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February 28, 2006
King.com goes from cold to hot
Over at sister site the alarm:clock we are saying it is good to be King.com as the firm reports quick growth with casual gaming small-stakes betting.
We’ve been following Midasplayer.com Ltd, the company behind King.com, for a couple of years now and note the changing fortune of founders Riccardo Zacconi (pictured here) and Toby Rowland.
The two had a hard time raising early stage financing in 2003, despite having connections to the rich and famous in London. We understand that Rowland's father was a high-profile entrepreneur and Zacconi had worked as an EIR at Benchmark Capital Europe.
What is more, they both had experience with consumer-oriented online services. During the bubble, Rowland had founded Clickmango, a high-profile dotcom flop. After that he backed and worked at udate.com, which was acquired by USA Interactive in late 2002 for $150M. Zacconi had been a VP of sales at udate when the two had the idea for the new business.
When we were researching an article about VC investment trends the other day, we had a look at Ricardo Zacconi’s OpenBC profile and had to smile at the number of investment bankers, executives at places like Google, Excite, Vodafone, as well as venture capitalists, in his contacts list.
About a year ago, several months before the firm raised €34M from Apax Partners, a private equity and late stage venture investor, and Index Venture, we asked the founders to send us some VC quotes circa 2003. Here is one:
What a cold, Internet start-up? Who gave you this number?”
And here is another one:
VC: Could you put £5m to work this year?’
Entrepreneur: No
VC: Do you know anyone who can?’
Toby Rowland, picture here, said some things at the time that fit in with what the a:c and others have been saying more recently about VCs being in a bind these days.
Overall, my feeling is that VC funds are so big now that they are forced to look for companies with existing cashflow, and huge opportunities. Of course, that puts them into competition w/ private equity who tend to be more aggressive about getting deals.
Read - VCs in a no-win bind
Read - It's Good To Be King.Com
Posted on February 28, 2006 07:08 AM | Posted to Online services | Venture Capital | Permalink
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