It takes a special group of people to judge a startup pitch competition. They need to be experienced, knowledgeable about startups, and preferably have access to resources that startups need most (money and connections).

We’ve selected four judges who will get RAW with Tech All Stars. Some are VCs with a lot of experience with the European startup community. We have a media presence from The Next Web and the Chairman of the Judges is from Silicon Valley Bank – who will soon be expanding their operations in the UK.

Tech All Stars RAW startup pitch competition will start on June 20th at 2:30pm in the Tech All Stars room. Be there!

Alex McCracken

Director at Silicon Valley Bank UK

Alex is the Chairman of the Tech All Stars Judges Panel and he has 18 years of experience financing technology companies and helping them to grow. His specialties include financing for technology companies and new business ventures, business strategy and business development, and turnarounds of underperforming companies.

Ivan Farneti

Partner at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures

Ivan has over 15 years of experience in investing in early stage technology companies in Europe and US. He offers active support to entrepreneurs and managers building companies from the ground up. Ivan also specializes in the marketing positioning and strategy, commercial business development, M&A and financing negotiations. Ivan has corporate governance experience as a board member in both in the US, UK and continental European boards.

Martin Bryant

Managing Editor at The Next Web

Martin is Managing Editor at The Next Web – a leading online publication covering Internet Technology, business, and culture. Martin is a technology journalist with a particular interest in European startups, apps and the constant evolution of digital media.

Charles Grimsdale

Partner at Eden Ventures

Charles is a co-founder and Partner of Eden Ventures. Charles brings his domain knowledge of digital media as well as operational management skills having founded and run two successful software startups to the judges panel. At Eden he is responsible for investments in Secerno (www.secerno.com), Exabre (www.exabre.com), Mobyko (www.mobyko.com), blinkBox (www.blinkbox.com) and We7 (www.we7.com).

Who is going to get a Term Sheet beat-down? Will the entrepreneur and his legal counsel come out on top? Or will the Venture Capitalist get the upper hand?

Often the outcome of the Term Sheet negotiation depends on how savvy the entrepreneur and their counsel are. You have to remember that a good Venture Capitalist negotiates term sheets for a living and may have done 50 or more of these negotiations. The VC has seen it all and knows all the tricks of the trade – its hard to get something past them.

The entrepreneur can gain an upper hand if they are an experienced entrepreneur or have a really strong startup and bargaining power. Having other VCs interested in your startup never hurts either. Strong counsel is essential too.

We have assembled an especially strong cast for the upcoming LeWeb and Tech All Stars Term Sheet Battle. It promises to be a true battle of wits and experience. Check out their profiles here :  http://techallstars.eu/term_sheet_battle.html

If you’d like to experience a Term Sheet Battle, its going down June 20th at 2:30pm in the Tech All Stars room of LeWeb. We have limited seating (and we’re running out quickly), so reserve your spot here today.

This is a guest posting by the Tech All Stars premier sponsor Microsoft BizSpark. Ruud de Jonge is the Director Technical Audience Evangelism & Startups, Western Europe, Microsoft BizSpark.

Microsoft BizSpark is delighted to announce that it is the premier sponsor for the inaugural Tech All Stars in Europe, organised with the European Commission this month.  Why are we doing it?  Because we love opportunities like this to help promote some of the amazing work that start-ups within the BizSpark program are doing in the region.  And of course, I admit that it’s also a great chance to promote the benefits of BizSpark to start-ups (more on that later).

The Tech All Stars event comes hot on the heels of our own BizSpark European Summit, where we selected the crème de la crème of our 16,000+ start-ups in the region and I’m delighted that some of them will also be taking part at the Tech All Stars ‘RAW’ pitch competition on June 20^th.  They include France’s Commerce Guys (winner of this year’s BizSpark European Summit, with a very innovative Drupal-meets-cloud solution suite) and Roozz, a Copenhagen-based cloud company that in only 48 hours, converts software to run online in any browser, without users needing to downloading anything.

If our own events are any indication, the judges on June 20^th are going to find the selection process pretty tough.  Myself and my colleagues talk to start-ups pretty much every day of the year and we continue to be awed by the incredible calibre out there: not just great tech ideas, but ground-breaking and disruptive business models.  These start-ups are the hero companies of the future.

So what is BizSpark?  I’ll keep it brief.  Launched in 2008, the program gives qualifying start-ups free technology (no licence fees and includes access to the Windows Azure cloud platform), support (access to our tech guys, but also business advice, mentoring, useful introductions) and visibility.  At the very least, this includes information about a start-up on our website, but also includes invitations to events like these.

We also work closely with partners all over the world to create great offers and opportunities.  Tech All Stars is already an important strategic partner for Microsoft in the US, so being the premier sponsor for this exciting new event is a natural evolution of that.  And, it shows that both organisations believe that entrepreneurs in Europe not only have a great future, but that we need to pull together to  help them have the best possible chance.

Ruud de Jonge

Director Technical Audience Evangelism & Startups, Western Europe, Microsoft