What if we could combine top-notch hackers with leaders from across different companies? What if we could bring talented developers from all over Europe to create innovative solutions for organizations or sectors that desperately need them? Could this format potentially form great new startups that address untapped needs?
Those are the three rhetorical questions asked by Seedcamp, the well-known European early-stage seed investment fund and mentoring programme. In its quest to get answers to those questions, the company is organizing a new, totally free event called seedhack, which will be sort of like a hackathon – like the one we organize during TechCrunch Disrupt – but not just for programmers and designers but also for business people (with or without ideas).
The event will be held at the London Business School campus on September 23rd-25th, 2011, and is sponsored by Facebook, Paypal, and .me Domains. You can register here.
People interesting in developing a solution, and/or forming a new company, will be able to gather on the first day of the pow-wow to hear some talks from company leaders who will talk about problems plaguing their industry as a whole or their company’s value chain in particular.
This will be merely a kickstarter for ideas, Seedcamp explains. The general idea is to solve problems posed by people on the first day, but teams can form to hack around any industry, topic, or idea. The teams will be supported by a number of people from companies that offer APIs that can assist in the development of products or services – engineers will be on stand-by throughout the weekend to help out with any integration issues that may arise.
Evidently, there’s also time for networking, idea presentations and discussions. On Sunday, there will be a final presentation sessions during which all teams – which can be maximum 5 people strong – will showcase what they’ve come up with.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: any endeavor that can help inspire EMEA’s next generation of technology entrepreneurs and companies is welcome in my book, and Seedcamp seems to have a knack for coming up with great ideas to do just that.