentors at the New York event was Jonathan Klein, co-founder of Getty Images who presented 10 tips on how to build a great business. And one of the participants was Emi Gal, CEO of Brainient, who wrote about Jonathan’s presentation here.

There are plenty of very good advise from Jonathan; from a Nordic perspective I would particularly like to emphasize point 3 & 9 as these are oftentimes much more important than one might think and really critical when scaling up an organization.

Here’s the list as noted by Emi:

1. Raise more money than you think you need. If you’re on to build a large business, dilution doesn’t matter anyway. You’re in the business of minimizing risk.

2. Cash is the only thing that matters. That should be your focus. Create an automated, scalable business model that will generate cash.

3. Invest in your company’s culture. It works as a filter for making small, easy or complex and tough decisions.

4. The two most important things in your company are: your employees and your customers.

5. Be honest, transparent & realistic. Especially with yourself.

6. Decide fast. It’s better to be wrong and fix it than sit around for 3 months and miss on opportunities.

7. Wrong decisions are OK. As long as you’re wrong really fast!

8. Focus, focus, focus. Say NO to stuff. Constantly.

9. LEAD. People are crying out for leadership. Know where you’re going, and they’ll follow. You can find Jonathan’s leadership principles here.

10. Have fun every day. “Sometimes it’s even black humor“, he said.

As previously noted, Seedcamp is a great event really tailored for entrepreneurs. Now, the 2009 applications are open.

Seedcamp Week 2009 is a weeklong programme that connects 20 early stage web tech startups with over 400 highly experienced and sought after entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, product and developer experts. Along with current board members Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni, the chosen teams will also have access to Seedcamp’s recently appointed board members who have been selected for their broad range of entrepreneurial experience and international background in order to help Seedcamp deliver its mission to build a world-class, sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Read more here.

Most of you are probably familiar with Seedcamp, a great week-long event in London targeted at young entrepreneurs from across EMEA. Everyone I have talked to that have participated describes it as an extremely interesting and valuable experience. What’s cool is that it is really designed for the entrepreneurs; VCs, CEOs, successful entrepreneurs are there to help out the entrepreneurs rather than to mingle with each other.

This year, there will be seven mini seedcamps around Europe and one of them is organized in Helsingborg in southern Sweden on May 5. Last date for signing up is on Sunday April 19 so if you haven’t done so yet, visit the official website or their blog to find out how to do it.

I am going to be there as a mentor together with for example Hjalmar Winbladh from Rebtel and there will be interesting panel discussions with panelists such as Martin Gren (Axis), Thomas Weilby Knudsen (NorthCap Partners), and Hampus Jakobsson (TAT).