How to put your startup on steroids

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to put to words how fantastic the Seedcamp experience has been to me, my team and our whole company. But today I realized that the best way to show you how much Seedcamp can help your company is by showing you how it has helped us.

Last year, together with my team at Brainient, I started working on an open-source video management platform for big video publishers, Veevid. I was sure it’s a pretty cool product, but didn’t really believe it’s the next big thing, so I wanted to get some feedback & thoughts from people smarter than me. So I applied to Mini Seedcamp Paris.

To my utmost enthusiasm, we got shortlisted. And won. I wrote 39 pages of feedback & ideas in my Moleskine. The whole event was actually so good that I decided to apply for Mini Seedcamp London event as well. We got shorlisted again.

Needless to say the London event was even better. I got more feedback & ideas. While looking through those notes together with my fantastic team at Brainient, I realized that we’re focusing on the wrong thing. “They need video monetization, not video management tools”, I remember myself saying under the shower, after that meeting with my team.

So we went back to the drawing board and created LayeredBrain, a tool that would help video publishers make more money with their video content. And the more I thought about it, the more I believed it’s going to be the next big thing. So in September, I applied for Seedcamp Week.

We got shortlisted again, and boy, what an experience. I don’t even have words. Here’s just a quick glimpse of what we’ve gotten out of it:

196  business cards. 6 potential customers. 4 parties. 640 minutes of mentoring with some very smart people. 27 pages of feedback. 19 glasses of wine. 44 powerpoint slides. 76 emails. Over 40 pitches. 6 meetings with clients. 2 potential advisors. 50.000 euros. Credibility. Validation. Focus. Enthuziasm. Vibe. Momentum. And that’s just to name a few.

If I think about the progress we’ve made in just 8 months, I still can’t believe it. We went from a company with one product and no real direction or business model, to a company with two products, a kick-ass business model, a few customers eager to try it out and, if that’s not enough, we now have Seedcamp on board.

To sum up, I strongly encourage every startup out there to apply to Seedcamp. It will really put your business on steroids and take you to a whole new level.