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November 30, 2006
WiredMinds Funded by Creathor
Stuttgart-based WiredMinds, a web analytics software company, has raised an undisclosed amount of financing from Creathor, the Bad Homburg-based VC. Readers might not recognize Creathor. Although it is a farily new name and is in the process of fundraing, it was established by Gert Köhler who has a long track record in German VC. Köhler was a co-founder of Technologieholding in the late eighties, and he stayed on until 2003 after 3i acquired it in 2001. (He was one of the first VCs your a:c euro correspondent interviewed almost 9 years ago.)
Back to the present. WiredMinds, which is located in Stuttgart (HQ image right), has an established business based on it its newfangled pixel-based click tracking technology for portals and ecommerce sites that it sells using the SaaS model or by licensing (so-called source licensing). But the new money is to develop its MindSuite product , which we couldn't find on its website. In a statement, the firm said it is targeted at enterprises running web services and integrated applications (like CRM)
WiredMinds has been through the bubble and back, originally founding in 1997, and appears to have been restructured in 2003 to focus on its click tracking software.
Read - Creathor Venture invests in WiredMinds (creathor press pdf)
Posted at 12:43 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
alarm:clock euro Puzzler
This week's question:
Which London-based communications-oriented VC firm is a veritable Bain & Co. dugout, with a managing partner who was a founding partner of Bain & Company in Italy? Hint: Two of its recently added investment managers were with DFJ ePlanet Ventures before joining.
Click the Contact Us link in the right-hand column and fire off an email to win fame, if not fortune, in the a:c euro puzzler this week.
Posted at 09:18 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
November 29, 2006
Esprit's Simon Cook Shows The a:c euro The Exit(s)
The other day we wrote that we wanted to hear more about "money out" as opposed to "money in" from the tech sector here.
Well, we got a response from Simon Cook (image right), the CEO of Esprit Capital Partners, the London-based company that was formed in July 2006 from the merger of Prelude Ventures and Cazenove Private Equity.
He sent us his presentation from the Super Investor conference, which delivers what we'd been looking for (we have a link for readers to download it below).
New Media / eCommerce Exits
Chip Sector Exits
The company logos in the images above and below are VC-backed exits, not investments, achieved since the bubble burst. The ones circled in red are billion euro companies now. At the risk of stating the obvious, semiconductors and new media/ecommerce companies are finding the exit and that's why VCs continue to invest with confidence in those areas.
There is a series of slides within the presentation that Simon Cook calls the Countdown - basically a detailed comparison between European and US venture performance since the bubble burst. It's a bit more witty than your usual investor confab presentation and it shows that with the exception of Google, European ventures are not doing too badly on the exit front.
The Message Is That European VCs Are Duking It Out With US VC For Limited Partner Commitments
Link - Celebrating European Venture Capital Success Presentation (pdf file at Esprit)
Posted at 03:32 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Plazes Network Networks With Google Maps
Over at Plazes blog we read today that it has teamed up with the folks at Google Earth to integrate their users' location data into its maps. We wrote about Plazes a while ago when it attracted some angel investors. We still are trying to figure out what the pain point is that this firm's software solves but we'll let it slide - the techies of this world seem to love it.
Fact is mobilephone companies have tons of data about where users are and they are not doing anything with it - they are not adding services that let you see where your friends or kids are located, or where the next Starbucks is, and they do not seem to be heading in that direction either, so Plazes is jumping in with an alternative solution, at least for Internet users.
This video from Handelsblatt.com, part of series, has an interview with Plazes's mastermind Stefan Kellner. If you understand German, it's good.
Read -Locate Me Startup Gets Funded (the a:c euro)
Posted at 01:14 PM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Motorola Tops Up Wimax Startup Sequans' Latest Round
French fabless semiconductor startup, Sequans Communications, specialized in Wimax, has attracted an investment capital from Motorola, Ventures, the strategic VC arm of Moto. The investment is an extension of Sequans' recent $24M round led by Kennet Ventures back in July. It looks like Motorola is seriously interested in Wimax.
Read - Motorola Invests In Sequans (press rel.)
Read - Wimax is hot - Wimax is not (a:c euro)
Posted at 10:06 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
French VCs Back Fishy Dotcom
Pecheur.com, a French ecommerce company focused on hunting and fishing gear, has raised €1M from Sofimac, OTC Asset Management and BP Creation. The Gannat-based firm sells gear for the hobby gamesman. The new capital will be used to add more merchandise in related areas, such as pets and camping gear.
Everything You Need To Smoke Today's Catch
The company was founded in 2000 but really started to develop in 2004 with the addition of a new executive to the team. Sales in 2004 were €380K, growing to €900K in 2005 and on track for €1.5M in 2006. Prices, depth of product range, and its distribution have contributed to sales growth, the firm said in a statement.
Read - SOFIMAC Partners participe à la levée de fonds de Pecheur (press rel.)
Posted at 05:28 AM | Posted to News And Updates | eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
November 28, 2006
Pagebull Launches - Visual Search Results
Christopher Muenchhoff, one of the two founding team members of Pagebull.com, wrote in to tell us his firm has launched its new search site that instead of a page of text links, delivers up screenshots of hits in response to a search query - if the websites have been produced using standard web formatting (Flash pages are an issue, for example).
Search For the alarm clock And You Can Learn A Lot Before You Click Thru
Icons in the lower left corner of each "hit" describes the site's contents and a Zoom icon provides a larger view of the page. It's a search engine that you would use when looking for a particular website, or a company, or a product's homepage, not necessarily when researching a topic or looking for tickets to the next U2 concert.
This is Muenchhoff's third venture. He co-founded Dealpilot.com in Germany back in the nineties, and subsequently sold a stake to Bertelsmann. Over the years it changed hands several times, finally ending up as eBay's Dealtime service. After that he founded a solar cell startup, but he closed it down in 2003 as he learned that a subsidies-driven business was not for him. He is also an angel investor in several German startups.
We asked a couple of our regular readers to take a look at the beta yesterday. (More below the jump)
The reactions were diverse. It takes about a minute to understand the search concept, especially if you have not been exposed to things like Ask.com's Binoculars feature. A minute or two can be perceived as a long time, we learned.
Another said it's great for finding out about a company - delivering an instant visual overview, displaying corporate blog, photos in Flickr, and the homepage, all in one page. But it is also clear that a broadband connection is required. A reader tried to access from China and had a slow response. And since he's a VC, he wonders how unique the underlying tech is and if a business can be built on the back of it without that differentiation.
We think it is a click reducing concept for the end user, and that it could also put a crimp in the traffic flow to sites that are set up to take advantage of people clicking through to them by accident. For the a:c that would not be a bad thing, actually - to lose some of the traffic from people looking for a "talking digital alarm clock" or a "rolling alarm clock".
As for the business behind such a tool, Muenchoff who is in the process of moving the venture and his family from Germany to Edinburgh, Scotland, says that he wants to see what kind of uptake it has, and then he can implement a traditional search biz model, such as sponsored links. The company is angel financed.
Posted at 12:51 PM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
FAST Acquires Platefood's Contextual Search Biz For €8.1M
Norway's FAST Search & Transfer has bought out its strategic co-investors in Platefood, a British contextual search advertising software and related service provider that offers content and directories publishers an alternative to search advertising solutions from the Internet giants.
Platefood was originally set up as a joint investment in 2005 by Schibsted SØK AS, Sensis Pty and FAST. FAST acquired Schibsted's 20 percent and Sensis's 61 percent for € 8.1M in cash. FAST owned 19 percent prior to this transaction. The deal closed November 27, 2006, and FAST expects that all Platefood employees will be kept on.
Platefood Might Be Good With Search Ad Tech But Its Flash Website Is Retina Wrecking
Read - FAST Acquires Platefood (press rel.)
Posted at 12:29 PM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
Sweden's Tilgin To IPO
Swedish supplier of set-top boxes and gateways for broadband consumers to access so-called triple-play service (Interactive TV/Internet/Voice) is currently in the runup to float on the Stockholm Stock Exchange on December 15. It's a small IPO, aiming to raise about €11.5M, and from what we could see in its prospectus, which is only published in Swedish, there are no venture firms backing it.
Earlier in the year we covered Tilgin's quick growth mode. It sales were SEK 283mn (US$ 39.83mn EUR 31.06mn) during the first three quarters in 2006. The firm expects to be profitable in the second half of 2006.
Tilgin's French rival, Netcentrex, a much larger venture-backed operation, was acquired by Comverse last month for $170M including earnout.
Read - Read - Tilgin's Hockey Stick Growth (the a:c euro)
Posted at 09:38 AM | Posted to Interactive TV | TrackBack | Permalink
Whiskey-brand Has Scottish Startup's Display Tech On Tap
We picked up the news today that Glasgow-based Design LED Products has won its first commercial rollout with Scottish whiskey-maker The Famous Grouse, which will be installing point-of-sale displays in pubs in the UK exploiting the firm's innovative display technology.
We're reporting it because that kind of news usually presages a first round of financing.
One Display Has Many Ways To Animate That Logo
So far, the very-early-stage investor Braveheart Investment has been backing Design LED, which has patented the technology to make displays that enable mobilephone designers, indoor advertising display-makers, and even TV set manufacturers to add additional screen real estate to their hardware. It fits curved and 3D surfaces, something enabled by its getting rid of the rigid printed circuit board typically found in displays.
It also has a "secret-until-lit" feature that lets viewers see only parts of the display, which is nice for animated logos, but really interesting when developing user interfaces for appliances or other types of consumer electronics, enabling icons only being backlit when appropriate to the programming sequence
Back in July, Braveheart invested about $400K in Design LED. It was a second tranche of capital for the almost two year old firm, according to an article in The Scotsman. Braveheart, which has nice digs in Perth, (image right) has a good track record in backing early stage electronics sector firms: it backed Wolfson MicroElectronics (one of the 10X venture capital exits in the European market since the bubble burst) as well as AIM listed MicroEmissive Displays.
Read - Lighting up the Grouse brand at the point of sale (press rel.)
Read - Design LED is Braveheart's Alpha investment (The Scotsman)
Posted at 07:58 AM | Posted to Displays | Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
The Devil Wore Malware And WiFi Worms On Planes
Selling software to secure computer data and online services is kind of a dull business, unless of course someone like F-Secure's Mikko Hyponnen is doing the talking, and then it sounds like the trailer for an upcoming Hollywood thriller.
Our fllippancy here is only a pose, we actually believe that a few more tech executives Europe could be learning about public relations from Hyponnen. F-Secure's stock performance over the past five years would be one reason we've formed that opinion.
The security software company's chief research officer is interviewed by Bruno Giussani, a journalist and conference producer, over at the Lunch Over IP blog. It is an entertaining piece that describes the latest scary security threats: WiFi worms and professional bands of malware software developers whose intent is to separate PC users from their savings.
F-Secure was ahead of the curve in identifying wireless security threats and Hyponnen recalls that the first mobile phone virus was found in 2004 and since then 335 mobile phone viruses have hit the airwaves. Then he talks about what's next:
Wi-Fi worms, jumping from one Windows laptop to another, reaching organizations' internal network as people physically carry the infection in, bypassing corporate firewalls.
The Wi-Fi worm threat sounds a bit Like Snakes On A Plane, but we've little doubt that F-Secure has the right call on this one.
Hyponnen also talked about the evolution of viruses and their creators too.
In place of widespread malware assaults, 2006 has been characterized by targeted attacks which generally do not make the headlines and which have typically one single motivation: money. . . practically all new Windows viruses are written to make money. We're no longer fighting teenagers and hobbyists. We're fighting criminals. We're fighting professionals. We're fighting organized activity.
Read - Mikko Hypponen on the next data-security threat: beware the wi-fi worms( Lunch Over IP blog)
Posted at 06:30 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
November 27, 2006
VOIP Startup Vertico Raises €2M From firstVentury
Vertico Software, a one year old Karlruhe-based company specialized in developing VOIP products and services for small&medium sized businesses, said today it raised €2M from firstVentury, a Heidelberg-based VC.
The startup already employs a team of 22 and has developed a softswitch PBX, which it sells as a package, or pre-installed in a server appliance under the brandname Starface (image right). It supports the kind of features businesses requires, like caller ID, call deflecting, conference calls, call routing, and connectivity for external employees. The middleware framework is Asterisk, according to the firm's website - if we read it correctly. Support for things like hotlines, virtual call centers, and integration into apps like CRM is also built in. We didn't see anything about Outlook Express integration, though.
What probably attracted the VCs the most was its managed services offering, where it hosts the soft PBX for customers, which nicely positions Vertico for growth, internationally.
Starface's user interface is browser-based and looks pretty easy to use.
Read - firstVentury equity GmbH Invests
Posted at 06:17 PM | Posted to News And Updates | VoIP | TrackBack | Permalink
The Wattson Says What's On From Do-It -Yourself Kyoto
Tech that makes consumers a lot more careful with energy is on our minds at the a:c euro this morning.
It's The Nabaztag For The Energy-Saving Set - The Wattson Monitors Household Energy Consumption
Last week the media frenzy over the mysterious death of a former Russian spy in London overshadowed the news coming out of a Russo-EU summit in Finland that the European Union failed to establish a new agreement with Russia for the supply of gas and oil - the terms of agreement for a new charter meant to replace one that will expire next year are not in place.
That failure could very well result in higher oil and gas prices for the region in the coming years. Meanwhile, the Swiss press is reporting the hottest November here in 500 years (how they get the stats for the year 1506 we don't know - but we'll let that query slide).
Rising energy costs and temperatures, means that the market is ripe for the kind of gadgetry from companies like DIY Kyoto, which sells the Wattson. The wireless sensor device displays the amount of energy used in watts or in pounds sterling (it's only available for the UK market at the moment). It also communicates the info via colour. When the sensor is blue, energy consumption is low and if it's red, it's high - so even young children can understand what's going on. PC connectivity is also supported.
It is off to a great start, but there could be a lot more products and services targeting consumers to help reduce energy consumption and to improve energy efficiency across the board.
Read - DIY Kyoto proifle (NESTA)
Read - Russia, EU Meet as Trade Talks Stall on Polish Row (Bloomberg)
Read -
Meat-Imports Ban Dampens EU-Putin Talks (AHN Finland)
Read - EU-Russia summit yields little fruit (people.com.cn)
Posted at 06:57 AM | Posted to Alternative Energy | Being European | Cleantech | TrackBack | Permalink
Rounding Up Euro VC Dotcom Investments
How much money has gone into consumer Internet and media companies in Europe this year? That is the question that Paul Fisher, a corporate finance advisor at First Capital in London, is trying to answer. He is publishing his findings in his Coffee Shops Of Mayfair blog. The idea is to list 2006 Internet and media investments by the end of the year.
So far his research shows that the investment in the sector has increased, something he had predicted earlier in the year, as firms like Accel wake up to the sector, and US VCs put money into European firms in this category (part of a general interest in Europe by US VCs, the alarm:clock euro might add).
Fisher writes:
The type of companies are fascinating too: Far more online-offline models such as Moo and Spreadshirt, some of the filter technologies that excite me so much like Netvibes, PageFlakes and Last.fm, and also a new breed of online media properties like the wonderfully named DailyMotion.
Posted at 06:28 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
November 24, 2006
Tornado Insider Confirms Venture Capital Concentration
Tornado Insider confirms the trend in the market here that sees larger amounts of capital going into fewer companes that we reported on earlier this quarter. For the past four years about €4B a year has been invested in European and Israel (includes biotech/life science) based companies, says Tornado Insider. This year, the average deal size climbed to €5.8 million - compared to €4.5 million in 2005, €4.3 million in 2004 and €3.8 million in 2003.
To date in 2006 some 706 companies shared a pot of €4.1B, which is down from the 868 companies that shared a similar amount last year.
If we assume that VCs are backing the companies that they believe are winners and are providing them with the cash they need to compete with venture-backed companies from around the globe, then the trend is a positive one.
This is all very well and good. But whenever people talk about money in it sets off a craving for statistics and news about money out. As one of our old editor-in-chiefs used to say, any fool can invest a €100 million, or in this case €4B. If you have exit news and statistics, please send it to over - we will publish it.
Read - Funding The Burn (a:c euro)
Read - The Magic 4 Billion Mark (tornado insider)
Posted at 10:51 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Hot Betas - NAVX, Visuarios, WAYN
Image source: The Warning Sign Generator
We noticed that you like the alarm:clock euro's "fresh betas" posts, our super-short briefs on startups. The criteria to be in the list is pretty subjective. Either we've tried the product and liked it, or it's getting some coverage in the press and blogs, or investors are talking about it.
NAVX = One year old Navx, a French company that develops software and services that can be integrated into navigation devices, got some international press coverage this week for its contribution to a new mobile messaging service that monitors 120 parking garages in Paris and lists where the empty parking spot are on the cellphone or GPS display in auto. It is not a dotcom in beta, but we're briefing it here anyway. NAVX lets users change the voice of their GPS system or find out where the speed radars are located, among other things. NAVX's founders, Jean Cherbonnier and Florent Boutellier, previously co-founded ringtone and cellphone-wallpaper startup K-Mobile/Kiwee in 1999, which was acquired by AG Interactive in 2004
Read - Forget park and ride, try dial and park Wireless (IHT)
WAYN Where Are You Now = The blogs say WAYN is backed by UK-based Esprit Captial Partners. Our moles say that the founders are ex-Accenture guys, that WAYN has 6M members, and a premium membership that is used by about 3 percent of those folks. The user number is high - but with all of these community or social media sites - user numbers don't mean a lot. It's common for people to make multiple accounts within one community or even in rivalling communities and then leave them dormant. What really counts is how much these dotcoms are selling via subscriptions, or affiliate marketing schemes, and other money-making partnerships. And so far, that info for WAYN is not being whispered, at least not to us.
Read - What do you think of wayn (Brad Feld blog)
Read - Cool Startup Where Are You Now (pindrop blog)
Visuarios = Via the Museum of Modern Beta's Hot 100 list we discovered that Visuarios is generating some bookmarking activity (that's how you get into the Hot 100). It is a video sharing site that lets people show off what they can do (tutorials, "wetten das.." type stunts, and cooking how-to). It's from a multi-culti team based in Barcelona, Spain and launched a month ago in beta. The twisting ankles Yoga demo gave us the creeps - human joints are not meant to do that, are they?
Read - MOMB Hot 100 (Museum of modern betas - hot 100)
Posted at 06:22 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
November 23, 2006
AdLink Pays €35M For Another Piece of Sedo's Domain Name Biz
AdLink, the online advertising and digital marketing subsidiary of Germany's United Internet, said this week it borrowed €35M to boost its stake in Sedo, which provides domain-name services. AdLink bought an additional 24 percent of Sedo - it already owned 52 percent -- and now owns 76 percent of the company, according to press announcements it made this week.
The AdLink deal implies a valuation for Sedo of about €140M. It had sales of close to €30M in the first 9 months of 2006. We could confirm with AdLink that Sedo is profitable, but the figures were not provided.
Sedo will retain its founders who also still have a stake in the venture. Sedo is active in the US and Europe and is specialized in Domain-Parking, Domain-Name Marketing, Domain-Valutation, Domain-Transfers and Domain-auctions. The latter activity has become lucrative again - it recently sold gays.com for €500K - we are not informed if it acted as an intermediary, or actually owned the domain itself.
AdLink's Biz Model Include Display Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, And "Domain Marketing"
Read - Adlink 3Q06 (9 month) Report
Posted at 05:14 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Seed-Funded WiVOIP Startup To Seek Financing
Earlier this month Add Partners announced a seed investment in a Luxembourg-based wireless VoIP (WiVoIP) start-up, called Wireless Technology Partners. We followed up for a couple of reasons. It was Add Partners first very early stage investment for several years, and two, the announcement brought attention to WTP before it even had a website - if you wanted to know more you couldn't just link through.
So we asked Niko von Huetz, an investment director at UK-based Add Partners, why the early announcement? After telling us about the "rare and unique" opportunity to assemble a team of this quality with "perfect market timing", he explained why.
"By announcing the seed round, it is a way to signal the firm will be raising its first round of VC soon. The startup aims to raise €3M in VC early in the new year," he said.
The deal is also part of the firm's “warehousing program” for its next fund, and it signals that the fund, AddTwo, will be launched shortly.
von Huetz gave a bit of insight into how Add Partners works the early stage. "We tend to go in very early when adding new firms to the portfolio. The founder, David Parsons [an American living in Paris] is an IP [internet protocol] and wireless voice expert, but it is also his first time as CEO and you don't want to have a badly groomed venture when it comes to Series A round," said von Huetz.
Using Skype and other VOIP services on WiFi isn't as seamless, secure, and user-friendly as it could be. WTP hopes to change that with solutions for carriers, handset-makers, and service providers.(Pictured left: the Skype Netgear phone).
Just in case readers missed the press release, the company is developing VoIP solutions for handsets equipped to handle wireless LAN communications. The solutions, it claims, will solve some known integration and quality problems with IP telephony on mobile Wifi handsets, as well as considering security, and cost of implementation. The firm's business model is based on licensing its solutions.
von Huetz says that the WTP team has the directly relevant experience required and they're "the only team" developing this particular set of technologies for WiVOIP.
"The press announcement provides enough information to draw the attention of potential customers, including handset makers, network operators, and resellers," responded von Huetz. There is more information available but only under non-disclosure agreement, he added. The a:c euro doesn't do NDAs, so we'll just have to wait and see what WTP will deliver.
Read - Wireless Technology Partners Secures seed funding from Add Partners (press rel.)
Posted at 06:30 AM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
November 22, 2006
Top 10 Things Missing From Mobilephones
TechDigest.tv, a UK and Europe-oriented blog about gadgetry, is where we turn for a break from busting our noggins trying to understand VC mumbo jumbo about IRRs and "incentivizing" founders, online advertising business models, and electronics trends that require deep knowledge of the thermodynamic properties of silicon-on-insulator lattices.
Their Top 10 gadgets that HAVEN'T converged with mobile phones yet post is an example of what we're talking about.
Top 10 gadgets that HAVEN'T converged with mobile phones yet
Your phone's a camera. It's an iPod. It's a GPS satnav system. It's a games console. It plays porn. It can do everything. Well, not quite everything. There are still a select few gadgets that haven't been rolled into a phone yet. Here's ten of 'em. Get to it, Nokia pointyheads...
1. Tin opener
2. Metal detector
3. Gun
4. Pacemaker
5. Egg whisk
....
TechDigest.tv suggests Nokia is the closest to converged everything, but we think that Victorinox, the company behind the Swiss Army Knife brand, could emerge as the dark horse in this mad race. (Image: s.beat MP3 Digital Audio Player; Victorinox.ch)
Read - Top 10 Gadgets That Haven't Converged With Mobile Phones Yet (techdigest.tv)
Posted at 01:39 PM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
Open Source In Mobile - What You Need To Know
The a:c euro didn't make it to the Informa Open Source in Mobile conference in Amsterdam in early November but Andreas Constantinou of mobile industry consulting firm Vision Mobile did, so we asked him if he heard anything that might affect a:c euro's readers.
He put together a short report in reply that highlights recent open source developments and a quick analysis. Constantinou concludes there is a huge opportunity but one that comes with double-edged risk.
Read on below the jump.
Open Source in Mobile gathered over 100 industry attendees. Presentations were given by the who's who of execs active in open source for mobile phones: Panasonic's Yukio Yagi (General Manager), Vodafone's Phil Carter (Head of Terminal Platforms), Motorola's Christy Wyatt (Head of Ecosystem Dev), A la Mobile's Pauline Alker (CEO), Trolltech's Adam Lawson (PM, Qtopia), Nokia's Ari Jaaksi (Head of Open Source Software Operations), OSDL's Bill Weinberg, ARM's Philippe Robin (PM Linux) and Black Duck's Doug Levin.
The event's mystery speaker was Sean Moss-Pulz, the visionary father of FIC's OpenMoko, who chose to break the news on the open-source platform at the event.
Open source has the potential to disrupt conventional ways of doing business in mobile, by engaging external communities to reduce total cost of platform ownership, reduce time to market, and speed up innovation in creating new mobile phones, which is why is it currently a hot space for VC activity.
However, as any open source veteran will point out, using open source
- is not free,
- does not guarantee hordes of external developers contributing code to your product
- most often needs seed funding (most successful O/S projects have commercial backers)
- requires extra care in defining the business plan, and working your way around licensing issues.
The flurry of activity in open source is evident in the many recent announcements in the area:
- Nokia's Maemo project is continuing to grow and Ari Jaaksi announced the Sardine device which would follow the 770 Internet tablet, both based on Maemo.
- In July Motorola pledged that more than half of the manufacturer's mobile phones will use Linux within 18 to 24 months. (Image above is the Motorola Linux Model e680 and here a screenshot).
- Motorola has further open sourced their implementation of MIDP3, i.e. next-gen Java for phones. At the open source conference, Christy Wyatt also said that sales of Motorola's Ming have reached 1% of total phone sales in China, an impressive feat.
- Last week Sun announced details of how it is going to open source J2ME and J2SE implementations, marking a major twist in Sun's Java saga.
- Earlier in November Adobe announced it has open sourced ActionScript 3, a core part of Flash, which is now hosted by Mozilla and will find its place into future Firefox browsers.
- Handset manufacturer FIC announced OpenMoko, the first fully open source Linux phone software platform, that competes with Purple Labs (owned by ODM Vitelcom), MontaVista's MobiLinux, WindRiver, Trolltech's Qtopia and Applix's BTO service.
- In late October Access Linux Platform announced it is open sourcing its application framework, a critical part of the phone software stack.
- Linux tools vendor Open Plug announced it had secured a $15m Round B funding in early October
- A la Mobile was started in June by entrepreneur-in-residence Pauline Alker with $3.5m seed funding and is believed to be looking to secure another $10m to fulfil its promise of 'the Red Hat of mobile'.
- In October, private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital announced it had acquired a controlling stake in a privately held U.S. company Celunite , reportedly for $30 million. Celunite is a Sunnyvale, California-based provider of Linux-based open-source technology, which is still in stealth mode.
In this flurry of open source activity around mobile handsets, what are the opportunities for VCs?
Open source has the potential to be as disruptive for mobile handset software, as Google has been is for mobile operator 'closed garden' strategies. In other words, if you bank on the right player, the potential for returns are huge, as Linux and open-source software are garnering industry backing and market share.
However, the potential for failure in open source projects should not be understated. A la Mobile and Open Plug for example are very ambitious and high risk propositions. Investors and VCs looking at open source need to have both a very good understanding of handset technologies and the risks associated with open source licensing.
Read - VisionMobile (Andreas Constantinou blog)
Posted at 10:46 AM | Posted to Open Source Software | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
Marketing Ammo For Euro VCs
Here's an event for venture capital firms on the fundraising trail. According to Guy Fraser Samson, a former institutional investment, specialized in VC, and investment book author, the alarm:clock euro's venture capitalist readers could get some marketing material if they go to a two day workshop put on by Incisive Media on December 4th and 5th in London.
It will be based to a large part on the tenets from his book entitled Multi-Asset Class Investment Strategy. Fraser Sampson writes that it's "the marketing weapon they have been waiting for. It is basically a worked example of why everyone should be putting at least 20% into private equity."
He's just back from the SuperInvestor event in Paris where 33 participants attended his workshop, almost all from a private equity background but with a handy showing of family offices too.
Read - Incisive Media Multi Asset Class Event Broschure
Posted at 10:29 AM | Posted to Events | TrackBack | Permalink
Codasystem's Metadata Tatoos For Fotos Funded
French startup Codasystems has raised €2M from OTC Asset Management, according to Neteco. This was the firm's second round. Its first was raised in 2004 with Cap Decisif.
Exactly Where The Shot Was Snapped
Codasystem sells a solution used by businesses to document and legally certify images. For example, a construction firm wants to document daily the work completed on a new roof for a building to make sure there's no quibbling about contracts and deadlines.
According to the firm, its software enables image to be "tattooed" (using steganography) with the environmental information captured at the precise instant the picture was taken, including the author, the location (using GPS), time and date (certified), altitude, temperature or any other kind of numerical information. The solution also supports the data file transfer, encryption, archiving, and storage of image files. Reference customers seem to be from the retail, construction, and security sectors of the economy.
The new capital is meant to startup international sales and geographic expansion.
Read - Codasystem leve 2 million (neteco)
Posted at 10:11 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 21, 2006
Checkpoint Offers $586M For Swedish Data Protection Company
It looks like virus protection software firm Check Point Software Technologies figures the increasing number of news items about executives losing their laptops stuffed full of customer data and credit card numbers is an opportunity to grow its business, as it has made a $586M offer to acquire publicly-traded Protect Data the Swedish company behind Pointsec Mobile Technologies, a US registered company specialized in providing security solutions for cellphones, PDA, and Notebook PCs. The deal is subject to approval by shareholders and regulatory authorities.
Ovum, the UK market research firm, sees this as a defensive move by Checkpoint to keep up with rivals Symantec and Mcafee, and that it will have to make some buys to complete the suite. Pointsec uses encryption technology it licensed from F-Secure. Correction Nov. 23/06: F-Secure is a not a Swedish company, as we originally wrote here, it is a public Finnish company listed on the Scandinavian OMX exchange.
Read- CheckPoint announces acquisition of Pointsec Mobile Technologies (ovum)
Posted at 02:58 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Spain's Properazzi Got VC And Gets Some Buzz
Reading BusinessWeek today we learned that Mangrove Capital is backing Properazzi, a Spanish-based real estate listings site that just launched (in beta) earlier this month - it's a site that tries to cover Europe-wide properties for rent and for sale.
If we are not mistaken, Gil Penchina, a former eBay International exec-turned-wiki-entrepreneur- is an angel investor too, according to an interview we eyeballed on Lukasz Gadowski's Gründerszene blog. Penchina is also invested in mobile games company Boonty and local search startup Qype, two other European startups.
The BW article is worth reading because it's based on a rare interview with Mangrove Capital. As for Properazzi, it's early days to start making a judgement but it seems there's plenty of competition with local real estate listings.
Sure, there are few pan-european search sites for property, but then again how many people seek an apartment or home with a Pan European scope - local search makes sense for this application. We can only imagine a tiny niche market that would require such an online service - such as professional relocators or those wealthy enough to own multiple homes or apartments.
Read - Searching For An Encore To Skype (businessweek)
View Interview With Gil Penchina (Gründerszene)
Posted at 09:47 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Sybase Buys iFoundry - The Latest Of Several Wireless s/w Acquisitions
Sybase is becoming a consolidator in the mobile and wireless software market. Its latest acquisition is Singapore-based iFoundry, a specialist in embedded wireless - Bluetooth and IrDa - solutions. The deal was announced Monday. There was no disclosure on the price paid.
iFoundry had been the Singaporean operation of Extended Systems before its management bought it out back in 2002. Sybase bought Extended Systems in 2005.
The Singapore deal is the most recent of several acquisitons the US firm is making to build up its product lines and subsidiary businesses that not only now target mobilephone manufacturers and network operators, but also the business - or enterprise - mobility market.
This activity should be getting the attention of European VCs as Sybase paid a healthy $400M for Mobile 365, a mobile software company that resulted from the merger of Mobileway, which had been backed by European VCs, and Inphomatch, backed by US investors. It also acquired in June a Germany company called Solonde whose business intelligence software business was added to Sybase's Unwired Enterprise business activities.
Read- Sybase Acquires iFoundry Systems (press rel.)
Read - Sybase Acquires Solonde (a:c euro)
Posted at 08:07 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
VC + DVD Player + Remote = Sofatronic Casual Gaming
Germany's Neuhaus Partners just let us know that it has invested an undisclosed amount in Sofatronic, a Hamburg-based developer of casual games that can be played on standard DVD players. It's an original idea and fits with casual gaming trends that see browser games and light-weight mobilephone games catching on.
The tech is enabled by Adobe Flash and there's is no need for a new remote control or embedded software in the DVD hardware.
Sofatronic was founded early this year by a team that previously founded mobilephone games studio Elkware, which was acquired by Infospace for $26M at the end of 2004. The firm's MD is Nils Hammerich and its CTO is Rouven Malecki, along with Elkware co-founder, René Baisch who is in charge of business development.
Neuhaus says this is a very early stage investment and that the startup has potential for international growth, but the German market is first to be targeted. The company is looking to hire some wizards in Flash, testing, and gaming graphics, by the way.
Posted at 06:32 AM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 20, 2006
Yahoo Acquires Sweden's Kenet Works For Its Mobilephone Software
GigaOm is reporting that Yahoo has acquired Swedish startup Kenet Works for about €16.6M. The deal closed a few months ago, it said. Not much info on Kenet Works's website. However its software is sold to operators and it requires users to download a client to their phone to manage email, messaging, and other applications. No details on whether or not it is smartphone targeted or a mass market Javaphone product.
Read - Yahoo is on a spending spree (gigaom)
Posted at 03:46 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Nugg.ad Funded
Nugg.ad, a German online ads tech startup has raised an undisclosed amount of cash by selling bmp AG (a publicly traded VC vehicle) 17.5% of its equity. The six month old Berlin-based company shows it knows the that most online ad campaigns are a waste of money:
More than 99% of the advertising found on the internet is not clicked on, and nearly as much of it is quickly forgotten. What a waste of screen space, mind space and advertising money!We'll be trying to dig a bit deeper into Nugg to find out about its technologies -it website says it combines a few things, such as cookie tracking and measurement, user surveys, and ad server software it has developed. A quick read on its blog suggests it has an edge on the cookie thing - people delete them, dontcha know - as one of its shareholders is Spring Gmbh, which is an 11 year old software firm specialized in web analytics and measurement, ie. cookies - among other things. It originally spun out of the German Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Read - bmp beteiligt sich in Nugg.ad (boerse.de)
Posted at 03:22 PM | Posted to Advertising | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
French Online Real Estate Ads To IPO
An IPO is imminent for Seloger.com Groupe (formerly Poliris), the Paris-based company behind online real estate ads sites Seloger.com and Immostreet.com. The float will be on Euronext and it's slated for December 1. The company hopes to sell around €197M worth of shares, a little less than half of which will be new shares.The mid-bookbuilding share price gives it an implied valuation of around €390M.
About half the company's share will be in free float. If successful, it will mean a realization, at least on paper as it was not disclosed who is selling shares in the offering, for some of its VC backers, such as 3i, which acquired 34 percent of company for €60M a year ago.
Seloger.com Has Added Some Web 2.0ish Price Comparison Features This Year
Read - Castles of France.com (the alarm:clock)
Posted at 10:43 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
TranSIC Gets Startup Funding For High Performance Transistors
Swedish university spinoff, TranSiC AB has raised €440K from Volvo Technology Transfer Corp (VTT) and Midroc New Technology, according to Semiconductor Today. The startup is working on silicon carbide transistors that it hopes will make it into new hybrid vehicles (like the Prius), power converters to reduce the size, and ac/dc motor control. The early adopters of such chips are companies that make light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for auto headlights, dashboards and other lighting applications.
Read - TranSiC raises €0.44m in first-round financing
Posted at 07:57 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 19, 2006
alarm:clock euro puzzler winners: Hitflip's Jan Miczaika and Neuhaus Partners's Jozefak
We have two winners for this week's alarm:clock euro puzzler because timing was close we called it a tie.
The question :
Which early stage German venture fund counts SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira as an investor and supporter?
The answer: Firstventury Equity
Out of Heidelberg, Firstventury, is one of the few VC funds in Europe that is founded by entrepreneurs and financed by wealthier entrepreneurs, as opposed to pension fund managers and institutional investors. It's a model that seems so obvious and yet is still relatively rare in the venture market here.
Both Jan Miczaika, founder of online digital media trading exchange Hitflip - that is him (far right) in the photo on the right - and Paul Jozefak, a Neuhaus Partners' managing partner (before joining Neuhaus, Jozefak was at SAP Ventures, leading the European direct investements as well as its LP activities), wrote in with the correct answer.
Posted at 09:14 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
November 17, 2006
Just Your Average German Gamer
Researchers in Germany surveyed 3,000 over-fourteen year olds to find out who the average gamer is and found that the clichés are not very accurate, except for the fact that the most frequent players are male.
This is your average frequent gamer. He's 44 years old and the PC is the platform.
This is his fridge,
And his living room.
Gaming in Germany generates more sales that cinema. The full report (which was sponsored by Electronic Arts, German gaming magazine GEE, and Jung Von Matt, a corp comms company) can be downloaded if you provide your personal details.
Read - Spielplatz Deutschland
Posted at 04:22 PM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | TrackBack | Permalink
VC Money For Air
Air Semiconductor, a fabless chipmaker developing RF silicon for mobilephones, has raised seed funding from Pond Ventures, reports EETIMES.
Not much info is available yet. Except that one of the founders, David Tester, is a chip engineer and was an exec at Dialog Semiconductor and the other Stephen Graham, was at Renesas Technology. The company is based in Swindon.
Pond has an eye for promising chip design teams and it is sticking to its very early stage style of investing - so this will probably end up being one to watch.
Read - Chip startup formed to address mobile phone problem (eetimes)
Posted at 03:19 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Cleantech VC Leads Round For Austrian RFID Company
Austria's Identec Solutions has rasied €10M in a round led by SAM Private Equity, a Swiss cleantech investor. Other investors include Sustainable Performance Group, RFID Invest, gcp gamma capital partners. The company announced it wanted to raise $15M back in June. Since the PR says this was a first closing it means it's probably looking to raise $5M more.
It's a bit of a stretch trying to understand how SAM Private Equity could see this as fitting its cleantech style - maybe its looking at the potential RFID tracking and tracing solutions have to reduce CO2 emissions because containers are not zooming around the world half empty, or transport and logitstics companies being more efficient on the road and in the air. We're not sure.
Identec has some big name reference customers, such as Boeing and Volkswagen. And the capital is meant to enable the company to expand geographically plus invest in development of new products.
Read - Austrian RFID Firm Raising (a:c euro)
Posted at 02:55 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 16, 2006
alarm:clock euro Puzzler
We changed the name of the a:c euro venture market quiz to "puzzler" so that we are in line with sister-site alarm:clock, in case you're wondering about the title. This week's question:
Which early stage German venture fund counts SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira as an investor and supporter?
Click the Contact Us link in the righ-thand column and fire off an email to win fame, if not fortune, in the a:c euro puzzler this week.
By the way, not a single reader was able to answer last week's puzzler: Name the two venture capital firms based in Germany that recently dropped "Techno" from their firm names.
The answer was Neuhaus Partners, which dropped the Techno Nord from its name, and TVM Capital, which used to be known as Techno Venture Management.
Posted at 09:20 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
Austria's TTTech Raises €20M To Support Growth
Germany's Firstventury has invested €20M in TTTech Computertechnik, a nine year old Austrian electronics company, that is specialized in developing ultra-reliable control systems and x-by-wire protocols for the aviation and transport sector. Austria's Wirtschafftsblatt got the scoop earlier this month.
The firm employs 150 and this is its first round of institutional investment. It is an unusual deal for Firstventury as it typically enters a portfolio firm's equity at the very early stage, but Niall Davis, a partner at Firstventury, told the a:c euro that it was an opportunity too good to pass on. Several of its LPs co-invested with Firstventury to boost the size of the round.
TTTech, founded in 1997, is doing about €13M a year in sales, he said, and was originally a spinoff of the University of Vienna. The new capital is meant to enable the company to meet its production and support requirments on the back of getting some design-in wins with big name transportation industry customers. It will also invest in developing new markets for its technologies.
TTTech Licenses To Chip Manufacturers, Makes Its Own Systems, And Sells Supporting Software
Its founder is a pioneer in communications protocols for the x-by-wire category, a tech that is meant to make automobiles, airplanes, tractors, and other vehicles lighter by getting rid of some of the hardware required for steering and braking, for example. The company has several business units targeting other related applications.
The car manufacturer Audi also acquired a minority stake in the company. Audi was a reference customer signed on back in 2001.
Read - Audi und firstVentury beteiligen sich an TTTech (wirtschafftsblatt)
Posted at 08:06 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Upcoming Event: Mediatech
Library House, a tech business research and database publisher, is putting on a one day confab in London called Mediatech 2006 on November 30, meant to bring together startups, corporates, and investor types.
For a:c euro readers, it could be a chance to get closer to people from Intel, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - if that is important to your biz. Intel Capital and Intel will have a contingent there led by managing director Ashish Patel, and Microsoft too, headed by Matthew Bishop, (both companies are sponsoring the event).
The Microsoft people will be the ones that are looking for partnerships with young technology companies who want to exploit Microsoft's software or services in new products. (The Redmond-based giant sheds some light on what it is doing in Europe in its startup blog platform and there are also details on its appetite for acquisitions and startups. E.g. it has made 21 acquisitions this year, three of them were in Europe - none were blockbuster-sized though).
Speakers are Bob Young, the CEO of lulu.com and a co-founder of Red Hat, Jonathan Wolf who is Yahoo's director of corporate development in Europe, and Anil Hansjee who has a similar title at Google, which means you might be able to meet them before and after their talks.
And if a financing round is on agenda, there are quite a few VCs signed on to attend, such as 3i, Acacia Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Amadeus Capital, Benchmark Capital, Celtic House Ventures, Esprit Capital Partners, as well as Partech International, TLcom Capital Partners, and TTP Venture Managers, will be on hand. Most of these invest across Europe, as well as the UK. The BBC, Sky, and Guardian are participating from the media side.
Read - Microsoft EMEA - Investors in Innovation (David Rowe's blog)
Read - Microsoft Ready To Deal (alwayson)
Read - Library House Web 2.0 Conference (the equity kicker)
Read - Mediatech 2006 Who Is Walking The Walk (UK TechCrunch)
Posted at 07:02 AM | Posted to Events | TrackBack | Permalink
November 15, 2006
InovisCoat Raises €2.3M
Inoviscoat, a Leverkusen-based startup that has a multicoatings technology that it says can make the production of photographic film and paper cheaper, has raised €2.3M from Leonardo Venture in exchange for 41 percent of its equity.
The startup's coatings are measured in micronmeters and it works with SolGels.
Read - => Nachrichten | Leonardo Venture investiert in das Leverkusener Technologieunternehmen InovisCoat GmbH (finanznachrichten)
Posted at 03:21 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
4G Systems Taps T-Mobile To Speed Market Dev
4G Systems GmbH in Hamburg has raised an undisclosed amount of financing in a round led by T-Mobile Venture Fund (one of Deutsche Telekom's VC vehicles), earlier investors Brockhaus Private Equity and Adinvest also joined. The new capital is develop 4G's iternational activites at speed. 4G makes a box that supports a higher speed data service (HSDPA), that the likes of T-Mobile and other cellular operators would like to see gain some uptake among households and business.
Read - alarm:clock euro: Hamburg startup = Broadband Internet + Alphabet Soup – Wires Archives (the alarm:clock)
Read - 4G Systems GmbH / T-Mobile Venture Fund beteiligt .(FAZ/ots)
Posted at 03:08 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
London Company Starts Up NanoWars
Tim Harper from Cientifica, whose firm does a lot of consulting on nanotech commercialization, wrote in to say that his firm is advising Playgen on its new NanoWars video game. The idea is that the game should be based on fact as it's meant to be an educational tool to make learning about nanoscience interesting for 12 to 18 year olds.
Here's how they describe it:
The game's plot is to save the world from destruction by Dr.Nevil and his army of nano-machines and nano-materials, whilst the player stealthily learns about real world nanotechnology. The game hero (player) supported by Dr. Goodlove and his assistants use nano-imaging and quantum theory, create nano-machines, develop nano-materials, and utilise an extraordinary shrinking machine to shrink the player to nanoscale to stop Dr. Nevil and save the world.
It seems like a good idea but we think Playgen should consider making it Dr Nevilla and her army of nano machines versus Dr Goodlove and her army of assistants - that way female gamers might be attracted too.
Posted at 09:20 AM | Posted to Games (PC and other) | TrackBack | Permalink
Nordic VC Backs Polar Rose's Visual Search Innovation
Malmö, Sweden-based Polar Rose has raised a nice sized Series A round of $5.1 m (€4 m, SEK 37 m) from Nordic Venture Partners to make a business out of its facial recognition technology applied to searching and identifying images on the Web.
Details on the firm's commercial service are sketchy. But knowing Nordic Venture Partners from interviews over the years and recent conversations with its partners, the company is meant to make money and it is being built for a global market.
What we know so far is that it's software can do some three-dimensional processing of images (3D extrusion) and applies cutting-edge facial recognition algorithms. This combined with labeling and input from users - to sort and add context to images -- is the basis of the service.
Here's what Polar Rose tells potential users:
Polar Rose works with any public photo. No matter if you're using flickr, 23, Kodak gallery, or any other website, Polar Rose lets you discover people in pictures. Learn who people are, and help improve results by tagging pictures together with other users.
Read - Euro Rivals For Riya (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:29 AM | Poste