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March 31, 2007
Euro eCommerce Trend: Off-Price Fashions For Members Only
We've noticed a spate of investment across Europe in new eCommerce sites set up to sell off designer fashions and accessories at discounts to "members-only". In the retail world, the equivalent might be off-price shop that only sells to card-carrying members.
The latest is a Spanish/German venture called BuyVIP. Others include UK-based Koodos.com, Privalia, also Spanish, and two French ones 24h00 and AchatVIP
BuyVIP offers German and Spanish language versions of its site. Just raised €2M from MCI (a family office advised by Active Capital Partners), Grupo Intercom (VC arm of Spanish Internet holding co.) and a pool of investors represented by Valkiria Network International Holding. It claims 200K members and was founded by Gustavo Garciá Brusilowsky and Gerald Heydenreich. The two previously build PORTUM, an auction and procurement platform that did €5B in turnover, which was acquired by IBX Europe in 2006.
Read press rel.
Privalia, also from Spain, recently raised €400K from , according to Carlos Blanco's blog from Internet entrepreneurs and two strategic investors.
Koodos.com is an English language, private sale site selling luxury brand-name items, backed by Atlas Venture. Its longer term plan is to sell through consumer facing ecommerce sites, according to Robin Klein's blog.
Olfo, the company behind AchatVIP.com raised €3.5M in January from Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners and OTC Asset Management.
France's 24h00 also recently raised capital in February when AGF Private Equity invested €6M. It also sells brand name items at special prices for a limited time only.
Posted at 05:28 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
Germany's Pace Raises €3M
PACE, a high-end engineering software startup has raised €3M from Germany's eCAPITAL, Dutch Strategic European Technologies N.V. and Berlin Mittel VC. Its customers include Rolls-Royce, Airbus, and Bombardier who use its software for CAD like applications in aircraft performance, cabin design, and industrial product design.
Expansion into other vertical markets and an international push are on the agenda.
View Pace
Posted at 04:24 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Russia's Yandex Acquires Biz Social Networking Site
Yandex, the Russian portal and WiFi network operator, has acquired Moikrug.ru, which is said to be the country's largest social networking site for professionals. Moikrug roughly translates to MyCircle.
Regular and active a:c euro reader Yakov Sadchikov, co- founder of Russia-based search company Quintura, uses the term ‘acq-hired’ to describe the deal, suggesting the know-how and experience of the team at Moikrug was the attraction. Moikrug is said to have some 100k registered users.
No disclosure on price but rumors range from $1.5M to up to $5M including cash and Yandex stock options.
Read - Yandex buys social network MoiKrug.ru (cnews)
Posted at 03:44 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 29, 2007
Euronext Internet IPOs - More Dotcoms
Euronext has supported a few more dotcom IPOs.
Notrefamille (mkt cap €16.9M on Alternext)
Its websites help you find your family and then send them gifts. VC-backed
AdenClassfieds (mkt cap €216M on Eurolist)
Operates several career search related websites. VC-backed.
Referencement.com (mkt cap €16.5M Marche Libre)
European search engine marketing firm
Entreparticuliers (mkt cap €52.6M on Alternetxt)
Internet sites for real estate ads from and to consumers. The group also sells the publication Les Annonces Immobilières.
View Euronext.com
Posted at 06:16 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Vinod Khosla Answers To Your Questions
We recently asked alarm:clock readers to mail in questions for VC titan Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, who has been busy lately making investments in alternative energy. Here some top questions with his responses.
Posted at 06:05 AM | Posted to Alternative Energy | TrackBack | Permalink
March 28, 2007
Paris' Trace.TV Takes Strategic Funding From Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount. In addition to cash, Universal will provide Trace with global music and video rights, a weekly slot on Universal's International Music Feed and cross promotions, including an urban music partnership to sell mobile content in China.
Launched in 2003 in Paris, France, TRACE began as a print magazine and now runs urban music programming in multiple languages across Internet, cable, satellite, radio, IPTV and mobile platforms. It expects to launch in the US market in 2007/8. In 2003, Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group made an investment.
Trace's founders are Claude Grunitzky, Olivier Laouchez who are former TV and record label senior executives, and Richard Wayner a former investment banker.
Read - Universal Music Group (UMG) to Invest in Alliance TRACE Media (TRACE)
View - site
Posted at 07:32 PM | Posted to Media | TrackBack | Permalink
Austria's Carlyle-backed UC4 Buys Appworx
Austria's UC4 Software is buying Bellevue, WA's AppWorx. The company makes the claim to be the first truly global and independent provider of IT process automation and optimization solutions. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
UC4 sells enterprise job scheduling and data center automation while AppWorx sells event-driven business application automation and batch integration technology.
The Carlyle Group, which owns 80% of UC4 Software, has supported the merger with a follow-on investment in UC4.
UC4 recently released financial data indicating that in the first three quarters of 2006 ithad total revenue of USD 29.5M (EUR 22.9M) – this corresponds to an increase of 23% over the same period of the previous year.
Read - Application Automation and Job Scheduling Vendors Join Forces to Apply New Focus on End-to-End Process Management Challenges (Press release)
Posted at 06:42 PM | Posted to Financial Software | TrackBack | Permalink
ePayment's Moneybookers Bought Out By PE Firm For €105M
London's Moneybookers, an online payment provider and the UK's first FSA-licensed e-money issuer, says that private equity firm Investcorp Technology Partners has bought-out of the company for €105M. The company was 100% owned by Gatcombe Park Ventures in London.
Moneybookers says its processed transaction volume reaching more than EUR2.5B with 3M account holders. Moneybookers customers can pay and at more than 3,500 online shops that are using Moneybookers without entering their payment details. Moneybookers charges never exceed EUR0.50 for sending money worldwide.
So why are people using Moneybookers rather than PayPal or Google Checkout? It seems that Paypal still does not work or work well in a number of countries.
View - Press release
Posted at 06:36 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
French VC Backs UK's Webjam
We just heard from Webjam that it raised £1M from iSource Gestion, a French venture capital firm. The founding team, former employees of Yahoo, are British, Spanish and French and based in London.
The round was raised shortly after launching a public beta on February 1st, wrote Sonia Kalfon in an email to alarm:clock euro. She is Product Marketing Manager at Webjam.
Kalfon and co-founder Alberto Barreiro and Chief Product Officer.
Kalfon said that iSource's recent float of geneology site, notrefamille.com [on Alternext the junior Euronext market], is what clinched the deal from the founders' point of view.
It's a nice looking and responsive website - tightly designed too. And while some Web oriented writers have called it "Myspace plus Netvibes on Steriods", we cannot help but wonder if the the world really need another blogging, photo, chat, and event publishing platform? Time will tell.
View Webjam blog
Posted at 06:32 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Top 5 Fast Digital Startups in the UK - King.com By Far
GP Bullhound, a UK-based corporate finance firm, has done some research on digital media companies in the UK (for an event it organizes) and published a list of the top five of 50 based on revenue growth over between 2003 and 2005, with casual gaming company King.com topping the list.
Interestingly, the high growth irates spans a range of categories, from SMS-based marketing to online advertising.
Top 5 Fastest Growing Digital Media Companies 2007 [GB]
1 King.com 20,900% Online Skill Gaming
2 OTPmedia 5,711% Internet Advertising
3 Txt4 4,278% Mobile Marketing
4 Kontraband 1,1660% Online Entertainment/ Viral Marketing
5 Gamesys 1,511% E-gaming
View- Site (Top 50 2007 List is not posted yet...)
Read - alarm:clock networks coverage of King.com
Posted at 04:21 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 27, 2007
ZBD Raises $20M - Its e-paper Goes Global
ZBD, a UK company that has commercialized what it calls e-paper (bi-stable displays) has raised a further $20m in private equity funding to grow its electronic point of purchase solutions business.
The system is popular because grocers can change shelf pricing, promotions and product information dynamically. E.g. fresh food retailers can reduce the amount of food that is disposed of every day by putting on discounts as it nears closing time.
Lansdowne Partners and Esprit Capital Partners join existing investors, Prelude, QinetiQ, Dow Chemical Company and TTP Capital Partners, who have funded ZBD’s innovative technology since the company’s inception.
Read more from the a:c euro about ZBD
Posted at 07:18 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Estonia's Ambient Backs Oskanda Eurosat Deal
Telematics company Oskando, which is backed by Ambient Sound Investments (an investment of some former Skype engineers) has acquired a 20 percent stake in GPS solutions provider Eurosat Group, an Estonian company that sells GPS gear and develops software for businesses that want to integrate GPS into their existing systems. The deal was financed by Ambient.
Oskando offers Homekeeper, which is an
alternative to this
View Oskando
Posted at 07:10 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Novintel and C-squared Raise VC Funding
CapMan made an investment in, and acquire 3i Group’s stake in, Finland-based custom market intelligence company Novintel. No financial terms were disclosed.
Meanwhile, over in the UK, C Squared raised £250,000 from The Capital Fund. C Squared is a publisher and event organizer for the advertising industry. It publishes Cream Magazine, M&M Europe and runs the Venice Festival of Media.
View - Novintel site
View - C Squared site
Posted at 07:24 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink
Streetcar - London's Pay As You Go Car Rental Business Raised £6.4M And Plans IPO By Year End
Streetcar which was founded in 2004 has raised £6.4M to help fund its expansion before a possible flotation, reports The Times. The company claims has more than 10,000 members and says it will use the financing from Smedvig Capital to increase the size of its fleet of its cars and to continue its growth outside London.
Streetcar has a number of comparable startups in other countries like Zipcar in the US that have been funded and that are growing in urban areas. Car clubs such as Streetcar are becoming increasingly popular in large cities because they help to cut the expense of owning a car. Members pay an upfront fee and can then book a rental car that sit in parking lots throughout a city. Prices start from £4.95 an hour.
The company's founders financed the start-up costs with their own savings and a £100,000 bank loan. They were refused credit by 70 banks and angels but stuck to it.
Read - FEATURE: Streetcar it might just work (Real Business)
Read - Streetcar names desire for £6m expansion plan
(The Times)
Posted at 07:08 AM | Posted to IPO | TrackBack | Permalink
Experteer Brings In Wellington and BV Capital
Christian Leybold of BV Capital sent us in the news that German startup Experteer, which runs a web-based executive recruitment platform, has raised a second round of investment of an undisclosed amount from firm BV Capital (backed Del.icio.us, Rojo, Expertcity) and Wellington Capital Partners (which backed Xing).
They join early investor Holtzbrinck Ventures and some unnamed Silicon Valley investors, according to BV Capital's press announcement of the investment.
The jobs on offer are the better paying ones in Germany and dozens of headhunters are using it for recruitment. The site itself is refreshingly uncluttered with a simple to grasp UI. It is designed for people that want to search based on location.
The a:c euro notes that location is a factor that is more important in Europe than in other regions that we've lived in.
Its business model reverses what's typical in Germany (and surrounding countries), the jobseeker buys a subscription. The job offers are free to post.
View Experteer
Posted at 05:28 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Burda Takes Stake In SevenLoad
Burda Digital Venture, the German media company's venture arm has taken a small stake in YouTube-like Sevenload GmbH. There was no disclosure on the size of the investment, but the corporate finance team that assisted two year old Sevenload's founders Axel Schmiegelow and Ibrahim Evsan on the deal said it is "one of the largest Web 2.0 investment in Germany to date".
One of our regular and trusted readers from Germany told the a:c the amount invested is rumored to be in the "upper single digit million Euros".
Burda will also enter a business cooperation with Sevenload to enable video publishing by some of its brands and communities.
SevenLoad has several "channels" now. Folks send in their own cooking shows, comedy series, and day-in-the-life style reporting.
There's premium content too.
Read - IEG press announcement
Posted at 05:02 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 26, 2007
Xing Now Speaks Spanish With eConozco Acquisition
One thing we've noticed over the years that we have been following him, is that Lars Hinrichs, founder of Open Business Club AG, the company behind XING, does what he says he is going to do.
He said a few months ago he wants to do an acquisition or two and he is doing it. An announcement today said Open Business Club has acquired eConozco, one of the leading Spanish contact networks for professionals, from Grupo Galenicom. It says eConozco is the second-largest Spanish contact network with approximately 150,000 members.
There was no disclosure on the price paid and the company will be run as a subsidiary until the transaction is completed, which will take about 12 months, said Open Business Club in a statement.
View Xing IR
Posted at 08:29 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
WebWag Acquires One Year Old Mobease
Franck Poisson, the founder of WebWag, sent us the news that his firm has acquired one year old Mobease to add mobile widgets and a mobile search engine to its Web-based product line, which includes an AJAX build-your-own homepage platform with a search feature and customization tools (lots of APIs and plug-ins) or widgets.
Mobease is in Bordeaux and it has some jobs on offer for progammers. Its software supports Symbian phones and enables things like a scrolling news feed.
The founder of Mobease becomes COO of WebWag.
View Mobease blog
Read - Silicon Valley Move For WebWag (a:c euro)
Posted at 08:10 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Sweden's Tobii Taps Investor Growth Capital
Sweden's Tobii Technology has raised a nice sized $14M round of venture capital funding from Investor Growth Capital. The investment, its first, will be used to accelerate the company's growth, enhance product development and expand global sales and marketing efforts.
The a:c euro notes that Tobii has really made some progress since we wrote about it a year ago, launching a line of hardware, adding OEM products, and services to exploits its eye tracking technology.
View - Tobii Press
Read - A New Dimension In Eyeball Metrics (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:31 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Ipercast Raises Capital To Grow Internet Video Distribution Biz
Riding on the growing demand for video and IPTV services over the net, France's Ipercast has raised €2.5M from OTC Asset Management and Siparex, according to Altaide blog. The five year old company runs a very lean organisation that manages IP multimedia services across the board from DRM, to electronic programming guides, security, and content distribution network services.
Read - Ipercast leve €2.5M (altaide blog)
Posted at 06:22 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 25, 2007
Scottish Startup Seeks £25M To Grow Oil- And Gas Detecting Biz
At the Scottish TechTour last year we heard some good things about MTEM, a university spinoff that has developed a electro-magnetic analysis system to outline and monitor oil and gas researves, in real-time.
Now it's looking to raise £25 to grow the business, according to an article in the Scotsman. The paper said that an MTEM rival ElectroMagnetic GeoServices, in Norway is getting ready for an IPO that would value it at £200M. That deal will help MTEM in pricing the round, no doubt.
MTEM spun out of Edinburgh University in November 2004 with £7.4M in funding from Scottish Equity Partners and two Norwegian funds, Energy Ventures and HitecVision. The VCs own 65% of the business, with the rest divided between MTEM's founders, its employees and Edinburgh University.
MTEM employs 70 engineers, technicians and administrative staff, today and has opened its second office in Houstion. It plans to open further branches in Calgary in Canada, Tripoli in Libya, and Stavanger in Norway.
Read - Scotland on Sunday - Business - Oil spin-out seeks £25m funding (scotsman)
Posted at 01:41 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Europe Is Fifty - Where's The Party?
If fifty is the new thirty, as people of a certain age say, then the Europe Union is ready to party. It's 50 years since the Treaty of Rome was signed, establishing the European Economic Community. We sifted through some of the media coverage this weekend.
Clearly the Euro-sceptics are out in force, but there are a few that aren't bashing what's been achieved - we're just not sure who's voice is louder.
There's a couple of good reasons why a:c euro readers might feel more positive about the EU than others, but first some of those voices.
There's an amusing but cynical roundup of anniversary events from ForeignPolicy.com (listed here)...
- Belgium is hosting a veteran rock concert
- Denmark is giving away free buns
- Ireland is organizing a “Prayer for Europe”
- Luxembourg is arranging a circular walk
- Romania is establishing ...
..a European Union Internet chat-room
- Spain is producing a giant puzzle
- Slovenia offers free parachute jumps (“very liberating”, writes the FP, “a chance to escape the EU, perhaps”)
- Berlin is hosting all-night rave featuring 100 DJs in 35 clubs, not to mention free beer and sausages and a rock concert at the Brandenburg Gate
Another British voice, with a different attitude, is quoted by Radio Netherlands. He points out that fifty years ago "less than half the European continent was democratic. Eastern Europe was Communist, Spain, Portugal and Greece were dictatorships. The EU has spread democracy, stability and security and prosperity across the whole continent. Never since the Greeks invented the word 'Europa' have there been fifty years of peace and prosperity. NATO has helped but it's largely due to the EU."
And Irish rocker-turned-VC Bono mentions the US contribution to it all and the impact on Ireland and his hope that there'll be more of the same for other parts of the world.
Say what you will, the Europe Union has got some things going on. There's the Euro, a single currency used in the regions largest countries (and will be used in the new demographically strong members joining this year) and it is accepted across the region and around the world. It has also grown in value. We'd have made a bundle if we'd bought those speculative currency funds our brother-in-law was selling back in 1992.
Funds from the EU backed the GSM digital cellular standard (a success - but no comment on operator roaming charges here), and its citizens have the right to cross borders, travel and work in EU countries (although only 1.5% of the population has actually done it), and its environemntal investments are cool like Natura 2000 (the biodiversity project).
And for a:c euro readers, the European Investment Fund (EIF) is important. As Real Deals recently wrote, “The EIF has built a reputation for providing crucial cornerstone commitments, and providing financing for emerging managers and untested territories.”
With some similarities to state-backed small business support that the US has, the EIF's contributes to entrepreneurship via co-investments and sometimes sponsorship investments in European VC funds.
Like it or not, a lot of the investment in the current generation of startup has been enabled by profits made from EIF-supported funds that invested during the last cycle in companies like Skype (acquired by eBay), Kelkoo (acquired by Yahoo for half a billion euros in 2004), and Cambridge Silicon Radio (billion euro Bluetooth chipmaker).
View Europa 50
Read - Europe’s 50th Anniversary Clown Show (foreignpolicy.com)
Read - EUROPEAN PRIVATE EQUITY’S MOST INFLUENTIAL 2006 (real deals)
Posted at 08:03 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
March 23, 2007
alarm:clock euro Puzzler - Engel Ueber Berlin, Paris, Lisboa
Sorry for mangling Wim Wenders’ lovely film title but it worked better than Himmel. We note that biz angels like to organize themselves into networks. With that in mind, here’s the puzzler:
Which of the following statements is most accurate?
a) Germany has 4 business angel networks?
b) Germany has 40 business angel networks?
c) Germany has 14 business angel networks?
... you can guess and have a one in three chance of getting it right!
Bonus question: Name the network of angel networks active in Europe?
This week’s Puzzler was inspired by Paul Kedrosky’s provocative post entitled: When Angels Rule The World, Part XXXIV on Infectious Greed.
The first and 15th a:c euro reader to write in with the correct answer will win Puzzler fame, if not fortune. Here’s the address...
Posted at 01:10 PM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
Enfis With AIM Float For Light Engine Tech
Enfis, a Wales-based maker of LED-based light engines and arrays that go into products like the spotlight shown here, has raised £4.5M on Aim. It had been backed by investor Wesley Clover, an investment vehicle of Terry Matthews, the Welsch Canadian entrepreneur.
Read - Enfis in £4.5m Aim switch-on
Posted at 12:13 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
More Zopa Clones For Germany Smava and One2Money
The spreading of the Zopa clones has likely been hindered by regulatory and infrastructure issues, but it's catching on now. We mentioned Boober.nl last week, and this week we read about One2Money and Smava in Exciting Commerce blog.
We were talking to James Alexander the UK CEO of Zopa and co-founder on the phone a few weeks ago about the importance of being first. Is there such a thing as first mover advantage anymore?
He replied in the affirmative, and talked about the founders' experience at Egg, how it helped with starting up Zopa, and how lessons learned in the early days taught them what to avoid.
Alexander noted that credit checks and "a few other kinds checks" are critical, and that the first wave of borrowers are not necessarily the most desirable ones. He didn't give other examples on the record, why should he help the competition avoid expensive mistakes, afterall.
The German ecommerce blog says that the Smava crew counts the co-founder of Datango Alexander Artope (see our recent post about Datango below) is working on Smava, along with Bernd Hades (formerly of Econa), Jörg Rheinboldt (formerly of eBay), Eckart Vierkant (Ex-ECC) and Sebastian Rieschel (formerly of Jamba)."
It has a famous angel investor, Stefan Glänzer (who invested in last.fm - among other startups - and was a co-founder of Ricardo.de).
One2Money counts as at least one of its backers Patrio Plus, a shareholding company, whose portfolio currently includes 10tacle Studios (which recently floated), Pintango, and Happybet. It will be working with an unnamed German bank.
Neither of the startup teams have launched their services yet, so there's we are not linking today.
Read -Zopa Raises $12.9M More And Hires New CEO (alarm:clock)
Read- HPV chooses Datango (a:c euro)
Read - Smava Weiterer Social Lending... (exciting commerce)
Posted at 11:05 AM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Stress Reduction Web 2.0 Style
The topic is the business kind of stress -- not the astute and popular Swiss hiphop artist Stress.
Yesterday, Peter Schuepbach, the Swiss business angel who's invested in Xing.com, Plazes, StudiVZ, Hitflip, and is also an entrepreneur, said he's found a Web 2.0 beta that reduces stress.
Stress 2.0 (Sorry it's only in German)
Read - Hast du Stress 2.0?
Posted at 07:27 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Turkey's Venture Market Has A Blog
(image source: instanbul.com)
The launch of LeVenture.com, a new Istanbul-based vehicle for investing in Turkish startups, opened our eyes to the market there. Turns out there's a couple of blogs on the topic. We came across Grandstanding Traction, which tracks Turkish VC news, PE activity, and exits. We've added it to our Netvibes dashboard.
It links to a couple of VC-type Bloggers, such as From Instanbul to Sand Hill Road and SortiPreneurs, as well as a few others.
View - Grandstanding Traction
View - From Instanbul to Sand Hill Road
View - SortiPreneur
Read - Esnaf24 Aims To Be MyHammer For Turkey (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 06:48 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
March 22, 2007
Eden Ventures and Esprit Back Tribold's B Round
Tribold, a company whose intrepid engineering talent we wrote about last year, has raised a $15M Series B funding round led by new investor Esprit Capital Partners and joined by existing investor Eden Ventures.
As part of the investment, Esprit Partner Nic Brisbourne will be joining the Tribold board.
Tribold's software is used by telcos and ISPs to better manage their growing service portfolios.
Read - Tribold Geek Completes All Female (a:c euro)
View Tribold
Posted at 06:14 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Dutch AlbumPrinter Takes On Capital For Growth
Van den Ende & Deitmers Crossmedia Fund has taken a 30% stake in Amsterdam-based Albumprinter, an online consumer photo album publisher, for an undisclosed amount. The investment will fund international growth.
Albumprinter was founded in 2001. It provides its software and service direct to consumer and as a white lable service to European and US retailers.
View - Albumprinter
Posted at 06:08 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Spotzer Goes From Series B To C In A Month
We did a double take on news that Spotzer had raised a round of funding as we had just reported on the company's Series B closing a month ago. Sure enough, Netherlands-based Spotzer says it has closed Series C led by Cyrte Investments. The amount of which was not released. Spotzer competes with US-based Spotrunner. Its pitch is that companies can purchase affordable and highly targeted advertising-time on TV, websites and mobile devices. Spotzer was started by Andrew Klein, who previously founded an investment bank Wit Capital in 1996.
View - site
Read - Press release
Posted at 06:01 PM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
UK's Azea Networks Raises More Funding For Under-sea Networking Equipment
Essex-based Azea Networks has secured $6M of a $15M Series D round, according to a regulatory filing, as reported by PEWire. TVM Capital and Lago Venture Fund were joined by return backers Accel Partners, Atlas Venture and Quester Management.
Azea sells optical networking solutions to undersea cable operators who are interested in increasing their capacity.
Azea's equipment
View - site
Posted at 05:26 PM | Posted to Broadband Networks | TrackBack | Permalink
MobileLabs Seeded To Launch Mobile Messaging Services
German startup MobileLabs has just launched Blu Mobile, a new mobilephone service for mobile data (GPRS) users. Its solution offers support for messaging and email, instead of SMS and MMS.
It is enabled by its Java (J2ME) app but has some deeper hooks into the phone's OS so you can access your internal addressbook, according to what we read on the website.
It also lets you send longer SMS messages (500 characters instead of 160). The user interface is nice too as you can see with the screenshots.
The company thinks that this kind of functionality is worth something and is charging rent to use the application.
We're kind of old-fashioned that way and say, if they can charge money for their application, they should.
MobileLabs just raised seed capital from the High-Tech Gruenderfonds, and like its other investments, the founders bring experience to the venture - e.g. Rüdiger Premm, founded Intercom, which launched an e-loading terminal business in Germany and was aquired by Alphyra.
View Blu
Posted at 07:08 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 21, 2007
Citrix Acquired Scottish ThinGenius
Edinburgh-based ThinGenius has been acquired by Citrix. It was announced last week but we just saw it now. The 5-year old Scottish company's TLoad software was developed specifically for Citrix environments provided the rationale for the acquisition.
Read Announcement
Posted at 04:04 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Profitable Transmode Raises €12M F Round
You don't see too many F rounds in Europe at all - usually early stage VCs stop investing and start looking for an exit long before that number of rounds - but Swedish optical networking gear-maker and service provider Transmode, which did $50M in sales last year and is profitable (EBITDA), has raised $12M from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Shamil Chandaria, Pod Venture Partners and HarbourVest Partners.
The new money, according to Rune Hurtig, Transmode’s Chairman and acting CEO, is to be devoted entirely to strengthening sales and R&D, as part of that growth.
View Transmode
Posted at 03:46 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
inge AG Closes €6M Round Clean Water Tech
inge AG said today it had raised the €6M round that it announced back in October to going to mass production of its water filtration modules. Internation growth and R&D are on the menu now. It's gone from startup to market leader in municipal drinking water treatment in Germany in five years since founding and it is now catching on in Russia and China. That is the kind of execution you have to admire.
Investors include Belgium's Stonefund NV, the Dutch Entrepreneurs Fund BV and existing investors Siemens Venture Capital GmbH, Emerald Technology Ventures (formerly SAM), SPG Private Investments Limited und Taprogge Watertech GmbH.
View Inge AG
Posted at 03:33 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
The Solar Cell Sector's Famous Founder You Haven't Heard Of
He's not as famous as those other Scandinavian founders Zennstrom and Friis, but Norway's Alf Bjorseth should be. He has created a company with a bigger valuation than Skype's and he's not finished yet.
Bjorseth is the scientist-turned-entrepreneur that rolled up the four solar cell production startups he had co-founded to create Renewable Energy Corp. REC Group's market cap today is €8.5B.
He made some serious money from the REC floatation a few years ago. Now some of that capital is being re-invested in Scatec AS, which backs renewable energy and materials companies, some with potentially disruptive tech.
And he's much in demand as a board member - he recently joined the board of Innovalight, Inc., a Silicon Valley startup developing silicon-ink based printed solar cells.
Scatec has made investments, along with VCs, in Norsun, a solar silicon producer active in Norway and France (through a JV), Isosilicon AS, a developer of a type of silicon that takes longer to heat, and n-tec a Norwegian nanotubes startup.
Innovalight is venture capital backed by ARCH Venture Partners, Apax Partners (a European firm that knows a thing or two about solar startups see link below), Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Sevin Rosen Funds and Triton Ventures.
REC Founder Joins Innovalight Board
(press rel)
Read - Apax Homerun On QCells (a:c euro)
Posted at 07:07 AM | Posted to Cleantech | TrackBack | Permalink
UbicMedia Founder Goes From Supercomputing To Consumer Video
UbicMedia, a freshly founded French startup, is set to launch in May a new video and film platform called PUMit, which is still under wraps but is signing up beta reviewers.
Not much is being said about its tech yet, but its chief marketing man Pierre Col gave us a few insights this week. The company has several patents on enabling a combination of Video on Demand and P2P streaming of films and videos.
Founded on the belief that Internet distribution will replace DVD distribution of film and consumers will adopt home server technologies (such as the one Microsoft talked about at CES 2007), UbicMedia hopes that Pumit will be there to meet the demand, covering distribution, rights management, and payment on its platform.
The has team raised €320K round of seed finance.
It's not the only one aiming to do this but UbicMedia has an interesting founder, Alain Rosset. The 57 year old was behind a couple of other seriously techie ventures in the past : namely Archipel (supercomputers & parallel architectures) and SGDL Inc (modeling and algorithmic optimization). and is hiring up experienced management which might help.
Maybe this time around, it’ll be a seriously financially successful venture.
Col (picture right) recently joined from publicly-traded Jet Multimedia group, which does about €250M in annual sales, where for a decade he handled marketing, communication and investor relations roles. Before that he was with Infogrames and then at Cosmosbay where he was marketing director.
The Pumit software was developed in the labs of French research institutes CNDP, l'INA, and France 5 and invested 3 years of R&D in it. The initial funding of the company was with "love money" from Rosset's friends and family.
Read UbicMedia raised 320 kEuros in first-round financing (press rel)
Posted at 07:05 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Esnaf24 Aims To Be MyHammer.de For Turkish Market
Frankfurt-based Cem Dalgic, an active reader of the a:c euro, told us last week about Socv.net and this week he has other news.
Dalgic is working on is soon-to-be-launchd Esnaf24.com. Esnaf means Handwerker (in German) or handyman (in English) - and it will (corrected text) mediate the service of handymen via reverse auction with built in service rating (corrected text). It's like MyHammer in Germany-- the future plan is to sell tools, nails, and d-i-y gear online.
It's "a premiere" in Turkey, he said, so much so that local TV covered the news about its formation.
Dalgic, along with business angels and private investors, has formed Istanbul-based LeVenture to invest in companies targeting the Turkish-speaking regions of the world.
As a Swiss/Turkish friend never tires of pointing out to us, there's a population of 205M with a common language reaching from Cyprus in Europe to China and Siberia and points in between, a legacy of the Ottoman empire.
We've reported that iLab Ventures, a local holding company, has invested in a handful of local web companies, including GittiGidiyor.com, a Turkish consumer online auction company.
Turkey itself has a very young population base.source: de.wikipedia.org
And there are a couple of other Turkish language sites that seem to do well out of Germany: Vaybee.com, a classic portal founded in Germany, and there's Bizimalem, a social network, which has more members in Germany than it does in Die Turkei.
Posted at 05:23 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
March 20, 2007
JobMeeters.com Raises First Round
France's JobMeeters, which runs a referral-based recruitment platform with cash incentives, has raised a few hundred thousand euros (rough translation of " plusieurs centaines de milliers d’euros") in a first round from Unaya (via Altaide blog). Jobmeeters was founded in 2005 by some experienced HR and Internet platform folks.
Unaya is worth noting too. It was founed by Jean-Yves Usunier, ex-director generale of Groupe Yves Rocher in 2006. Its aim is to invest in Internet startups in the eCommerce and matchmaking/exchange domains.
That would encompass startups that can actually make money from the get go, no waiting for the Freemium model to kick in, we would guess.
Read - Leve de fonds (altaide blog)
Posted at 09:53 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Germany's Software AG Ready To Acquire
Dow Jones reported from Cebit on Sunday that Software AG, the Germany-based SOA and XML software company, is closer to making a rare acquisition.Via the deal or deals, its turnover should grow by €100M this year. The Darmstadt company has about €700M it can pull together for M&A. There were no further clues about the target.
Datamonitor actually reported the upcoming acquisition plans a while ago and has some guesses at possible targets.
Software AG, which admits to having an extremely low profile for a company its size and age, has set a goal to double sales to a billion euros in the next four years. It's trying to raise its profile with some publicity and CI. It even has a blog now, which is good, but we suspect it's written by PR pros, which makes it no fun (at least for us).
The German chancellor made a pitstop at its booth during her visit to Cebit this year.
Read Software AG Promises Rapid Expansion, Acquisitions (datamonitor)
Posted at 05:55 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Dutch FeedYes Puts Its RSS Conversion Tech Up For Sale
Amsterdam-based Jerome Bertrams, one of the people behind the RSS application FeedYes, wrote in to say its up for sale in an auction. The FeedYes application is mainly used by people that want to track eBay searches by RSS feed.
The highest bid for FeedYes, when last we looked, was $22K. Bertrams and co. plan to "start a new venture related to RSS, but different from FeedYES".
View - Auction url
Some backgrounder links from Bertrams.
Silicon Beat
Scobleizer
masternewmedia
Posted at 05:28 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
March 19, 2007
Kyriba Raises $14.4M - French Bank Leads Round
BRED Banque Populaire led a $14.4M the oversubscribed round in Kyriba, which does on demand treasury management software (for managing multiple currencies and multiple accounts). Its existing investors also re-invested, it said a statement. Its website lists Commerzbank and Mangrove Capital as its investors, as well as GRP Partners.
The funding came on the back of the now San Diego-based startup's doubling annual revenues (it was originally French, we believe) and adding a "record number" of customers in 2006.
The seven year old Kyriba will utilize the additional funding to accelerate growth in North America and Europe, to expand sales and marketing activities and extend international hosting operations.
Posted at 06:51 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Dutch Entrepreneur On Chinese/Euro Seed Deals
A Dutch Internet entrepreneur’s diary of his expat life in China delivers some interesting tech sector Zeitgeist, as well as some profiles of startups he’s invested in.
Besides running theAsian operations of online games portal and games development startup, Spill Group, Marc Van Der Chijs, the 34 year old Dutch entrepreneur has started to make local angel investments. He writes about them, among other things, in his Shanghaied Weblog.
The 1bib team - Van Der Chijs (far right)
1bib.com is a Chinese used car sales platform, which is looking to raise a new round over the next months. The founder and CEO is Honglian Tan. Accordig to i-wisdom blog, the Shanghai-based businesswoman worked at DaimlerChrysler in Germany and she holds a MBA from the European School of Business at Reutlingen.
Read - Looking for a 2nd hand car?
Pioco is a Bluetooth advertising start-up. Like the recently seed financed Blue Cell Networks over in Germany, the Bluetooth channel is being exploited it seems for local events and promotions. According to Van Der Chijs, Pioco is looking for capital to grow its "already profitable" business.
Read - Shanghaied Weblog
Posted at 05:53 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
Hot Betas: Latengo.com, Boober.nl, And eLolly
Image source: The Warning Sign Generator
It's beta season in Europe. A couple of startups are cloning Zopa - to one degree or another - in the Netherlands i'ts Boober.nl and in Germany it's eLolly. And over in Germany self-financed Latengo.com (beta) has launched a "digital life" platform to make it easy for users and special interest groups to share, trade, and look at each other's digital stuff.
More below the jump.
We established Latengo because of a problem. We wanted to know: which person in my entire social network has a special item. It is easy to explain this when using a DVD. I want to see that movie Terminal with Tom Hanks. But I don’t really wanna buy it. So we needed a website where we can find out „who of my friends owns „Terminal““. If I find someone I can easily ask him if he can get me that movie. I can discuss that movie with him or other people and so on… there are serveral possibilities to use Latengo. E.g. DVDs, Books, Youtube Videos, Links.. etc.
The startup, founded in September 06, launched in November. The founders, Ortwin and Dieter Kartmann, Thorsten Buss and Dirk Rudolf, are coming out of the of ePayment, online community, and software development sectors. Self-financed, the startup employs all but one of the founders work full-time at Latengo. Their site has signed up about 10,000 users.
Quite a few users - how did you do it so quickly?
We engaged some people to support us in the development of the community. Plus it's a cool website and offers a lot of interessting features to attract people to use it and participate in the planning.
Plans are afoot for international expansion. If it takes off in Germany, the founders will look enable international growth some outside financing.
Boober.nl
Our Dutch language skills are virtually zero, but we have enough to see that Boober.nl has launched a person to person loan exchange, much along the same lines of the pioneer of this fairly new category Zopa, which is now backed by Benchmark Capital and other Euro VCs. Boober does a credit check on borrowers with Experian and INTRUM JUSTITIA. It also distributes the loans over several borrowers. Boober takes a fee from the lender and the borrower, and charges for the credit check, according to the Prosper Group News blog.
Part of its publicity approach seems to be taking a poke at ABN Amro bank
eLolly.de
This one claims €5M in loans on offer. It's out of Germany. It does the matchmaking, but we don't see any information that it also does the credit-worthiness checks that Zopa does. That's an important and crtical difference.
Posted at 05:27 AM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
March 18, 2007
OnlineGameChallenger - The King.com For Clans
King.com is an early and successful example of how a couple of smart European entrepreneurs saw the boom in casual gaming and figured out how to make money on it. Now that several other categories of online gaming are
growing, other entrepreneurs are forming startups with similar business models.
There's PrizeFight (beta) in the UK, whose founders we've talked to several times in recent months, and they tell us that the startup is doing well financially with its focus on first-person shooter games. The founders have impressive experience.
View Prizefight
If You're Not Up To Speed on Call of Duty, This Clip From The US-Version of The Office Will Do
We've been chatting with Scholten over the past year as he got this thing off the ground and it has been an education in Euro bootstrapping and new online gaming trends for us.
In a remarkably short period of time, considering the small budget he had, Scholten has created a platform for virtual teams to play against each other on Call Of Duty2, Counterstrike, and EnemyTerritory.
Now he's rounding up the "clans" with the platform in beta mode. Besides tapping his own network of online gamers, Scholten attracts new members to download the OGC client and signon by teaming up with with the likes of German games portal, Tek-9 Networks, and other sites for promotional showmatches that encourage online clans (groups of gamers) to compete for prize fees of betwen €100 and €250 at the moment.
OGC takes a commission on the wagering, like King.com.
The winner will be the ones that can build the most trusted platform, the fastest, and since VCs don't target the segment until there's pretty big numbers, having a low cash burn is going to be critical.
View OGC
Posted at 08:48 PM | Posted to Early stage | TrackBack | Permalink
March 17, 2007
Netbooster Raises €20M To Boost Search Mktng Biz
Paris-based Netbooster has raised €20M in private placement, according to Neteco. The search marketing company has been listed on the Alternext, the junior market in France, since mid-2006. Its main venture backer is Truffle Venture. It was founded in 1998, employs more than 50 in Paris, Frankfurt, London & Madrid and claims 600 Clients World Wide.
Posted at 06:55 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
March 16, 2007
Google Buys Swedish Micro-company: Gapminder
Google announced on a slow news Friday that is has bought Sweden-based statistics display software company Gapminder. The Gapminder site has been taken down and moved to Google servers. Google's Marissa Meyer explains: "Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in