Miguel Pinho found Mobilize on a journey to grow the Seedcamp community of founders. Since using Mobilize, their community has grown 100 percent. Today, they’ve helped hundreds of European entrepreneurs secure their first round of funding and turn their dreams into a reality.
MEET SEEDCAMP
Miguel Pinho is the Tech Lead at Seedcamp, an early stage startup investor dedicated to guiding European startups as they secure their first round of seed funding. Seedcamp is Europe’s first investor of its kind. Since 2007, the company has invested in nearly 250 companies who have raised over $600M in funding.
When Miguel joined the team in January 2015, his first task was to find a new tool to efficiently engage Seedcamp’s community of founders.
THE CHALLENGE
During his first few weeks at Seedcamp, Miguel was using Dashboard.io. However, it was a challenge to onboard new members. Miguel needed a central workplace where email communications were accessible and easy to use.
“One of the many advantages of receiving investment from Seedcamp is our platform of support. We expedite a founder’s mission through immediate access to smart capital, our global network and an unparalleled community of support. This includes over 650 founders, our operational experts, in-house team and EiRs so you’re surrounded by the best possible people to help you scale your business.” he says.
Miguel noticed Dashboard.io didn’t help facilitate meaningful conversations between his community of founders. It was important to Seedcamp that their founders could rely on more than Seedcamp for advice and tools on how to navigate the early stages of the funding process.
“One of the great advantages of getting investment from Seedcamp is that we’re able to support you with a network of mentors and experts that come in and can provide very specific, very good advice to you,” he says.
THEN THEY MET MOBILIZE
At first, Mobilize helped Seedcamp simplify communication channels to their community of founders.
“It’s great that Mobilize allowed users to participate just by hitting ‘reply’ on email,” he says. “Many of our community members read our messages via email replied via email because they’re on the move constantly.”
Miguel says subgroups and the community map also helped keep the community organized internally. “What stood out to me was how we could have multiple groups structured in a tree hierarchy,”
Leveraging Mobilize, the Seedcamp began to experience a stronger sense of community using the platform’s customization features which helped lead to more growth.
“The fact that you can customize the messages when you reach out to so many people helps maintain a sense of community,” he says.
RESULTS & IMPACT
Since using Mobilize, Seedcamp has grown their community of founders from 300 to 660 entrepreneurs, and that number only continues to grow. In addition to helping these entrepreneurs secure their first seed rounds, they’ve been able to provide them with critical additional resources to succeed.
“The community’s now much larger. We have found that Mobilize is a good place for the community to help each other but also for us to broadcast opportunities, internal opportunities that the founders didn’t have, such as office hours and those levels of support that we, at Seedcamp, can provide to the founders that we invest in,” Miguel explains.
One program that has made a big difference within the community is the mentor network. In this program, they offer dedicated office hours for entrepreneurs to schedule with industry leaders.
“We use Mobilize to spread the word about those hours and foster the engagement with those mentors, making sure that the startups are getting the best advice possible out there,” he explains.
USING MOBILIZE
Seedcamp’s growth wouldn’t have been possible without members receiving proper training prior to joining the community, Miguel says. To ensure this, Miguel first sends out an email with content through Mobilize explaining how they can benefit from the community and using Mobilize.
“We onboard them directly via email. This is meant to make sure they understand how they can take advantage of all the features of the network,” Miguel explains.
Miguel says Mobilize has a significant impact on their successful onboarding process which helps with their growth.
“It would be a lot harder to onboard if we didn’t have a tool like Mobilize to help and connect the dots. Mobilize makes it so easy for us to communicate with 660 people.”