Fred Destin

Blogger extraordinaire Fred Wilson has been using Zemanta for a while and loved it so much he decided to put his money where his mouth is (read all about it on the USQV blog).  As the news gets broken on the first day of the second edition of Seecamp, it provides a great testimony to what is achievable for the ones who know how to leverage the resources they are provided with.

Zemanta was a much loved participant in Seedcamp Mark-1, both for the bubbly/geeky personality of the founders Andraz and Bostjan and the charm and simplicity with which they approached the event.  Zemanta first caught everyone’s attention in their Seecamp online application blurb.  I don’t have the original language to hand but it went something like this:

• Why did you apply to Seedcamp ?
• The heat was such that we were all too tired to code and instead spent the afternoon searching the web, came across Seedcamp and thought we should apply.  So broken air conditioning, really.

Being tongue in cheek served them well.  They attracted post Seedcamp money from Eden Ventures and TAG (Robin and Saul Klein) who also got some love from Fred. 

Here are two amazing facts about Zemanta:

• they are trying to turn “zemify” into a verb
• their office apparently doubles up as a tango club at night

Way to go !  I wish all the 2008 participants as much success. It just shows you that it’s all about leveraging the goodwill and working those connections smartly.