Seedcamp finalists – 4 months later

Four months have passed since the great Seedcamp event in September 2007. So we decided to make a comparison of the traffic data for the Seedcamp finalists to answer several questions: how they are doing today and what Seedcamp gave them in terms of traffic. We have used Alexa.com and Compete.com for that purpose.

Main results:

• Ten out of twenty Seedcamp finalists are in top 100,000 sites according to Alexa by the beginning of February 2008. Here they are sorted by current Alexa weekly traffic rank (Artflock, FaceContact, Buildersite, Tickex, Debatewise, Zemanta, Kublax, Tablefinder, RentMineOnline, Avenue7 ). The ranking above heavily depends on methodology, so please see more details for each company below to get better understanding and do your own analysis. Other Seedcamp finalists didn’t passed the “top 100,000″ barrier, however some of them have better Alexa rating than those who passed, but there are no more additional details for those sites.
• So far, there are no substantial differences between Seedcamp finalists and Seedcamp winners. Moreover, the two top positions are hold by companies, who were not selected as Seedcamp winners (Artflock and FaceContact).
• We can see substantial spike of traffiс during Seedcamp event. Traffic surged around the time of the Seedcamp, but dropped back off to pre-Seedcamp levels. Seedcamp effect was at least 4-5 times less than Techcrunch 40 effect. 4 months later only 4 companies were able to reach comparable levels (Artflock, Buildersite, Tickex) or even exceed them (FaceContact).
• Through the geographical analysis of users we can separate those leaders in three groups:
  • UK-focused companies: Artflock (UK – 49%, Germany – 17%, US – 8%), Buildersite ( UK – 90%, Germany – 6%), Debatewise (UK – 96%, US – 6%).
  • International-focused companies with leading US presence: FaceContact (US – 27%, UK – 13%, Spain – 9%), Kublax (US – 46%, UK – 17%, Singapore – 8%), RentMineOnline (US – 26%, UK – 21%, Spain – 13%).
  • International-focused companies with leading European presence: Tickex (Romania – 37%, US – 28%, UK – 25%), Zemanta (Slovenia – 27%, UK – 18%, Germany – 15%), Tablefinder (Sweden – 32% , US – 22%, UK – 20%).

See detailed analysis for each company and more detailed tables on slides below

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How for a company to benefit from its employees’ social networks.

Corporate sector may benefit from their employees involvement in social networks. Currently most companies take very aggressive position towards social networks, because most users expand their networks from their office computers during working hours. In a recent Clearswift survey of 1,200 global HR professionals, 79% percent said their company was completely blocking access to social networking sites.

For corporations it is hard to establish whether their employees use social networks for their personal needs or for business purposes. Most of them claim that they use social network like Linkedin mostly for business purposes to get new contacts and sales opportunities. But requests to integrate their contacts into CRM/HR systems are often resisted by the employees.

However, in a number of companies the policy has recently been revised. For example, Allen & Overy (an international law firm) has been forced to lift the ban after the firm’s IT department was bombarded with staff complaints following a firmwide ban on social networking website Facebook.

Recruiters and especially headhunters already actively use social networks to source new candidates, and corporate recruiters follow the lead. Corporate employee bonus programs could be a perfect match for integration with employees’ social networks. This way employees still control their social networks, but have enough motivation to share potential candidates with HR department.

According to a recent Spherion Emerging Workforce Study, 58 percent of top HR executives said that referrals are the best way to recruit top talent. In another survey by HCI/ExecuNet, 62 percent of recruiters listed networking as their most effective means of finding senior managers.

Cisco Systems Inc., the California-based Internet pioneer, created a program called “Friends,” where prospects are paired up with Cisco employees of similar work backgrounds. Cisco employees act as an extended sales force, helping convince on-the-fence and passive candidates that the company is a viable (and friendly) employer. 40 to 60 percent of all new Cisco hires now come from employee referrals.

Some companies like Eli Lilly and Company are transforming employee referral programs from de facto program for family and friends to an explicit program of talent scouting. Talent scouting moves employee referral programs from reactive to proactive operations to reach into the workforce at multiple touch points and on a regular basis and aggressively solicit the names of prospects, even when openings do not yet exist for them.

What’s next? Companies already expand referral programs to search not only via employees (for instance, through alumni and clients) and not only job candidates (for instance, new clients). It is easy to benefit from the social networking boom by using Software-as-a-Service options.

For example, FaceContact.com, a venue for getting referral rewards, will provide integration of referral bonus programs into corporate websites.