The Mad World of MadTech: February Roundup

1. Startup alum Locomizer rank in AI Tech Startups to Watch 2017

Following a number of pretty exciting updates (including a cheeky interview in Forbes), our class of '13 alumni are making us proud again.

Tech.eu has highlighted the biological intelligence tech team as one of the startups tech enthusiasts should keep an eye on for the upcoming year.

Great work guys. Read more here.

2. LivingLens secures £1.3m funding AND becomes finalist for SXSW Accelerator Competition

The LivingLens team are having a pretty impressive few weeks with two top announcements, starting with an incredible £1.3m funding round.

The mix of investors includes the Angel CoFund, angel investors from their involvement in our accelerator programme and successful marketeers and financiers.

This follows their recent win after being selected as a finalist for SXSW Accelerator Competition, in which only those leading startups from around the world are selected to take part in.

Good luck for the upcoming pitch event on March 12th!

Read more here.

3. Seenit and SyncSpot's founders stopped Forbes 30 under 30 list

A huge congratulations to Emily from Seenit and Jubair from SyncSpot for making the Forbes 30 under 30 list – a serious achievement.

Read more here.

How To Be Successful In A Startup Accelerator

After relaunching our Collider quarterly MadTech drinks, it would only be right to get someone to say a few inspirational words to a room of startups, investors and brands, right? And that someone could only have been Carl Wong from Living Lens. Check out his top six tips to all startups on how to really get the most from an accelerator programme.

1. Play the long game.

Don't ever forget who you've spoken to. Meet them. Follow up with them. Make demands of their time, but play the long game.

2. Keep at it.

It's bloody hard raising money, and much, much harder than you think it is now [early stage]. You have to keep at it, you have to keep going, and it's going to take three times as much effort and three times as long in terms of time. If you do keep at it, you will make it happen.

3. Craft your story.

That's a learnt skill, not an art. There's a way to tell your story, but make sure you know it inside out.

4. Be bold.

Show off. It's not about what you think you may be able to do, but what could you do if you had everybody behind you and all the starts aligned.

5. Be prepared.

You should be prepared for all the questions – that's what's going to help you in shaping, thinking about your product market fit, who your competitors are, what is your pricing, your distribution, how are you different from the rest, how do you prove that? Who is going to beat you? You need to know the answers to all of that because somebody is going to ask you and you need to be coherent.

6. Love it.

Have a brilliant time, because, do you know what? You may never get the exit. You may never even fundraise to the level that you want to. But if you keep thinking about tomorrow, you're not going to be able to enjoy today.

Launching in Amsterdam with a bang

We couldn't just launch in Amsterdam without something pretty special, which is why this week some of our team headed out to the Dutch capital for our second popup.

Bringing brands and startups together is what we do best, and so this time round we were joined by a number of senior team members from both KPN and NS, hosted in Deloitte's iconic The Edge building.

Working with Ellen, Amsterdam Collider's co-founder to help establish their challenges, we identified the best startups to select for the popup and work directly with the teams.

Joined by a number of Collider startups including Pixoneye, Scoop Retail, Syncspot, Locomizer and Seenit, Collider Booster startup Duel, we also welcomed three startups from Belgium and Holland – Cabture, Social Seeder and Storymail.

Trial funds were up for grabs, so the popup meant business and gave both the startups and brands the chance to really knuckle down to see where they could work together.

But KPN and NS struggled to only pick one each, and so with Social Seeder and Storymail picked as the number-one-let's-do-this, there were many other promises of future conversations for others.

Ellen said: We designed the popup as a highly interactive session, where the corporates shared their challenges and topics of interests, allowing to identify together relevant applications of the startups’ technologies. KPN and NS have each chosen a startup for a trial project and invited several startups for follow-on conversations."

You'll be hearing much more from us in Amsterdam as we're now open for applications, as we scour the globe for the very best startups to join our first ever programme in Amsterdam. You can apply right here.

Collider hits milestone with launch of fifth cohort

It's our birthday (kinda). An anniversary, of sorts. Well, a milestone has definitely been reached.

That's right... WE'VE JUST KICKED OFF COHORT NUMBER FIVE! And to celebrate, our network from across all years joined at The Courthouse Hotel in Soho to welcome in the fresh faces of our new startups.

Community is key and at the heart of everything we do at Collider; you sell to people, not to businesses, and so what better way to integrate into the MadTech world than getting to know our network full of brands, agencies, investors, startups and VCs.

A huge thank you to Microsoft Bizspark too, for sponsoring the event and for all of your help to our startups – you're awesome.

A Year of Collider: 2016 in a Nutshell

What a year. We’ve crashed, bumped, smacked, bashed incredible people with incredible businesses – it really has been quite the collision – or whatever cheesy pun you’d like to go for. But all jokes aside, 2016 has turned up some seriously exciting moments. Here’s our top 2016:

1. Collider’s very own first exit – Avocarrot

Mobile ad exchanger and Collider alumni, Avocarrot, sold to Glipsa Global Group back in September for $20 million dollars.

Avocarrot joined our first ever accelerator programme back in 2013 and didn’t take them long before they headed off to San Francisco to continue their journey, exiting in less than four years.

2. Seenit took the win at TechDistrupt London!

From 14 startups down to one, our very own Seenit was crowned Startup Battlefield champion 2016, winning £40,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

After presenting in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders and with hours of deliberation, TechCrunch editors worked through the judges’ notes to narrow the list down to five, resulting in only one winner.

3. Collider to launch in Amsterdam

SERIOUS excitement in the Collider office when we finally announced our launch in Amsterdam!

With a booming startup scene and a huge wealth of incredible brands, Amsterdam was the obvious pick for us – we can’t wait to see what it’ll bring in the New Year.

4. Our 5^th cohort joined the Collider community

We handpicked the very best, new MadTech startups from around the globe, who have now joined the Collider family as our 5^th cohort!

We had a record number of applications this year from startups all around the world, and were incredibly impressed with the quality that came through the door.

Our final eight have now been picked, which we’ll be announcing in the New Year.

5. The launch of our Mentor Network

https://vimeo.com/collidergb/collider-mentor-network

Sarah Wood, Guy Weiynk, Zaid Al-Zaidy – just a few names you’ll find in our Mentor Network.

An exclusive offer to our scale ups, this isn’t ‘another accelerator’ with another ‘mentoring platform’ – instead, we hand picked some of the very best names in the industry and paired them up with some of our very best startups for an unbelievable mentorship experience.

And yes, back to that pun, but it really was a magical collision.

6. More startups reaching the one million pound revenue mark!

More and more of our alumni are reaching this milestone every month, with the first achieved midway through this year.

It’s been a blast, 2016. We’ll see you in the New Year with the official announcement of our new cohort.