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April 28, 2007
Mobile Classifieds Enabler Wins Newspaper Client - Seeks Funding
Mobiya, an Anglo-Belgian startup that has developed a self-service online, and offline classified ads platform for newspapers and others that sell classifieds, won its first big-name customer this month, the Belgian edition of Metro (free commuter paper). Its tech relies on mobilephone's SMS (text messaging).
How it works: Metro readers to place classified ads via SMS and a dedicated short code number. Support for adding a cameraphone pic is there too. The ads then appear in the paper and are published to Metro’s website. Potential customers send an SMS reply quoting the ad's short code which then triggers and exchange of mobile numbers between the parties for follow up text messages or phone calls.
This is how a website looks that runs Mobiya's newfangled classified features
In its own words:
Mobiya offers a fully-managed, user-generated mobile content service that includes billing, technology infrastructure, messaging customisation and management control for cross platform classified advertising in print, online, television and mobile.
According to its profile on KillerStartups.com, Mobiya is now looking for a first round from VC types. Its blog says has raised about a quarter of a million euros from private investors and is incorporated as a Belgian NV specifically to support outside investment.
There are a few startups offering similar platforms to publishers, we think that they are going to make tasty tech tidbits for large print publishers or even telcos looking to buy themselves some growth while enabling them maintain a hold on the core business.
Read Mobiya profile (killerstartups)
View Mobiya
Posted at 07:45 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 27, 2007
Avatars 2.0 Meet Web 1.0 Startup Funded
StageSpace, a unit of three year old eleisure Group, has raised an undisclosed amount from a syndicate of seed stage investors, namely Swiss-based Mountain Partners (founded by Cornelius Boersch a smart card entrepreneur-turned- business angel), Moritz Seidel, founder of Webfair AG, and Tiburon Unternehmensaufbau GmbH, an investment vehicle from Daniel Wild and Tim Schwenke who founded getmobile.de.
StageSpace creators want to make Web 1.0 online communities and social networks more colorful and animated with their avatar engine and supporting user profile publishing platform. The plan, as we understand it, is to market it to the installed based of online dating and chat sites, which are still largely text based.
Parent company eleisure is active in Online-Gaming with Gameconomy.de, Feenix and OnlineWelten, an MMOG portal, which was recently acquired by Frogster Interactive Pictures AG. The startup employs 20.
eleisure has a track record in accessorizing virtual communities. Its Gameeconomy unit under the tagline Pimp Your Game develops and sells assets for virtual worlds, online games, and subscriptions.
View- StageSpace
Posted at 06:01 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 26, 2007
Wellington Invests In Euroclick/Adconion
Sister site alarm:clock has the news that Munich-based online advertising network Adconion Media Group has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Wellington Partners. The company was formerly known as Euroclick but recently rebranded as it is expanding beyond Europe.
Read - Adtech: Adoconion (a:c)
Posted at 07:27 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Football Coach Simulation Gamemaker Gets Seed Funding
coach and win GmbH, a German games developer that puts artificial intelligence to work in its products, has raised seed capital from the High Tech Gründerfonds. Its flagship product is a football (soccer for our US readers) coach simulation game.
This startup is not the only game in town, there are a surprising number of these just in the German market alone, like OnlineFusbballManager.de (screen shot below) and fusballmanager.de from Bigpoint Gmbh,
and soccermanager (which runs on Yahoo and Freenet) from Neopoly.
Its backers say this startup has four things going for it that its competitors don't have:
= The football coach game is based on AI
= coach and win has the rights to the German Bundesliga
= User controls his own team in a browser-based 3D animation format
= Since every football fan thinks he's a better trainer than the team's real-life one they are highly motivated to show their skills (play frequently in other words).
The site is under construction but here's the link
Posted at 07:00 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed DocMorris Acquired By Pharma Disti Celesio
Online pharmacy DocMorris has been acquired by Stuttgart-based Celesio, a more than one hundred year old pharmaceutical wholesaler and retailer, as well as sector IT solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount.
The founders of the seven year old company retain 10 percent of the company, while early investor Neuhaus Partners, along with 3i and Hg Capital, find the exit.
Based in the Netherland but active in Germany, DocMorris is a success story despite having had to tangle with regulatory issues and resistance from pharma retailers in its markets. It did €178 M in turnover in 2006, up 18.8 percent from what it did in 2005. It claims 800,000 Kunden customers and 330 employees. The company was profitable in 2006 too. It fulfulled 1.9M prescriptions.
The company had been bandied about as an IPO candidate, so the offer from Celesio must have been a good one.
Posted at 06:48 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
UK's Autonomy Unit Ties up with Blinkx For Video Search Float
Specialized in search, Autonomy is one of the UK's survivors of the last venture cycle so the news that it's spinning off one of its business units with the much-hyped US search startup Blinkx and floating it on the AIM sounds intriguing. The two companies have been working together since 2005 as Autonomy's tech powers Blinkx' video search service.
Sister site the alarm:clock has the news with a link to the FT story that broke the news here.
Posted at 06:12 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
German Cereal Entrepreneurs Customize Grainy Content
Over at the Deutsche Startups (DS) blog is the news that mymuesli will launch this month, a German site that lets users select from 75 choices the ingredients for their cereal and have it shipped to their address.
So Mymuesli is to cereal what Vistaprint is to business cards?
Like the DS reporter we thought it was a joke or parody site when we first heard about it on the Skypevine last week from one of our respected founder readers (who was charmed by the idea we might add) and since the site's not open yet we can't eyeball it.
One thing is, Birchermuesli is your a:c euro reporter's fave Swiss fast food, a habit picked up from the Swiss (See foodnews.chfor the history of mueslie) - but we're not so picky that we need to customize the content. (Image source: foodnews.ch)
If it goes, this won't be a low budget Web 2.0 play though, it's an ecommerce venture-- and getting the logistics infrastructure and shipping bags of raisins and oats around the world is not going to be cheap.
At least today Europe has a few successful entrepreneurs mymuesli can talk to about how to do it and what to avoid. We think they should give Sofinnova or Seventure a call, both of them backed Vistaprint through its ups and downs and took to IPO on NASDAQ - it is now a $1.74B company.
By the way, the title of this post we stole from one of DS' blog post commenters (we'd give you his name to credit him but he signed it 'hehe'.)
Read - Mymuesli macht ... (Deustche Startups blog)
Posted at 05:29 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
April 25, 2007
Former TV Exec Tries Her Hand At Venture Capital
We missed the announcement earlier this month that Christiane zu Zalm, a former TV executive, has launched a new digital media venture fund targeting €100M, a chunk of which will be her own money. We couldn't find a website to get more info but Manager magazin said that the 40 year old has a track record in youth oriented TV and in 2005 sold her shares in Euvia Media to ProSiebenSat.1 for over €10M in 2005.
If she's successful reaching the target, her Munich based fund will be one of the larger independant German VCs and the only female-led one too.
So far she's invested in Mobile 3.0, a consortium of media companies looking to acquire a mobile TV license (DVB-H standard), as well as jump tv, Smaato Next New Network, and wunderLOOP.
Posted at 09:53 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Investor Seeks Founders
Over in Germany Jens Kunath, a former media exec turned startup adviser and investor, posted on his blog the other day that he was looking for founders to invest in. Within a day he had 41 responses. He wrote
Mein Artikel Kapital sucht Gründer hat seine Wirkung nicht verfehlt. Ich habe seit gestern bereits 41 Anfragen von Gründern erhalten. Das zeigt mir wieder einmal, dass die ganze Mühe und der Zeitaufwand des Bloggens eine gute Investition sind.
(My article entitled "Capitall Seeks Founders" was not without results. Since yesterday, I received 41 responses from founders. That shows me that the effort and time required to blog is a good investment...)
Kunath hasn't written much about his portfolio, although one he mentions is Paulsmama.de, a family oriented social networking site that based on one volley of announcements to German blogs and media reporters resulted in several queries from venture capital firms - the site hasn't even launched yet.
We've long said that blogging by VC types is a good idea -- and not just because about a year and a half ago we tried to do some consulting on the topic, thinking it might be a revenue source for the alarm:clock, a business idea the flopped, by the way -- but because it's a low-cost way to reach time-constrained founders that are looking to acquaint themselves with potential investors and partners.
Kunath's posting and what we hear from some of our blogging VC acquaintances suggests we were right. Not that being right means much - as a dear friend of ours always reminds us: It doesn't matter who's wrong or who's right but who is left.
Read Jens Kunath blog
Posted at 07:16 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
Index Ventures Funds Name-Changing Euro Youth Social Network
Index Ventures has convinced the founders of four year old Netlog, the new name for Incrowd, er no Facebox, the youth oriented social network, to take €5M Series A funding.
Other investors include Atomico, a new investment vehicle from Skype’s founders. It's an advertising business model here.
A Netlog co-founder Toon Coppens - demonstrating what happens when you spend too much time online promoting your social network
It's one of the most popular sites in Europe - says the firm - and has an aggressive program to get members to sign up friends (repeated email invitations galore). Red countries on the map here show its market presence.
What is intriguing about this is the number of times the site has changed its name. According to Mashable it was also known as ASL.TO and Redbox before adopting Facebox.
Does a brand name mean nothing in the social networking world? Maybe not. We note members reactions to the current name change -
*shrugs* 49 minutes ago I still can't get over this facebox to netlog thing... What does everyone prefer? Personally I thought facebox was kind of a cool name... at least a cooler name than netlog...
NETLOG IS A GAY NAME!!! FACEBOX WAS BETTER ..
Facebox changed!!! And left me feeling very confused...but everything was how I left it and so I was cool.
It's a risky move and it is something that our readers are probably going to watch closely. Several founders that own online communities have told the a:c euro that one of the things that has held them back from more aggressive M&A activity has been the fear of having to combine the brands of existing sites, effectively dropping one for another.
If Netlog pulls this off (again) without alienating too many members, then it could inspire more combinations and the building of bigger online communities through M&A.
Read -- Facebox Insane Growth ? (mashable)
Posted at 06:08 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 24, 2007
London's Xconnect Raises $12M
Xconnect, a VOIP peering and multimedia network provider that helps its service provider customers bypass the telephone network (PSTN), has raised $12M from a truly international syndicate: Accel's European team, Venrock, Grazia (out of Germany) and Bridge Capital Fund of Japan (an affiliate of Nikko Antfactory).
The company was founded in 2004 by its CEO Eli Katz. Xconnect is a favorite of trade publications like Light Reading and Pulvermedia.
If this startup doesn't make it big with this group of investors and its potential to win big with the transition to everything-over-IP, then you'd have to be seriously puzzled.
Posted at 06:55 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
xFruits Nice And Simple RSS Contortions
A French startup is making it nice and easy to distribute RSS on other platforms, like mobilephones, PDF, and voice (text to speech). There are other companies doing this kind of thing but xFruits has a user interface even your mother would love and be able to use. And its available in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and French too.
It's from a six year old startup out of France called WM, which stands for Webzine Maker, a profitable post-bubble CMS startup - according to its founder Sébastien Simoni in an interview on L'Expansion.com.
We found it via Leblog De Bezier who interviewed the founder and published it using a nifty looking video tool (we're not sure whose it is but it is definitely not Youtube).
We figure user uptake must be good as the company is another (like Joost) one making Sun Microsystems happy and it appears to be buying all this heavy metal with its own money.
(Image source: xFruits blog)
View xFruits
Posted at 05:49 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
April 23, 2007
German Directory Publisher Acquires Web 2.0 Local Search Startup
Hans Müller GmbH & Co. KG, a telephone director publisher has acquired dialo.de from Hamburg-based ICS Internet Consumer Services GmbH - the same company behind DealJaeger, which we profiled a while ago.
The startup publishes reviews and contact details for restauarants and small businesses. It is less than a year old. There was no disclosure on the price paid but reports suggest it was around €4M.
Read - ics-verkauft-web20-plattforma-an-telefonbuchverlag (people and deals)
Read- DealJaeger (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 06:58 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Sulake Buys Finnish Social Networking Site To Exploit Habbo Hotel Infrastructure
In a deal meant to exploit the infrastructure it has for its animated chat platform Habbo Hotel, Sulake Labs has acquired IRC Galleria. VC-backed Sulake says that IRC is the most popular social networking site in Finland with sites in Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany. No disclosure on the price paid or terms and conditions.
Is that the Finnish version of a six pack? (source: IRC Galleria)
Posted at 06:43 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Eqvitec Backing TraceTrackers Global Rollout
TraceTracker is one of the most exciting companies on the Nordic market today. TraceTracker has an experienced management team with an unbeatable track record, a phenomenal service that's grown by word-of- mouth, and a vision that puts the company at the center of the massive food security trend ..."said Eqvitec Partners Investment Director Jukka Jokinen
If you were reading the a:c euro earlier this month you would already know that it's a hot one. We profiled TraceTracker here.
Posted at 06:30 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Business Objects Acquires VC-backed Cartesis
Business Objects and VC-backed Cartesis announced the acquisition today. Under terms of the agreement, Business Objects will pay €225M (approximately $300M) in cash. Founded in 1990 Cartesis was acquired for an undisclosed amount in February 2004 from PricewaterhouseCoopers by Apax Partners, Advent Ventures Partners, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Partech International. At that time analysts belived that Cartesis was doing about €80m in revenues. While in the hands of the VCs it grew revenues by 43 percent in 2005 and 28 percent in 2006 and it completed two acquisitions in the meantime.
Posted at 06:19 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Bertelsmann Investing In Ventures Again
Bertelsmann, the German media giant, has started investing in Internet startups again. During the last venture cycle its VC arm was at one point one of the biggest and most prolific investors - but that's another story. This time around, it seems intent on co-investments with experienced VCs, mainly.
It doesn't do much PR so we had to dig to get a round up of recent deals - listed here:
Intent Media - $10M round in US-based digital distribution platform. Co-investment announced last week.
Emotive - US-based ringtone developer for 3G, 4G and VoIP services announced last week. Co-investment.
Exit Games - co-investment with German VCs in a German gaming engine and platform provider, announced last month
UITV - an IPTV provider. Beijing-based, a coinvestment with bigname US VCs
Bloomstreet - German youth social network run by w/ritemedia. Check out the pic below - how many startups that are less than a year old have a rack like that?
Posted at 05:18 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 22, 2007
France's Gostai Invents Robot Programming Tool - Seeks Funding
Gostai, a French startup that has developed a new programming language for commercially available robots, got some press coverage this weekend via an AFP wire report.
The recently formed startup is on a mission
to provide robot manufacturers and end-users with the best universal robotic platform, associated to state-of-the-art software modules (voice recognition, face detection,...) in partnership with leading robotic software companies and academic research labs.
It has a free to download version and plans to market its URBI language to developers of disaster and rescue robots, as well as consumer robots (Sony Aibo Dogs, Lego Mindstorms). Since we've tried some of these robot toys, we can vouch that a new programming tool that is easier and more flexible is a niche that hasn't been addressed very well yet.
We think it might be a hit with the RoboCup crowd.
Image credits: MesseBremen Robocup 2006
Its website says its looking for capital.
Read- French Startup Sees The Future (rawstory)
Posted at 08:47 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
France's eCommerce Gurus
French magazine eCommerce announced its jury's picks of the top three "men of ecommerce" along with fifteen runners up for 2007. Top prize went to Jacques Antoine Granjon, whose private online sale site Vente-Prive.Com is doing €240M a year in turnover and is on track for €300M this year, according to the prize committee.
Granjon is credited as the pioneer of the private sale model, which is catching on over here. We've noted at least three copycats in the past few months.
Also in the top three Mihai Crasneau of Glowria, an entrepreneur we've been following for some time. He's on a roll with DVD rentals, moving into VOD, M&A activity, and negotiating strategic partnerships.
Read Trophees eCommerce Resultats
Posted at 08:12 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 20, 2007
Samwers Do Deutsche Startups
The Samwer brothers and their European Founders Fund have been busy and now have a new site for German startups (via BabblingVC). Holtzbrinck Ventures is also supporting it.
So far it looks great for keeping up with not only the portfolio firms of the two investor orgs, but also others in that part of Europe too. If you read German, you want to add it to your feed reader.
Read - Deutsche Startups
Posted at 05:26 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
Inside OpenCoffee London
Over at Tbites blog, from journalist Mike Butcher, there is a post and some pics of the latest London OpenCoffee event that was launched by Saul Klein, an early stage Web investor and a venture-partner at Index Ventures. If you haven't been to one but like us have seen the announcements from various cities, it's a rare low-down on who goes to these things (at least the London one) and why.
He's been covering Internet trends since the last cycle and can add some informed opinion in addition to just reporting who was there.
Tbites photos show standing room only.
Despite the idea coming from a rival VC, several others in Europe have picked up on it and are promoting get-togethers in their own cities under the OpenCoffee name, people like Paul Jozefak of Neuhaus Partners in Hamburg and Larry McDonald and Per von Zelowitz from Nordic Venture Partners.
It's typically held at Starbucks coffee shops, ones that didn't have much business during the mornings (which explains why Butcher was speculating about the presence of a Starbucks PR man).
Not all are at Starbucks though - in CapeTown (SA) it's a hotel and free drinks affair (Read Eric Edelstein NO Coffee @ 1st Open Coffee Club Cape Town)
Read OpenCoffee Roundup
Technorati search OpenCoffee
Posted at 04:48 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 19, 2007
Mandriva Linux Raises Capital To Exit Chapter 11
Mandriva, the French Linux distribution, announced raising new capital and a new major shareholder, Occam Capital (which recently did a first closing of its first fund --- more on that soon to come).
Occam has committed about €1.65M and two of its principles will join the Mandriva board once the transaction is completed.
At a valuation of €2M for this round of funding, the firm is currently selling new shares targeting €1.35M (75 percent has already been signed for by existing investors - Millennium Partners, Windhurst Participation, Jacques Le Marois, and François Bancilhon- and Occam).
The publicly-traded Mandriva has struggled since it floated just as the tech bubble burst. This is its second "plan de continuation", the French equivalent of Chapter 11.
We think its investors are getting a good deal. The French company has a well-known global Linux brand. Open source and Linux on the desktop are increasingly being used by Europe's public service administrations (and there's a lot of them over here).
Occam's Laurent Cadieux said as much in a phone interview, adding :
"Linux has been difficult to make money on. Mandriva has been strong on technology and needs some help in marketing/sales and community building. We have the resources to support that..."
The company is going to need a strong financial footing too in order to win contracts in large-sized organizations and if its latest realease is as good as the Linux-specialized reviewers say it is, it will be busy.
Things like it being Wii compatible and offering a super flexible desktop, as well as VOIP support, and virtualization without bloating the size of the code, are what they liked.
"[Mandriva] stands to benefit from the growth in PC purchasing in markets in India, China, South America, and Africa. We think that in three years time there will be one billion new PCs sold and they will be running Linux,"
said Cadieux, referring to the high costs related to using Microsoft's latest OS Vista.
Mandriva is currently offering a version on a USB memory device.
We like the the Metisse desktop wizardry
and that you don't have to buy a new PC running superfast processors to run it
Mandriva has completed a couple of acquisitions recently in Europe and Brazil. Its latest, Linbox, is meant to strengthen Mandriva's position in the French corporate market, as it brings on customers like Renault, Arcelor Mittal, the French Ministry of Interior and the French Prime Minister’s office, and some new products.
View Mandriva
Posted at 05:53 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 18, 2007
Pimp My Battery Charger
Ding3000, the German design firm first came on our radar when it launched Pimp By Billy (based on Ikea's Billy shelves that everyone we know has owned at least once in their lives) a while ago.
Now its offering this stylish wall mountable recharging unit that hides myriad cables and plugs. We think Ding3000 should hook up with Splashpower for the next generation of this product.
It came to mind after reading a post on the Technofile blog, where VC insider Max Bleyleben wrote an analysis of the difficulty Splashpower has had getting its tech into the OEM market because it is disruptive to the mobilephone manufacturers' battery and accessory business.
He suggests it's a good fit for Apple. (a:c euro notes: It's not one of his firm's portfolio companies, rather it's one of Benchmark Europe's, as well as several other VCs.)
Splashpower's universal charging pad charges batteries for all kinds of devices through electromagnetic induction.
Read- Great Unmarketable Technologies (technofile blog)
View Ding3000
Posted at 06:24 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
Eidos Acquires Profitable Rockpool Games Studio
Eidos (part of SCi) has acquired UK mobile games developer Rockpool Games and its sister companies Ironstone Partners and SoGoPlay for a minimum of £1.2M, increasing to a maximum of £7.7M depending on performance levels through to 2010, reports paidcontent. Rockpool is the 30 year old founders second venture. He sold his first to the same acquirer and used the capital to create Rockpool, reports Manchester Evening News. This time he is planning on spending his new found wealth on a house and a car.
Read - (paidcontent report)
Read Game On For Great Ideas (manchester evening news)
Posted at 06:00 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
UK Osoyou Soc Shopping Raises Capital
Paidcontent.org reports that Brightstation Ventures, which recently made a splash with an invest in Shiny Media the blog publisher, has made a £1 million ($2 million) investment in Osoyou.com, a UK fashion social shopping network due to launch later this summer.
Osoyou.com will compete with Condé Nast's StyleFinder.com, NatMags' Handbag.com and with MyStyleWindow.com, targeting 25- to 35-year-olds, says Paidcontent.
The alarm:clock euro had a read at its blog - it's similar to its peers - bubbly, breezy, and brain-lite. Some of its snaps from London streets suggest it is targeting grown up women that don't mind looking like Leprechauns (but what do we know about fashion -we're geeks).
Posted at 05:41 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 17, 2007
Jan Baan's Cordys Raises 60M Euros
This is one of the largest VC investments that we have seen in Europe in some time. Putten, Netherlands-based Cordys has raised Euro 60M in equity financing led by Argonaut Private Equity, giving Argonaut a significant minority stake in the company. Jan Baan, founder and majority shareholder of Cordys, also participated. The funds will predominantly be used to expand Cordys' operations in the US.
Cordys sells business process management suite (BPMS) enterprise software. The company claims 40 customers and nearly 500 employees.
Cordys notes that in addition to being the founder of Baan Software, Jan Baan made early investments in Top-Tier (acquired by SAP) and WebEx (acquired by Cisco).
Read - Cordys Secures $80 Million Investment to Meet Fast-Growing Market for Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Software (release)
Posted at 05:16 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
France's BestofMedia Acquires Tom's Hardware To Challenge CNET
BestofMedia, a 7 year old French technology online publisher, announced it has acquired TG Publishing AG, the company behind Tom's Hardware Guide, a multilingual web pub that tests and reviews computing gear (it is published in 11 languages). BestofMedia, which does about €10m annually in turnover, said the acquisition positions it as the "only Pan-European alternative" to Cnet Networks and IDG.
TG had been backed by German VC firm bmp and was founded in Germany by Thomas Pabst in 1996.
No disclosure on deal size.
Bestof claims 11.3 million unique readers based on Xiti stats, which puts it in the top 30 in France with an 18% penetration rate of French Internet users (source : Nielsen/NetRatings). With TG, the company can now lay claim to 19.8 million monthly unique visitors.
Founded in 2000 by Alfred Vericel, Bestofmedia Group, runs several sites dedicated to new technologies, including Bestofmicro.com, Presence-pc.com, Infos-du-net.com, Jeuxvideopc.com and Jeuxvideo-flash.com.
The Inquirer broke the news of a trade sale in early April, speculating the size of the deal was about $15M. Bestofmedia issued a press release on Monday, outlining the transaction and the rationale for the acquisition.
Posted at 03:33 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 16, 2007
Looneo The Latest in French Soc Shopping Trend
Neteco reports that Looneo, is the latest social shopping community, to launch in France. Inspired by Ciao.com and Yahoo's Questions/answers, reports Neteco, it offers remuneration for the best and most active contributers. Also mentioned in the French social shopping trend is Zlio and Xinek.
The name sounds a bit of a Web 2.0 parody to English ears, but Looneo is not joking. It was founded in 2006 by some ex-Microsoft and media types and is backed Groupe Marc de Lacharrière, a major shareholder in the French holding company Fimalac. The Neteco article mentioned that it uses Paris-based Heaven, an online marketing agency to get word out about its service.
Read Looneo Remunerer Contributeurs (neteco)
Posted at 06:36 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
NewMedia Spark Doing Deals Again
On the back of a run on exits (TouchClarity, Footfall, and Mergermarket), NewMedia Spark, the UK-based venture fund has announced some new investments in recent weeks.
Notonthehighstreet.com- a UK based ecommerce site for unusual fashions, food, and jewellery - like the butterfly shoes above, or are they slippers? NewMedia Spark's Tom Teichman, who the firm says handed over the first investment cheque to lastminute.com, joined the board. The web site launched in April 2006 selling high quality original products from 130 of Britain's best small businesses. It has about 10,000 products in its catalogue.
Complinet: -a b2b financial publisher ans software vendor in the UK with a focus on governance, risk and compliance issues.
iSporty: - a sports social network that includes "everything local, national and international around the sports you play and the clubs you support". It has one of the Friends United promoters on board. Library House blog gave its view on iSporty's potential this month,without mentioning the VC investment.
Gambling Compliance: -online news and events targeting the gambling sector with information on the global regulatory and legislative issues
View Spark News
Read Entrepreneurs Seek Home Runs
Posted at 06:14 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Sparus Raises €4M For Mobile Device Management
Two year old Sparus Software out of France has announced commitments of €4M for its second round to finance its « Mobile Device Management » venture. New investors is Crédit Agricole Private Equity, joining existing investor AXA Private Equity. The firm's software is targeted primarily at Windows MobileCE devices. It is another one from the Microsoft IDEEs programme, which we wrote about the other day
View Sparus
Posted at 04:54 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
royalblue acquires LatentZero
UK-based royalblue Group has acquired LatentZero, a developer of front office solutions for asset managers for up to £63M. LatentZero will continue to operate as a separate entity within the royalblue group and the existing management team, including Richard Jones (co-founder and CEO) and Dan Watkins (co-founder and director), will remain in place as part of the transaction. The 8 year old company employs 170.
View LatentZero
Posted at 04:46 PM | Posted to Financial Software | TrackBack | Permalink
New Index For The Powerpoint Fatigued
New Index, a three year old Norwegian startup has raised an undisclosed amount from Proventure Seed, out of Norway too, according to Unquote. New Index has developed an optical pen and sensor set for beamers and projectors that enables users to write and record electronically what they draw on a a wall or whiteboard or even in the air.
The inventor is a former professor who got tired of static powerpoint and overhead projectors.
View New Index
Posted at 04:31 PM | Posted to Hardware | TrackBack | Permalink
Contortion Artist Dynetic Solutions Raises VC from Creathor
Creathor Venture, the German VC founded by Gert Köhler, has invested an undisclosed amount in Dynetic Solutions, a developer of mobilephone multimedia publishing software.
The Kaiserslautern-based company employs 45 and already has customers like T-Online and Der Spiegel doing everything for SMS sports scores to mobile TV, and a Virginia-based subsidiary. It calls itself a "conversion artist", but "contortion artist" which is what you have to be to handle all the content, format, and publishing standards involved in getting multiple content types from the web to the mobilephone. It seems to be handling the transformations well, if its demo is anything to go by.
View Dynetic
Posted at 04:18 PM | Posted to Media | TrackBack | Permalink
April 13, 2007
Italy's Expert Systems Bought by Mobile Voice Search's AskMeNow
Irvine, CA-based AskMeNow (OTCBB:AKMN) is acquiring Italy’s Expert Systems, a developer of natural language query technology. The two companies had been partners on AskMeNows mobile Q&A service whereby users could vocally search the Internet via natural language queries rather than key word search.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read - AskMeNow In Talks To Acquire Expert Systems (MocoNews)
Posted at 07:19 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
Hot Betas: Clipperz, PassPack, Tag2Find
Two startups out of Italy recently launched free secured data and password online apps, and a young team in Austria proposes tagging desktop for file management. They've all spent some serious man hours developing their wares. In their present form, they are more angel than VC material but they could make tasty techie tidbits for an Internet or enterprise software big fish, as they offer functionality that should or could be inside a browser, a desktop operating system, or integrated into an ISP/Internet portal.
Founders Marco Barulli and Giulio Cesare Solaroli have spent the past 18 months developing Clipperz with their own money. They tell us that the application stores and manages passwords and online credentials and logins for web services without entering any username or password (it's a "zero knowledge" system), other things like burglar alarms, software serial numbers, PINs and credit card details can be stored, along with offline sensitive data. The founders have been working together for close to 8 years. Back in 1999 the two founded eXtrapola an internet monitoring and press clipping service serving businesses and public orgs. Contrary to the trend at the time, they did not raise VC. It’s now a 25 person company, strong in Italy with good potential to expand, they say. They left eXtrapola in 2005 to found Clipperz.
View- Clipperz
Out of Rome, PassPack offers similar functionality to Clipperz, but with additional data support. Launched in December, its team has done tremendous job generating buzz about its service.
Read PassPack compares itself to Clipperz
Tag2Find has been in development for several years by a young Austrian team that started the work on the software while at university. They recently launched a technical review version of their Tag2Find tool for consumers and are looking at some investment to launch a networked version.
Tagging for file management is a popular feature for web projects these days, but this one wants to compete against desktop search software. Tag2Find says desktop search offers similar functionality for finding documents, movies, images, music, but tags are better for networked and team-oriented orgs. Comparing its tech to other Web 2.0 tagger teams, this one says they have the better and more feature rich solution. Tag2Find says it is not about organizing data on computers and computer networks, rather Tag2Find makes organisation superfluous. For the chaotic amongst us, that sounds pretty tempting.
Picked this up on the Tag2Find blog.
View Tag2Find
Posted at 07:52 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
April 12, 2007
London's World-Check Takes Investment From Spectrum Equity
World-Check, which sells data on heightened risk individuals and companies, has received "a significant equity investment" from Spectrum Equity Investors and HarbourVest Partners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Profitable World Check was founded in 2000 and has expertise in tracking money laundering for banks, fraud checking and terrorist funding tracking.
The company claims as clients over 2,000 institutions, including 45 of the world’s 50 largest financial institutions and hundreds of government agencies.
Read - release
Posted at 07:03 PM | Posted to Financial Data Service | TrackBack | Permalink
Top Image Systems Buys UK's Capture Projects
Israel's Top Image Systems [Nasdaq: TISA) has acquired Capture Projects, a UK provider of document management solutions, for £1.8M, plus potential performance-based consideration.
Top Image sells solutions for managing and validating data entry. Its software does data capture, identification and storage in databases.
Posted at 06:55 PM | Posted to Digital imaging | TrackBack | Permalink
Joost: Sun Microsystem's Best New Customer
The buzz about Joost is getting louder as it nears its public launch set for May. There are the VC financing rumors, reviews of its beta service, and the news of a deal with Viacom.
The Jooster blog took a survey of its readers -- they think that this one is going to be big.
One thing for sure, spending is big. The Joost blog reveals its hooking up fiber links in The Netherlands and Luxembourg and taking palette-wise deliveries of Sun servers, among other gear.
Posted at 04:16 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Ubisoft Acquires German Games Publisher Sunflowers
Ubisoft has announced it will acquire Germany's SunFlowers, publisher and developer the Anno brand of PC strategy games. No disclosure on the price paid, though.
Ubisoft said the deal "reinforces" its position in the real-time strategy market by acquiring Sunflowers and its 30 percent stake in Related Designs, which developed Anno 1701, the latest entry in the Anno series. It is currently working on a future Anno title. Ubisoft generated sales of €547 million for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.
View - Sunflowers
Posted at 05:07 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 11, 2007
Exalead's CEO On Wikipedia Search and Quaero Myths
We read with interest a Q&A this week with French search company Exalead's CEO where he dispels some of the myths about the much hyped Quaero project, which he said was falsely dubbed by politicians as a Google "killer".
Despite what some politicians have said, Quaero is not a collaborative effort aimed at creating a "Google killer." It is a research project on multimedia search technologies, period. In particular, image tagging, speech-to-text and machine translations, etc. It may very well produce technology or technology advancements that improve search, but Exalead is pursuing its own course of product development and go-to-market activity. What comes of Quaero will not determine what Exalead becomes or offers.
There is something Exalead has in common with Google, Yandex and Co
While its HQ is not as stylish as Russia's Yandex
Its team does have a sense of irony : April Fool's Day Logo
And in Neteco we read about how his firm has done some Wikipedia wizardry for better search access, apparently with the blessing of the popular online encyclopedia's IT team.
We've noticed an uptick in search driven traffic from Exalead to the a:c euro - it's nowhere near what we get from Google, but enough to make us notice. The French search engine is gaining some momentum it seems in its pitch to build a more consumer oriented search business on top of its enterprise search activities.
Read - Exalead Robot Assault Wikipedia (neteco)
Read - Q&A With François Bourdoncle, CEO Of Exalead (search engine land)
Posted at 05:14 AM | Posted to entrepreneurship | TrackBack | Permalink
Poland's Apple To IPO in Warsaw
NTT System, a Polish company that has built a profitable business manufacturing PCs, servers, and hardware under its own brands is going public in Warsaw on the back of sales last year of 527M PLN (€137.49M) and generating €2.1M in net profit.
It hopes to increase profitability by 80 percent this year on revenues of €175M. It aims to raise just €12.5M (if we read Interfax correctly) to double production in its factories.
Who would have thought making PCs in Europe could be a profitable venture? It currently sells about 170k units of its Corrino brand gear in shops in Europe, such as Media Markt (DE), Carrefour (FR) and Tesco (UK) and in its own domestic market, according to Google Finance.
A Gamer's Dream Machine
Polish iPod
Posted at 05:02 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 10, 2007
Sexy IPO for Dreamnex
France's Dreamnex, the company behind SexyAvenue, an adult-oriented ecommerce and content venture, is now a €106M company after its oversubscribed IPO on the Euronext. Several days after its flotation, it is trading about €10 over its issuing price of €35 a share.
Posted at 05:35 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 09, 2007
Open Source Content Management Ez Systems In $5M Deal
We had to do a double take this morning seeing that eZ Systems out of Norway had raised $5M from a local investor - as we have not seen a content management software deal in years. It is one of those Web categories that hasn't come back as an investment theme after the boom and bust.
eZ is not a freshly baked startup though - it was formed in 1999 and has about 7 pages of reseller partners. Its software has been downloaded 2 million times and it recently added a search function for users (based on its own algorithm and tech) and a payment platform add on.
It's open source too. Its creators write:
The funding is an expansion round and the founders remain majority shareholders.
Posted at 12:27 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
French VCs Fund Fast-Moving Idylis' SaaS ERP
Idylis, a French software company that sells a low-cost ERP solution for small and medium sized businesses has raised €2.5M.
If you only went to its website, you would not know that this SaaS company was founded just two years ago. It looks a lot more mature than that. And as far as we can see, it has got here on a low budget. Including this round it has raised only €4.9M in VC money.
Idylis has two experienced founders: Philippe Amand and Pierre-Yves Morlet. Their last venture, Ciel was acquired by the UK's Sage, whose many software packages are targeted at the small and medium sized business markets.
We think that its progress can also partly be attributed to getting into the Microsoft startup programme "IDEES" (Initiative for Business Development of Software vendors and starts-ups) that was first launched in France after a few years of activity in the US market.
Quite a few French startups that have raised VC lately are in this programme, including Boonty, an online games distribuiton startup and Xcalia, enterprise SOA. You can understand the appeal for VCs who are always looking for an edge in building ventures that can get big fast - without them having to risk a lot of capital.
The big question about this model is how valuable the startups will be at exit. Can they grow large enough to float? If VCs and founders are looking for a trade sale, how would a potential acquirer feel about having to pay Microsoft for license fees over the longer term in order to keep the business going?
An indication of how hot Microsoft's software is in the startup market here is a statistic we found in recent post by Microsoft blogger and biz dev executive David Rowe, he writes that 50 percent of the startups that made it to the finals of the latest European Commission's ICT Grand Prize contest were using Microsoft platforms.
Besides giving out nice sized cash awards - up to €200K- the ICT contest has become a lot more commercially-oriented in recent years, notes the a:c euro - we actually have a couple of posts to publish on that trend soon.
Read - Jacques FROISSANT Altaïde: Idylis lève 2,5 millions d’euros
Read - David Drach : You just have to go to Europe to find good Microsoft SaaS
Read -David Rowe : EU's "Nobel prize" for ICT: 50% of Top 20 are MSFT Partners
Posted at 07:00 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
April 07, 2007
European Web 2.0 Contest
There's a new Web 2.0 contest and event on our radar. Over in Spain, a team that includes a bank, a social networking company, an economic development agency, along with several entrepreneurs, is hosting a European-wide contest for Web 2.0 projects and sites.
The goal of Startup 2.0 is to give the winners some free promotion and there are a couple of prizes on offer too, such as a trip to Cambridge for a one-week training program at the Center for Entrepreneurial Learning; or a two-week advertisement in Techcrunch, and an exhibition booth at the e-Business Global Forum.
Criteria:
- Any person or company from a European country having developed a web 2.0 site, either as a startup company or just as a personal project.
- Anonymous projects will not be accepted, nor projects without a valid URL.
- Individuals and companies can submit as many projects as they wish.
View - startup 2.0
Posted at 11:32 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Spanish Startups Wanted
The folks at the European Tech Tour are looking for Spanish startups to present at its two day event upcoming in May.
Startups selected to demo do not have to pay to present, unlike some of the other investor showcase events ongoing in Europe. Deadline for entries is April 15th.
For further information, go to their site or contact us:
You can contact Berggi co-founder Jorge Mata is the organizer for Spain jorge [ at ] techtour.com
Johdi Woodford is the overall marketing contact for the event johdi [at] techtour.com
Posted at 11:21 AM | Posted to Events | TrackBack | Permalink
Europe Versus US - Brain Shake Zeitgeist
Over in the US, newfangled functional foods sell themselves on building the immune system, or offering low calory alternatives to junk-food, or helping you get to sleep, reports siste pub alarm:clock.
But over here it's all about stimulation -- giving the brain more bounce. Energy drinks like Red Bull (and no name brand ripoffs) are still as popular as ever.
And it has replaced coffee among junior programmers and the young clerical set (we see it in our day jobs). Image source:Intershot
But brain shakes, caffeine laced milky drinks from new brands like Austria's Returnity are coming on. They tartget doctors, dentists, and professionals. It recently raised capital from Inventages and busine