After whole day filled with presentations and mentoring sessions, 5 teams emerged as winners of the Mini SeedCamp Zagreb. They are (in alphabetical order:

• Clover Studio (Zagreb, Croatia)
• Garmz (Vienna, Austria)
• GIS Cloud (Zagreb, Croatia)
• Salepod (Zagreb, Croatia)
• Visionect (Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Congratulations to all the winners, and to all the teams and mentors who participated at this event.

Reactions from all the teams and mentors were great; everyone was happy with organization and concept of this event. Let’s see some of the comments from Twitter:

Seedcamp was great expirience. We got a lot of quality feedback, and made many important connections for future of @plakatt (Darko Fabijan)

Great day at Seedcamp, Zagreb. Networking, mentoring sessions, sharing new ideas and a lot of positive energy. (Davorin Gabrovec)

It was a total #epicwin and a total blast. Great teams, huge potential, tnx to all who organized and participated! (Ivo Spigel)

We are very proud for being the organizers of this event, and we hope this event will help all participating startups to make better products.

Thanks again to all the teams, mentors, and our sponsors – Microsoft Bizspark, Associated Northcliffe Digital, RSG Capital, The Croatian Chamber of Economy, Sun Startup Essentials, UKTI GEP, and supporters Eagle Ventures, Netokracija, tportal.hr, and Zemanta – for helping make Mini Seedcamp Zagreb a success.

Images by Ivo Spigel and Netokracija

Only one week before the Mini Seedcamp Zagreb, 20 startups who will compete for a chance to participate in a Seedcamp London have been announced. Here is the list:

• AdCaptcher, Bucharest, Romania
• Albia, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Clover Studio, Zagreb, Croatia
• CO2cut, Zagreb, Croatia
• Digital Distribution Press , Bucharest, Romania
• Flowr, Ptuj, Slovenia
• GaMiTech , Bucharest, Romania
• Garmz, Vienna, Austria
• Kubu Stream, Bucharest, Romania
• Mojnogomet, Zagreb, Croatia
• Ninth Prime Technologies, Bucharest, Romania
• GIS Cloud, Zagreb, Croatia
• Physio Software, Bucharest, Romania
• Play.FM, Vienna, Austria
• Primabit, Zagreb, Croatia
• R3, Maribor, Slovenia
• SalePod.NET, Zagreb, Croatia
• Talentoncampus, New-Delhi, India & Cardiff, Wales UK
• TB Soft, Sofia, Bulgaria
• Visionect, Ljubljana, Slovenia

We had teams applying from all over the Europe and beyond, and these 20 lucky ones will have a chance to get advices from more than 60 mentors. We wish good luck to all teams, and let the best wins!

Follow @shoutem , @seedcampzg and @seedcamp on Twitter to receive more news and info about Mini SeedCamp Zagreb.

Day one – NYC

In the morning, we had a sort of Mini Seedcamp in NY at Google’s offices. All of us held short 3-minute pitches and after that we had 30-minute sessions with mentors. People were very friendly and full of advices. It is so much easier to explain in USA what you are doing and where the opportunity is. My favorite mentors were Dan Porter from OmgPop, Laurie Racine from Startl and John Stokes from Montreal startups.

After that we went to a BrownBagLunch event organized by Beta Works at the Apple HQ in New York. Basically, those meetings are held during the lunch and everyone is bringing their lunches and talk and listen to the pitches while eating.

And one of my favorite things this week was Special New York Tech Meetup event that night, where all Seedcamp companies on the US trip got a chance to demo online. For those who don’t know NY Tech Meetup, here is how it works. They have meetings once in a month where they choose a couple of startups to present a live demo of their product. No PowerPoint, no talks; only live demo’s are allowed. I messed up my pitch a lot because I didn’t have anybody to drive my presentation but the audience still got it. What is most impressive about NY Tech Meetup is that they have around 700 visitors at each meetup. It is like a rock concert, just amazing. Even in SF they have a smaller event with around 250-300 people participating. So in that point NY kicks ass. Imagine 700 geeks at one place. Awesome . Check out the Withneys Hess nice blog post about the event.

Day two – NYC

We began our day with a breakfast at Union Square Ventures with Brad, Albert and Andrew. They gave us a talk about NY vs. SF vs. Boston vs. Europe VC’s and overall startup scene. It seems that NY is getting more and more new startups and successful entrepreneurs and it is becoming one of major hubs in USA if you want to start a business. What was interesting to me is their statement that until some time ago it was very hard to hire a programmer in NY, because they all worked in a banks and had good salaries. However, now everything is being changed because banks are in troubles and people got tired of boring nine to five jobs. They were extremely friendly and open for questions. No wonder they are one of the most wanted investors in the USA .

After that Saul Klein took us to his uncle Jonathan Klein’s company headquarters GettyImages. Jonathan Klein gave us a speech about how they started 15 years ago, how they stayed No.1 over all this years and how they still manage to keep 2000 employees in multi billion dollars company motivated to work hard. Besides that, he mentioned how they will be covering 15th Olympic games, explained technology behind it, etc. One really cool example, of how they do business is that they promised to press, that during Obama’s oath they will have pictures of him holding his right hand up, available to download before he finishes the oath. Quite impressive story, I have to admit .

Flight to SF was delayed so I arrived in my hotel around 2 AM, which is basically 5 AM NYC time. Fun…

Day three – Silicon Valley

In the morning, we again had pitches and mentoring sessions in a form of Mini Seedcamp at Google’s offices. However, this time mentors were really high profile people from the valley. I will just mention my favorite ones and those I’ve been talking to. Pascal Finette from Mozilla angel investor Aka-Aki, Andrea Zurek Xg Ventures (Ex Google), Mark Jacobsen Alphatech Ventures, lately investor in FourSquare, Group.ly… Don Dodge who was our host wrote a nice blog post about whole event and covered all the teams.

Later that day we went to Startup2startup event organized by Dave McClure. There was like 150 people from around 50 startups. It is informal dinner with tables organized so that everyone has one and people discuss around one topic. This time email was on the menu. Future of email in general, problems about dealing with it, sending it, spam, etc.… Again, so many startup companies at one place and all that energy is just amazing. And it is just one of the events that is going around the Valley…

Day four – Valley and SF

We started with a breakfast with Mike Arrington and Jason Kincaid. First we had short introductions and brief from Mike on how to approach press and why not use PR companies . After that we had 3min pitches to Mike and Jason who were recording a videos of us pitching. I had an impression that they really liked our stuff. Besides that, whole TC crew has been very friendly, letting us use their office and talked to us a lot while we were there. We all know that sometimes their blog posts can be nasty but I have to say that these guys are very cool and very nice when you meet them in person.

At the afternoon we had another Mini Seedcamp in SF at the First Round Capital HQ with a new group of mentors and again we received a lot of feedback and good ideas. Highlight of the evening was chatting with Todd Sampson who is a really nice guy and had some really interesting ideas on how to approach sport fans and what could get them hooked on one of the ShoutEm networks.

I finished the day at the Live Sushi where I turned on roaming just to check in with Yelp (yes Yelp is my choice for location based networks ) in a front of the Platogo guys Jacob and Florian who just could not believe that I’m doing it . Most of my time I spent with them, and they were great buddies to hang out with. Real geeks with a nice idea to put all your flash games to a Facebook in no time .

Day five

I’m flying back to NY where I’m going to meet my wife who is coming from Croatia. We’ll have a nice relaxed weekend. And btw I have managed to set up a new Croatian record in Tweeting from a plane. I tweeted three times and thrilled up all my Croatian followers with this unbelievable achievement. Yes, Delta has WiFi on board .

One more time. Go and apply for the Mini Seedcamp Zagreb. Don’t miss your chance to see the Valley from inside.

We are very proud to announce that ShoutEm has been selected as one of the top 5 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2010!!! This list has been made by CIO.com and its editor Kristin Burnham. It is so cool to see ShoutEm on a list together with BackType, Evernote, Kosmix and Posterous; fantastic and very popular startups.

Kristin’s words about ShoutEm:

ShoutEm lets you customize a secure microblogging network where you can share photos, files, links and locations with only the people you want—great for businesses looking for a secure alternative to Twitter. Or, if you prefer, you can synch your account with Twitter and Facebook. ShoutEm has also rolled out a mobile client for BlackBerry and iPhone users.

Microblogging is what ShoutEm offers now, but very soon we’ll introduce support for mobile social networks, location aware applications and networks, augmented reality and a new design. We hope these new features will boost ShoutEm user base and thousands mobile social networks will be created using our service. Do you already have yours?

2009 was a great year for us, as more than 10.000 mobile social networks have been created using ShoutEm and we have received many awards and recognitions, but we are really looking forward to 2010 and new features that we plan to introduce.

Follow @shoutem on Twitter to stay informed about news and our feature plans.

With only 8 days to apply for Mini SeedCamp Zagreb, list of some most important mentors has been announced at SeedCamp blog. There will be more than 50 mentors who will participate at Mini SeedCamp Zagreb, from all over the Europe and with different backgrounds. Diversity of their backgrounds will assure that you might get an advice about everything needed for a successful startup. List of some very successful mentors includes:

Chris Grew, Orrick
Damir Sabol, Entrepreneur
Darko Jovisic, Microsoft
Goran Radman, Entrepreneur
James Routley, Eden Ventures
Jure Mikuz, RSG Capital
Mario Oasche, Eagle Ventures
Radu Ticiu, UBIT
Stanislav Prusac, Entrepreneur
Val Vladescu, Entrepreneur

If you’re entrepreneur from Europe, who don’t you use this opportunity to present your product to people who really know a lot about VCs, startups and technology? You might get an advice on how to receive funding, on how to develop your product and how to sell your product. If you present your product really good, you’ll might get a chance to attend SeedCamp Week in London, and compete for 50.000€ of seed funding. Not too much, but just enough to help your startup grow.  

You have 8 more days, as applications will be closed at midnight, January 27th. What are you waiting for?!

Follow @shoutem , @seedcampzg and @seedcamp on Twitter to receive more news and info about SeedCamp Zagreb.

As we have already informed you, this year one of the Mini SeedCamps will be held in Zagreb, and ShoutEm will be one of the organizers. It is a great opportunity for all startups from all around Europe to present their product to some of the leading European advisors and investors.

Whole event will take place in a new office of the Croatian Chamber of Economy on February 11th. Applications for the Mini SeedCamp Zagreb are open until January 27th, on the Mini SeedCamp Zagreb official web page, so you have two more weeks to apply.

Why should you apply?

1. You get a chance to present your solution to advisors, investors and a community.
2. You get a chance to receive many great advices, which can help you to boost up your startup.
3. If you get noticed, you get a chance to participate in a SeedCamp Week 2010 in London, as we did last year.
4. You get a chance to receive 50.000 Euros of venture capital.
5. You get a chance to meet so many cool folks and commute.
6. You get a chance to meet potential business partners among other teams.
7. You get a chance to visit a beautiful city of Zagreb.
8. You get a chance… should I go on or this is enough?

Why is Mini Seedcamp Zagreb important for the region?

Getting the word about your project and getting an early stage investor in Croatia, Slovenia or Romania is almost impossible. If you are building global service, and you want to have global outreach it is very hard to do it if you are not a Silicon Valley startup with a couple of millions dollars of seed funding. Mini Seedcamps are right now the best connection to the top London based and USA based VC’s. Zemanta’s story is a great showcase how couple of guys from a small country can make it big out there.

If you are one who is thinking big you should not miss Mini Seedcamp in Zagreb.

Who will be there?

At the Mini Seedcamp Zagreb, you will be able to talk in person with one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the region and Europe. Full list of mentors should be published very soon.

One more time, this is a unique opportunity for you to test your idea and get feedback from people who made it and who are willing to help you around. At Seedcamp, in a single day you will get the best advices and contacts possible.

Our story

Last year we were the winners of the Mini SeedCamp Ljubljana, and that has been the beginning of a great journey for us. That led us to the SeedCamp Week in London, and also to the SeedSummit. We met so many great folks, and presented our solution to some of the leading European advisors, who gave us many useful advices which we use daily to improve ShoutEm. We think Mini SeedCamps are providing great opportunities for startups, and every startup should participate in these events.

So, don’t wait too long. Go to the official web page of the Mini SeedCamp Zagreb and apply. Also, I recommend you to read our advices on how we got into SeedCamp.

Also, check out blog posts here at the ShoutEm blog (subscribe to our RSS feed), at the official SeedCamp blog, follow SeedCamp Zagreb official Twitter account and SeedCamp Twitter account and also check out SeedCamp videos at Vimeo.

We will tweet also, so make sure to follow us on Twitter.

What are our plans for the 2010?

1. We plan to position ShoutEm as a service for creating mobile social networks.

Niche microblogging definitely has a bright future, but there is a huge space for a mobile social networks. As smart phones are gaining more and more market share, we think that we can, and we should offer a service that can connect all mobile users and offer them a new experience. We’ve already started with developing applications for the mobile operating systems, with iPhone, BlackBerry and Java applications already available for use.

2. Location aware applications and networks

With most of the smart phones already equipped with some kind of a GPS device, we want to take the opportunity and use a GPS data. We plan to make a service which will be able to create location-aware shouts. What do we need that for? Wouldn’t be nice to come to a restaurant and using your mobile phone see all shouts ever written in that restaurant? We also plan to add some additional features on the top of that service, like rewards, titles, etc.

We will also display a list of points of interests near a user, which he can use to find any spot that he needs.

3. Augmented reality

On the top of location-aware shouts feature, we will include support for augmented reality. Users will be able to see all shouts written at a certain place just by pointing their mobile device camera at that place. It will also display a list of your friends who recently visited that place, with their avatar and information displayed in a “bubble”.

4. New design

Exclusively on ShoutEm blog, we present you some screenshots of new designs for ShoutEm networks. Please note that this is only a proposal, some things might change, but you can see a general design and all new features integrated in it. Also please note that these are not all designs that we plan to have.

With new design and features, we are trying to provide network administrators a way to create more Facebook-like mobile social networks. Microblogging will still be one of ShoutEm’s core features, but with integration of all features mentioned above, we think it’s time to redesign our networks to provide better user experience for our users. These changes will affect current html code, and also some parts of CSS files. Network administrators will have to change their current CSS files if they want to achieve the same look of some parts of their mobile social networks as before. We will give some time to network administrators to adopt to new html and CSS codes, so we won’t enable new design immediately.

This is a huge improvement for the ShoutEm and network administrators, as we’ll be able to provide new features and a new user experience for our users. It will also provide better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for ShoutEm networks, which can help network administrators to have much more members. We strongly believe that our new features will help network administrators to create fantastic mobile social networks, attract much more users and boost network traffic.

Click on a thumbnail to see a picture in original size, and please post your opinion in comments.

What else do you want to see? Are there some new features that you want ShoutEm to implement? Do you have some idea for us? Please give us some feedback in your comments.

Mini Seedcamps are smaller versions of SeedCamp Weeks that are being held in London once a year. The purpose of Mini Seedcamps is to provide an opportunity for local web-tech startups to connect with advisors and fellow entrepreneurs within some region. They are held between January and June in several locations across EMEA. Any European startup from any region can choose to apply to any Mini Seedcamp that suits. Last year ShoutEm was one of the winners of the Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana, and later we even got an opportunity to participate in the Seedcamp Week.

Every year the places where Mini Seedcamps are held are being changed, and we are very proud to announce Mini Seedcamp Zagreb to be held on 11th February! This is a great opportunity for all startups in Europe to present their solutions and connect with advisors, and also to visit Zagreb, capital of Croatia.

Here are some of the facts:

1. Whole event will take place in a new office of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, at the corner of the Heinzlova and Vukovarska street.
2. ShoutEm is one of the organizers of this event. We are, as winners of the Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana and the only participants at the Seedcamp Week from Croatia, very proud to be able to support this event.
3. Lunch will be sponsored by the RSG Capital from Slovenia.
4. Evening party will be sponsored by the Microsoft Croatia, and it’s BizSpark program.

Soon the Mini Seedcamp Zagreb web page will be published online where you will be able to find out more information and register your startup.

IT Showoff

What if you have some great technology project, but you can’t register it for a Mini Seedcamp; if your solution is, for example, part of some larger project? You still have a place to show your solution to everyone interested. Day after the Mini Seedcamp Zagreb, event IT Showoff will take place at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. This is a conference for all geeks who have some kind of a technology solution, and they would like to show it to the world. It is also a conference for everyone interested in technology solutions, which can help them to solve their problems. For more information, please visit IT Showoff web page (in Croatian only).

In the February, Zagreb will be the center for all startups and investors from all over the Europe. Will you be there?

• handle multiple accounts on your favorite microblogging networks:   ShoutEm and Twitter
• browse through your friend’s statuses, public statuses or mentions
• update your status
• explore user profiles, their followers or statuses/tweets
• follow or stop following users
• status search

There are also some improvements and features that we will implement very soon:

• integration with native camera application on BlackBerry mobile devices
• auto-refresh
• favorites

Click here to download ShoutEm BlackBerry application.

Do you already use our application on your BlackBerry mobile device? What do you think? What would you like to see changed?

1. Make a good design.

Although we have 18 pre-defined styles that you can use on your social network, you may want to customize the way your mobile social network look like. Try to choose some nice colors, because if you choose to have red text on green background, your members will find it difficult to read, and they could decide not to participate in your network anymore. Look at some of our successful mobile social networks and their beautiful designs, and try to accomplish the same user experience for your members as they did for theirs.

2. Edit your profile.

Have your real picture as your profile picture and provide real data. People want to have trust in their network administrator, and showing them your picture is a good way to start gaining their trust.

3. Start interesting conversations.

You must have been an expert in some niche, for example, in ASP.NET MVC. That means that you know so many interesting stories for your members, and you have so many links to share with them. Then do it! Give them a reason to engage. Share your thoughts, opinions, experiences and links with them, and try to engage them with a simple sentence: "What do you think?". It’s a call for action for them, and they’ll probably reply.

4. Join some conversations.

Your network is not all about you, and you have to show that to your members. Follow the things they’re doing and saying, and start talking with them. Share your thoughts on a subject, and your members will appreciate that. As you have more and more interesting conversations and shouts, your network will be more interesting for your members and, most likely, they’ll come back more often, and they’ll even invite their friends and colleagues.

5. Set up the rules and follow them.

Write down the rules for your mobile social network. Define what is forbidden to do and to say, and define what’s going to happen to a member who violates your rules. Tell that all links to warez/porno are forbidden, that it is not allowed to insult other members… you get the point. If somebody breaks the rules, give him a warning. If he continues to break the rules, ban him from your network. You’ll lose one member, but other members will be happy, because they probably don’t want to see him on your network, either.

6. Reward your members.

From time to time, you can organize some kind of a prize game for your members. Try to find some prize. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one; a t-shirt should be enough. You can also try to find some sponsor for your game; software company which is willing to give one or few licenses for their product, or a restaurant which is willing to give a free dinner for one of your members; possibilities are endless. Then set up rules of your choice. The winner can be whoever writes the most shouts in one week or whoever starts the most replied shout. This will give a motivation for your member to shout more and more, and to come back more often, and to be happier… and that’s what you want, you want happy members!

What do you think about this? Which qualities should a good network administrator have? What are your experiences? Post it in comments.

If you think you can do all this, the create your own mobile social network on http://www.shoutem.com . It’s free!