We’ve started out HTW Tour at Timisoara, with Radu Ticiu, the manager of the Timisoara Software Business Incubator, and Andrei Firoiu, a local web entrepreneur and long-time friend.

First step was meeting local business owners and entrepreneurs for getting a taste of what Timisoara’s tech scene looks like. Had a lot of talks and meet a lot of people, but one story was trully special and I want to share it with you.

Who heard of Mindomo ? Not too many, right ? Well, this project seemed to me the perfect example of what looked like an Eastern European startup in the pre-Seedcamp era.

Mindomo was started in 2007, helping people to use mindmaps for organising their ideeas or knowledge. Since 2007, Mindomo bootstraped without getting any financing money at all. They’ve got two mentions on TechCrunch, when announcing that MindMeister bought MindMaker (“If you’re interested in checking out more mind mapping tools, you might want to take a closer look at Mindomo and MindJet, too.”) and when MindMeister released it’s iPhone App (“And on the web we have bubbl.us and mindomo.”). And that’s it.

With no budget for marketing and PR, Mindomo reached an outstanding number of 200.000 registered users during these 3 years. They’ve sold hundreds of licenses in South-East Asia, especially to schools and public insitutions. But nobody knows of them. I challenge you to think about the path this company would have had in a fully-developed entrepreneurial ecosystem.

On Sunday I’ve went to the local GeekMeet, had a lovely capuccino and had a talk about how to get from a Geek to an Entrepreneur in 7 simple steps. Met a lot of people and had a great time, hope I’ll see them again soon

When we started to organize How to Web 2010, a lot of people asked me: is Romania or Eastern Europe ready for this ? Is the local and regional industry developed enough so it can be interested in a big and expensive international event ?

Everybody knew that, during last years, more and more web businesses have arised from Eastern Europe. You can see that just by looking at the winners from the major startup competitions across Europe. Also, we’ve got Adobe Labs in Bucharest and Amazon developing cloud technologies in Iasi, and that’s a big leap forward from the traditional support centers we’ve got all around Eastern Europe.

Well, my answer (and my bet) is that we are at the begining of a new development stage for the Eastern European tech scene. Up until now we’ve only got the technical talent, along with a major lack of venture funds, international exposure and entrepreneurial skills. However, the startup scene is getting more global than ever, and talent starts attracting the money and the attention it deserves. All we need to do is ask.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 8 months: we’ve been asking major web players and personalities to switch their focus to Easten Europe too, and we managed to get their attention. First part of the problem was solved.

Now moving to the next one: do the local business people understand their potential and want to move forward ?

Well, that’s one thing we’ve still got to find out in the same direct manner. Since last week, we’ve started to meet with local communities for small and focused presentations and direct chats. But that’s not enough, as we’ve found out some amazing things. More to come !

Everytime I thought of Seedcamp I’ve consider it a competition event. Well, that’s not the case anymore.

When entering the Seedcamp Week venue, I’ve could do nothing but dazzle looking at all the great entrepreneurs and investors gathered there.

When starting a startup or just moving your web business or project to the next level, you need a lot of things: market information, PR exposure, probably some investment, but also a lot of knowledge about how to handle your innovation. Most of the times, you have non or little of all of that.

And here comes the amazing part: Seedcamp puts you in the same room with people having knowledge on all of that. All you have to do is grab the opportunity and have your 1 minute pitch as many times as possible. You’ll get some knowledge, but mostly direct access to people who can help you during a longer period.

Beyond the actual competiton, Seedcamp is a great networking event. And the most important part is that it really helps all the participants, winners or not.

Networking is one important thing we’ve been focusing on at How to Web 2010, and for sure the ones that want to enlarge their network will be able to do it big time.

While on my way to Seedcamp Week, the main question I had on my mind was what are the criterias used for selecting the winners. That’s a tricky question, and let me tell you why.

When any VC decides to finance a startup, the criterias are quite general: great team, some experience, big market opportunity and/or powerfull innovation. But everybody has different priorities.

During the first two editions, Seedcamp selected as winners mainly disruptive innovation startups, focused on developing technology and engaging in new markets. That’s a risky bet, because the market addressed might prove to be too small for the VC’s to make a great exit out of that. Also, geting further investments for a technology-disruptive startup is more difficult in Europe, and the startup might run just half the way to the exit. But that might be also a rewarding strategy, and probably the only chance to build world-wide champions.

However, in 2009, Seedcamp selected mosty businesses that already had a finished product, and also had a client base and revenue, but were liniar businesses in terms of innovation. And that’s a different game. For sure most of them are great businesses, but do they have the potential to disrupt the market in such a way that it might get the investors to a great exit ? Don’t forget European internet market is just a tiny part of the global market, after all.

Before choosing the 2010 winners, the question was: will Seedcamp move further from it’s original seed investment focus, or will it go back to it’s roots ? It is not a matter of personal taste, but rather a more mathematical calculation, because Seedcamp, as a pre-VC investment fund, needs to be sure as much as possible that their winners get the next VC investment for moving on.

Most of us were betting on the first option. However, we were wrong.

Between the 11 winners, many are technology innovation businesses, and that’s a big deal. It means Seedcamp managed to gather a bunch of Internet-focused VC’s, with enough market knowledge to push technology inovation in Europe. Personally, I think this trend encourages Eastern European startups to apply, mainly because their skills are more technical-focused then market-focused.

Seedcamp 2010 is a wrap, but there are many things to be told. We’ll also be back soon with a interviews of some of the teams and some of the How to Web 2010 speakers, hope you’ll enjoy them too.

Four years ago, Seedcamp was a brand new name in the minds of European entrepreneurs. A great iniative of a bunch of UK business angels and venture capital funds, Seedcamp put it’s bet on the European entrepreneurs talent for starting and developing great web companies.

Years have passed and now Seedcamp Week reached it’s 4th edition. Bigger than ever, with 29 companies from 16 countries and almost 400 mentors helping them to improve their businesses, Seedcamp seems to stretch it’s limits year after year.

One thing is certain for sure: at Seedcamp Week you feel like a kid in a candy shop. You’ve got in the same room Dave McClure (does he need a presentation ?), Reshma Sohoni from Seedcamp, Iain Dodsworth from TweetDeck, Alex Hoye from Latitude, Fred Destin from Atlas Ventures, Ryan Carson from Carsonified, and so many other great entrepreneurs trying to change the world and also make a buck out of it.

But the quest is not over yet, as years pass by and questions start to arrise: how positive is the impact Seedcamp has on the companies they invest in ? Can Seedcamp do more for the European entrepreneurship ?

Because of the partnership between How to Web and Seedcamp, we’ve got the great opportunity of having a few talks with entrepreneurs and investors about the Seedcamp path, the opportunities of the global web and  how to develop great web apps and businesses. If you’re interested in that, get connected to the How to Web Blog and follow us during the next days. Also, if interested, send us some questions and we’ll try to get the answers for you.

We are happy to present the 2 new members of the Startup Challenge jury: Reshma Sohoni – Seedcamp CEO and Patrick de Laive – Initiator of The Next Web Conference and TheNextWeb.com blog.

Startup Challenge is the startup competition organised by How To Web whose purpose is that of finding tomorrow’s most promising businesses. In order to enter the competition startups should have less than 2 years of activity, target a global or international market and shouldn’t have raised any VC funding until the present moment. The deadline for the registrations is the 10th of October 2010. The 6 finalists will have the chance to present their pitch at the How To Web 2010 Conference and will receive:

• one free conference ticket and 50% discount for the second ticket (125 EUR, including VAT);
• a 5 minute presentation of their new product or service for free to the 500 Internet professionals who are attending the How To Web 2010 conference on the main stage;
• a dedicated space, situated in the Startup Challenge Area, where they can present his product or service to all attendees;
• individual mentoring discussions with all the members of the jury, for getting feedback and improving their product or service.

Both Reshma and Patrick will also be joining us for the How To Web 2010 conference as speakers. Check out the conference schedule for more details.

We’re excited to announce that Patrick de Laive, Initiator of The Next Web Conference and TheNextWeb.com blog, will be joining us as a speaker for the How To Web 2010 Conference.

Patrick de Laive is an internet entrepreneur and evangelist and a true web enthusiast. He was the Initiator of one of Europe’s largest web conferences The Next Web and he also started OpenCoffee Amsterdam and co-organized Kings of Code. Patrick also co-founded TwitterCounter and Paydro.

Check out our full list of confirmed speakers and schedule for the 2 conference days.

Get your ticket now! Very early bird tickets are still available for sale.

Building a great team is never an easy task. And it’s definitely a very important one. If in a corporation hiring the wrong employee and firing him afterwards may go along unobserved. But in a start-up this will cost you will definitely impact your daily business operations much more. Therefore hiring someone because they are part of the family, because they are in need and you want to help out, because they are friends and because you have no better idea who to hire might be lethal decisions. Hiring someone only based on their educational background and work experience is also a not so great idea.

In order to avoid the inconvenients of hiring the wrong person we have talked to variour business founders and HR professionals and here are the top 10 tips we have gathered:

1. From scratch to… getting things done

The most important feature you should be looking for when searching for a suitable employee is the ability of getting things done. You need a doer and a “things-happen maker”. So what you should be asking yourself when interviewing job candidates is this: is this a resourceful person? Can this person get by with little details and very few tools at hand? And will he do everything possible to make things happen? Remember: there are many smart PhDs out there who never get things done. And your start-up doesn’t need one of them on board.

2. Passion is viral

You need to hire people who are infected with passion for their particular job. Loving what you do means that you will eventually try harder to do it well and you will constantly look for ways to do it better. Passion is viral. If an employee loves what he does he will probably infect others as well with this love for your product.

3. Drive. Motivation. Action.

Is the person in front of you motivated to do this particular job? Self-motivated people will walk right through walls in order to get stuff done. They will keep pushing forward until they succeed and they are usually quite indendent in taking action. This is exactly the kind of attitude you are looking for.

4. Does he really need experience?

Experience is not everything. And I would also add that sometimes experience is exactly the feature you should compromise on when looking for an employee for your business. Look for passion, intelligence and potential, not for experience

5. Constant self-development

You need people who are keep to constantly learn new skills and abilities. You don’t need a person who stops moving forward in your team. What you need is people who dislike stagnating and who will forever try to improve their skills in order to be successful. You need curious people who continuously seek for news and improvements about their field, craft, profession.

6. Start-up mindset needed

If the employee in front of you has worked for a corporation like IBM for the last 10 years it may be difficult for him to addapt to the start-up do-everything-from-nothing context. But this doesn’t mean that former corporate employees don’t make good hire material for you. You need to ask the ex-corporate candidates about their reasons for leaving their job. If it was because they hated the bureaucracy and because things were moving too slowly without creating any value for the client then this is a person who could fit your start-up wonderfully.

7. Adaptability to chaos

Start-ups are not about safety. And they are never about strict rules or routine. If the candidate in front of you is looking for some fixed procedures and is reluctant to change then you should look elsewhere. Startups are about chaos, rapid changes, “no job description” positions. And you need a person who can adapt easily to this kind of environment.

8. Don’t forget ethics

Integrity and business ethics are a must when hiring people for your team. Of course, this is also hard to check, but you should pay attention for previous less ethical actions in the candidate’s background.

9. Problem solvers, not perfectionists

You are not looking for perfectionist specialists but for people with the right skills to solve a particular problem. Therefore the necessary skills are not enough. Your new team member should also have a result-driven attitude. They should try to solve problems at all costs and most effectively and not get stuck because things haven’t been done the right by-the-book way.

10. Willing to be a jack-of-all-trades

You don’t need people who don’t want to get their hands dirty. In startups there is usually less workforce than the business needs. And there are probably a lot of small tasks that are both easy and not so pleasent. And somebody has to do these as well. And it’s best when the nasty work gets divided and everyone in the team gets his fair share of nasty work. So you don’t need someone who won’t commit to small tasks as well when needed. But you should make sure that these tasks are the exception and not the rule.

Have you had any nasty experience while recruiting for your start-up? We would be more than happy to hear it if you feel like sharing it with us.