« Specialized ERP Firm Gets New Owner | Main | SAP To Buy India's Yasu - Business Rules Software Acquisition »
October 17, 2007
DEMO Sidelines: Instant Competitive Intelligence
We go to conferences as much for the content as for the people you meet on the sidelines, and in this respect DEMO in Munich didn't disappoint. We met up with people from several interesting startups, picked up some news too, in addition to the ones on stage and in the exhibition pavillion.
MyTV.de in Relaunch
Frank Didsuzleit (image right), founder of Internet broadcast guide mytv.de, told us over lunch that he's relaunched the company after the partial takeover with Gruner+Jahr fell through earlier this year, causing the previous incarnation of the venture to go into insolvency.
The software has been refined and he's sticking to the original plan to deliver consumers a guide to what's on in the Internet video channels, including streaming, clips, and iptv.
Didszuleit was a co-founder of United Domains, which is now the domain name portfolio tool inside United Internet, Germany's multi-billion euro Internet giant. He's also heading up DomsXL, a domain name broker.
MyTV.de and GoGooRoo
You can always get some instant 'competitive intelligence' at these kinds of conferences. We asked several professionals that invest in digital media in Europe about Didsuzleit's chances with mytv.de.
One offered up the name GoGooRoo as a rival and contender for the spot at the top of the Internet video guides heap.
CommerceTools
We also met CommerceTools founder Dirk Hoerig (image left). In the past year, the Software as a Service launched and it is now enabling a couple of brand-names to sell directly to consumers via their websites.
The market niche that Hoerig's firm is targeting is still quite untapped, a piece of intelligence that we picked up a few months ago here , see answer to question four and five.
Its revenue model, transaction-based, gives it a good selling point, as well as the founding team's experience selling related products in a previous life.
Our instant due diligence with investors on the sidelines offered up rivals in the UK such as Venda, and Demandware in the US, but
Hoerig has this reporter believing he just might be able to grab some market share ahead of them in his target markets.
Demandware, is one that the a:c euro already knew about (see post ). It is a venture led by a co-founder and former exec at Intershop, the once high profile ecommerce software firm out of Germany that reached an incredible valuation during the bubble, survived the downturn, and is growing again in this new cycle.
Venda evolved from MAID, a publicly traded online database provider, and is doing well in the 'bricks and clicks' ecommerce niche, retailers that are developing new, more integrated eShops. A year ago, Venda raised capital from Swedish private equity firm Investor Growth Capital.
Read - Wagner finds $20m for US drive - Times Online
Posted on October 17, 2007 03:15 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/6171
