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January 31, 2006
France's DxO Technolgies' pictures tell its story
Apax Partners has led a $10M expansion round for Paris-based DxO Technologies, a company that develops software to enhance, test, and correct the quality of digital images. DxO has a couple of product lines: software packages for professional and hobbyist photographers. An embedded system used in chips sold by Texas Instrument to digital camera manufacturers. And software to enhance images produced by the cheaper kind of optics used in mobilephone cameras.
It it seems that its the latter two product lines that attracted Apax.
“DxO Labs’ core technology consists in mathematically modeling major optics and sensors faults in order to correct them at a software level. This approach enables a reduced bill of materials, while obtaining previously unachievable performance. We believe that this new approach has the capacity to completely revolutionize the digital imaging markets,” explains Eddie Misrahi, Partner at Apax Partners France. “Tomorrow’s cameraphones or still or video cameras will be cheaper and lighter, while producing perfect image quality. It will take imaging to another level.”
DxO was founded by the same team that founded Vision IQ, a venture-backed software company whose technology was used in public swimming pools to detect suspicious non-movement, as in drowning. It seems to still be in business but most of its management are now at DxO.
Jerome Meniere, CEO and co-founder of DxO, left French private equity firm, LBO Europe, to form Vision IQ in 1995. He is an engineer, educated at the Ecole Centrale de Paris, with a business degree from Stanford University and Institute d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. CFO, Erick Poule is on his third venture with DxO. He was a founder of Vision IQ and before that he co-founded Effix, a real-time software supplier which was acquired by Reuters in 1993.
DxO's textual description on its web-site is heavy-going but example before and after shots make its story clearer.
Read - DxO announces $10 million financing for expansion
Posted at 04:12 PM | Posted to Digital imaging | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Startups like logo on laptop ads
Over at CNET there is a story about the popularity of colorful laptop covers and vinyl “skins” that enable users to boldly brandish their name and logo, instead of Sony's or Dell's.
The skins are popular with European startups running low-budget market campaigns, it seems.
Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, is promoting his latest startup, vpod.tv whenever he flips open his laptop.
As does someone from Martin Varsavsky’s latest startup, FON, an alternative telco.
They turn to Aspoke.com, an Ireland-based vendor of laptop covers. It was launched by Antoin O Lachtnain, an IT and telecoms consultant whose company is called Digital Messenger. It is not high-tech and there is lots of competition in the customize-my-gadget market, but Aspoke is interesting because of its customers.
Read - Yearning for color on laptops
Posted at 08:06 AM | Posted to Hardware | TrackBack | Permalink
Apax homerun on Q-Cells IPO
Apax Partners says to Index Ventures, my homerun is bigger than yours. Not to be outdone by Index Ventures and its Skype exit, Apax Partners is putting it out to the press that its IPO of Q-Cells, a solar cell manufacturer, gave it a bigger return than the one Skype delivered on a trade sale to eBay.
Apax, which does buyout and late stage venture investing, told The Independent newspaper in the UK that it made a 27X multiple after holding the investment for a mere 22 months.
Apax's return, Euro 280M (£190M) after costs and net of its original investment, is the largest single capital gain made by a European venture capital firm since the dot.com boom. It beats the $300m (£170M) return Index Ventures made on the $4.1bn sale of Skype to eBay in September.
The article tells us a couple of things.
1) The German IPO market is recovering from its post-bubble near-death experience. (Last year 14 IPOs took place in Germany, two more than took place over the entire three year period before. )
2) The amount that Index Ventures made selling its Skype share was $300M.
3) And that solar energy stocks are hot in Germany.
Solar energy shares are valued highly indeed, although it should be noted that the best post-IPO performance in Germany last year was turned in by Interhyp, an online vendor of mortgages. The second and third best post-IPO performance was turned in by by two solar energy concerns: Conergy and Q-Cells. Another solar energy stock, Solarworld, publicly traded since 1999, saw its share price triple last year.
These kinds of exits for VCs are going to give them a bit more confidence to invest, even in earlier stage ventures. It is worth noting that Interhyp was backed by Hamburg-based Earlybird Ventures which first invested in 1999, with 3i joining in a later round. We hear that the IPO gave 3i Group a 9X return so far, and it still has some stock it can sell at the higher post-IPO price.
Q-Cells has a nice, clean factory for nice, clean energy
Read - Q-Cells sale makes €280m for Apax as tech rises again
Posted at 06:05 AM | Posted to IPO | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 30, 2006
Adviva clicks Kennet for $8M
Kennet Venture Partners has invested $8 million in Adviva Media Ltd, a UK-based pay-per-click ad serving company. It’s Adviva’s first round of venture financing since being established in 2000 and the capital is to be used for expanding into France and Germany. It competes with the likes of Falk eSolutions in Germany, which is soon to sell some stock in an IPO on the lightly regulated Entry Standard market in Germany, and the larger US-based companies such as Valueclick, Fastclick, and Doubleclick. Adviva claims 500 million ads serverd per month and it also has a new "profiling" service (ad-network-speak for planting cookies that track browsers' movements).
Read - New and improved ... ad network (the alarmclock)
Posted at 02:10 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Intel still looking for the perfect EUV light source
Intel Capital invested an undisclosed amount in XTREME technologies GmbH, based in Göttingen, Germany to “accelerate” development of its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources, which go into chip manufacturing equipment (lithography tools).
According to several articles in the EE Times over the past year or two, Intel needs beta EUV lithography tools soon if it wants to keep to its roadmap for next generation chip sizes.
XTREME technologies was founded in 2001 and is a spinoff of Jenoptik AG (a laser and microelectronics manufacturer and once the primary laser producer for the former Soviet bloc), which shares ownership of the startup with Japan’s Ushio.
Xtreme Technologies demonstrates that the smaller the integrated circuits, the bigger the laser
Intel is backing a number of startups in the EUV market. In 2004 it invested in Cymer (San Diego), which also makes EUV light sources and in 2005 it invested in Italy’s Media Lario, which makes the micro-mirrors required to focus the light beams.
There are a few others in the race that Intel Capital has not invested in yet: Japan's Gigaphoton Corp (also partly owned by Ushio), Energetiq Technology based in Woburn, MA and Philips Xtreme UV GmbH in Aachen, Germany
Posted at 07:57 AM | Posted to Semiconductors | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 29, 2006
Germany's it-werke And Pay By Thumb
San Francisco-based biometrics start-up Pay By Touch has tapped deep-pocketed hedge funds to finance its rollup of smaller rivals and add on the bits of technology it doesn’t have. If it looks to Europe for acquisitions, it won't exactly have a lot of choice. There is only one company on our radar that is making a go of fingerprint-based payments, it-werke, based in Lahr, Germany, located near the Swiss and French borders.
Founded in 2000 it-werke developed its fingerprint scanning technology initially to authenticate online payments, but found that adoption was faster amoung business that wanted to use it for access to buildings and enterprise networks. It recently began to tap the German retail market.
Although the idea of storing your fingerprint anywhere scares some people, we like the concept: no PIN code to remember, no card to worry about losing. Besides, it-werke says its scanning method is not based on the same one used to legally identify a person, it is based on comparing 24 points on the surface of the finger that are unique to an individual.
Either it-werke supplies all employees with the same make and model of vehicle, or this photo was taken in a used car lot.
Read -SAN FRANCISCO, CA Pay By Touch Has Raised More Than $60M in Series C (Biometrics)
Posted at 08:42 AM | Posted to Biometrics | TrackBack | Permalink
Europe VC tech investment plunges in 4Q05
Where are Europe’s VCs? Are they on the road trying to sell vintage 1999 portfolio firms? One thing they are not doing is announcing new investments. VC activity plunged in the fourth quarter of 2005 and so far 2006 has been very slow, particularly in early stage tech investement.
The latest figures for Q4 2005 published in the Calibre One Index (a Trans-Atlantic tech sector executive search firm that always gets the quarterly VC investment figures out before the commercial data providers, such as Dow Jones VentureOne) show a sharp drop in activity. Only $441M was invested in technology in Q4 2005, the lowest quarterly figure in the past two years, even lower than the previous low of $522M in Q4 2004.
The figure contrasts sharply with the previous quarter, which was a 2-year high at $748M in tech investment deployed. "It was a weak end to what was a phenomenal year for tech investment in Europe," said Calibre One.
Did the VCs blow all their cash in the third quarter? Are they drowning their sorrows at being the least favored alt asset class (according to Coller Capital’s latest survey of limited partners) in the bars of HabboHotel? We will try to find the answer.
Read – Calibre One Index
Read – Coller Capital Barometer
Posted at 08:03 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 27, 2006
MarketXS hires its i-banker as CEO
BusinessWeek is profiling a few tech companies in a cover story about firms creating the most jobs in Europe in the shortest time. One of the companies is venture-backed MarketXS, a Dutch application service provider that enables a Web face for financial news and data feeds. The a:c euro notes that the firm's founder moved over to let his investment banker run the company.
In December, MarketXS announced that Jan De Roeck, a former ABN AMRO corporate finance advisor, was appointed CEO in December. He brokered acquisitions and capital raising for MarketXS, as well as advising on other deals in the niche of the financial services sector in which MarketXS operatres.
We think the company, could be planning further acquisitions, or aiming to become a target itself. By putting De Roeck at the helm, it would be ensuring an “alignment of interest” for its chief negotiator.
Online newspapers and banks use MarketXS to webify financial data feeds
Read - MarketXS profile (BusinessWeek)
Posted at 09:41 AM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
January 26, 2006
Edgeware versus Broadbus
versus 
Boxborough, Mass-based Broadbus has a new rival in the form of Stockholm-based Edgeware AB, a developer of video servers for broadband networks, which has just raised 25 million SEK ($ 3 mln) from Swedish early stage investor Creandum.
Both are developing video servers to deliver video-on-demand over cable and telephone networks to broadband Internet subscribers. Their main point of differentiation is the storage technology used. All video servers contain some kind of storage, either a hard drive or solid state memory chips.
These two both use memory chips. Edgeware uses NAND (Flash) and Broadbus uses DRAM. According Joachim Roos, CEO and co-founder of Edgeware, NAND is cheaper and the price “erosion” is faster than DRAM, which means his costs are lower.
Broadbus was founded in 1999 and has raised about 20 times more capital. It has a prototype and is apparently running trials with telcos and cable TV operators.
Edgeware was founded in 2004, was bootstrapped until now, and is about 8 months away from running trials with telcos and cableTV operators.
The three founders of Edgeware hail from Xelerated (Roos was a co-founder and still has shares in the company), a metro Ethernet networking equipment maker, which received a large round of VC from Accel and Amadeus last year. This is the third venture the three have worked together on. Roos says they are not rich yet.
So we are thinking these hungry Swedish entrepreneurs with their fortunes yet to made, who have worked with telcos before and know about the long sales cycles and grueling trials, and who have demonstrated that they are capital efficient, just might give Broadbus a run for its money.
UPDATE: Broadbus makes solid state VOD strides
Posted at 04:39 PM | Posted to Hardware | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Mobile messaging tech firm draws private equity
Things are looking up in the technology sector as European buyout funds, which pretty much steered clear of the sector over the past few years, return. Either that or the fierce competition in less risky sectors is driving prices into the nosebleed area, making technology deals look more attractive.
Either way, Advent International has just taken a stake in Airwide Solutions, a vendor of text messaging servers, as well as cellular phone security software. The deal comes one week after Metris, a measurement systems company, announced raising Euro 30 mln to acquire three smaller rivals with GIMV, a Dutch private equity firm leading the round.
Airwide, which was founded in 2004 through the merger of Schlumberger's Messaging Solutions based in the UK and Taral Networks, a North American startup, mentioned plans to pursue "strategic opportunities" with some of the $25 mln it raised. The latter is VC-speak for making acquisitions.
Our moles say that doing a rollup won't be easy. The mobile messaging equipment segment is ripe for consolidation, comprised as it is of many smallish companies that often have only a single product. Others that have tried say the challenge is convincing business owners to give up control of their small businesses.
It is unusual for an investor like Advent not to take a controlling interest. For this investment, it shared the deal with Airwide's four earlier investors. More usual is the kind of deal it did late last year when it acquired a majority of Aircom, also active in the cellular network market, but more focused on network planning and management. Advent said itself that Aircom is a "platform" company, which means it will be adding to it through acquisitions to build a larger company.
Read - Airwide financing
Posted at 12:03 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Infineon spinoff's RFID software raises first round
Austria’s RFiT Solutions is one of several startups to emerge as a result of Infineon’s ongoing restructuring, as the chipmaker sheds most of its futurific activities. (Others to emerge include biometric passport solution provider, Safe-ID, backed by Wellington Capital and Atlas Venture, chip-design company, OneSpin Solutions GmbH, backed by Apax, and wearable computing startup, Interactive Wear AG.)
RFiT was founded via a managment buyout last June, a deal that included rights to the products and a customer demo and verification site located in Graz. It has just raised Euro 4 mln from local venture firm PONTIS Venture Partners and France’s Truffle Venture.
Founders Dominik Berger and Alexander Gauby, were responsible for marketing, while Matthias Weitlaner, was the product manager for the business while it was inside Infineon. They hope to convince systems integrators to adopt RFiT's software and its approach to RFID implementation.
Given their experience, plus the customer contacts they bring from their time at Infineon, we’d say the team is in a good position to grow the business. Although they might have to shed that demo site, or get some of its suppliers to co-fund it. That’s the kind of luxury only big companies can afford.
If RFiT expands rapidly, it will probably have to bring in larger, more experienced investors, or find a strategic partner among one the big systems houses that want a piece of the RFID market, like CapGemini or AtosOrigin. Its VC backers are both quite young themselves. Truffle Venture says it is specialized in corporate spinoffs. True, but its activity has mainly been in the biotech and life science sector in France. Plus the partnership was founded only in 2002. It's a similar story for Pontis – it is not only young, it is small, with about $35 million in capital.
Combining new VC partnerships with new companies is something we saw a lot of during the bubble years with often less than spectacular results.
Lawyers can find their files faster with RFID so they will have more available time to bill clients
RFiT's software manages the hardware (the tags, readers etc) and the data that the devices output. They are calling it RFID “edgeware”.
Read - RFiT funding (Pontis Venture)
Posted at 08:48 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 25, 2006
Skysails = Ships + Air Filled Kite - Oil prices
An alternative energy startup of the unusual sort, Skysails, has raised Euro 8.5 mln from a shipping sector financier on the back of winning its first customer. SkySails, based in Hamburg, sells a towing kite filled with compressed air, as well as the accompanying software and hardware to optimize shipping routes with wind paths. The idea is that diesel-powered ships can use wind power to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and save costs. The four year old company is targeting merchant and passenger vessels, any of which it says can be equipped or retrofitted with the SkySails system.
It is not exactly high tech but we think it is interesting that it got this far. The high price of oil is turning into a boon for alt energy startups.
SkySails, based in Hamburg, the largest shipping port in Germany and eight busiest port in the world, hopes shipowners will use its gear to reduce fuel costs.
Read - Bremer Reederei Beluga Shipping GmbH kauft erstes SkySails-System (Innovations Report - in German)
Posted at 02:57 PM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
Iqua= Bluetooth headsets + Former Nokians + Non-Borg designs
If you’re tired of looking like a Borg when sporting a mobilephone headset, then the colorful and small ones from Iqua will be of interest. At least that is what Eqvitec, a major Scandinavian private equity firm, which just invested Euro 2 mln in the startup's first financing round is hoping.
Iqua Ltd was founded in 2004 by a team of marketing managers that left their comfy cubicles at mobilephone manufacturer Nokia to start the company. It was the management team’s experience that attracted the capital. That and the fact that Bluetooth chipsets are becoming standard in cellphones. The theory goes is that it will create “vast market” opportunity for companies selling wireless headset, handsfree phones, and other accessories.
“They’ve got some new concepts and innovative designs that we think will be popular,” Jukka Jokinen, Investment Director, Eqvitec Partners told the a:c euro.
Its Bluetooth-enabled accessories have a Scandinavian design vibe going for them.
It looks like Nokia may have dropped the ball on growing its accessory business as co-founder and CEO, Juha Reima, was the vice president of accessories at Nokia Mobile Phones and worked there since 1988. Another founder, Jouko Häyrynen, Iqua director of business development, also worked at Nokia for two decades before leaving to act as a business angel and startup consultant and then found Iqua.
The two have managed to fill the startup's key management positions by recruiting from their former employer.
But Iqua enters a competitive market. Its products will compete against those from the major brandname phone-makers, as well as Plantronics and Jabra, another young company that is part of the Danish-based technology group, GN Great Nordic. It will be hard to keep ahead of deep pocketed competitors.
Having said that, often the teams that spin out of these European electronics giants create companies that exploit some good ideas that were languishing in the larger organization, and they appreciate in value rather quickly.
For example, this week Spirent acquired five year old SwissQual for $70 mln this week, whose founding team left Swiss telco equipment manufacturer Ascom to bootstrap the company to profitability.
And there was Microcell, an original development manufacturer created by a large team of ex-Nokians, which was acquired by Flextronics for USD200 mln (it paid $80 mln in cash and assumed $120 mln in debt with the purchase).
We are sure these deals did not go un-noticed by Iqua’s investors.
Iqua is trying to sell smart badge gear to companies for office workers. It is a combo-device that include ID badge, headphone, and wireless access to several phones. It can handle 40 hours of talk time.
Read- Iqua raises first round (Eqvitec)
Posted at 01:19 PM | Posted to Peripherals | Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Frogster to IP0 on German junior market
PC games distributor and publisher, Frogster Interactive Pictures AG, aims to float on Germany’s lightly regulated Entry Standard stock exchange. It was founded in Berlin in April 2005 by Christoph Gerlinger to acquire Pointsoft Germany GmbH, a five year old publisher and distributor of computer and video games, whose French parent company had gone into insolvency.It plans to sell 325,000 shares. No price yet. But typically IPOs on the Entry Standard raise between Euro 5 mln and 10 mln in new capital.
Gerlinger's name will be familiar if you've followed tech and software IPOs in Germany as he was CFO of CDV-Software-Entertainment, a games developer, when it public in 2001. At the time CDV was best known for a pornographic adventure game called Lula Wet Attack. It also published Sudden Strike and Cossacks titles. In the meantime he was interim country manager Germany at Infogrames Entertainment. Prior to CDV he worked at Psygnosis Deutschland, also a games publisher.
With 100 PC games of various types and price points, Frogster claims to be market leader in its category in Germany and employs 20.
Frogster sells packaged CD games via retail channels but also runs several Internet download sites
Read Frogster plans IPO (In German by Reuters)
Posted at 09:42 AM | Posted to IPO | TrackBack | Permalink
January 24, 2006
Taatu launches HabboHotel clone
The success of the Habbo Hotel, an animated chat room or “virtual world”, developed by Finland’s Sulake Labs has not gone unnoticed by Europe’s enterprising founder community. The clones are a-coming.
The most recent is Taatu, a Belgium-based venture. Taatu raised capital from SF Investments and two business angels, Philippe Moitroux (founded and sold venture-backed ITMasters to BMC) and Maurice Olivier (an investment adviser who was an exec at Cambridge Technology Partners when it was acquired by Novell).
In the US, the highest profile clone is Second Life, which shares one of the same backers as Sulake Labs, Benchmark Capital.
They all target teens and people that spend a lot of time online. The business model is pretty much the same too: get users to spend real money to buy tokens that can only be used inside the chatroom to pay for virtual things. When I interviewed the founder of Sulake Labs, he told me that it is a business with good margins.
Yes, that would be what be right: users pay real money for virtual money.
According to Rodrigo (a Paris-based tech-sector blogger), Taatu has 30,000 new users signed up in the past 4 weeks, mainly in Belgium, France and The Netherlands. It apparently plans to expand into Anglo-Saxon countries in 2006. It offers a few more features than Habbo, such as a cinema where users can view film trailers, and seems to have some billboard ads like in the real world, but the idea and look is the same.
These companies are being built to be acquired by the likes of Yahoo, Liberty Media, IAC, or one of the other larger entertainment media companies looking to buy new business models and “audiences”.
Taatu screenshot
Read - Benchmark invests in Sulake Labs (The Deal)
Read - Just discovered another 3D world (Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz blog)
Posted at 09:08 AM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 21, 2006
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Posted at 04:33 PM | Posted to | Permalink
Online Tire Vendor Delticom Mulls IPO
Who would have thought that selling tires over the Internet could be a Euro 128M ($150M) a year business in Europe? Rainer Binder und Dr. Andreas Prüfer, the founders of Germany's Delticom, that's who. Both are former executives of tiremaker Continental.
The firm recently mandated two investment banks to explore an IPO and "other options" for expansion.
Over the past five years they built Europe's largest online tire sales company. Delticom launched in the US market in December after opening 56 online shops that operate in 25 countries.
The last time we talked to the CEO, he said that the business was “extremely profitable” and he believed that his profit margin is better than Amazon's.
Delticom has raised a mere Euro 3M from DVC Deutsche Venture Capital, of Munich, back in 2000. DVC now owns 10% of the company. About a year ago, Delticom relinquished another small percentage of shares to two German banks to boost "the number and diversity of shareholders", according to Pruefer.
An IPO on the German stock market is one possibility the firm is preparing for, but not the only one. Private equity investors could also provide the founders the kind of capital required. in Europe, buyout houses have been raising record amounts of capital and they are in fierce competition for assets in Germany.
We think it is quite possible that they would offer Delticom a better price for its equity to finance growth plans than the valuation it would get on the public market.
Besides selling tires online, Delticom sells autoparts and oil
Read - Delticom financial results 2005 (Presseportal in German only)
Posted at 09:46 AM | Posted to IPO | eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
3i Puts Its Mouth Where Its Money Is
A small news item in an IT trade magazine about 3i Group moving its European offices to a single Internet-Protocol (IP) network caught our attention last week. The report says the move will save 3i money but it also that the network makes easier to roll out new applications.
We know it has shares in a few startups that exploit the shift to IP-only communications. Does it use their products? If so, then it smacks of what the better Silicon Valley investors do. (See eating dog food link below). They adopt the technologies of portfolio firms and then talk about it (loudly), be it in blogs, at conferences, with other portfolio companies, or in the press.
So we sent an email to 3i inquiring if its 700 or so employees use portfolio company products. Its spokeswoman answered immediately with a phone call and a list.
Placeware: collaboration application for remote presentations (Acquired by Microsoft in 2003)
Reddot Solutions: content management system for the 3i web site (Acquired by Hummingbird in 2005)
Mindjet: brainstorming and planning software, MindManager. 3i say it uses it to map its venture capital portfolio. (Backed by 3i since 2001 moved HQ from Germany to US)
What about Vonage (the cash-burning wonder-company: wonder as in we wonder how it will deliver its backers a return on investment)? Sure enough she said that 3i has negotiated discounts for staff, if they want to use it.
Not bad. It jibes with some recent comments from entrepreneurs in the region about the quality of 3i as a partner. "Its network and willingness to share it with us was better than our experience with the VCs that everyone thinks of in that context," said the German founder of Webpay, the European version of PayPal, which recently sold a share of its equity exclusively to 3i to finance expansion.
There is no excuse for VCs not doing this kind of thing. If you sell email messaging software for mobilephones and the VC's Blackberry is still glued to his palm - for example - then you really have to wonder about the commitment to your company.
Mindjet screenshot showing how investors use it for due diligence.
See - Search results for eating own dogfood and VC (Google)
Read - Network cuts coms cost for 3i (itweek)
Posted at 07:00 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 16, 2006
Cambridge Broadband raises VC
Cambridge Broadband, a developer of fixed wireless telecommunication equipment, has raised a $9 mln internal round, in its fourth dip at the venture capital well. The capital will be used for R&D on its flagship product, which is used to connect cellular and Wimax base stations to backbone networks.
With this round, it has raised about $50 mln since founding just as the telecommunications market in Europe tanked. It tapped other markets, namely China. Last year it increased staff to 70, up from 50 in 2004.
Despite several rounds of venture funding, the founders are still leading the company. Prior to this venture, co-founder and CEO Peter Wharton led Adaptive Broadband, a spinoff from an Olivetti and Oracle Research Lab in Cambridge, UK in 1997. It was acquired by California Microwave, which then changed its name to Adaptive Broadband. That same group of 10 people left Adaptive some 15 months later to start Cambridge Broadband in 2000.
According to Pyramid Research, the market Cambridge Broadband targets is growing at about 25 percent a year which has attracted competition. When last we spoke to Cambridge Broadband it said its main rival is Alvarion Ltd., of Tel Aviv and Carlsbad, Calif., followed by San Jose-based Aperto Networks Inc.
Posted at 07:09 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Startups, VC funds, and pension funds' dumb money
In a report published by Investments and Pension Europe, the OECD tells Switzerland to lighten up restrictions on pension funds to enable them to invest in venture capital funds so that fledgling companies have easier access to capital.
The folks at the OECD obviously don’t read Daniel Primack’s Private Equity Week Wire.
They should. Primack has been reporting and opining on the meltdown of the private equity portfolio of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation pension fund.
Primack writes: "The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation probably is the dumbest of all dumb money, based on its recent actions regarding private equity disclosure."
For the uninitiated, dumb money is private equity code for public pension systems. This reputation was forged(A) Because public pension systems got into the game much later than did "smart money" groups like private universities, foundations, insurance companies, etc.; and
(B) Because public pension systems often feature understaffed and underpaid investment teams.
There you have it. That is what the pros think about pension funds and their chances to invest in this asset class.
Read - OECD in venture capital call for Swiss funds (IPE)
Posted at 07:22 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
January 10, 2006
Looking for the alarm:clock ?
alarm:clock (US site)
Posted at 06:58 AM | Posted to | Permalink
January 09, 2006
Meetic gets lol post-ipo
The lol in the title is the text messaging short form for "lots of love" and part of the name of a new mobile chat and dating service, called superLOL, launched this week by recently floated Meetic.
It is almost three months since Meetic went public on the Euronext stock exchange and the numbers are looking quite good. Its share price is up about 40 percent since and its market cap is slightly over half a billion euros (Euro 556,383,168 ).
Meetic is a founder-driven company, a type that seems to entice European investors these days (see Swiss Tech IPO post here), regardless of whether they are dotcoms or other types of tech companies.
We say founder-driven because the company raised a mere USD 8.7 million in private equity (not VC) money prior to going public and Marc Simonici (headshot here), the founder, retains a large stake post-IPO.
Posted at 06:37 AM | Posted to IPO | TrackBack | Permalink
VCs Get No Respect from Malik
This post cites the opinions of Switzerland’s very own Malik, Fredmund, that is, not the other well-known Malik, Om Malik.
The Austrian-born Malik is a uni professor and author who runs a 50-person strong consultancy in St Gallen. He is cited here because he provides some advice for startup managers in a podcast interview, published last week by VentureLab. He tells entrepreneurs to avoid VCs, a good tip in principle but something that would be hard for a chip startup or one trying to commercialize any kind of science-based innovation, and he also provides some good tips on marketing.
(Since the interview is in Swiss German your reporter translated some of it here.)
On VC in general: I used to think that venture capitalists – or whatever that masquerade of vanity calls itself now - were smart. I thought that they had vision, that they understood economics, that they had joy in taking risks, that they had the ability to gauge and analyze a business plan… But I have lost any modicum of respect I might have had for venture capitalists, when I think of the stupidity that they invested in...And they are not any smarter today, by the way. They do not think entrepreneurially and they are not investors.
On innovation: Innovation is all well and good but thrilling customers is better. It does not matter that venture capitalists, financial analysts, or journalists get excited about an idea and value it highly. What matters is getting customers excited.
On why marketing costs too much: Too many managers and management consultants promote the same strategies, which results in the same types of products. This means that marketing ends up costing a whole lot of money. It is certainly going to cost a lot to try to convince customers to buy the exact same product a competitor is offering.
Malik is consistent to say the least, which is a lot more than you can say for some folks that have commented on technology investment in the past eight years. He is saying today pretty much the same things he said back in 2001 the last time I quoted him.
Posted at 05:18 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Swiss Give iPod High-end Sound And A Luxury Look
Some startups are getting a hard time from Apple’s iPod trademark lawyers, but others are poised to grow on the back of iPod sales. Take G-Lab and its Geneva Sound System for example. It is a single cabinet speaker system for docking the iPod, promising to deliver an "incredibly broad audio sweet spot" for iPods, as well as CDs and radio.
A little research by your reporter reveals that G-Lab, they use Geneva Lab in press releases, is located in Teufen, Aargau.
It is a town nowhere near Geneva but who can blame the founders for choosing the name Geneva for their product - Teufen Sound? nah.
Switzerland probably has more than its fair share of high-end audio companies, where the focus is on precision engineering and quality components. They survive as niche players, targeting the high-end and are able to charge high prices for their gear.
For example, Orpheus Media, recently spun out of Anagram Technologies. Anagram is now concentrating on its growing chip business. Banexi Ventures of Paris recently invested in Anagram and there is sonicemotion, which designs flat panel sound systems.
Posted at 05:14 AM | Posted to Peripherals | TrackBack | Permalink
January 05, 2006
Firefox, Safari, and co. create opportunity for Trolltech spinoff
From time to time the alarm:clock euro profiles early stage and emerging startups. Today it is Froglogic getting the treatment. A team of software engineers parachuted out of Norway’s Trolltech, the quick-growing embedded software and GUI development tool company backed by Index Ventures, to create Froglogic back in 2003.
Froglogic develops and licenses automated debugging and testing tools. Initialy it targeted users of Trolltech’s software and C++ programs, which gave them enough customers and cash (it is self-funded) to extend the its product features to target a much bigger market, namely automated tools to test complex web applications and make sure that they work correctly in all of the popular browsers.
There is indeed a growing number of browser out there. A quick look at our SiteMeter log for the a:c euro shows the diversity of browsers in use these days: Firefox, two versions of Internet Explorer, Safari, two versions of Opera, and Konqueror.
Froglogic, not to be confused with the German PC games publisher Frogster Interactive that is poised to float on the Entry Standard stock exchange in Frankfurt, has formidable competition in the form of Mercury and Rational.
CEO and co-founder Reginald Stadlbauer believes that the the startup cab compete given its cross-browser testing edge. He told the a:c euro that despite the existence of web standards, different browsers behave very differently, especially when it comes to the more complex and interactive web applications.
“We test with the same test script on different browsers and that's the niche we want to use to enter the market,” said Stadlbauer.
We think that the founders are onto a good thing. Judging by its list of customers, there is demand for its tools with the likes of Reuters and Siemens buying licenses, as well as electronic design automation (EDA) folks at Xilinx, Synopsys, and Gradient, and business software developers,such as Language Weaver and Selden Systems.
It targets a niche market today but web services are taking off and so are the number of browsers on the Net, so it just might have a chance to build a business with international appeal based on its newest product.
We are however a bit concerned about the company naming trend we are seeing in Europe. Is it a Shrek effect? Logical frogs, technical trolls, at least the monikers make it easy find them in Google. What is more, the names seem to reflect a certain self-effacing humor. At Froglogic and Trolltech amusing-software-demo is not an oxymoron.
Read- Trolltech’s Cute Product Launch
View the demo of Froglogic’s first product with funky sound-track
Posted at 09:00 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
January 01, 2006
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