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June 29, 2007
RoyaltyShare Buys UK's Musicalc
I a minor deal, RoyaltyShare, which sells digital royalty solutions to the entertainment industry, has bought out Musicalc, a UK-based provider of royalty accounting software for the music industry. Musicalc has been in business for 25 years and has about 100 clients.
Read - announcement
Posted at 10:27 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
Job Search Engine Jobindex List With The Nordic Exchange
Jobindex has listed on OMX: The Nordic Exchange at First North. Jobindex is a search engine, which says it provides people with access to more than 500 job exchanges and private companies' recruitment pages in Denmark. Jobindex has more than 10.000 job ads daily and 40K people have posted their CV on the website.
The tiny exchange says that Jobindex is the ninth company to start trading at First North in Denmark this year.
Read - announcement
Posted at 10:00 PM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Applied Materials Buys Swiss Solar Wafer Tool Outfit for $475M
We are a bit late with this news but earlier this week semiconductor manufacturing equipment company Applied Materials Inc. said it will acquire privately-owned HCT Shaping Systems out of Switzerland for $475M.
According to a report in EDN, Applied said that "the acquisition is part of the company's strategy to accelerate customers' ability to reduce the costs of photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing to make solar energy more competitive with grid electricity."
The Swiss company's equipment is used in manufacturing silicon wafers for the solar industry - for shaping ingots and sawing them into wafers.
Applied buys Swiss solar technology player for $475M - 6/26/2007 - Electronic News
Posted at 05:32 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
QuantaSol Raises €2M For Solar Cell Tech
UK-based QuantaSol has raised €2M, according to this week's Tornado Insider newsletter. It mentions the two other deals we wrote about recently Heliatek (new materials for solar cells) and Solaire Direct (power generation plants ), and sees them as evidence of a continued interest in solar cells by investors, pointing out all three companies were founded in 2006.
QuantaSol aims for higher efficiency output using GaAs wafers under optical concentrators. The Cleantech Investing Cleantech Investing blog says:
This type of PV [photovoltaic] cell is most appropriate for use in concentrator-based solar power systems.Its backers according to the report are Imperial Innovations, Low Carbon Accelerator, NetScientific and Numis Corporation.
There was another recent investment in high efficiency photovoltaics targeting the same market segment, namely Concentrix Solar out of Germany which raised capital from Good Energies, an investment vehicle that has an impressive track record in backing photovoltaic companies, mainly in Europe.
Read - Industrial Strength Solar (a:c euro)
Posted at 05:03 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Cuculus Funded To Turn DSL Providers Into Hotspot Enablers
Cuculus in Germany has raised seed funding from High Tech Gründerfonds and co-investors. The startup which has a few patents on its technology aims to license it to established DSL providers and hardware manufacturers.
The pitch to DSL providers is that it enables their subscribers to offer wifi hotspots and use other ones run by the same ultimate provider when they leave home and travel within reach of that providers' extended network. SOHO users sharing broadband connections via Wifi? That sounds familiar.
View Cuculus
Posted at 04:41 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Finally A Phone Display You Can Read Outside
In daylight and outdoors, phone displays are virtually unreadable so we are almost thrilled with Qualcomm's announcement of a new MEMS display that promises to alleviate one of the most annoying things about using mobilephones and other gadgets in bright light.
We don't normally cover product announcements, let alone product announcements by multi-billion dollar US companies but this Qualcomm scratches an itch.
Instead of trying to stuff more applications and functionalities into devices, software applications, and web tools, it would be great to get some existing user issues solved first - as Niklas Zennstrom says - solve a problem find a business model.
Valleywag and Technofile have a whole lot more to say about what's annoying about consumer technologies, and more amusingly than us. The Valleywag post even manages to squeeze in some advice about carbon reduction ploys beyond the DotGreen glam trend.
Posted at 05:53 AM | Posted to Displays | TrackBack | Permalink
June 28, 2007
DotGreen Variation: Trendwatching Still Made Here Report
We wrote about Bruce Sterling's call on the DotGreen boomlet. Trendwatching sees a carbon offset friendly trend too, one that is evident in the manufacturing and retail sectors in the Still Made Here Trend Report.
Trendwatching says that USA swimwear manufacturer still makes it clothing in the US, and it does so profitably.
Posted at 07:03 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Forbes on EuroFroth
Forbes reports on European tech venture, seeing signs of a mini-bubble but also giving plenty of space to mention some European tech ventures, such as Iminent, Netvibes, Garlik, Smaato, FON, smeet, and Properazzi. These are startups regular readers will be familiar with.
Quoted is Mark Tluszcz, a managing partner at Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners and an early backer of Skype, who in true VC style bemoans valuations and cuts to the chase about the weakness in blockbuster exit activity.
"I get excited by the evolution of the European venture scene, but I am very concerned about froth," he says. "Our market has not had the exits to justify the valuations we are seeing."
While Herman Hauser takes the opportunity to mention portfolio company Plastic Logic to the thousands of readers of that business publication.
The news nugget of the Forbes piece is here:
The multi-lingual buzz at the Innovate!Europe 2007 conference in Zaragoza was one sign that the pace of starting tech companies in Europe is picking up.
Actually entrepreneurs never stopped founding companies over the past six post-bubble years. (We just cannot help kibbitzing). It is just that the business press, potential customers, and VCs have started to put some stock in them again.
Read EuroFroth
Posted at 06:21 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Top 10 Reasons Why Tech Public Relations Fizzle Rather Than Sizzle
We’re linking today to a post entitled: And Now For Some Unpleasant PR Medicine: Top 10 Reasons PR Fails by Colette Ballou who runs Paris-based Ballou Public Relations.
You’d expect the blog of a PR agency owner to put a positive spin on her top 10 list like Top 10 Reasons To Hire A PR Firm or Ten Tips On Being a Media Darling, but Ballou isn’t much like other tech-oriented PR firms in Europe.
We recently met her team at a party for clients in Ballou’s stylish apartement in Paris. Except for the fact that we’re on two different sides (when tech journalists switch to the PR world where the money and the coffee is much better, gossip says they've “moved to the other side”), Ballou and the a:c euro have one thing in common: both are mainly occupied with tech founders in this part of the world and their attempts to make Silicon Valley-style money without the Silicon Valley history and geography.
So if Ballou is not over in France churning out press releases and emailing them to all the names in Gorkana remotely related to its clients market in a spray and pray manner, what does it offer? According to the post, it’s strategic advice. Press releases are barely mentioned.
Ballou writes:
… every once in a while we get a potential client who thinks that PR can make a "me too" business into a Goggle, or who thinks that PR can work wonders for their sales pipeline (when what they really need is another salesperson and not PR).
Other insights:
.
“The media works on its own timetable, which is usually much longer than the client’s”
And she tells clients that they “need to drop everything if the media calls. This may be inconvenient, but the media waits for no one”.
And number 11 goes like this:
Perception is not formed only by the media: it includes analyst relations, attending (not just speaking at) conferences and networking opportunities, submitting awards applications and blogging (whether writing yours, being an active participant/commenter in the community, or both).
Read - Top 10 Reasons PR Fails (A View From Abroad blog)
Posted at 04:46 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
June 27, 2007
German Twitter Clone Finds A Buyer on Ebay
One of the folks over at allesklar.com sent us an email to say his firm bought German microblogging community dukudu.de. The dukudu founders put the German twitter clone up for bid on Ebay.de last week and the highest bidder at about €43K was allesklar.com.
You may recall we reported last week that there were about 8 Twitter type companies in Germany.
The startup was acquired to add some communications features to city information site meinestadt.de (“my city”), which belongs to allesklar. It is not decided yet if the creators of dukudu will join the acquiring company, said the team's spokesman in an email in response to our query.
View Meinestadt.de -
Posted at 06:21 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
French Solar Power Company Gets Financed
Germany and Norway are the leading players when it comes to solar cell companies in Europe, so it was interesting to see that French solar power production company Solaire Direct raised €6.1M to finance its initial development.
Investors include TechFund, Schneider Electric Ventures, and Demeter Partners. The founding team sound like it has the know-how to make a go of it. They need a combination of people able to raise capital and know the solar industry: Thierry Lepercq (Founder of NetsCapital which was a venture fund), Amaury Korniloff (former - Business Development Director of Poweo, an independant power generation company), Stéphane Jallat (ex Industrial Director Tenesol) and Abdel Bounia (ex Engineering Manager Photowatt).
Founded just eight months ago, Solaire Direct claims to be the first photovoltaic specialist dedicated entirely to solar energy production in France. The company designs, installs and exploits photovoltaic structures of all sizes from residential installations to ground power stations, it said.
View Solaire Direct
Posted at 06:07 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Axel Springer Puts €284M Price Tag On auFeminin.com
Media companies in Europe continue their race to acquire their way into Internet market share as this latest German/French content deal illustrates.
The founders of Paris-based auFeminin.com, which runs several female oriented content sites in Europe have agreed to sell their stake (41.4 percent) in their publicly-traded, eight year old venture, which includes an online advertising business unit.
Axel Springer, the German media company, is the buyer and it has an offer out to take over the rest of the company.
The price represents 20.6 times EBITDA for 2007 (estimated).
Founded in 1999, auFeminin.com grew sales by 54 % last year to €13.4M. Its EBIT grew by 79 % to €7.3Ml. The firm has a margin of almost 60%. It has an audience of 14.6M unique visitors per month (its source is Comscore Mediametrix Panel) and employs about 50 full-time people.
View - aufeminin investor relations
Posted at 06:38 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2007
OutSystems Gets Growth Capital for Web Business App Wizards
Spain's OutSystems, a six year old developer of a rapid application development platform has raised €2.4M to build on its already impressive market from ES Ventures, the venture capital of the Espírito Santo Group.
CEO and co-founder Paulo Rosado (pictured nearby) led marketing efforts at Altitude Software, a CRM company before starting up Outsystems in 200. Prior to that he founded ebusiness company Intervento, which he sold in 1999. A stint at Oracle Corp in Silicon Valley preceded all that.
The company targets large sized organizations, mainly life science and energy companies, that have to mix information from a lot of different data pots into applications that better support their business processes and regulatory constraints.
On its site you'll find reference to the "Agile" project management buzzword. We've started but not finished two different books on the topic. But just because we couldn't get into the topic doesn't mean much - we don't make making our living developing software applications. It seems that plenty of people that do make a living that way have picked up on it.
It names Brisa Autoestradas, Bristol-Myers Squibb Portugal, Cofidis, Delta Energy, E.ON Benelux, EDP, Oxxio, REFER, and SurfControl, as some of its customers. It claims 70 worldwide businesses as buyers and over 400 applications delivered, and growing.
View Outsystems
(via Tornado Insider)
Posted at 08:04 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Hedge Fund In Exanet Round For Network Attached Storage
Exanet out of Israel has raised $18M in an "oversubscribed round" of financing.The round was led by US investors Coral Capital Management and QVT Fund LP, a multistrategy hedge fund, as well as existing investors. Exanet’s current investors include Evergreen Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Microdent, Kodak, CSK Fund (Hitachi), Dr. Giora Yaron and others (via Neteco)
Posted at 06:49 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
VOIP Phonemaker Gets Private Equity Cash
AmericanVenture.com is reporting that BO4 Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in snom Technology out of Berlin.
Beaufort Capital is a private equity investor that apparently manages a fund called BO4. It is based in Hamburg and counts one of the Technologieholding/3i partners as a founder. They target SMEs.
The Snom Phones Compete With Big Names Like Cisco For the Enterprise and SOHO Desktop
Posted at 06:41 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
June 25, 2007
Sofinnova Funds BlueKiwi To Make Blogs Safe For Big Business
French startup BlueKiwi has hit the ground running with its SaaS blogging and Intranet platform for businesses. A push from the Microsoft Ideas program in France didn't hurt either.
We first heard about it via Altaide blog (whose author runs an online job search company) a few weeks ago and in the meantime the same source says that BlueKiwi has raised €4M from Sofinnova.
It may be the first time we've used the Intranet term in relation to a startup for several years - BlueKiwi probably uses a different term but all its documentation is in French and ours isn't good enough to pick out the buzzwords. The single language support is probably going to change now that Sofinnova has forked over some new capital.
We hear the startup has signed up a few large-sized enterprises in France for the kind of renewable subscription fees that would make any ISV pretty happy.
The driver on the buy side is that management at these large companies noticed that employees were using just any old blog, wiki, or other social software application that they found on the Internet. Now they pay BlueKiwi to deliver the applications.
BlueWiki is onto something. If you've ever worked inside a large or medium sized business you will know the pressure there is for employees to use company standard applications. It's frustrating as hell and can lead to some jumbo-sized resentments - but "that is how it is in the industry" - as one of our mentors used to repeatedly inform us in an endearing little shriek.
Read BlueKiwi Scoop
Posted at 06:52 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Burda Backs eCommerce Biz eDelight.de
Deutsche Startups and Gruenderszene are reporting that online gift recommendation site eDelight has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from Burda Ventures. We were talking by email last week with one of the founders after getting a nudge from one of our loyal readers (thanks Juergen) and have some insights below.
In the meantime, we eyeballed several positive posts about eDelight in the Exciting Commerce blog, probably the most widely read one on the topic of online retail (we like it because it tends to cast a critical eye on the startups it reviews).
Peter recommends the wallmounted acrylic race track as a gift for business colleagues
eDelight lays claim to be the first social-shopping startup in Germany but even without that claim, which the a:c euro is not in the position to corroborate, what it does have is some innovative features, a nice clean user interface and unusual ideas for gift.
It offers "revenue sharing, widgets, reminder services about gift events or a dynamic gift finder just to name some of our outstanding feature set", says Peter Ambrozy one of the three co-founders.
A magnesium silicate candle to promote wellness
It not only aggregates user recommendations on various categories of purchases, it enables them to put up a shop on their own sites and to earn a commission on sales. It also offers support for merchants. Ambrozy says that "some large online stores like styleon.de, dergepflegtemann.de and livingtools.de have implemented a connection to edelight for recommendations in their online shops".
It's a good idea and will probably grab a lot of users who have been recommending products on other sites that don't offer a commission. The only limits are the selection of products - we'd have liked to be able to recommend a Moleskin City Guide or a Kuhn Rikon one-button travel bug. But as another trusty reader pointed out when asked for his opinion even Amazon is limited.
eDelight launched in alpha in November last year and is now in commercial launch.
Read - Social Commerce News: Burda beteiligt sich an Edelight
Read - Deutsche Startups
Read - Exciting Commerce
Posted at 06:38 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Zenstrom: Solve A Problem Find a Business Model
Niklas Zenstrom's, of Kazaa, Skype, and Joost fame, talked about serial entrepreneurship at the Zeitgeist Google confab (updated: confusion early this morning on the location). We didn't make it to the event but viewed the video. He says that if you solve a problem, you'll have a business model.
Sounds simple, but many startups have a technology looking for a problem. They miss the most important step, one that Zenstrom points out in his talk, and finding the model can take a year or two. Convincing investors is another story, he says.
For me, it's never been about trying to make .. a lot of money..or something.(via Atomico blog)
Posted at 06:14 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
From Dotcom Boom To DotGreen Glam
Living in Belgrade gives Bruce Sterling, the American futurist, the proof of concept he needs to believe that the Dotgreen movement just might generate massive consumer demand for 'cool objects that will yield a global atmosphere upgrade'.
Seeing venture capital investment turn to cleantech has also helped.
He wrote about it in the Washington Post a while ago and has since been popular at cleantech VC events, if his blog postings are anything to go by.
We found the Washington Post article via William Gibson's blog (we're fans of the Canadian novelist) where we also found the link to Mr Woo below.
Sterling writes:
….there is an absolute explosion of trendy green design Web logs, of which mine, Viridiandesign.org, was one of the first.They're all about creating irresistible consumer demand for cool objects that will yield a global atmosphere upgrade. It's the Net vs. the 20th-century fossil order in a fight that the cybergreens are winning.
Why?Because they're not about spiritual potential, human decency, small is beautiful, peace, justice or anything else unattainable.
The cybergreens are about stuff people want, such as health, sex, glamour, hot products, awesome bandwidth, tech innovation and tons of money. We're gonna glam, spend and consume our way into planetary survival.”
Read - My Dot-Green Future Is Finally Arriving
Posted at 05:27 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Mr Woo’s Robots
We have all seen Sony’s Dancing Robots, but this weekend we discovered Mr Woo who lives about an hour from Shanghai via British journalist's Paul Merton's report. Check out Woo number 25.
He's had no formal training, just an unchecked passion for devising robots made from scrap metal and electronics. Even burning down the family farmhouse didn't stop him. What could he do if he had a good China-oriented VC firm behind him?
Via YouTube - Paul Merton in China Mr Woo Robots
Posted at 04:59 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
June 22, 2007
alarm:clock Launches Biz Network For Online Advertising At ad:bree
Next week is alarm:clock network's 3rd anniversary. We have enjoyed great support from our readers around the world and thank you all for being there and convincing us to press forward with our business.
A week ago, we quietly opened the doors to ad:bree - our business network for the online advertising community. In this test period, 200+ online advertising insiders joined the network. ad:bree members are publishers, ad networks, affiliate networks, media buyers, creative agencies, analytics providers, investors, and more. Members range from Google engineers, to Sand Hill road VCs, to USA Today biz dev'ers, to Metacafe execs to media buyers in Europe. The group wears everything from pinstripes to tank tops but has in common an interest to be friendly and make money.
In addition to networking, ad:bree has a group blog, forums and topic groups. This week the ad:bree blog features these posts:
+ Breaking Down Ad Servers With Openads' Founder Scott Switzer
+ Q&A With Matt Arkin, Tacoda Sr. VP of Sales.
+ Q&A With 360i's Emerging Media Lab Front-man David Berkowitz.
Why did we launch ad:bree? The tech economy continues to be driven by online ad sales. Most of the businesses that we cover at alarm:clock have online advertising as part of their business model. We think this market needs a business network to connect those of you who care about this sector.
Stay tuned for some more exciting announcement on ad:bree. If online advertising is important to you, get an invitation to ad:bree by visiting the site or email us at comments@thealarmclock.com.
Posted at 07:27 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Xing With Another Spanish Buyout
Fresh off its buyout of eConozco in March, Germany-based business network Xing has bought out Spain's Neurona. No price was disclosed on the acquisition. Neurona claims about 830K business contacts, which would make it larger than eConozco which had only 150K contacts at the time of the deal.
Read - Xing blog
Posted at 03:28 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
10 Things To Do When Your VC Pitch Flops
There are lots of posts in VC blogs about the art of saying "no". Just run "when vcs say no" through your favourite seach engine to see what we mean. The resulting hitlist is a big hint about what it's like when you deal with the risk capital crowd.
Now the thing is what's next when that happens. For a helpful answer we point to a recent post in the blog of famous founder Marc Andreessen. He suggests at least ten things to do when that happens.
First of all, it all depends on when the VCs said No.
If you were told "no" in 1999, I'm sure you're a wonderful person and you have huge potential and your mother loves you very much, but your plan really was seriously flawed.If you were told "no" in 2002, you probably actually were the next Google, but most of the VCs were hiding under their desks and they just missed it.
If they say 'no' nowadays, in a time when investing is more "rational" than either of those two eras, he offers some practical tips, many of which are about reducing risk for the investors.
Here's a couple of examples:
Try to raise angel money, or bootstrap off of initial customers or consulting contracts, or work on it after hours while keeping your current job, or quit your job and live off of credit cards for a while.The most valuable thing you can do is actually build your product. When in doubt, focus on that.
He ends by pointing out that "no" can turn to a "yes" at any time. Of course by then, the startups are often no longer looking for venture capital and are ready for growth capital from private equity funds or late stage venturers, but that is another story (actually just look up our posts on Spreadshirt, Meetic, VentePrivee, or king.com for some examples).
Read - The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"
(pmarca blog)
Posted at 05:26 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
June 21, 2007
Qiro Funded To Find You The Nearest Bankmachine
Qiro, which was incubated at Deutsche Telekom labs, has been seed funded to grow its mobile location services business. . Investors include teh High-Tech Gründerfonds, VC Fonds Berlin GmbH, along with Berliner Business Angels.
You can download the Qiro client for free and it tells where to find nearby cafes, rent-a-bike places and bank automats. It is like having YellowPages custom-output a search result for where you are standing right now. The app will also locate friends (if they belong to Qiro too).
This is the kind of thing we helped to hype years ago by writing about it as though it was just around the corner -- we fell for market forecasts (won't be letting that happen again anytime soon - you may notice we don't quote them in these pages.)
Just today we were puzzling over why it has taken the telcos so long to get their location based services in gear with a mobile industry tech exec in Zurich. He said, he felt they might be a bit late because in the meantime there are several competing ways to locate mobilephone users, GPS is coming on, and a few startups have come up with alternatives.
The thing is the business model is not exactly obvious - we'll be watching to see how Qiro and others do the money-making thing.
Posted at 09:11 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
PicoChip Wires Up $27M
PicoChip, the software programmable wireless chip developer has raised $27M in a fourth round led by Highland Capital Partners along with undisclosed key strategic investors. This brings total funding to $70M for the 7 year old firm.
Existing investors include Atlas Venture, Pond Venture Partners, Scottish Equity Partners, Rothschild, Intel and AT&T.
The company's chips are in demand because they can be re-programmed to suit the whims of the WIMAX standards development committees, for example. It's designs are also used in other flavours of wireless, making headway in the femtocell segment.
It's a TenX company: performance is ten times better and in a real world system it is "one-third the cost and one-third the power of DSP / field programmable gate array (FPGA) options", according to its press .
View PicoChip
Posted at 08:55 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Austria's CycleEnergy Raises Capital Bio-Power
CycleEnergy, an agro-energy power plant project company, has raised €6.7M growth capital for power plant activities in Central and Eastern Europe. Investor 3TS Capital Partners, which is backed by 3i in London, led the round, joined by founding shareholder investment company Ventacc.
Woodchips are what the Austrian startup is into at the moment, but it says it can adapt its power generation to whatever waste products are available in the surrounding areas.
The firm's CFO said in statement that this "is the first step in a series of transactions that should allow us to invest over EUR 100 million in construction and acquisition of bio-power plants across CEE countries.”
The company is currently completing construction of a 5.5 MW (nominal) woodchip fired
biomass facility in northern Austria.
View CycleEnergy
Posted at 06:03 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
June 20, 2007
Ormigo Brings In Second Angel For Lead Generation Biz
Following a recent investment by angel investor Hemjö Klein, Ormigo, the German online performance marketing startup, has signed on Michael Kleindl, as a new business angel and advisor.
Kleindl was a co-founder of AdLink, currently chairs the board at wunderLOOP, and is president of the European Interactive Advertising Association. The amount the company has raised is not disclosed.
The company was founded in late 2005 by Henning Lange und Oliver Thylmann (on the right in the image nearby).
Since we've been following Ormigo for a while because of its launch of a local performance marketing and lead generation business - even before co-founder Thylmann won one of our irregular quizzes - - we asked him to answer a few questions about the startup life. In our email Q&A he talks about the challenges in raising capital, making the leap to founding his own company, and his penchant for Apple's MacBook.
What did you do before starting your new venture and why did you leave to create Ormigo?
After having had my first experiences founding an internet statistics company during the Web 1.0 era, I started doing a part time MBA at the OUBS to learn more about the business side of things.
That led to a new start at OnVista Group in 2003 [financial news and stocks site]. There I first worked on different parts of onvista.de, and later joined Henning Lange, to build up a performance marketing unit, now called Ligatus GmbH.
It was my responsibility to make sure that we were building a sound technology platform, being a mix of product manager and CTO, if you need a name for it.
End of 2005 Henning and me left together to found Ormigo. We wanted to try building something fully on our own, having worked together at OnVista Group and instantly feeling that we are a great match. We have very similar ideas of life, corporations and business, while not stepping on each others toes when we consider our own core competencies. It is rare that you find such a good match, and we thought it was time to really build a great company together. The final idea developed from there.
What was the biggest challenge so far?
One of the biggest challenges was actually taking the decision to leave. We were kind of leaving our baby to have another one. Very weird feeling indeed.
In relation directly to Ormigo I'd say the biggest challenge was being a bit too far out [as in original] and not being a copycat. If you are not a "German Version of X", you have to do a lot more convincing.
This is especially true if on the surface a model seems simple, but it gets very complicated if you really get down to business. Therefor we were very happy to have been able to do our first round of investment with Hemjö Klein, as we are about getting Michael Kleindl on board. Their help and guidance has been priceless.
We read your blog and notice that you are using a Mac to run your company. Is this some kind of Euro founder trend - am asking because we noticed in Paris last week that the entrepreneurs we talked to are all carrying brand new Apple gear?
The office is at the moment is distributed evenly between Macs, Ubuntu and Windows. We have standard LAMP servers, plus some stuff on Amazon (S3/EC2).
But I actually just converted Henning over to a shiny new MacBook from Windows.
I do believe that entrepreneurs want to get things done. That's what the Mac helps you with. In terms of bang for the buck, the MacBook is currently hard to beat, which is another reason to go there.
Third, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lots of Entrepreneurs are using it, so more and more do. And they do look good.
ENDS
Posted at 06:50 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
MTEM Goes From spinout to $275M In 3 Years
Three-year old electro magnetic imaging startup MTEM, a University of Edinburgh spinoff, has been acquired by Norway's Petroleum Geo-Services ASA for $275M.
MTEM, which has been providing imaging services to oil and seismic exploration companies, was venture-backed by Energy Ventures, HitecVision and Scottish Equity Partners, each owning about 22% of the shares. MTEM's management and the University of Edinburgh held the remaining 35%. After the acquisition, PGS will own 100% of the company.
They invested about £7.4M in the company, according to an article in the Scotsman that was published a few months ago. If that report was accurate, then the investors made a nice multiple on their investment in a very short period of time.
Headquartered in Edinburgh, with 67 employees the company generated sales of £1.5M in the first quarter 2007.
We are following up on the news and hope to have more details in an update.
Read - Scottish Startup Seeks £25M To Grow Oil- And Gas Detecting Biz (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:42 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
June 19, 2007
Flirtomatic Raises New Round of Finance
We are a bit late with the news but we wanted to check that Flirtomatic's new £2M round, led by Seraphim Capital in London, also included early investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. It did. The new money is to finance its expansion into international mobile markets. Read -
Read - Flirtomatic Chalks Up
Read - Supersnogging and the Viral Myth (alarm:clock euro
Posted at 08:55 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Inquam Acquires Swiss Wimax Operator
San-Diego-based Nextwave via subsidiary Inquam Broadband (Germany) has acquired a 65 percent stake in Swiss Wimax Telecom, an operator of wireless networks in Austria, and neighbouring countries.
Nextwave has an unusual mix: chips, embedded software and wireless telcos and carriers. Its subsidiaries, include NextWave Broadband Inc., PacketVideo Corporation, GO Networks, Inc. and IPWireless, Inc.
This deal suggests its looking to grow its broadband operations in Europe.
View Nextwave
Posted at 07:24 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Media Companies Co-Invest With Mangrove In Nimbuzz Deal
Nimbuzz, the one year old Dutch startup that makes online IM services available to mobilephone users that are members of its network, has raised $10M from early investor Mangrove Capital, joined by MIH Group, which is the company behind Naspers - active in South African and BRIC countries, along with Holtzbrinck Ventures
The media investors bring more than money, according to a PR we received from the firm, they will help with the tough problem of distribution.
Read - Mangrove Back Numbuzz Free (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 06:36 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Trivop Taps Angels
Travel search needs an overhaul as we found out when planning our recent trip to Paris. Trivop, the French startup that offers video-enhanced hotel search services online is working on that one. To get there it has raised an angel round of financing, according to Mashable.
Once again, a set of experienced angels are signing on to back the founders. Mashable sees mscape and Everyscape as its competitors.
We actually used it to find potential hotels in Paris, but ended up booking directly once we found one because we had to check availability and amenities. We expect that Trivop is going to be working on providing a better engine to close transactions through its site.
Read Hot Betas Smeet, Trivop (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 06:51 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Accedo Raises VC For White Label ITV Content Business
Stockholm-based Accedo Broadband AB, which aggregates and sells content, like an acquarium for your TV and interactive games, to IPTV service providers, as well as the software to manage and provision it all, has raised about €1M from Industrifonden and its early backers.
The startup was founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs Michael Lantz and Fredrik Andersson. It has offices in Stockholm, Sweden and London.
View <"a href=http://www.accedobroadband.com/">Accedo Broadband
Posted at 06:40 AM | Posted to Broadband Networks | TrackBack | Permalink
Ex-Photoways CEO's New Venture Gets eCommerce Stars As Angels
Michel de Guilhermier, the French founder of VC-backed Photoways who parted ways with his startup's board about a year ago, has pulled together an impressive group of ecommerce business angels for his new stealth-mode venture called Inspirational Stores [via Altaide].
He says in his blog that his venture is seed funded for an undisclosed amount and the founder team retains the majority of shares.
Regular readers will not only recognize his name, but also most of his advisors and angels, we've profiled some of them over the past year or so. In our recent interview with de Gulhermier he revealed a little about ISG. Three or four of his angels have US market chops.
Robert Keane - Vistaprint founder an online business card printing biz whose mkt cap is $1.5B on Nasdaq
Fabrice Grinda - founder of Zingy (ringtones) and now working on Craigslist clone OLX
Loic Lemeur - whose blogging company was acquired by Six Apart a few years ago, he started LeWeb confabs, and is one of the top 2 bloggers in France. He is leaving Europe for Silicon Valley now, according to his blog.
Graham Hobson : co-founder of PhotoBox whose firm Photoways acquired in 2006
Jérémy Berrebi : who is on his second venture, the popular Zlio online shop building company
Patrick Robin : Imaginet founder which was acquired by Colt telecom and now runs a members only ecommerce site called 24h00.fr
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet : founder of fast growing Price Minister, a top e-commerce site in France
Michael Copsidas : founder of Guide, a price comparison engine tradiing with a valuation of €60M.
Patrick Hannedouche, founder justeatemps.com, an ecommerce biz that delivers drinks on demand
Posted at 05:46 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
June 18, 2007
French Mapping Company Raises €3.2M
Neteco reports that InterAtlas, a French mapping company has raised €3.2M in financing. Its customers include PagesJaune and Microsoft for its new Virtual Earth product. It also runs sites called Paris VuDavion (Paris: bird's eye view) and urbimap.com.
Two planes
And a supercam give InterAtlas the cartographic edge
Read Interatlas Leve (neteco)
Posted at 08:51 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Spanish Investors Invest $25M in MyStrands' Recommendation Web
MyStrands, a "social recommendation" site, has raised $25M in a Series B round led by Antonio Asensio, who runs a Spanish media company called Grupo Zeta, along with a Barcelona-based venture firm called Debaeque and Sequel.
Founded in 2003, the startup has raised $31M to-date. Currently, MyStrands employs a team of 50 people.
Sister-site alarm:clock says it might be easy to call MyStrands a knock-off of LastFM, except that the company was founded years ago (although we imagine LastFM's buyout by CBS helped to lift vaulations.) MyStrands has been around long enough that it has a bit of everything: a music player, mobile services, widgets, recommendation engine, social network and more.
Sure, MyStrands competes with a host of companies from LastFM to Slacker and Pandora, but that doesn't seem to have slowed growth. Like these companies, MyStrands is getting into other forms of recommendations from movies to dining and shopping.
MyStrands focuses on mobile recommendations like its PartyStrands application.
View - MyStrands site
Posted at 08:25 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Russia's Quintura Raises Series A For Search Clouds
After backing Qunitura's seed round, Mangrove Capital Partners has invested "several millions US dollars" in the search startup's Series A round. Techrunch.fr got the scoop on Quintura earlier today.
The new capital is to grow the firm's affiliate model for site search and "build a semantic web index" using its neural networking techniques, it said in a statement. Quintura plans to pitch its search tech to web-sites and blogs to replace a standard site map with a Quintura cloud.
The affiliate model will be either free/ads-supported or subscription-based.
View Quintura
Posted at 08:18 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
ReVolt Charges Up €10M In VC For Battery Tech
ReVolt Technology, a Swiss/Norwegian developer of rechargeable zinc air batteries raised a €10M internal Series B round from its backers Northzone Ventures, Sinvent, Sofinnova Partners, TVM Capital, Verdane Capital and Viking Ventures.
The company recently signed on with Phonak to develop batteries for the Swiss company's hearing aids. Long term goal is mobilephones and consumer electronics.
Founded in 2004, the startup has raised €22M to date.
View Revolt
Posted at 08:08 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
MOMBastic News: Betas in Decline
Recent entries in the Museum of Modern Betas MOMB reveals "shocking news" from a betalogical point of view, fewer beta sites are winning 'best of web' awards on a global basis.
The MoMB, whose author tracks the beta quotient around the web, also does some other fun analysis:
Read -Germany 2.0, a listing of 100 German web projects and sites;
Read - Google's 50 Most Popular betas (how many does it have altogether if it has 50 popular ones?)
Read - Percentage ofGerman Twitter clones that are in beta (38 percent).
See - Recent entries on the MOMB blog
Posted at 06:03 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
June 17, 2007
Disrupting Web Analytics From Budapest
A Danish born, Budapest based tech venture COO has a good pitch:
Accompanied by the ballsy move of listing four of its competitors, Webtrends, WebSideStory, Omniture and Coremetrics, in all its press releases.
Who said it: Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools, based in Budapest with offices in NYC. Tip: Don't call his product a web reporting tool.
What's Index Tools? The name of a seven-year old web analytics platform on the SaaS model. The company has offices in New York.
Mortensen's blog
View Index Tools
Review of Index Tools on Pay per click universe
Posted at 08:30 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
June 16, 2007
Spanish Digg Clones
How do you get a blogger's attention? Easy, send visitors to their site. A spike in traffic from Meneame on Tuesday is how we "heard" about this Spanish Digg clone. Thank you Meneame readers for the nice Karma.
We followed up and asked Julian Martinez, founder of free classifieds site Adoos.com, about the site. Martinez, who is also based in Spain, said there are two large contenders for the top spots in his home market: meneame and Fresqui.
We also found a Loic Le Meur video where we learned that Meneame is the third most popular news site in Spain. It is ahead of news sites that have hundreds of employees, according to Martin Varsavsky who is apparently a minority investor in the startup (see video below).
If it is true that the traffic is that much greater than established media sites, you can understand well why publishers are interested in acquiring such sites.
The site's creator Ricardo Galli talks in the video about the media company offers he's rejected and why he founded Meneame and he does it with disarming modesty and wit. Worth viewing.
As of February there were 380 Digg like platforms, according to the Internet Cash Machine.
Posted at 06:59 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
June 15, 2007
Skype : Still Europe's Best Kept Secret?
In AllThingsDigital there is coverage of an Index Ventures confab in Silicon Valley. The reporter talks to the founder of Moo in the UK, as well as a couple of other founders and Neil Rimer of Index Ventures.
We viewed it after Paul Kedrosky pointed out that around 5 minute mark, that Neil Rimer tells the anecdote of being at a recent conference in the Bay Area where folks were talking about whether it was worth doing venture investing outside the US, especially in Europe or Asia.
Rimer overheard someone saying, "Now, what Europe really needs is a Skype."
(links and video below).
Read - Kara Visit Index And Tests The Entrepreneurs
Posted at 06:50 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
New Twist On Open Source: The Bootstrapping Startup Behind Spreed.com
Today we profile struktur, the Stuttgart-based open source applications developer behind Spreed.com, an online service that caught our eye last year because of a fine user interface (Flash-based) to do online meeting and conferencing, including video and powerpoint, screensharing and even mind-mapping.
struktur has impressed since last summer because it is steadily developing new features for Spreed, it launched a financial planning application, which banks install on their customer-facing portals, and it sells icoya content managment software, which is the basis for a set of appliances it developed for e-billing that it claims makes invoice printing a lot cheaper for business and government orgs. (image of one the boxes right).
And it did all that with 20 employees.
struktur is an Open Source company, but not in the sense of a MySQL or a RedHat. struktur uses open software to create its business applications, which is apparently a very cost-efficient way to go.
If we compare Spreed with Sequoia-backed Unisfair, both are web-based conferencing and events applications: Unisfair has raised several millions in VC. Spreed.com has raised zero dollars in venture capital. 
Little buzz, but big customers.
Read on to hear co-founder Niels Mache talk about why he's not raising venture capital, on what's overhyped in Europe, and how his company makes open source profitable in the business with just 20 employees.
You host some of your software applications, like spreed.com, but you also sell software licenses?
Our core business is not software, nor technology. It is selling business applications to industries, i.e. banks, insurances, government and the manufacturing industry. We license business applications. Our licenses guarantee that the application, spreed for instance, is reliably available with
- a defined set of features,
- for a given number of users and
- during the contracted period of time.
Developing solutions for upcoming businesses in the future, understanding the customer need is what we essentially do. Except for spreed, services are not struktur's core business.
Basically your team develops code for certain OS communities in exchange for using it in your products, right?
We directly support and are part of a few OS projects. For example, Zope, Plone, Red5, icoya, WordXML, OSNelly -- the Nelly Moser ASAO open source project. We directly finance OS developers for development projects and we develop and release code for OS projects. Indeed, our product development takes advantage from shared OS development.
This helps us to improve quality and to lower development time and costs. Open Source is our most important instrument that helps us to have products ready for the market before others do and to work with cutting edge technology being able to deliver unique products.
In many installations the customers receive the complete source and therefore would be able to deploy the application on their own. But most customers don't deploy our software on their own. But they don't because it is simply too expensive [for them].
How many employees do you have now and how much do you spend on R&D?
struktur is a small company. 20 people are working for struktur. In 2001 the R&D budget was 250,000 EUR. In 2006 we invested in R&D 480,000 EUR. For 2007 the goal is to spend 850,000 EUR on R&D.
You have never raised outside capital from venture capital firms or biz angels?
Right. We have not raised venture capital. We started in 2001 with private capital of €1M [that is not a typo -it's one million].
What are your goals with Struktur? Do you plan to go public someday?
We had a few enquiries this year to get capital for raising our business to eventually go on the stock market. However this is not our goal, at least not in Germany.
Why?
German capital in the IT-sector is pretty stupid money. For most IT companies, capital from German venture capitalists does not really help to grow an IT business. Our strategy is to spin-off operations. spreed.com is one example. One of our product lines will also take a role in an IPO next year.
Can you elaborate on that statement about venture capital and IT sector in Germany?
I personally cannot think of a larger and successful venture-backed German IT company in the past 10 years.
There are many successful start-ups in other sectors: physics, Laser technology, medical, pharma, automotive and construction. Germany is a good market for start-ups in the consumer market. Examples include Car advertiser mobile.de, photo sales platform fotolia, Jamba mobile ring-tones, OpenBC/XING and social platforms (students, dating, etc.) are successful in Germany.
My impression is that the German venture capital investors focus on rather simple business models where no real technology is involved.
VC’s in Germany have mainly invested in businesses where the revenue scales directly with the investment in marketing, sales and eventually, production.
Venture capital over here is rarely invested for the development or deployment of a technology. Most investments solely focus on the growth of a revenue-proved product and market. Thus a typical German VC investment in not a venture finance, it is growth finance.
The revenue/customer - investment loop is also typically driven by a short term view: an investment today must result in an increase of revenue or number of customers within a narrow time frame of 3 to 12 months.
What is the most overhyped tech trend in Europe right now?
Europe generally and Germany in particular overhypes older technologies and underhypes the really new ones because Europe tend to adopt new technologies slower than the US and Asia.
Nanotechnology [for exampl] is decades old. It is not well suited to create much employment because most of the outcome of Nanotechnology will be pretty simple and straight-forward applications such as fluids, colors, windscreens for the automotive industry. Mass production of nano-products will be in Asia or the US.
The solar cell sector is also overhyped in Germany because of an artificial pricing for solar and wind energy. Solar energy is overhyped in Germany because of a legislation “Regenerative Energy Law” that force energy producers to pay high prices for electricity generated by solar panels.
The effect of the law is that the solar energy sector receives hundreds of millions of Euros subventions from consumers who pay for increased electricity prices. The unwanted side effect is that many solar companies can only survive on a subsidised market.
Finally, Second Life is massively overhyped (but this is a lot of fun for the media).
- End of interview extract.
Mache also told us about how he recruits for his startup, which we wrote about in How to Hire For Your Bootstrapped Venture.
Posted at 04:38 AM | Posted to Business software | TrackBack | Permalink
June 14, 2007
Clash Media Raises VC For Lead Generation Biz
MMC Ventures (MMC), has invested £2 million in Clash-Media, an online lead generation, or performance based ad business, based in London. The new money is for growing the sales force in the UK and establishing a global platform to move into the European and US markets.
Clash-Media was founded a year ago by Simon Wajcenberg, founder of TMN Media, an email marketing business listed on London's AIM.
The new backers say that lead generation is "still a nascent market in the UK. However, market data for the US shows that in 2006 the lead generation market was valued at about $1 billion, and was growing at the rate of circa 70% per annum."
Our go-to man on the art of online lead generation is Oliver Thymann, who founded Ormigo in Germany in 2005. From what he says, Ormigo and Clash-Media are addressing a fast growing opportunity.
The fact that Steve Umberger is one of Clash's angels and board member reinforces that notion. Umberger was a director and angel investor at Valueclick. He was responsible for setting up its London, Paris, Munich, Sao Paulo and Montreal operations.
View Clash-Media
View Ormigo
Posted at 07:13 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed Nacre Acquired For Its Military Hearing Blockbuster
Norway's Nacre, a VC-backed developer of pro hearing systems mainly used by the military, has been acquired by French company Bacou-Dalloz for $120M, according to Tornado Insider's weekly newsletter. The all cash transaction delivered one of its backers, Ferd Venture, which invested €1.9M in early 2005, a return on investment of up to 15x in on the sale, said the report.
Other investors included Viking Venture, Four Season Venture and Sinvent Venture (which is 75 percent owned by Four Season Venture).
The startup has been winning large-sized contracts from the German army and a $30M order from the US Marine Corp in recent months.
View Nacre
View Tornado Insider
Posted at