frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

I launched an EU incubator for US founders who have had enough

https://sevenseed.eu
5•scrollaway•6mo ago

Comments

scrollaway•6mo ago
Just a couple of months ago here on HN, I sent a "message in a bottle" for US-based founders who are looking to move to Europe and contribute to a more stable future. I have personally helped several take the leap in the last few years, and I wanted to do it in a more structured way.

The response has been astonishing. I have talked to over 50 founders with sometimes up to 25-30 years of experience, who want nothing but the opportunity to do just that: Uproot their life, move their company, start again in Europe.

I took time to restructure this as an incubator, which I have designed with constant feedback from the founders who reached out. What you see at https://sevenseed.eu is the result of this work.

I've founded startups and exited in both US & Europe. The EU mindset is different - sometimes that's for the better, sometimes not. There are many flaws and issues, but I can attest that Europe is working on those (for example through EU Inc: https://www.eu-inc.org), whereas the US is simply not going in the right direction.

My goal with Seven Seed is to create a space and 6 months program specially crafted for founders currently residing in NA, wishing to make the leap. Brussels is the perfect place for it. It's extremely international (one of the most international cities in the world), making it extremely welcoming to English speakers. It's geographically convenient, within 2h train rides of London, Paris, Amsterdam (and many more if you take the plane). As a human sized capital city, it's super walkable; you don't need a car. But despite being human-sized it's still buzzing with activity. It also has no capital gains tax, something most people seemingly don't know.

Many EU programs are very inward-looking. We are not. The program looks towards all of Europe and we bring expertise in tech, AI, cybersecurity, climate and defence. We are privately funded (part-cohort, part-angels), which gives us a lot more flexibility and neutrality when it comes to helping startups make choices.

One last thing... everyone in the program is automatically invested in each others' exits. We have a profit sharing system which redistributes 25% of all proceeds from the startups directly to all the other members of the same cohort. I have yet to see another incubator/accelerator do this, and I hope this will change because IMO it creates an amazing incentive to help each other within the program.

I'm around for a while, but my email's in my profile as well!

anovikov•6mo ago
Why incorporating in Belgium? Let's revisit one big benefit of being in Europe: plenty of countries, very different tax regimes. OK forget Hungary because it's one more little MAGA land, but there are also Malta and Cyprus that have very low corporate taxes. Both also have fantastic, well-functioning legal system when it comes to corporate and IP law. Why not there?
scrollaway•6mo ago
In EU, you will have an easier time incorporating in the same country you actually live/operate in, due to paperwork, admin, costs, benefits etc. The sole exception to this rule is that of Estonia, which has e-residency.

It's not a hard requirement for this program to incorporate in BE, but I recommend it and we take on all costs of BE incorporation as part of it.

The EU Inc project (https://www.eu-inc.org/) I mentioned is very promising when it comes to how incorporation should actually eventually work, but it's not live yet. Once it is, it will likely be our strong recommendation.

anovikov•6mo ago
What is your position on hardware-rich startups? Especially those that plan to manufacture here in EU? Defence/mixed use tech. Are these too much of a pain/unscalable/little monetisation potential, or OK?
scrollaway•6mo ago
Depends what kind of hardware. B2C is difficult. But in dual-use/defence there are a LOT of opportunities - and several we can assist with (we have strong experience in drones and other dual-use hardware startups, as well as direct links to Ukraine to help battletest said hardware)

If you're just manufacturing drones, truth is you'll be in a red ocean and will be unlikely to make it. OTOH, specific components, drone modules, etc are all very hot right now.

If you're doing much more deeptech-style hardware, there are opportunities and EU is a good place for it but we'd likely be looking at helping get EIC funding (2.5M nondilutive funding, ~5% success rate but very tough application). NL and southern france have interesting ecosystems for this.

Do you have something specific in mind?

anovikov•6mo ago
Yes i do have a very specific thing is mind but i don't want to sound like a typical American pie-in-the-sky founder so i'd only apply once we have at least a crude working prototype.
scrollaway•6mo ago
Don't hesitate to apply anyway! We're OK with idea-stage startups. Program is for idea stage to early seed.

Z8086: Rebuilding the 8086 from Original Microcode

https://nand2mario.github.io/posts/2025/z8086/
1•nand2mario•1m ago•0 comments

Listen to Mixtapes from Before

https://intertapes.net/
1•poniko•5m ago•0 comments

My First Impressions of MeshCore Off-Grid Messaging

https://mtlynch.io/first-impressions-of-meshcore/
1•mtlynch•7m ago•0 comments

I built a tool to restore old family photos without ruining them with AI

https://forevi.ai
1•poznerd•7m ago•1 comments

Designing Electronics That Works

https://nostarch.com/designingelectronics
1•0x54MUR41•7m ago•0 comments

Most LLM cost isn't compute – it's identity drift (110-cycle GPT-4o benchmark)

https://github.com/sigmastratum/documentation/blob/main/sigma-runtime/SR-EI-03/benchmark_report_S...
1•teugent•8m ago•1 comments

Show HN: PlanEat AI, an AI iOS app for weekly meal plans and smart grocery lists

1•franklinm1715•8m ago•0 comments

A Post-Incident Control Test for External AI Representation

https://zenodo.org/records/17921051
1•businessmate•9m ago•1 comments

اdifference gbps overview find answers

1•shahrtjany•10m ago•0 comments

Measuring Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Dev Productivity

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
1•vismit2000•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Lazy Demos

http://demoscope.app/lazy
1•admtal•12m ago•0 comments

AI-Driven Facial Recognition Leads to Innocent Man's Arrest (Bodycam Footage) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9M4F_U1eEw
2•niczem•13m ago•1 comments

Annual Production of 1/72 (22mm) scale plastic soldiers, 1958-2025

https://plasticsoldierreview.com/ShowFeature.aspx?id=27
2•YeGoblynQueenne•14m ago•0 comments

Error-Handling and Locality

https://www.natemeyvis.com/error-handling-and-locality/
1•Theaetetus•15m ago•0 comments

Petition for David Sacks to Self-Deport

https://form.jotform.com/253464131055147
1•resters•15m ago•0 comments

Get found where people search today

https://kleonotus.com/
1•makenotesfast•18m ago•1 comments

Show HN: An early-warning system for SaaS churn (not another dashboard)

https://firstdistro.com
1•Jide_Lambo•19m ago•1 comments

A Practical Approach to Verifying Code at Scale

https://alignment.openai.com/scaling-code-verification/
1•gmays•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: macOS tool to restore window layouts

https://github.com/zembutsu/tsubame
1•zembutsu•23m ago•0 comments

30 Years of <Br> Tags

https://www.artmann.co/articles/30-years-of-br-tags
2•FragrantRiver•30m ago•0 comments

Kyoto

https://github.com/stevepeak/kyoto
2•handfuloflight•31m ago•0 comments

Decision Support System for Wind Farm Maintenance Using Robotic Agents

https://www.mdpi.com/2571-5577/8/6/190
1•PaulHoule•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: X-AnyLabeling – An open-source multimodal annotation ecosystem for CV

https://github.com/CVHub520/X-AnyLabeling
1•CVHub520•34m ago•0 comments

Penpot Docker Extension

https://www.ajeetraina.com/introducing-the-penpot-docker-extension-one-click-deployment-for-self-...
1•rainasajeet•35m ago•0 comments

Company Thinks It Can Power AI Data Centers with Supersonic Jet Engines

https://www.extremetech.com/science/this-company-thinks-it-can-power-ai-data-centers-with-superso...
1•vanburen•38m ago•0 comments

If AIs can feel pain, what is our responsibility towards them?

https://aeon.co/essays/if-ais-can-feel-pain-what-is-our-responsibility-towards-them
3•rwmj•42m ago•5 comments

Elon Musk's xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI over App Store Drama

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-xai-lawsuit-apple-openai
1•paulatreides•45m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Build it yourself SWE blogs?

1•bawis•45m ago•1 comments

Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer source code

https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11
3•Fiveplus•51m ago•0 comments

How Did the CIA Lose Nuclear Device?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/13/world/asia/cia-nuclear-device-himalayas-nanda-devi...
1•Wonnk13•51m ago•1 comments