Seedcamp and Y Combinator

I'd like to talk about Seedcamp and Y Combinator. In essence both are Seed Capital Funds and their philosophy is to connect entrepreneurs and developers with mentors, but Seedcamp works with europeans entrepreneurs and Y Combinator with north american.

As Scott Duke Harris said in San Jose Mercury News, Y Combinator philosophy was the inspiration for Seedcamp and others like TechStars, LaunchBox Digital, Dreamit Ventures, Shotput Ventures and many others.

Y Combinator, usually, not invest more than $20000, and Seedcamp standard investment is €30000-€50000, but help and contacts they provides have not price.

This is the real distinguishing feature, a lot of seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists waiting for new ideas and new products.

Seedcamp have this calendar for 2009:

• 7 July (Tu) Online application opens
  
• 23 Aug (Su) - 23:59 GMTOnline application closes
  
• 2 Sep (W) Short-listed candidates notified
  
• 9 Sep (W) Short-list interview day, London
  
• 10 Sep (Th) 20 finalists notified
  
• 21-25 Sep (M-F) Seedcamp Week, London
  

You can see the complete Seedcamp calendar here.

Y Combinator have this calendar for 2009 winter:

• If you want to apply, please submit your application online by 10 pm PST on October 26, 2009. Groups that submit early have an advantage because we have more time to read their applications.
• On November 5, we'll invite the groups that seem most promising to meet us in Mountain View on the weekend of November 20-22. We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses.
• We decide who to fund that weekend. Yes decisions will include the amount we'll invest and the percent of the company we'd want for it.
• If we invest in you, your group is expected to move to the Bay Area for January through March 2010. (You can of course leave afterward if you want, but it's a good place for a startup to be.)
  (...)

You can see the complete Y Combinator information here.