European startup programme Seedcamp is bringing in extra fire power to deal with the increasing numbers of startups it plans to fund. In the last four years it’s typically funded between five and six startups at the end of its year long process but that will leap, when tomorrow’s finalists are picked, to around ten of the 23 that are in competition during this Seedcamp Week in London.
As a result it’s clear that CEO Reshma Sohoni is going to need some help. To that end they’ve lured venture capitalist Carlos Espinal from Doughty Hanson.
He becomes a Seedcamp Partner to Sohoni, jointly sharing the burden of sifting the startups and running the organisation. Sohoni told me that they purposely targetted someone who had both investment knowledge and was also strong in deep tech to complement her more business oriented background.
Philipp Moehring is also joining full time as an associate, with three years background in VC, and will be managing the daily operations and portfolio at Seedcamp.
I recently described Seedcamp as something of a juggernaut recently and the numbers bare this out. In 2010 alone Sohoni and her team have met and mentored nearly 200 teams at 9 Mini Seedcamps and now they are extending to events in Singapore and Mumbai. Since 2007 they’ve processed 2,500 team applications, mentored more than 540 teams and made a total of 22 investments.
Espinal is a former engineer for the Advanced Communications Technologies group of The New York Stock Exchange where he focused on the next generation of wireless and mobile trading platforms for the exchange. Prior to SIAC, he was a network security consultant for the professional services division of Baltimore Technologies. At Doughty he took care of investments in mobile technologies and services, Internet services & gaming, IT systems & security, and renewable technologies, such as like Flirtomatic and Mobango. He holds an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University.