The Forsyth Group – Executive Search

Congratulations to our four new investments

Antavo: travelling all the way from Hungary, this ambitious team showed an impressive promotion building platform for SMEs to market their offerings on various platforms – a slick product with big potential.

Bukit: Sarah lived through the bad experiences of having personal debt and was fed up with the status quo. That’s why she founded Bukit, which allows consumers to settle their debts through a new platform.

MightyFingers: absolutely rocking HTML5 gaming engine performance; our first 100-per-cent Latvian team is certainly going places.

Sayduck: a fantastic usage of Augmented Reality bridging the gap between online and offline retail experience by helping customers visualize real world items in their environment (Via Sayduck’s app, Carlos is able to hold a virtual table below). This Finnish team impressed us with their dynamic approach to rolling their solution out to market.

In the may 12^th edition of  Wired our Managing Partner wrote 7 pointers on how to hire great talent.

1. Exploit your network for potential employees or referrals before considering using a recruiter. Great businesses are built on great referrals.

2. Think about and create an attractive company culture. Understanding and building a robust cultural DNA for your start-up will help you hire and retain the best candidates.

3. When making a hire ask yourself: “Would I enjoy spending 8 hours next to him/her on a long-haul flight?”

4. Try to hire executives with past start-up success. They will understand the requirements of a rapidly growing company. They also will help you avoid the mistakes they made or experienced.

5. Do not hire executives who don’t fully understand the demands of a start-up company.

6. Locate your business as close to the talent pool as possible. If this is not possible, be prepared to entice the right candidates to your location, or relocate.

7. Hire slow, fire fast. The right employee can help you grow rapidly, even exponentially, but the wrong candidate can set your company back twelve months. Work out why they weren’t suitable before you make your next hire.

Congratulations to the team at Crashpadder our Seedcamp portfolio company who were just acquired by Airbnb. This is the second exit from Seedcamp after Mobclix were acquired in 2010 by Velti.

Well done to Stephen and Dan!

Read the full story here

Our Managing Partner Brett presented to 45 LBS [www.london.edu] students on the state of the hi-growth technology sector on the 15^th February. The audience members were interested in finding out more about this sector as they had demonstrated a strong interest in the entrepreneurial space and potentially working with growing companies, especially in the technology sector. Brett was asked to talk about the current landscape in the high-growth technology space in the UK and Europe and give advice for those looking to develop their careers in the sector.

Link to the presentation:  http://slidesha.re/z3MDXX

Link to video: http://bit.ly/wBQ5sW

Not to be outdone Imperial College Business School Entrepreneurs Interactive Club have asked Brett to present on the 19^th of March on how to build the right start-up team!

Rosemary and Brett spent January the 31^st with mentors and entrepreneurs at the 2012 London Seedcamp event in Soho. The competition was intense with excellent pitches from 22 teams; the winners came from Spain, Belgium, Estonia and London. Congratulations to 24Symbols [www.24symbols.com], Bluefields [www.bluefields.com], Checkthis [www.checkthis.com] and Pult [www.pult.io]  - Pult should be commended for an awesome live demo that blew all the mentors and judges away. The teams are off to the US for Roadtrip Seedcamp USA, which will involve meeting all the good and the great (and the VCs) from the high tech world in the US.

After Roadtrip USA the next Seedcamp event will be Tel Aviv – apply here http://www.seedcamp.com/events/seedcamp-tel-aviv