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June 30, 2006
Ohnemus' Asset4 Taps Goldman Sachs As Strategic Partner
Yesterday Zug-based Asset4, an extra- financial data provider, announced it tapped Goldman Sachs to help sell its platform to the investment bank's clients and as a minority investor in an ongoning financing round.
Financial data services are on the edge of our scope but this is one of our Where Are They Now posts.
Asset4 was co-founded founded by Peter Ohnemus (right), one of Europe's famous founders from the bubble era. In the mid-nineties he co-founded The Fantastic Corporation, a Swiss software company that wanted to enable broadband content delivery from creator to customer.
It was backed by big name investors, had a successful float on Germany's now defunct Neuer Markt in 1999, and proceeded to achieve a market cap of of over $3B. Fantastic's sales never took off as expected, losses grew, and when the bubble burst, the stock plummeted accordingly.
Ohnemus, who was 35 then, left shortly after the IPO and has been an active business angel in the region until starting up Asset4 last year.
Its main product takes extra-financial data (such as environmental compliance, social, sustainability, and corporate governance information) and uses it to rate publicly-traded companies.
Asset4 sales pitch is based on the conviction that corporate governance practices are among the most important non-financial factors that have a direct impact on a company’s value over the long term. This chart is from one of its recent presentations.
The a:c euro visited Asset4 about a year ago and at that time its early investors and founders had invested about SFr8.5M for the startup phase.
Read - ASSET4 Enters into a Strategic Relationship with Goldman Sachs (businesswire)
Posted at 06:40 AM | Posted to Where are they now | TrackBack | Permalink
June 29, 2006
Brandalley Aims For Breakeven This Year
Reuters is reporting that Brandalley expects to hit breakeven this year, forecasting sales of 5 million to 7 million euros ($6-9 million).
Banexi Ventures-backed Brandalley is a French clone of Overstock, that sells discounted clothing and accessories from top tier brands, but also many local and less expensive European labels. It only launched a year ago in France and more recently in the UK..
Proving Designer Swimwear Can Be As Ugly As No Name Labels: Orange Kenzo Swim Trunks
Read- French luxury website sees breakeven this year(iTnews.com.au)
Posted at 06:58 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
June 28, 2006
Alfresco's Bathroom Positioning And Low-Budget Marketing Success
We've written about it before, how European founders are boasting about their lean R&D and low cash-burn marketing efforts, here is another example.
The management at Alfresco, an open source document management software company whose founders hail from big name software firms that spent lavishly on such efforts, seem to be having fun with taking a very different marketing approach this time around.
Alfresco's Booth At A Recent Trade Show Has A Retro Look - Reminds Us Of School Science Fairs And Yet It Pulled Traffic.
The secret apparently was being located near the public restrooms.
At the Expo, our booth has to have got to win an award -- for least pretentious and best home construction project. Compared to the multi-million dollar monstrosities of EMC, IBM, Filenet, Kodak, Xerox, etc., I think we only spent a couple of hundred dollars on it. At least you know that our money is going on product rather than fancy marketing. But because we were near the bathrooms, we got pretty good traffic. We got some fantastic leads and keen interest from our attendance.
If this is really a trend, how long until we're feeling nostalgia for the booth babes, the slick suits, the free beer, the blaring audio/video displays, and arm-breaking bags of freebies?
Read - Last Week at AIIM and Java One (John Newton's blog)
Posted at 07:28 PM | Posted to Software | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Fuel Cell Startup Pemeas Raises Internal Round
German fuel cells startup, Pemeas, has has raised € 6M in an internal round, according to FuelCellWorks. The report says that the capital will be used to support market development in the area of portable electronics, back-up power and stationary fuel cell systems.
Pemeas says it is the only commercial supplier of a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) that can be operated at temperature between 120°C and 200 °C.
The MEA is used inside polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Founded just two years ago as a spinoff of Hoechst Chemical Group, the firm has raised €26M to date.
Read -PEMEAS raises € 6 million to support continued growth in the fuel cell market (FuelCellWorks)
Posted at 03:37 PM | Posted to Alternative Energy | News And Updates | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Austrian RFID Firm Raising $15M
Austria's Identec Solutions, which makes RFID-based tracking and tracing solutions, is raising another $15M in a deal led by RFID Invest AG of Lichtenstein. It is to use the capital for investing in R&D efforts in the area of system development, standardization, and global markets.
It also wants to invest in new applications for its long range RFID gear, such as the one undertaken with Boeing and FedEx, which it says involved equipping MD-10 freight aircraft with active RFID tags to track the longevity and manage parts inventories. Until now, Identec has mainly been involved in vehicle tracking and container tracking projects.
Read - RFID Provider IDENTEC SOLUTIONS Secures Financing Package (press release)
Posted at 03:04 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
US VC Makes The Case For London And Toronto
In a guest column in PE Week Wire, Charley Lax, managing general partner of GrandBanks Capital, an early stage VC writes (with a bit of irony) that London's AIM and Toronto's TSE may be a way to get around the issues with Nasdaq and tech IPOs.
On his firm's website, Lax describes himself as a retired big-wall climber, now an enthusiastic but challenged golfer ... and an internationally recognized cigar aficionado
It is the latter that holds the VC back from wholeheartedly supporting London and Toronto as the places to float. Both cities have bylaws about no-smoking in public places.
With the Nasdaq looking less and less open to venture-backed companies, investors can make congressional leaders sit up by exploring liquidity options outside of our borders, such as the London AIM Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange or the Japanese markets. If we threaten to take our money and our companies away from our native soil, then will Washington react? ... SOX has effectively killed the classic U.S. technology IPO. Without a viable U.S. IPO market, our emerging growth technology companies are severely disadvantaged particularly against the growing competition from India and China. Top acquirers like Cisco, Microsoft, EMC and Symantec all smell the decline of the public market even through my heavy cigar smoke, and do not offer the IPO valuation premiums that we usually seek when pursuing M&A. This results in our portfolio companies suffering from a decline in exit valuations. These acquirers need to recognize that we do indeed have public market options and London’s AIM is among those paths that we are pursuing.
We are not so sure that London or Toronto can offer a better exit opportunity for US technology firms, but we do know that those no-smoking bylaws should not be too much of a deterrent. They are adhered to most strongly in the tourist areas. And we're sure London's investment bankers will know where Mr Lax can enjoy his Monte Cristo in peace.
Read - Guest Column (PE Week Wire)
Posted at 01:11 PM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
June 27, 2006
US Giants Buy Two Euro Photo Software Startups in Past 2 Days
Microsoft has bought the London's iView Multimedia. The purchase brings both consumer and professional-level digital media asset management products to Microsoft, products that could position Microsoft to more closely compete with Apple's iLife, and Google's Picasa as well as Adobe.
iView sells software for Mac and Windows and all are centered around the management and viewing of digital image, sound, and movie libraries. Yesterday, we reported that Adobe had bought an iView competitor - Denmark's Pixmantec.
Posted at 10:37 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
alarm:clock euro Venture Quiz
Do you know European venture industry past and present? If so, read on.
Because news is slow today, we have a quiz question for you: What was the name of the firm or fund that made the first VC investment in an open source software startup company based in Europe?
Don't cheat and use the VentureSource database. And here's a hint, it is not Index Ventures.
If you know the answer or want to guess the name of the firm and the startup, just click that Contact Us link to the right and fire off an email. The first to send the correct answer gets a random gift from one of our swag bags
... Today it's a brand new Orange 4-slot USB hub.
Posted at 02:50 PM | Posted to Open Source Software | TrackBack | Permalink
Netvibes Founder Says Mainstream Adoption Up, Still No Biz Model
CNET has an interview with Tariq Krim, founder of personal "homepage" software firm, Netvibes, at Supernova a Silicon Valley confab.
Points he makes: Netvibes interface is to Web 2.0 what the MAC graphical user interface was to computing (ie. it opened up the computer to a whole new user group: graphic artists and designers). And so it is that Netvibes opens up RSS, blogs, and other Web 2.0 apps to mainstream Internet users - not just geeks anymore.
Netvibes has 4M users now, half are in the US, and the rest are distributed globally. He's still looking for a business model. Update: He actually said that he's still looking for the "killer" business model.
View - Netvibes corrals your digital world (cnet)
Posted at 10:09 AM | Posted to Early stage | Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed Norkom Floats
Norkom Technologies floated on the Dublin (IEX) and London (AIM) exchanges this week, achieving a market cap of $126M and raising $26.4M, according to Finextra. The profitable company develops anti-fraud and anti-money launder software for used by banks and insurance companies.
New capital will be used for acquisitions and to strengthen its market leading position.
Norkom raised about €30M ($37.8M) in funding from investors including Trinity Venture Capital and Island Capital, according to ThePost.ie. The founders retained about 40 percent of shares pre-IPO.
Read - Norkom Technologies begins trading on IEX and AIM (Finextra)
Read - Dublin software firm forecasts €24.5m in revenues (ThePost.ie)
Posted at 08:33 AM | Posted to IPO | Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2006
Zanox Acquires eProfessional
Berlin-based Zanox, an enabler of affiliate marketing for ecommerce firms has acquired Hamburg-based eProfessional for its search engine optimization technologies for about €20M.
The founders of the acquired company, Christian Petersen and Michael Schelandhave, signed on for at least three years post-acquisition.
eProfessional had raised a small amount VC about six years ago from bmp, a German publicly traded venture fund.
This is Zanox's second acquisition in recent months. It is rumored to be mulling an IPO or getting itself acquired for a €200M plus valuation.
Read - Berliner ZANOX.de AG erwirbt Hamburger eprofessional GmbH (gsc research)
Read - Zanox gets a price estimate (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 07:45 PM | Posted to Advertising | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Denmarks' Pixmantec Bought By Adobe
Adobe has gone up-market and bought the Denmark photo startup Pixmantec. Pixmantec sells workflow software for high-end cameras that enables digital photographers to download, browse, view, prioritize, compare, edit, correct and convert large batches of digital camera RAW image files.
Pixmantec's Flagship Software Package
Posted at 06:45 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
Stardoll's Series B Brings In Sequoia
Four months after announcing that it raised a €4M first round with Index Ventures, Stardoll, an online celebrity-look-alike doll dressup site, has raised €5M more bringing in big name VC firm Sequoia Captial to join its earlier backer.
Index Ventures told the alarm:clock euro that the new capital will be used for "developing additional content and features for Stardoll.com, and also for marketing and business development."
Stardoll said it will be launching the MeDoll feature, which lets users to "create a personalized doll whom they can dress with merchandise from a virtual store. In addition to increasing revenues from user payments, this new feature also creates opportunities for marketing partnerships with fashion, retail and media."
Sequoia's Mark Kvamme likes the target market:
“We were impressed with the exponential growth of Stardoll.com and sheer number of young people moving online to enjoy this pastime... Stardoll’s team has developed a close relationship with its online international community and is well-positioned to continue attracting the growing interest of a highly motivated and creative demographic.”
Read - Online Paperdolls Capture (a:c euro)
Posted at 03:40 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
French Linux Guru Starts Up Ulteo
As some people say, all it takes to create a new business is a resentment and a coffee-machine, or a case of Red Bull, if your under thirty.
And so it is with Ulteo, a French startup aiming to develop nothing less ambitious than a new open source approach to operating system software. Its founder is Gaël Duval, the key developer of Linux Mandrake, who was recently ousted from Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, with nothing but a thank-you (he writes) and a "two-month standard" severance package.
NewsForge says that Duval is suing his former company, but more interesting is that he has formed Ulteo.
We're looking into the startup effort and can report that it is using the Kubuntu/Debian distribution (according to Wikipedia).
Duval created Linux-Mandrake in 1998 which was based on Red Hat Linux and it became known as being the easiest-to-use version of Linux. The company he formed around it was called Mandrakesoft, and later Mandriva.
Mandriva came close to insolvency several months after it floated on the lightly regulated Marche Libre in France in mid-2001, raising a meagre €4M. Our research shows that two investors, a US hedge fund and a French investment firm called Remote Reward stepped in to shore up finances.
In the meantime, it has changed its market focus and business model, in an effort to reach profitability. It has also acquired several other open source firms, namely Conectiva in Brazil, Edge IT in France, and Lycoris in the US.
Ulteo is based on an idea that Duval had brought to the Mandriva's management team back in 2004 that was ultimately rejected, he writes.
We think that there is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming 18 months due to the hefty number of startups that VCs have shopped to larger technology companies in M&A deals as they seek to exit bubble era invetments (as opposed to IPOs where it is more common for founders to stay on, that is if the founders are still with the company by the time it floats.)
As the post-merger key-man lock-ins end, and related non-compete clauses get lifted, founders are not retiring to Toscana to live the dolce vita, they are setting out to either repeat their past success, or make more money than they did last time around.
Examples abound, such as the post M&A activity of the founders of Kelkoo, acquired by Yahoo, and Musiwave, acquired by Openwave, who have since created Wikio and Eyeka, repsectively.
There are also reports about departures at SUSE Linux (acquired by Novell in 2003). Our research show that several founders and early employees have subsequently joined or create new startups.
Although not all of them actually begin with a resentment, the trend for founders to become serial entrepreneurs is pretty clear from where we sit.
Read - Gael Duvall's Fired Message (personal web page of Duval)
Read- NewsForge | Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (newsforge)
Posted at 10:22 AM | Posted to Early stage | Open Source Software | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
June 25, 2006
Get In The Elevator With Atlas Ventures
The Elevator Pitch normally means a short presentation by a startup founder in front of a VC - the equivalent time limit as if the two parties were travelling between several floors in an elevator.
But we hear that Atlas Ventures is hosting a real elevator pitch at upcoming TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam where entrepreneurs actually get in an elevator with two of the managing partners to pitch their idea.
It sounds like a good event for online service and web-oriented startups with VCs from 3i, Solid Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners, also on hand.
Posted at 08:22 AM | Posted to Events | TrackBack | Permalink
Meyer On Butt-Kicking Euro Techpreneurs And The Next Skype
The European entrepreneur: you've got to be willing to do deals that handle his lower tolerance for risk and sometimes you have to kick him in the butt, at least you do according to Neil Rimer of Index Ventures, for the former, and Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital, a technology company advisory firm, for the latter.
Meyer, who gets more press than any other European venture industry professional on our radar (relative to the size of her company), was profiled in European Business this month where there's some insight into her butt-kicking ways. She also predicts Zopa as the next eye-popping European exit a la Skype.
So who’s the next Skype on her books? “Zopa,” says Meyer without hesitation. Zopa, she explains, is a peer-to-peer lending network, web-based of course, “that matches lenders to borrowers”. Behind it is Richard Duvall, the man who created Egg in 1998, today the world’s largest purely internet bank.
And about the need to provide a kick to the entrepreneur:
... Zopa’s only a couple of years old, but Duvall came to Meyer for all sorts of advice including whether to start up in the US when the British side of the business was hardly begun. “I kicked him up the butt and told him that if he didn’t get going someone else would eat his lunch and he’d be the QXL to eBay instead of the eBay to QXL.”
Later on, Meyer was asked about the "relative paucity" of entrepreneurs in Europe, compared to America and what advice she has for wannabe tech entrepreneurs inside old European institutions, like Telecom Italia, looking to break out and startup a business. Here again the butt-kicking advice:
“Stop moaning about Telecom Italia,” she tells an imagined trudging employee. “If you have something to contribute to the world, get off your butt, tell the spouse it’s going to be a tough eight years ahead, and get on with it.”
Read -Read - Skype’s the limit: Cover Story June 2006 (European Business)
Read - Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs (dailyii.com)
Posted at 07:04 AM | Posted to entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
June 24, 2006
a:c euro's Most Read Posts This Week
Most Popular Posts Last 7 Days
Samwers' European Founders Fund: Interview
Spotfire Predicts World Cup Soccer Results
Wifi Telco Founder Looks To Raise VC For Expansion
FON's Varsavsky Plots World of Warcraft: The Movie
Nanoradio Ramps Up Its Tiny WiFi Chip Line
Unsubscribe_me.com
WiFi Bunny Maker Taps Banexi Ventures
Source: RSS Views Via Pheedo
Posted at 06:27 AM | Posted to Top 7 In Last 7 | TrackBack | Permalink
France's vpod.tv Taps Varsavsky Investment
vpod.tv announced in its blog that FON founder Martin Varsavsky has invested an undisclosed amount in the online video publishing-on-demand company. In May, the startup announced that Innovacom had committed $5M to its first round of financing.
As a result of the Varsavsky investment, the Spanish vpod.tv R&D team will move into offices in the same building as FON in Madrid. Besides running FON and writing plots for screenplays, Varsavsky has also taken seed round stakes in Netvibes, an RSS and personal homepage software developer, and Wikio, a French news search and ranking software startup.
Read - Martin Varsavsky joins vpod.tv as an angel investor (vpod.tv blog)
Read -vpod.tv Founder On The Business of Online Video (alarm:clock euro)
Read - FON Founder Plots World Of Warcraft: The Movie (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 06:14 AM | Posted to Online services | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
June 23, 2006
Push OK With Thumb
Russian design firm Art Lebedev says it is a thrill to push the OK button with your thumb, not the cursor
We like to check in to Art Lebedev's website every once in a while to see what wierd and wonderful things they've come up. The Orbiculus line of thumbtacks are printed with “Cancel”, “Play”, “Save”, “Yes” and are available in Russian or English.
Posted at 02:28 PM | Posted to Ideas | TrackBack | Permalink
French Search Engine Optimization Startup To Float
Netbooster is expected to float on Alternext (the lightly regulated exchange that belongs to Euronext) this month. If it prices in the middle of its bookbuilding range it will raise €5M. The French search engine optimization provider with sales of €8.5M and a reported 70 percent growth rate in 2005, wants to expand its business internationally.
It expects to grow sales by about 60 percent this year.
Read- IPO et internationalisation au programme de NetBooster (Journal Du Net)
Posted at 02:17 PM | Posted to Advertising | IPO | TrackBack | Permalink
How To Work With European Entrepreneurs
Via the Infectious Greed blog we learned that Index Ventures co-founder Neil Rimer has penned an article entitled Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs for the Dailyii.com.
It's an interesting read. The essence of his strategy: be willing and able to back a geographically distributed startup company, and structure deals to meet the risk profile of European entrerpreneurs.
Read - Derisking Entrepreneurship (Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky)
Read - Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs (dailyii.com)
Posted at 08:09 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Tim Draper Adds To Zopa's Growth Cash
Unquote has the scoop today that Zopa, an online borrowing and lending exchange, has added $5M in funding from Tim Draper, founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and the Rowland Family, to back its expansion into the US market and build up its UK business.
The startup recently announced raising $15M from new investor Bessemer Venture Partners, which joined Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners, its first round investors.
Read- Zopa gains additional $5m backing for transatlantic launch (Unquote News published by Incisive Media)
Read - London's Zopa Takes €15M (alarm:clock)
Posted at 06:25 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Online services | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
June 22, 2006
Samwers' European Founders Fund: Interview
As regular readers know, from time to time the alarm:clock euro profiles early stage ventures. But we also want to cover those who work with and advise seed stage firms, and today it is the European Founders Fund getting the treatment.
We spoke to Oliver Samwer (m) who along with his brothers, Marc (l) and Alexander (r), are the "founders" named in the fund. This was the first interview the recently minted venture investment team has ever given.
In case some readers are not familiar with recent European venture history, the Samwers are so-called serial entrepreneurs. They founded online auctioneer Alando in 1999, which six months later was acquired by eBay for $50M during the bubble.
Subsequently, they established the mobilephone ringtone and content company, Jamba, which was acquired by Versign for $273M.
In business as investors for about nine months now, the European Founders Fund has enetered the equity of 7 startups, 4 in Europe, and 3 in North America, and is looking to add 5 or 6 more in the coming year.
Current portfolio firms include Hitflip.de, a Peerflix clone, e-Sport.de, a developer of browser-based games, and Myphotobook.de, a Berlin-based publisher of books based on digital photo albums.
In many ways, the setup and approach is similar to the Scandinavian early stage investor Lund/Kenner, which we profiled in April (See link below).
Both offer capital for early stage ventures, but what makes them different is the level of advice and industry contacts provided by the prinicpals.
Typically, venture capital firms tend to operate more or less at a strategic level, often interacting only during board meetings.
With this team, it's daily contact, and its operational rather than strategic advice, according to Samwer.
It does not insist on a board seat when investing. "We're not the board meeting types, and prefer to work at the operational level with founders," said Samwer.
For these reasons, the team handles 3 or 4 active investments at any given time. "We can help wireless and Internet startups, particularly those with a consumer focus but also B2B, to be more successful. We do that by building the business model with them, showing how to convert customers using free services to premium services, how to grow in the European online market, search optimization, help to meet the right people to make deals with portals, and matchmaking with partners both online and offline," said Samwer.
This business development advice is key. The three venture-backed US firms that have accepted an investment from the European Founders Fund did so because they felt it would help them to enter the European market, said Samwer.
It seems to be a formula that helps them close. "Every investment opportunity we have approached, we got into, and our offer was accepted," he added.
Because of that hands-on approach, the most important aspect in making investment decisions for Samwer is the management team of the startup. "If the chemistry is right, we will invest," said Samwer.
Chemistry, or an affinity between the founders and the investors, is important because the Samwers work closely with their investees during the early phase of investment. "We are in daily contact with founders. They come to us with ideas and problems. We help them address the issues," said Samwer.
The value of their experience is noted by venture capital investors as some are starting to bring in the European Founders Fund in order to help develop portfolio companies.
For example, about six months after Index Ventures invested in Oanda, the Delaware-registered company behind fxtrade.com which is managed by teams in Zurich and Toronto, Samwer's fund was invited to participate in the investment.
"We are helping Oanda with the development of the European market for its foreign exchange trading services," he said.
Established nine months ago, the European Founders Fund is called a fund, but its activity is more like a business angel. It is a partner for entrepreneurs looking to develop their business model and develop online and wireless services.
The Samwer's are investing their own money, rather than capital raised from a set of limited partners as VCs do, and they only invest where there is a potential to help at an operational level with entrepreneurs.
Since the firm does not have a website and has no plans to put one up here's a summary.
Quick Facts About European Founders Fund
- Deal Size = 500K to 2M
-Offer=advice and contacts on expanding and developing new markets for
online services.
-Sector Allocation= Software: consumer-oriented wireless and Internet
businesses, including exchanges, networks, and online services. Also open to
B2B.
-Geographic= North America and Europe
-Market opportunity= greater than €100M
-Stake size=Open to minority investments
-Board seats=Not necessary
-Liquidation preference=Yes
-Portfolio Companies: Oanda (fxtrade.com), Myphotobook.de, e-sport.com, Hitflip.de plus 3 other undisclosed ventures.
-Contact: oliversamwer @ yahoo.de
Read: Lund Kenner Stakes Out The Early Stage (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 03:29 PM | Posted to Early stage | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Who Is Eutube, er Europe's Youtube
Updated: If you are looking for the European Union's new Eutube site, find it here.
Several startups are aiming to emulate the success of YouTube in Europe. It's early days to start calling winners but we wanted to get a handle on the development so far.
We picked four whose names have reached the alarm:clock euro's ears, and ran them through Alexa (which tracks users of the Alexa IE toolbar) and Urlfan (which tracks blog mentions) and it looks like Dailymotion, which comes out of Paris, has the lead. It probably helps that it has been online the longest. Time will tell if it keeps the pole position.
Dailymotion
Urlfan says ranks 359 out of 1,844,043 sites
Sevenload.de
Urlfan says ranks 8218 out of 1,844,043 sites
Myvideo.de
Urlfan says ranks 17817 out of 1,844,043 sites
vpod.tv
Urlfan says ranks 27367 out of 1,844,043 sites
Posted at 12:38 PM | Posted to Early stage | Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Spotzer, Europe's Answer To SpotRunner For TV Ads
Dutch startup, Spotzer Media Group, launched this week an online service to make creating television ads more accessible to firms with smaller advertising budgets in Europe. It also helps to buy airtime on broadcast networks and regional markets. Additional services include placing video ads on mobilephone networks and public video displays (in airports for example).
Spotzer Applies Web 2.0 To Advertising Videos
The a:c euro asked Spotzer about the competition and barriers to entry and first mover advantage.
On competition
Unless we are totally off-target, we are certain to face many other competitors, from other start-ups to new initiatives developed by groups such as Google. (whose business development head recently said in a press interview that local video advertising was one of the biggest next opportunities) and Yahoo and perhaps even E-Bay (which recently won a contract to create an auction platform through which advertisers could buy and sell airtime.)
On the potential for copycats:
The barriers to entry, on the other hand, are pretty significant. What we are trying to do is not easy. We have to define an entire new genre of commercial that works for multiple advertisers operating in different cultures. The creative is actually very challenging and we are spending a huge amount of time with exceptional people trying to figure out what will work. Then, beyond the ads, there are the challenges of getting the message to local, small advertisers.
Is being one of the pioneer for this type of service provide an advantage?
We think being the first mover helps, since we are going to have opportunities to make partnerships with media companies who are looking for ways to enable local advertisers to purchase their inventory. If our efforts work, then the next guys will have to really out-do us before they get the same opportunities.
The company was founded earlier this year and is funded by private investors and the founders, namely, Thed Lenssen, who is a well-known European commercial director, and John Mezzina, former Young & Rubican creative
director and co-founder of Mezzina/Brown. Lenssen has directed commercials for Heineken, Philips, Volkswagen and many others and is the founder of The D-Films and Snoep Films, both based in Amsterdam.
Read- Industry Veterans to Pioneer New Media Model (press release)
Posted at 09:50 AM | Posted to Advertising | Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
Famous Founders Join VC Ranks
It looks like a few European serial entrepreneurs have made enough money to start investing in tech ventures in Europe and beyond. We count three sets that are deploying some of their cash on a more formal basis - as opposed to angel investing, which is already quite common.
European VC Attracts Some Famous Founders
There's the European Founders Fund, established by the Samwer brothers in Germany who together co-founded online auction house Alando.de, acquired by eBay and Jamba!, a mobilephone ringtone and content business, acquired by Verisign for €273M). They are investing their own money in early stage ventures, particularly Internet and wireless startups (due to their knowledge of the sectors). We'll be profiling the European Founders Fund soon based on an exclusive interview with Oliver Samwer, the firm's managing partner.
Then there is Amaya, which Red Herring says is currently raising a fund to invest in Europe and India. It's got some famous founders signed on as limited partners, including Brent Hoberman, co-founder of LastMinute.com; Stefan Roever, co-founder of Brokat Technologies, and Morten Lund, an early investor in Skype and co-founder of security software startup Bullguard.
The third worth mentioning is Daniel Aegerter, the Swiss entrepreneur who sold his startup Tradex to Ariba during the bubble for $5.6 billion dollars. Aegerter is one of the anchor investors of the Munich Venture Fund, which recently invested in 10tacle, a German games developer. He is also principle of Armada Investment Group, which keeps a fairly low profile, but has invested in Oanda (fxtrade), Overture Networks, and Skyway, all three are based in North America.
Read- Europe Targets India
Posted at 09:00 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
June 21, 2006
WiFi Bunny Maker Taps Banexi Ventures
Violet, the company behind the Wifi bunny known as Nabaztag, has raised an undisclosed amount of VC from Banexi Ventures. The Nabaztag is a bit of a phenomenon, where supply has not been able to meet demand, which is one reason the firm needed VC.
It Has Spawned a Community Of Owners That Write About And Make Videos Of Their Bunny In Action
How the company describes the smart bunny:
Nabaztag means “rabbit” in Armenian. Violet’s Nabaztag is an object connected to the Internet via WIFI,
which reacts with sound, movement and colors to informations exchanged on the Web...[It receives and relays] market updates, weather forecast, traffic reports, email alerts and reading of emails (Nabaztag offers text-to-speech function), reading of RSS feeds from any online site, alarm-clock, broadcasting etc.
Read- Thanks to Banexi Ventures Partners, Nabaztag is ready to conquer the world !(press release)
Read - What It Takes To Sell WiFi: Bunnies and Social Routers (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:18 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Uniqall Looks To Finance Its Challenge To Brooktrout, Intel Netstructure HMP and Co.
Makers of IP media servers, which are used for interactive voice response (IVR), voice mail, messaging, and conferencing applications, might be in for some competition from an unexpected place, in the form of a startup
coming out of Zagreb called Uniqall.
If, that is, Uniqall's founder successfully raises the capital required to ramp up sales and marketing.
Back in 2001, Uniqall founder, Boris Pavacic, decided to develop a software-only IP media server, counting on the fact that PC processors would be powerful enough to handle a software-only solution, and that VOIP was the
way the telecoms market was going.
He raised a relatively tiny amount of seed financing from local business angels and has since demonstrated that his vision was the right on the money. Pavacic says that Uniqall is generating revenues without having invested in sales and marketing, and continues R&D, having recently completed the third release of its software.
Croatia May Be Struggling To Get Ahead In This Year's World Cup, But This Team Is Doing Well In The IP Media Server Game
The Croatian startup's product is a good 20 times lower in price than the equivalent Intel hardware-based solution, according to Pavacic. Other competitors include Brooktrout, Audiocodecs, and Eicon.
To be sure, Intel is also developing a software-based IP media server product, called Netstructure HMP, which will compete with Uniqall's, but the startup's founder believes his agile and "legacy free" startup has a better
product and more incentive to drive market development.
The a:c euro is not an expert on IP media server market, but one thing we noted when comparing the two products feature sets that Uniqall's solution supports more operating systems than Intel's, including several Linux distributions and Solaris, for example, while Intel supports only Windows OS and an Intel modified version of a few Linux distributions.
Now Pavacic's next task is to find the right partner for the next stage of the firm's growth.
Posted at 10:42 AM | Posted to Early stage | Specialized Software | VoIP | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Zyb Gets Storegate's Vibe
Last week we wrote about Storegate. This week Zyb is on the radar. Actually it's in Under The Radar.
Both companies are out of Scandinavia and both want you to backup your mobilephone data on their servers. Storegate charges a minimum of £1.49/month, while Zyb is free.
As a company, Storegate has a wider range of storage services available and a white label online storage business model, in addition to cellphone backups.
Zyb has just the one service and it is free but it has Morten Lund (of Skype early investor fame) as a co-founder. [Update: it has free backup and file sharing services and a premium service for syncing with Outlook, iPods, and MSN] It's main strategic investor is Excitor, which develops secure mobile messaging software.
Read: Cell phone backup gets sexy (Under The Radar)
Posted at 08:50 AM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Lara Robot: A Vision in Pink
A team of students at Darmstadt Technical University (Technische Universitaet Darmstadt) have devleoped Lara, a humanoid robot that has some innovative metal alloy "muscle" and "foot" technology (pictured right).
She is 130cm tall and has 38 artifical muscles, which the developers say provides her 6 degress of freedom of movement in each leg and 3 in each arm.
They add: the use of muscles instead of servo motors (See Mr DD (left) and pictured below) allows a novel robot design based on a lighter and more flexible architecture.
She was on display at this year's robotic soccer championships, a geek's verison of the World Cup, which was covered by Wired correspondent, John Borland, who describes Lara as "a 51-inch-tall vision in pink that just might be the missing link". He adds: "I fall in love with her at first sight."
Compare Mr DD To Lara
Read - Androids Dream of Soccer Glory
Read - Lara's website (TU Darmstadt)
Posted at 06:55 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
June 20, 2006
WatZatSong Is Name That Tune With A French Accent
A team of three twenty-somethings in Paris have launched a music discovery site called WatZatSong.
A Kind Of Name That Tune For Digital Babies
It's meant to build a community around users who are looking to find the name of a song, either because they cannot remember the title, or they want to challenge other members.
Song seekers provide clues about a tune, the genre, era, and sex of vocalist, if known, and then hum, sing, or do the doodoodaada thing, which is recorded in an applet. It's set up so that other members of the community can guess what song is being sought by listening to the clips.
We checked it out. One thing we can say is that there are a lot of tone deaf and really bad singers seeking music titles so far.
Posted at 05:00 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Wifi Telco Founder Looks To Raise VC For Expansion
Ben Van Dongen, a 42 year old Dutch entrepreneur, just might be running the leanest alternative telco in Europe.
He says his two year old company is already profitable, employs just 3 people, and has more than 3,500 broadband subscribers in Amsterdam. Its second city network is being built in Barcelona using the free cash flow from the Dutch business. 
The soon to be launched iZingo brand (the company is called Hotspot Holding based in Amsterdam) is positioned as a wireless broadband Internet access provider, targeting the consumer and small business market.
It is not a hotspot service provider business model, points out the founder, it's a telco business model with juiced up WiFi as the carrier.
Pictured here with members of his team: Gert Bos (l) and Carl Harper (r), Van Dongen (m) is poised to take a piece of the growing broadband Internet access market, enabling things like wireless VOIP, wherever he decides to deploy one of his WiFi networks.
Having proven that the business model works, Van Dongen is looking to grow internationally. He will be raising venture capital to do so.
Here are his thoughts on the competition that we jotted down in a recent interview.
What about Wimax - isn't this the market that Wimax operators want to target?
"Forget Wimax, it's not going to be a mass market application until 2012 -- reasons: there are three Wimax frequencies and no end user devices yet.) Compare that to Wifi, which has one standard worldwide and today 600 million enduser devices," said Van Dongen.
This sounds like a challenging of the way that FON and France's Ozone, are attacking the WiFi telco model?
"It's better than FON, because the subscriber does not need a fixed broadband connection to the Internet in addition to a WiFi card.
The entrepreneurs said: "You buy broadband Internet for less then DSL and you can use it anywhere you want (at home, in your ofice, at hotspots or outside)."
What about muni wifi?
"It is different than muni-wifi business - [iZingo] operates without any government or state subsidies. "
The a:c notes that a robust architecture has been enabled that can support a range of broadband and voice services built using wireless mesh technology from a hot Dutch startup called Hopling Technologies.
This is 42 year old Van Dongen's third WiFi startup. He also founded Picopoint Technologies in 2002, a supplier of software to manage subscribers, billing, and management of WiFi networks and roaming onto WiFi networks and Wjoy in 2004, a traditional hotspot operator, both still in business.
Posted at 11:39 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
More About Tech IPOs On AIM
If AIM, the lightly regulated arm of the London Stock Exchange, was a startup, our hypemeter would be getting a reading of 8.5 to 9. Its pitch to US investors is getting a lot of resonance. Today Business 2.0 weighs in with quotes from Index Ventures' GP Danny Rimer.
AIM was used by IGM, a four year old provider of mobile value-added services in East Asia, to raise new capital this quarter.
There is a chance it could all go terribly wrong. Let's not forget Pets.com and other problem children of the dot-com bubble, which the Nasdaq welcomed with open arms not so long ago. Investors will need to proceed with caution to make sure venture capitalists don't start dumping ailing startups on these "light touch" markets, with bankers and entrepreneurs playing along."You need to get these three parties to behave well," says Rimer, the London-based venture capitalist. "It may be a tall order, but if it's accomplished we could see something like the AIM becoming what the Nasdaq was back in the mid-'90s." In other words - a market for promising companies where investors actually made money, before the bubble started inflating.
Read-
Why tech IPOs are moving to Europe The U.S. tech-IPO (Business 2.0)
Posted at 05:49 AM | Posted to IPO | TrackBack | Permalink
Israel's Infinity Venture Capital Finds The Exit
Out of Israel comes the news that Infinity Venture Capital, which manages $250M in VC, has made 11 exits in the past year.
Here's a partial list that was published in Globes in a story reporting EMC's acquisition of ProActivity, one of Infinity's portfolio firms.
- Identify Software to BMC Corp. (NYSE:BMC) for $150 million
- Shopping.com to eBay inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY) for $640 million,
- Sightline Technologies to Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) for $150 million,
- Saifun Semiconductors Ltd. IPO on Nasdaq
As one of our editors used to say, "any fool can invest a couple of hundred million" dollars, so when we see a VC making bets and finding the exit, we point it out.
Read-EMC buys Israeli co ProActivity (Globes)
Posted at 05:31 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
June 19, 2006
FON's Varsavsky Plots World of Warcraft: The Movie
Even multi-millionaire entrepreneurs are wannabe Hollywood screenplay writers, at least if FON founder and serial entrerpeneur, Martin Varsavsky, is an indication of such things.
He's too busy with his wireless telco business to do it himself, so he floated the "World of Warcraft" film idea, complete with plot synospsis on his blog. He is also offering to fund an enterprising writer willing to run with his idea.
Varsavsky says he was inspired by listening to Joichi Ito´s stories about the 200 person guild he runs at World of Warcraft. It seems that there are some US soldiers that are actually based in Iraq playing in his guild.
...the Iraqi members of the guild get kidnapped by Al Qaida operatives in Iraq while they play. The gamers can hear what´s happening, one of them speaks Arabic and starts translating to others the kidnapping scene. Everyone at the guild is shocked they stop playing and start a debate. Joichi (i love to turn my friends into movie heroes) decides that the guild has to do something about this and proposes a plan. Guild members will travel to Iraq and find the hostages. The rest of the movie is the rescue. How the guild gets organized to go. Clever tactics blending game and real life. How everyone arrives from the rest of the world to Iraq, how they meet, probably a love story as well, some humor.
Read - World of Warcraft, the Movie (Varsavsky' blog)
Posted at 11:45 AM | Posted to entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Nanoradio Ramps Up Tiny WiFi Chips
On the back of design in wins with undisclosed "tier 1" manufacturers, Sweden's Nanoradio, specialized in wireless LAN chips, is ramping up.
Nanoradio was founded to target the emerging market for low power wireless chips, increasingly in demand by makers of mobilephones, wireless headsets, MP3 players and digital cameras.
Such chips have to be super low in power consumption so batteries don't run down too quickly. And it appears that Nanoradio's two chip solution fits the bill.
The financing for the ramp up to volume production has just been announced with an $11.5M Series B internal round. The venture-backers hold a majority stake in the two year old company founded by Pär Bergsten (this is his second venture after a career at Ericsson).
Read- Nanoradio Completes (press release)
Posted at 09:37 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Unsubscribe_me.com
Germany's home to a neat idea in the form of meldebox.de, a website set up for consumers to cancel subscriptions to telephone, insurance, banking, loyalty cards, and credit card services, as well as changing address and contact info about themselves in various databases.
If you translate the German, it's called register.de, but we think unsubscribe_me.com is apt too.
The project is funded via advertising and integrating meldebox functionality into other platforms.
Although it's mainly targeted at people that are moving house, there is a need in general for this kind of online service. It was developed by netTraders GmbH, a Bonn-based startup, specialized in online and database applications.
Sometimes it feels like you've checked-in to the Eagles' Hotel California when you sign up for some of services...
"You can checkout any time you like, / but you can never leave!"
Posted at 07:40 AM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Pitopia Flat Rate For Stock Photo Downloads
It might be tough to raise VC in Germany, but that is not stopping entrepreneurs from doing their thing. German royalty-free stock photo startup, Pitopia, is offering a flat rate price of €29.95 for users of its digital images, which is a change from some of the more complicated pricing schemes we've seen from its rivals. Besides the user friendly pricing, Pitopia's interface and search functionality is rich but simple.
Posted at 07:28 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
June 18, 2006
a:c euro's Most Read Posts Last Week
Most Popular Posts Last 7 Days
Our Hypemeter Registers Euro OpenSource Startups
Free French Sports Mag Goes Online and Into UK
Yakaz : A Euro Classifieds Mashup
Yakaz versus Annonces.com
Indian-German Seekport Seeks IPO
The Case For Alternatively Fuelled Cars
Wellington Partners - VCs Can Karaoke
Source: RSS Views Via Pheedo
Posted at 07:10 AM | Posted to Top 7 In Last 7 | TrackBack | Permalink
June 17, 2006
Spotfire Predicts World Cup Soccer Results
Spotfire, a business analytics software company, has not escaped World Cup fever that we are all currently enjoying, and it is has made its software (you need to download a Citrix client) avaialbe for predicting outcomes. Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico to reach the World Cup 2006 semifinals, according to its number crunching. (If Mexico plays the way it did on Friday night - it's not going to make it, we say.)
Spotfire's on-demand software is typically used by researchers inside pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and consumer goods organizations.
Spotfire's World Cup Freebie
The company is backed by European VCs and comes out of Sweden (it was co-founded by Christopher Ahlberg who is still CEO of the company). After moving to the US quite early in its development, it has had something like 16 quarters of year-over-year revenue growth.
We think it won't be long until Spotfire makes a move for an IPO on the NASDAQ, and we don't need its software to help with that prediction.
Read - Goooaaalll!! – Analytics Software predicts (press release)
Posted at 06:07 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
June 16, 2006
French Memory Chip Innovator Taps VC
Participating in a startup workshop a couple of years ago at the IMD, a Swiss business school, may have helped memory chip startup Crocus Technology to raise a whopper of a first round.
Maybe that or the fact that it stands to take a chunk of the multi-billion memory business with its disruptive chips. Either way, according to PE Week Wire, the French magnetic random access memories (MRAM) maker, has raised $17 million in Series A funding.
Both Sofinnova Ventures in Paris and Sofinnova Partners in the US invested, along with French funds: Ventech, CDC Entreprises Innovation, AGF Private Equity, Sofinnova Partners, as well as Switzerland's NanoDimension
Read - IMD Startup Competition (imd website)
Read - Crocus Funding (pe week wire)
Posted at 04:03 PM | Posted to Semiconductors | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Kapow’s Window Into Web 2.0 Use By Businesses And Startups
We think that Kapow Technologies’ provides a window into the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies among startups and established businesses. Its on-demand web integration software packages pull data and content from remote Internet sources and serves it up for use in new applications and portals.
Kapow's clients range from the candy-colored, rounded corner, Frutiger font crew, such as travel site DoHop, social directory site Ziggs.com and music search site Simfy.de, to older, more established, ecommerce and online services run by the likes of Wells Fargo Bank, Lycos, KDDI, and Deutsche Post.
Danske Bank's Real Estate company collects data from the partners websites for its home.dk site.
Simpfy.de A New Music Search And Discovery Site in Germany
Ziggs.com A Professional Services And Business Directory
Kapow is venture-backed and was founded in 1998 during the bubble as a Danish online marketplace. In 2001, after the bubble burst, completely reinvented as a software company. The firm's co-founder, Stefan Andreasen, now serves as CTO of Kapow.