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April 09, 2007
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 on April 9, 2007 07:00 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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