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Should be a great new initiative for start-ups in the UK and EU.
I wish I was 15 years younger and didn't have a wife, mortgage and child.

Actually that's not true at all. What I really mean is I wish this existed 15 years ago.

Fantastic news! Schemes like this drive our economy and cultivate success in so many ways. Really looking forward to supporting Springboard.
Looking forward to it
feelin the love. i feel very privileged to be working with some exceptionally talented and generous mentors. so looking forward to 2011.
They mention "the programme last year", but could not find who are the alumni? & congrats on the intiative!
One of the alumni companies was PagerDuty, who went on to get YC funding in the last (YC S10) class.
It's exciting stuff! I'm psyched to be one of next year's mentors.
Is the site down for anyone else?
Was for a while - back up now, it seems
I think this could be interesting, RedGate who are behind SpringBoard seem to be very good at identifying talent.

I've met quite a few of the startups they've helped before (pre-incubator stage they used to give interesting startups office space) and they're all very talented people, I believe at least 5 of the guys they've worked with in the past have since gone through YC as well.

Globally I think TechStars is the only other seed accelerator that has managed to successfully pull off the YC model, but I suspect if anyone else can do it, it's going to be the SpringBoard guys.

(Especially given that increasing difficulty of getting US Visas, SpringBoard might have a significant advantage in appealing to EU startups)

I'd be tempted to apply to them myself if I wasn't a sole founder :-)

You should just apply, if you're talented enough I'm sure they'd accept you. I doubt they have an arbitrary if founder = 1 then reject.
From their FAQ:

Will you accept single founder teams? Highly improbable, the programme is incredibly intensive. We will actively encourage you to find someone to work with.