alarm:clock euro

« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »

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.

Posted at 01:12 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

June 15, 2006

Sybase Acquires Germany's Solonde

Sybase has acquired Solonde AG, which is based in Hamburg (registered in Delaware), for an undisclosed amount of cash. The German software company develops and sells data integration software, known as an extract, transform and load (ETL) solution that it offers on-demand. It was founded in 2002.

Extract And Transform Mass Data From SAP Systems.

Sybase Acquires Data Integration Provider Solonde AG (press release)

Posted at 04:39 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink

Swedish Online Storage With A Difference

Sweden's Storegate, an online backup and storage provider, has raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding from Industrifonden. To get that VC on board, three year old Storegate has to have something that makes it stand out from the large number of competitors in this category.

One thing that it does differently, besides selling directly, it sells to: banks, telcos, and insurance companies, who in turn market and/or promote the service to their customers.

Another thing that looks useful is support for sharing and backing up mobilephone contact lists and multimedia files.

Read -Industrifonden supports Storegate (tornado insider)

Posted at 11:39 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Online services | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

G-Wiz It's A Little Green Car

Keith Johnston, Managing Director of GoinGreen, the company behind the G-Wiz electric city car, has been voted one of the UK's top 20 entrepreneurs in the BT sponsored Essence of the Entrepreneur.

GoinGreen Says G-Wiz Doesn't Cost The Earth
G-Wiz buyers can customize their car online. Price is £8000 (approx). Its speed limit is about 42mph.
Read - GoinGreen MD wins BT 'Essence of the Entrpreneur' Award

Posted at 10:59 AM | Posted to entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink

London's AIM Pitching To US VCs

The marketing team for London's AIM exchange have been logging a lot of air miles making their pitch to investors in Europe and the US, which is starting show in the statistics.

That's good for AIM. The question is: how many of those listings achieved a market cap big enough to give early investors a smashing exit?
Read - The war for start-ups going public (cnn money)

Posted at 05:46 AM | Posted to IPO | TrackBack | Permalink

June 14, 2006

IPO Planned For Bluetooth Gearmaker Parrot

Parrot, a French developer of Bluetooth mobilephone accessories, announced it has been approved for an IPO on the Eurolist (from Euronext) IPO.

The venture-backed company is expected to raise between €91M and €103M. Its backers include Sofinnova Partners, Spef Venture, EPF Partner, SGAM Alternative Investments, and CIC Capital Prive.

These have been patient investors. The firm raised its first round of VC in 1995. It also still has its founder, Henri Seydoux, as CEO.

Its achieving quick growth with annual sales in 2005 of €80.6M up from €9.2M in 2004. It has a 9.5 percent margin.

Read- Entretien avec Henri Seydoux (boursier.com)

Posted at 05:06 PM | Posted to IPO | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

Weborama For France's Alternext

Weborama, a French web traffic and emarketing analytics technology provider, is to list on the Alternext (lightly regulated market of Euronext Paris) to raise €4M by the end of the month. Its offering price implies a valuation of about €20M.

Annual sales in 2005 were €2.6M, up 40 percent from the year before. It reports a 30 percent profit margin. Customers include Meetic, the French dating site, MSN France, and Neuf Telecom. Founded in 1998, Weborama plans to use the capital to grow internationally.
Read - Weborama : introduction sur Alternext (weborama PR)
Read - Webora Bientot (neteco)

Posted at 11:33 AM | Posted to Advertising | IPO | TrackBack | Permalink

QuNano's Out To Disrupt Bright LED Chip Biz

Sweden's QuNano has raised venture capital to make high-brightness light emitting diodes (HBLED) on plain old silicon, rather than the more expensive substrates typically used for this type of semiconductor device.

It's modified CMOS process along with its own nanowire layering technology could be quite disruptive. The pitch is that within a couple of years Qunano could be mass producing LEDs, typically used as backlights and flashes in mobilephones, in long-life flashlights, and traffic lights (to name but a few apps), a lot more cheaply than the incumbents, such as Cree, Lumileds, Osram Opto, and Toshida.

According to its backers, Qunano owns what it calls a nanowire platform technology. The LED market is just the first that it is targeting.

Read - Qunano announces (press release)

Posted at 08:03 AM | Posted to Early stage | Semiconductors | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

Wellington Partners - VCs Can Karaoke

We read the latest VentureViews newsletter from Wellington Partners, one of the few early stage VCs to raise a new fund in this cycle, where we learned that the VC firm celebrated its 15th anniversary and founding partner Rolf Christof Dienst's 60th birthday in Munich in March, with 400 guests.

This pic shows the general partners providing a birthday serenade.
Read - VentureViews May 06 (wellington partners)

Posted at 07:18 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink

Liquavista Pans OLEDs, Touts Its Power Efficiency

A lot of venture capital and industry money has gone into OLED startups in Europe with the hopes that plastic displays will take a chunk of the booming LCD market.

But Liquavista, the recently spun off venture from Phillips R&D unit that has an alternative to OLEDs, is making moves to challenge that notion. It has published a comparison of the power efficiency of its tech to rivals, which dramatically shows its superiority (naturally).

So far, we haven't detected any response from OLED vendors or the VCs backing them.

Read - Liquavista launches world’s brightest reflective displays

Posted at 05:45 AM | Posted to Displays | TrackBack | Permalink

June 13, 2006

Dutch Man Charged With Online Extortion of London's Future Media

FutureMedia (Nasdaq: FMDAY) has entered into new grounds by suing a Dutch-man for using Yahoo Finance and other message boards to impersonate company officials and deride the company. He even has posted bogus press releases, they say. The man allegedly has asked Future Media for cash and shares to go away.

The Dutch man might have picked on the wrong dog, as Future Media has been fighting against being delisted from Nasdaq due to poor performance.

Read - Futuremedia Announces Legal Actions Against Attempted Extortion

Posted at 09:21 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Employee Monitoring In a Box

In what 3i is calling a home-grown solution, it is, along with Scottish Equity Partners and SGAM Alternative Investments, investing in a £3M Series A round for Chronicle Solutions.

The five year old startup makes a server-grade appliance, which captures and indexes all types of user activities in a network in real time, including email, Instant Messanger, WebMail, Blogs and VOIP calls.

Looks innocent, watches and records everything you do

Read - 3i backs Chronicle with £3m financing and CEO (3i press release)

Posted at 05:32 PM | Posted to Business software | Security | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

German Games Developer 10tacle To Float

Germany's 10tacle Studios, a high-end games developer, aims to raise about €20M on the Frankfurt stock exchange next week. The shares, mainly new ones, will be offered on the General Standard market (not the lightly regulated Entry Standard).

10tacle, which develops racing games with rich graphics, as well as role playing and combat games (first person shooters), has annual sales of €17M, a positive EBIT, employs 180, and has studios in Germany, France, Singapore, UK, and Bratislava, it reports.

Back in April, 10tacle raised an undisclosed amount from Munich Venture Partners, along with other unnamed investors. It was an interesting VC investment - more about access to technology than it is about money.

Although a newcomer to the VC market here, Munich Venture Partners has close ties to the Fraunhofer Institute whose claim to fame is the development of MP3, among other goodies. The deal is meant to give 10tacle access to Fraunhofer's R&D teams to build on the startup's exisiting gaming engine, or middleware, platform.

Read - Spieleentwickler 10tacle bietet Aktien zu 11,75 bis 13,50 (reuters)

Posted at 03:43 PM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | IPO | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Euro VCs Back BridgeCo's Move To LA

BridgeCo, a Swiss startup specialized in digital home networking chips and middleware, has raised a series D round of $23M, led by two new investors, Advent Venture Partners and Wellington Partners, both European fund managers.

They were joined by all of BridgeCo’s Series C investors: Benchmark Capital, Cipio Partners (formerly Infineon Ventures), Earlybird Venture Capital, Fidelity Ventures and Intel Capital.
The company also announced the opening of their new global headquarters in Los Angeles. The capital injection is to be used to "accelerate market adoption and product development activities".

All but one of the firm's original founders have left the company and it has recently appointed Gene Sheridan as CEO who hails from an executive role in the communications unit of International Rectifier, a power semiconductor manufacturer. The move to LA is meant to tap the market proximity, the "entrepreneurial leadership talent, expansion, and exit opportunities" provided by that locale.

Read- BridgeCo Raises $23M in Latest Venture Finance Round

Posted at 02:48 PM | Posted to Media | News And Updates | Semiconductors | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

Our Hypemeter Registers Euro Open Source Startups

We ran our hypemeter (currently a crude, labor-intensive device that we'd like to see automated) over the open source sector in the region and have found a few younger startups that are beginning to register some spiky readings.

Alfresco, founded in 2005, based in UK, and backed by Accel Partners (european fund) is an open source content management software distribution, founded by John Newton, who co-founded Documentum (acquired by EMC in 2003). The management team all have blogs and have achieved quite a bit of industry buzz in a short period of time. We are not sure if that momentum is reflected in its sales, but we're sure this startup will be letting the world know, the moment it does.

Alfresco has done a lot push out of the way the initial scepticism about the ability of the management team to switch from proprietary and traditional software business model to the open source one.
Media Buzz = 40 (number of recent mentions in the press)
Blog Buzz= 1,285 (blog posts containing "Alfresco and open source" )
Sourceforge rank= 157
Overall hypemeter rating (scale of 1 to 10)=9

CEO Quote:

IT decisions are based on maximum information (perhaps too much information at times?), not marketing messages and sales guys with good hair.

Logicalware, based in Scotland, develops an increasingly popular open source application called MailManager, mainly used for streamlining customer support desks, a pretty competitive niche to be in. Founded in 2002, the startup is backed by Sigma Technology, an AIM listed VC fund.
Media Buzz= 1 (rnumber of times mentioned in the press recently)
Blog Buzz= 77 (blog posts that mention the firm)
Sourceforge Rank= 12
Overall Hypemeter Rating = 6
CEO Quote:

Our headquarters are in Eskmills near Edinburgh, Scotland. Eskmills was built 138 years ago and at the time was home to the largest fishing net company in the world. We aim to have the same success with email response management systems.

Having said all that, it should be noted that Europe hasn't had a good sized exit in this market since Novell acquired SUSE Linux back in 2004. The valuation for Trolltech's upccoming IPO will provide some insight into the potential returns, and so would MySQL if and when it has a liquidity event.

Posted at 08:07 AM | Posted to Software | TrackBack | Permalink

Give Me My Location Now, Right Now

The a:c euro doesn't spend a lot of time in Thai back alleys (and we still have a penchant for maps printed on paper), so we're asking: are there a lot of tardy but impatient executives that spend time in Bangkok's narrow biways (or other dense urban environments) that need to know their location with a high-degree of immediacy?

The question came to mind after reading the latest white paper from Swiss navigation module-maker u-blox, which has developed an "assisted GPS" solution for cellphones and navigation devices meant to establish the users location more quickly and with more reliability than in the past.

Here's the intro to the pitch:

You're lost in a narrow street in Bangkok, trying to decipher street signs in Thai characters. You need to get back to your hotel, grab your bags and head to the airport fast or you'll miss your flight. You try using the personal navigator on your PDA but the regular GPS receiver inside cannot establish a position because signal conditions are bad due to high-rise buildings all around you. You know it normally takes your GPS receiver at least 30 seconds to pinpoint your location....you simply can't afford to wait.

Read -Assisted GPS: Instant positioning anytime and under any signal conditions (u-blox)

Posted at 07:29 AM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

June 12, 2006

Free French Sports Mag Goes Online and Into UK

The number of media deals undertaken by European VCs is on the increase. The latest is a €10M round for Sports Médias et Stratégie, which publishes a free sports magazine distributed in France, as well as an online sports tabloid, Freesport.fr. Update: The two year old venture has already reached the breakeven point and is on track for €12M in sales this year.

Iris Capital, Galileo and Crédit Agricole Private Equity make up the syndicate of investors backing the expansion of this two year old French startup. Update: The syndicate also includes Complete Leisure Group, a specialized investment co. based in the UK. Since inception, the company has received 3 rounds of financing amounting to €18M.

The plan is to launch "Sport" in the UK by the end of the year. Some 516,000 copies of the paper version are circulated each week and read by about 2 consumers, according to a report in Toutsurlacom.

Read - Le gratuit Sport distribué en Grande-Bretagne avant fin 2006 (toutsurlacom)

Posted at 08:00 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

The Case For Alternatively Fuelled Cars

Investor's Business Daily presents a gloomy picture for alternative energy vehicles. But before we start dumping alt energy investments, take a look at the share price performance of Toyota, which introduced the hybrid Prius, to GM which pulled, and then pulverized its electric car in 2002.

Source of this graphic: SAM Group, Zurich
Read: Hydrogen And Hybrid Vehicles Latest Better-Mousetrap Efforts
Read - European Car Makers Need to Get up to Speed (SAM Group)

Posted at 07:28 AM | Posted to Alternative Energy | TrackBack | Permalink

June 11, 2006

Indian-German Seekport Seeks IPO

The German press is reporting that online search company Seekport, founded two and half years ago, is to list on the AIM in the next six months, with plans to list on Nasdaq subsequently.

The success of the floatation of Chinese search portal Baidu is apparently giving current shareholders confidence, according to press reports.

Seekport was founded by former Infospace executive, Joachim Kreibich, in December 2003. It runs a consumer oriented search portal and delivers white label search solutions to the likes of lastminute.com and publisher IDG. Seekport's sales are reportedly €7.5M last year with €14M forecast this year. It operates in Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabia.

One third of Seekport is held by Aftek Infosys, an Indian IT firm. It was Aftek that originally announced the plans for a float.
Read - Deutsch-indische Suchmaschine soll an die Nasdaq (Der Spiegel)
Read - Seekport plans NASDAQ listing in 12 months (moneycontrol)

Posted at 09:48 PM | Posted to IPO | Online services | TrackBack | Permalink

Yakaz : A Euro Classifieds Mashup

Six month old Yakaz has tapped seed funding from Qualis SCA (a French investment company) for its local classified ads search business. It has visual aids such as GoogleMaps and supports English, French, and German searches.

Notable is its use of Exalead's search engine (the same company that is inolved in the high profile European project called Quaero that aims to outdo Google for web and content search). Exalead is also backed by Qualis.
.. more below the jump about the founders and links to French trade press reports.

Founders of the six month old firm are two former AOL France executives, Mathurin Ducastelle who headed the premium mobile services business at AOL France for five years, and Frédéric Mahé former head of R&D at AOL France. Heading up technical development is Sajid Fayyaz former chief geek at Plurimedia (Lagardère Active) who has also developed sites for Paris-Première and Skyrock (recently acquired for a speculated €100M by French buyout firm AXA Private Equity).

Read - Yakaz localise les petites annonces avec Google Maps (01net)
Read - Petites annonces: levée de fonds pour Yakaz.fr (VNUnet)
Updated: Read - Yakaz.fr boucle un premier (techcrunch Francais)

Posted at 09:07 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

Yakaz versus Annonces.com

Two new Web 2.0 classified ads offerings in this part of Europe: one from Yakaz, a freshly founded startup in France and the other, Annonces.com, from Switzerland's Virtual Network in Nyon, are competing for the same traffic it seems.

Posted at 08:47 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

June 10, 2006

a:c euro's Most Read Posts Last Week

Most Popular Posts Last 7 Days

Targets On Their Foreheads
HabboHotel's Sales To Reach $77M This Year
inLive Mass Audience Participation
Tribold Geek Completes All-female Greenland Ice Trip
Web 2.0 Look For Euro Boutique Hotels
Russo-German Wireless Startup Bought By Australians
€38M for Finnish DTV Startup And Other Fresh Euro
Deals
Source: RSS Views Via Pheedo

Posted at 06:36 AM | Posted to Top 7 In Last 7 | TrackBack | Permalink

Stockholm's Edgeware Funded For Interactive TV Networking

Stockholm's Edgeware has raised 17M Kroner from Amadeus and Creandum. The company is late to the party, but it is bringing a new approach to interactive TV. Rather than use hard-drives, its servers use flash memory, as iPods do and as some new laptops do. It makes the same claim that flash memory is more reliable and doesn't crash as much because it has no moving parts.

Edgeware’s 20-gigabyte device can serve up to 10,000 subscribers with standard-definition video streams at 2 megabits per stream. For high-definition streams, which require a minimum of 5 megabits per stream, the device can serve 4K subscribers.

Flash-based Server, so No Moving Parts

Posted at 12:17 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink

June 09, 2006

The Bunker For Your Sensitive Data

We might all be dead but the web site will still be running. A British company which offers secure web hosting located in top secret, radiation-proof bomb shelters has raised $1M in what it is calling a pre-IPO round.

The Bunker Secure Hosting has raised £1M from Foresight Venture Partners. They acquired 20 percent of the company. The deal was announced last month. We just found out about it today.

The Bunker acquired a refurbished nuclear proof bomb shelter back in 2004 that had been the object of about £100M worth of refurbishment for data storage, as well as a few other sites. Its got some of the original Apache SSL authors on managing its technical team.
Read -Foresight Invests in High Security IT Data Fortresses (newsblaze)

Posted at 03:09 PM | Posted to Online services | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

Zattoo= P2P + European TV + DRM

Looks like P2P streaming is attracting entrepreneurs and European broadcasters. We've been writing about Octoshape and now there's another entrant to mention, Zattoo.

The startup says it aims to deliver TV on the Web with the same quality as broadcast television, going for full DRM, authorized, and localized version of the service.

Based in San Francisco, with development in Ann Arbor and Zurich, Zattoo was co-founded by CEO Beat Knecht, a Swiss techie with management experience at UBS, McKinsey. Prior to founding Zattoo, he had been heading up marketing at Levanta (formerly Linuxcare) in San Francisco. Co-founder is CTO Sugih Jamin, an associate professor at Uni Chicago.

Zattoo debuts this week in Switzerland, broadcasting World Cup soccer matches for the national Swiss TV org Schweizer Fernsehen (SFI, 2 and TSR). It will be adding broadcasts from German, French, and Italian networks, as well as a smattering of news networks (Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, CNN etc)

We have an open question on the service - how does Zattoo know the location of the viewer? Is it based on the IP address or a virtual location based on email addresses? It must have some mechanism in place to restrict viewer access so that only those allowed to watch, based on the rights assigned the broadcaster, are given access.

Posted at 07:40 AM | Posted to Broadband Services | Early stage | Media | TrackBack | Permalink

June 08, 2006

Fangtek Raises VC For New Audio Chip Work

Fangtek. Ltd, a developer of MIDI and MP3 audio chips, has raised $12M in a Series C round. The Shanghai-based company will use the capital to invest in the development and production of new audio processors based on emerging standards, such as MP4 and TV-out, for the mobile device markets.

The financing was led by Qiming Venture Partners, as well as international VCs. DFJ ePlanet Ventures, IDG Technology Venture Investment, New Frontier LG Venture Fund and Kibo Technology Advancing Capital.

Read - Fangtek Successfully Concludes Financing Round of US$12 Million

Posted at 03:21 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

Sweden's Tilgin= Hockey Stick Growth + IP Boxes

Tilgin, a Swedish developer of boxes that enable so-called triple play services in the home (voice, video, and broadband Internet) is reporting quick growth. It had sales of SEK 208M (about €22.6M) in 2005, up 300 percent over the previous year.

Formerly known as i3 Micro, the firm's first quarter sales are keeping up that pace, up 402 percent over the same period last year.

Tilgin sells IP set-top boxes and gateway routers to OEMs, systems integrators, and resellers that in turn sell to the residential market. It is now ranked as Sweden’s fastest growing IT-company, it says.

Read - Tilgin ranked as Sweden’s fastest growing IT-company (tilgin PR)

Posted at 11:03 AM | Posted to VoIP | TrackBack | Permalink

Poll Result: OpenBC and LinkedIn Best For Biz Networking

The location of an online biz does matter somewhat when it comes to online business networking, it seems. Our readers say that the best business networking site for Europeans is OpenBC, followed by US-based LinkedIn.

Posted at 07:14 AM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink

Nordic Startups On A Chilling Mission

We're noticing a stream of chip and processor cooling innovators coming out of Scandinavia, bent on making computers and home electronics quieter. Did we miss a conference in Skane where everyone agreed that this is the next big thing?

No matter.

The latest to enter the fray is Nanofreeze Technologies, a spin off from Lund University. It joins Noise Limit and Asetek, both out of Denmark.

Below the jump we compare and contrast the competition and give it all some context.

Asetek sells units that can be installed on the mother board, while Noise Limit is hoping to get its liquid-cooling units sold as part of the basic CPU spec for new gear.

Asetek's can be installed after sale. It's also a bulkier solution, but it recently raised capital from a syndicate of investors to shrink its heat pumps.

Noise Limit has partnered itself with a major cooling systems manufacturing partner to be able to handle the high volume demand that it hopes its compact and cool products (pictured here) will generate from users of Intel and AMD processors.

Driving chip cooling efforts is the desire to dissipate the heat generated by today's digital video recorders, PCs, and home media centers -- it's a waste of energy and prevents processors from peak performance -- without adding more noise to the equation. The fan is the culprit here.

Basically, too much heat and noise restrict where you place the electronic gear.

Read - The Need For Silence (noise limit)
Read - Asetek Raises VC (a:c euro)
Read - Nanofreeze in the fridge (a:c euro)

Posted at 06:03 AM | Posted to Hardware | TrackBack | Permalink

Nanofreeze Wants Its Chips In Your Fridge In 5 Years

Over the years, we've seen a lot of pitches to put new technologies into refrigerators. Remember the Internet-fridge (pictured right) that would remind us when to buy milk?

Well here's one that is a little more compelling. Nanofreeze Technologies, a freshly founded spin off from Lund University in Sweden, has developed coolling chips that it says are powerful enough to work as a heat exchanger, "effectively replacing" the compressors used in refrigerators.

More immediately, it is looking at integrating its chips in cellphones, PCs, and other electronics systems. It has developed semiconductor devices with 10 to 15 times higher performance than so called Peltier-elements, it claims. (such as those from recently funded MicroPelt in Germany?)

The startup announced winning a €30K innovation prize in Sweden last week.

Read: Nanofreeze wins Lund Innovation prize 2006
Read: Micropelt: cooling in a microchip (a:c euro)

Posted at 06:00 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink

June 07, 2006

Cambridge Broadband Founder Heads New Chip Startup

Peter Wharton, co-founder of wireless gear maker, Cambridge Broadband, is now heading a team of former Virata/Conexant engineers at startup Adventiq.

Until January Wharton was CEO of venture-backed Cambridge Broadband. Before founding that company in 2000, Wharton was part of the founding team of Adaptive Broadband, which was acquired by California Microwave, adopting the Adaptive Broadband name.

Adventiq is backed by Adder, a European manufacturer of KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches, and RealVNC (Virtual Network Computing), a four year old Cambridge-based developer of software that enables IT and support desks to take control of remote servers, PCs, keyboard, video or mouse signals via the Internet.

The plan is to put RealVNC's enterprise-grade software on a chip and then get those chips embedded into a range of devices to target what the firm says is an $800M market.

The ex-Virata team Wharton is leading has a pedigree too. Virata was a broadband chipmaker that provided its venture-backers with stellar returns when it floated on the NASDAQ at €266M during the last VC cycle here. (It later merged with Globespan which was acquired by Conexant).
Read - Adventiq launches KVM over IP system on a chip(press release)

Posted at 04:35 PM | Posted to Semiconductors | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink

Acacia Eyes Mobile Video And Online Communities

The IDG Ventures European team has bought out the interest of its lone sponsor, renamed itself Acacia Capital Partners, is now readying itself to make four or five new investments, as well as work with existing portfolio companies.

Ajay Chowdhury, managing partner, spoke to the alarm:clock euro about where he sees opportunity for investment in the region. "We are very impressed by what YouTube has achieved. We're interested mobile TV and shared video files," he said.

We asked him to be bit more specific. "We think that video clips will end up being downloaded for a few cents each. As the files are shared, another few cents can be generated. We want to invest in ways to enable revenue generation [in these types of applications], such as micropayments technology," said Chowdhury.

Online communities with user generated content are also a target in a "big way", but Chowhury said that he prefers to back teams that already have established a large community of interest. For example, he pointed to portfolio firm Shazam, a wireless music discovery company, which is adding more interactive features for its 5 million strong community.

Because of the age of the fund, new investments will tend towards the later stage. But will look to early stage again with the next fund.

Acacia Capital Partners raised the capital to buy out the $100M fund from IDG from a syndicate of LPs, including Switzerland-based Partners Group and Access Capital Partners. They did it without any corporate finance advisors (which says something positive about its partners' dealmaking ability). It has so far invested about $50M of the original fund.

Posted at 11:40 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

June 06, 2006

inLive Mass Audience Participation

inLive Interactive Ltd., an interactive TV application developer, has raised €5M in a third round of financing to accelerate roll-out across Europe and to check out markets in USA and Asia. The deal was led by Arts Alliance and 3i, which is a new investor.

Viewers Dial A Number To Participate In Real Time Survey. This Example Asks Who Do You Prefer Schroeder or Merkel
The startup, founded in 2005 raised earlier rounds from Arts Alliance and business angels. Its software is developed at its corporate headquarters in Tel Aviv. Its solutions are distributed to German-speaking Europe from Munich, Germany.

Posted at 01:27 PM | Posted to Interactive TV | Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

€38M for Finnish DTV Startup And Other Fresh Euro Deals

Investments
HELSINKI, FINLAND
Digi TV Plus has raised €38M in deal led by Baker Capital (digital payTV)
BOULOGNE BILLANCOURT,FRANCE Ipnotic Telecom Raised €9.6M (Broadband and VOIP services)
LYON, FRANCEVarioptic Adds €1M to latest round w/ investment from Dow Corporate Venture Capital (total now €17.4) (cameraphone lens)
SEATTLE, WASH. Citel is raising £10m in an IPO on London's AIM. (VOIP SIP gear)

Fund News
LONDON, UK IDG Ventures European Team Forms Acacia ($100M European VC Fund)

Posted at 10:34 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Tribold Geek Completes All-female Greenland Ice Trip

Who says geeks are pale skinned, anorak-wearing folk with poor muscle tone? A software engineer at VC-backed Tribold just crossed Greenland's ice sheet, as part of an all-female and all British team that battled the elements on skis for 650 kilometres in 16 and a half days to reach Ammasillik on the country’s east coast.

OK, the anorak part might be right but it's worn here of necessity.

Software Engineer Jenny Pugh (far right) And The Arctic Fox Team.

Jenny Pugh of Tribold, a two year old software company in the UK whose products are used by telcos to manage the product lifecycle (so-call PPM tools), trained for eight months and took two months off from her job at the startup to complete the journey for a local charity organization.

Tribold is on our radar. It was founded in 2003 by Simon Muderack, who serves as CEO, and Catherine Michel, CTO, both former Accenture execs. It recently raised capital from Eden Ventures, one of the few early stage European tech VC to have raised a new fund this cycle. It's doing more than putting out brand building press releases - from what we are hearing it's making headway selling into enterprise and operations units of some good-sized telcos.
Read- Tribold software expert Jenny Pugh succeeds in historic all-female crossing of Greenland's ice sheet

Posted at 08:27 AM | Posted to Software | Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink

Web 2.0 Look For Euro Boutique Hotels

Is it just us, or do these new designer hotels in Athens and Brighton, UK have a Web 2.0 look to them? Check out those rounded corners, the use of vibrant colors, and the clean smooth spaces.

Semiramis Hotel, Athens From US Star Designer Karim Rashid

Lounge Area Semiramis Hotel, Athens

Concept For Bar Area - Myhotel, Brighton UK (images: KarimRashid.com)

Posted at 07:22 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink

HabboHotel's Sales To Reach $77M This Year

We've been wondering what kind of sales HabboHotel generates. Now we have an idea as Index Venture's Danny Rimer is quoted in an NY Times/IHT piece saying that the animated chat room, where members of the community buy virtual furniture and clothes for their avatars, is on track for sales of $77M this year.

He's quoted in a feature about Microsoft's willingness to exchange IP with VC-backed startups in Europe.
Read- Microsoft to Announce Ventures in Europe

Posted at 07:11 AM | Posted to Online services | Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

June 05, 2006

Russo-German Wireless Startup Bought By Australians

Publically-traded Jumbuck from Australia is buying Germany's Wap3. Wap3’s majority shareholder was Russia's Red Pyramid, which powers the game portion of Wap3's offering. Wap3 makes chat and games for mobile phones. The company recently signed a deal with TMobile for corporate users.

iMode for Avis - Made Possible By Wap3

Posted at 11:12 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

Targets On Their Foreheads

Here's a list of the types of venture most likely to be acquired in a budding M&A trend that PriceWaterhouseCoopers is calling "digital convergence". We've heard the convergence one before, but who's worried about that?

That list is followed by the top three answers to the survey question, who is most likely to win (besides the corporate finance teams) as a result of all this digital converging.

Most likely to be acquired (percentage of respondents)
=> Software developers (cited by 49%)
=> Business information content developers (41%)
=> Entertainment content developers (19%)
=> Wireless companies (18%)
=> Consumer electronics device makers (15%).

And who will win as a result of digital convergence?
=> Entertainment content developers (cited by 42% of respondents) (Ed. Content is king again?)
=> Consumer electronics manufacturers (36%)
=> Wireless operators and related service providers (30%)

PWC commissioned surveys of executives from big name IT and media companies, as well as a good number of startups and published the results in a report entitled Technology Executive Connections: Shaping Digital Convergence.

Read - Technology executive connections: Shaping digital convergence through mergers & acquisitions

Posted at 10:50 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Your Choice: Best Biz Social Network

We know where the VCs are putting their money. But what about you, which is the best business social networking site for connecting to your peers in Europe?

Posted at 09:49 AM | Posted to Media | TrackBack | Permalink

June 04, 2006

alarm:clock euro's Most Read Posts Last Week

Most Popular Posts Last Week
1. Emailvision acquires Belgian eMarketing Startup
2. Lux Mobilephone Niche Starting To Fill
3. Doughty Hanson: European VC Interview Series
4. Startup-job.netTrès Web 2.0
5. Burda To Spend On Internet Acquisitions
6. Fuel Cell Startup P21 Raising New Capital
7. Intershop's Founders New Ventures

Source: RSS Views Via Pheedo

Posted at 08:25 AM | Posted to Top 7 In Last 7 | TrackBack | Permalink

June 03, 2006

French Rival For OpenBC

Viaduc has tapped two French VCs for €5M to internationalize its business-oriented social networking platform.

Founders are Dan Serfaty and Thierry Lunati, a team that also founded Internet startups Caramail and Lokace, acquired by Lycos and Tiscali respectively.

It's big in France with over a half a million users and the new capital is for platform development and expansion of the model into a couple of other countries, but the startup is not saying which ones.

We hear from Viaduc's corporate finance advisor, Chausson Finance, that 8 VCs wanted a piece of the Viaduc transaction. The founders selected two, AGF Private Equity and Ventech.

The deal gives OpenBC its second well-funded rival in the European market. The other is UK-based Soflow, which is backed by Clifford Holding and Mel Morris, a business angel.

OpenBC has a head start on European rivals.

Posted at 11:24 AM | Posted to Media | News And Updates | Venture Capital | Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

June 02, 2006

A Littlle Lamborghini Flash

Can't afford to splash out for that Lamborghini until the lockup ends in 2008? Well there's always this notebook with a touch of the Italian's sports car's exoticism. It comes from Taiwan's Asus. Price about £1800 or €2799.

Read -ASUS-Lamborghini VX1 Unveiled

Posted at 04:00 PM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink

Float Raises €10M For Mobile Marketer YOC

YOC's share price climbed slightly on its first day of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its IPO share price gave it a €33.3M valuation and €10M to invest in international expansion, including opening an office in Poland and plans for small acquisitions.
The largest shareholder in the company is now founder and CEO Dirk Kraus with 25%. He has an 18 month lock up. The company, which develops advertising campaigns and content for mobilephones, employs 53 and had sales of €5.3M in its last annual figures.
Read - Börsendebüt von YOC AG geglückt

Posted at 03:10 PM | Posted to Advertising | IPO | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

P2P Streaming Goes Live With Octoshape

Danish startup, Octoshape, is a developer of peer-to-peer software that enables live streaming of videos and radio broadcasts. It's been on our radar for a while and we noticed that lately it's been growing its customer reference list.

Last month we mentioned that the Eurovision Song Content used Octoshape's software to broadcast the show live online. But others such as the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships have used it recently, as well as the grand final broadcasts of World eSports Games, an online gaming tournament.

Niche markets to be sure, but the startup claims a 97 percent improvement over the costs of existing streaming methods and the ability to scale up for large audiences, so it has the potential to get bigger.

A media savvy sales team could do a lot with what Octoshape has to offer. Right now pricing plans are based on the size of the customer. Free trials for prospective buyers are available.

Octoshape is venture-backed and was founded in 2003 by two techies: Stephen Alstrup, CEO, and Theis Rauhe, CTO. Investors are Nordic Venture Partners and IVS.

Posted at 10:26 AM | Posted to Media | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink

Spanish VoiceTrust Rival Starts Up

For a university spinoff, Spain's Agnitio has managed to stir up the interest of not only the Spanish, but also Chilean, Columbian, German, and Korean police and justice departments.

Not because it is up to something sinister, but because the two year old spinoff of Spain's Universidad Politécnica de Madrid develops voice identification and voice verification software.

Intelligence agencies and police forces are signing up to trial and in some cases buy its voice verification software, which they use in the same way that they use fingerprints to confirm the identity of a suspect.

And in another market, Spain's BBVA, one of the country's largest banks, is using a product from Agnitio to authenitcate employees that have to reset their passwords.

The password reset business puts it in direct competition with VoiceTrust, which so far has been pionnering that market niche. The German startup recently raised a €2M round of finance from some well-known German business angels.

Agnition has raised seed financing from a Spanish venture fund, Webcapital, which belongs to finance group, Riva Y Garcia in Barcelona.

The public sector is one market they could exploit with this tech. Longer term we could imagine a mass market if oice identification and verification solutions get adopted by the likes of online banks and enterprise network access managers.

It would be less cumbersome and cheaper than issuing chipcards and electronic password generators to end users. With that in mind, we expect that we'll be hearing more about Agnitio.

Read - Webcapital Toma participacion (Yahoo Finanzas)

Posted at 08:00 AM | Posted to Biometrics | News And Updates | Security | Venture Capital | entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink

June 01, 2006

Benchmark Europe Backs Netvibes Rival

Benchmark Europe is showing no hesitation to back clones of popular Web 2.0 applications. Last week it announced an investment in Bebo, a MySpace wannabe, and this week it's the web "homepage" firm Pageflakes, which is pretty close in look and functionality to Netvibes, based in France.

The undisclosed amount of capital will be used to accelerate the technology platform and product development.

Pageflakes, which is based in Germany, has to catch up to Netvibes, at least according to the Alexa sample.

Read - Pageflakes Secures (press release)

Posted at 11:21 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Venture Capital | Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

YOC Mobile Marketing Startup To Float

Berlin-based YOC, a mobilephone marketing startup, is hoping to raise some fresh capital next week on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's to fund growth.

The six year old firm's bookbuilding range gives it an implied valuation of up to €36M and the stock will be listed on the Entry Standard exchange (lightly regulated).

YOC (your opinion counts) employs 50 and achieved a positive EBIT for the first time in 2004. It has annual sales of €5.3M and claims it's on a 50 percent a year growth rate for both sales and profit.

Its product line is similar to those of rival startups Flytxt's and TXT4's and includes text messaging-based advertising solutions and some mobile content (ringtones, casual games etc).

The startup's lead bank on the IPO is Sal. Oppenheim.
Read - Neuemissionen: YOC (finanzen.net)

Posted at 06:45 AM | Posted to IPO | News And Updates | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink

Biogas IPO Gives VC Quick Return

Schmack Biogas, which delivers turnkey alternative energy plants, floated this week on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It raised €73M, achieving a post-money valuation of €153M.

The transaction gave Zurich-based SAM Private Equity (which does both early and late stage VC investment) a 10 times return on the shares it managed to sell in the IPO. It was a partial exit on a financing round that it participated in just last May, SAM Private Equity said.

Biogas plants converts raw sewage, manure, and other natural waste products into fuel which can be used for heating and cooling.

Read - Schmack Biogas AG successfully listed at the Prime Standard in Frankfurt

Posted at 06:14 AM | Posted to IPO | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink