Building Bridges in the Global Startup Community

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Seedrs, the London-based crowd funding network with an international outlook, with investors and entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries using the platform, has partnered with a major Chinese venture capital (VC) firm for one of the largest international entrepreneurship competitions.

Seedrs Founder, Jeff Lynn, added: "IEIC [the China Innovation and Entrepreneurship International Competition] is building bridges amongst global startup communities and will be an invaluable experience to ambitious young business founders.

Applications for the IEIC are open until February 28, 2017. You can enter the competition here.

Read more.  Note:  Seedrs will be opening to American investors shortly.

What Happens When International Expansion is High On a List?

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You can start out a year by saying "We will develop the absolute best social media campaign," or you can declare, "International expansion will be our number one priority this year."  Whatever you say ends up guiding your directives throughout the year.

In this case, Onfido, a London-based background-checking startup established by three Oxford graduates, has put international expansion high on their list of strategic priorities for 2015.

Onfido's technology allows companies to carry out remote background checks and is used by everyone from Airbnb rival Onefinestay to on-demand cleaning business Handy.

Ed Ungar, Google's former head of channel partnerships in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, has been named COO of Onfido.

Read more:  Onfido hires Google's Ed Ungar to lead expansion