It’s been quite a week here at Collider – never a dull moment! As the excitement from Ad:Tech London cooled down, it was time for the Collider team to pull together and begin filing through the applications for the Class of 2015. Applications for the programme are open until November 10th, make sure you get your applications in before the deadline (and even share with your friends now)!
In other news, our Seedrs campaign has come to a successful close! As of Wednesday evening, only 13 days after launch, the marketing and advertising industry pulled together to collectively raise over £330,000! Investments ranged from £100 to £55,000 per person and over 60 individuals participated.
Investors of note include media guru Mat Morrison and CEO of Havas Media, Paul Frampton. Senior advertising executives from Ogilvy and WeAreSocial also invested in the Class of 2015. Some investors will further be actively involved in the mentoring process with the startups during the programme. They will also draw on industry connections and expertise to further supercharge the startups.
“The response from the marketing and advertising professionals has been overwhelmingly positive,” Rose Lewis, Co-founder of Collider said. “We’re encouraging them to invest in the future of their industry through startups, and they jumped at the chance.”
Each of the 10 startups will receive £50K in exchange for 11% equity. A hand-picked 5 of the 10 will receive £100K follow-up funding for a further 11%. Half of the funds from the Seedrs campaign will go towards the first round of funding and the other half will go towards the second round, with all of the investors’ money being distributed evenly between all the startups.
In short, high praise goes to the marketing and advertising industry! They took the challenge head on and took an active role in shaping the future of their industry through emerging tech - their efforts paid off! The Class of 2015 has a group of mentors and investors behind it this year who have an envious track record, with even more brands signed up to help transform these products by acting as first market validators (more on this later). Things are moving quickly – this year will be bigger and better and we’re waiting impatiently to getting this race going…