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November 30, 2007
Mojowatch euro: e-trading is back, early stage euro vc is not, and Other News
Reported widely this week is news that Gigle Semiconductor raised $20M. Find coverage at eetimes(a freelance market of your a:c euro reporter) and lightreading.com
Referencement.com, a French online web marketing specialist with global connections and a mkt cap of €29M announced two acquisitions this week, buying a 100% stake in Agorad, an independent interactive media agency, and Daooda an ad network. Agorad and Daooda have been acquired from their managers and founders, Dimitri Ducourtieux and Michaël Amar who join Referencement new media div.
The IHT's Victoria Shannon reports on Web startups and VC trends from a Red Herring event in Budapest. It is her end-user targeted column so the companies she highlighted are consumer-oriented, e.g. momail and jooce.
Stock Trading Back Online in Europa. BW has a feature on the resurgence in online trading of the consumer kind in Europe. Last few paras describe an opportunity for startups, providing information and "advice". The return of individual investors to e-trading has not escaped the notice German entrepreneurs at brokr and stockjaeger and sharewise , as reported by Blognation Germany.
LPs slightly more optimistic about European early stage investing, reads the headline on an AltAssets survey report this week here. We saw it and were already planning how to spend the bonus income as interest in European tech venture news climbs and site traffic climbs to match it.
Managed to miss that word "slightly" in the title on first reading. What the article says is that the current view on European venture is somewhere between 'neutral' and 'marginally negative', and the amount of money flowing to European VC at the early stage is stagnating at about €4.1B invested annually. There are not enough Euro VCs that match the criteria for LPs to invest, it says. But the researchers did say they expect more activity in Europe from deep-pocketed US investors.
Posted at 05:00 PM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
Iris Capital Gives Oodrive Money To Grow SaaS Biz
Oodrive Technologies, a seven year old French venture specialized in remote backup, online file sharing and collaboration solutions, has raised €4M from Iris Capital [via]
Already way past breakeven, Oodrive Technologies, which is running on the SaaS model, has partnerships with France Telecom, Completel and FNAC. It's looking at acquisitions, such as the one it did last year when it bought Mayetic. It does about €4M in sales annually.
Posted at 07:28 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 29, 2007
alarm:clock euro Puzzler: Open Source Famous
Europe has delivered more than its fair share of disruptive open source projects. Some of the more commercial ones are SUSE Linux, XenSource, Alfresco, Trolltech, MySQL, Open-Xchange, Collax and Mandrvia.
Because of the nature of open source marketing, the leaders of these efforts are typically high profile, like Linus Torvalds of Linux fame, who has pages of quotes in online directories, like WikiQuote where we snagged the above image and quote.
Those pages inspired this week's Puzzler.
Who is pictured below and what is his position?
Bonus question: What is the name of this German corporate communications company founder who is also the founder of the open source car project OsCar Mobility
The first and ninth reader to illustrate your open source sector know-who by writing in with the correct answer will be announced as the winners.
We'd like to say that if you get the answer and the bonus question, we'll send over a Zino Chubby six-pack, or a 1998 bottle of Santa Restituta (Gaja) Brunello Sugarille, depending on your taste in fine things, but we haven't got the sponsorship thing going, yet.
Posted at 09:07 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
November 28, 2007
Spotzer Takes on New Money On a Mission
Spotzer Media Group, the low-budget TV and video ad enabler, has acquired two more investors for a €10M financing round. It is not clear if this is a top up to the C round, announced earlier this year or something else. The new backers sound like a good match for the startup's business plan. It raised capital from Sierra Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif. to help it enter the US market, and European Directories, yellow page publisher active in nine countries, which will offer Spotzer's ads (in a pilot program) to local businesses through its European sales team.
newsobserver.com | Spotzer Media Raises Euro 10 Million From Sierra Ventures and European Directories
View - Earlier a:c euro coverage of Spotzer
Posted at 09:06 AM | Posted to Advertising | News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Innovacom Invests In Mobile Devices' First Round
Five year old French startup Mobile Devices, the company that recently launched the Dreevo developer kit (above) has raised a first round of €3.1 million from Innovacom.
Innovacom is the French venture firm whose latest fund tapped LPs from all around the globe, but also has close ties to France Telecom and its units: GlobeCast, Wanadoo, StarMedia, and Orange Business Services
Mobile Devices sells hardware and software that enables enterprises to develop smart navigation, driver information, and fleet management applications. It says it also has comprehensive catalog of ready-to-use applications.
Mobile Devices says it has customers worldwide, such sa Alpha Taxis, SITA (garbage collection), Geodis, Thales, Spie, Antargaz, Gps Buddy, Trafficmaster. It employs 40 people and is headquartered near to Paris, in Le Kremlin Bicêtre, France.
View Mobile Devices
Posted at 08:27 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
Buy, Hold, or Sell with Alexander Straub
Alexander Straub of UK-based early stage investment companyStraub Ventures is more comfortable talking about the "revolutionary" startup companies he is backing than his personal technology investments, but we did eventually find out about his recent and planned acquisitions of the consumer kind for our new series called Buy, Hold or Sell.
In a telephone interview with alarm:clock euro, Straub said that he recently switched from a Blackberry to a Nokia E61i (above), similar in looks to the Blackberry with email, qwerty keyboard, quad band, Windows support, and Wifi finesse.
Another recent buy was an iMac with a 25 inch screen. Better posture is just one of the benefits he mentioned.
But he's not big on the iPhone. "I tried the iPhone and it is a great gadget, but I find that Nokia voice quality, especially for Voice-over-WLAN using Truphone, is still the best in the world," he said.
The a:c euro notes that Truphone, the UK-based mobile telephony startup is one of his investments.
"I make 90 percent of my calls on VoWLAN so it's been important," he added.
A weakness of the iPhone is that it can only take one SIM card, typically the identity module that is sold along with a subscription to a mobile network operator's service. "You need to re-hack it to use a different SIM card, which gave me a lot of problems," explained Straub.
Today he uses Apple's touch-screen gadget to take pictures of the kids and send them via a Wifi Internet connection to his grandparents. "But I do not make any calls on it," said Straub.
Carbon Neutral Driving
(Image Source: Daimler Press Office)
Beyond communications and gadgets, carbon neutrality is coloring his consumer activities. A sentiment that if shared by others will no doubt gratify readers who are actively investing in cleantech and energy-efficiency.
The German-born, London-dwelling investor wants a hybrid electric vehicle, but a small one. "It has to be even smaller than the Prius," said Straub.
"Perhaps a smart EV," he said. A hybrid variant of the popular German microcar from smart gmbh is expected on the market in two years time, with a rechargeable electric version to follow. (image source: Daimler)
But two things are holding him back, the price tag which he figures will be about £35K, and the fact that he lives in Notting Hill where finding a place to recharge a hybrid's battery pack is not trivial.
"If you don't have off-street parking, it is a no go," said Straub.
He's also looking at upgrading insulation, windows, and the heating/cooling systems in his country home on the Schoeninsel, in northern Germany in the former East German region of Mecklenburg Vorpommern.
The surrounding lake water could provide enough temperature differential to power a heat pump, which could save him some energy costs over the long term, but more important for Straub is the carbon reduction potential.
Straub is an entrepreneur-turned-active early stage investor. Besides his Truphone activities, he's currently the CEO of Pixsta, a visual search startup.
Degrees in engineering have led to a rare career path in the European venture market, specifically Straub has been successful as a startup founder, worked as a partner at Lazard Technology Partners, and worked in the technology team of Goldman Sachs.
View Pixsta
View Pixsta in action at ChezImelda
Read - alarm:clock articles mentioning Truphone
Posted at 08:06 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
alarm:clock euro Goes Shopping
Pioneering tech venture founders and investment professionals don't stop pushing the technology envelope when they go home from work. It's a preoccupation that flows into their off-time too. It is just one of the things that became apparent putting together a new series of articles for the alarm:clock euro, called Buy, Hold, or Sell.
Instead of covering the latest innovative business model out of Paris to attract venture capital, or a hidden gem in Italy exposed by a nine-digit euro acquisition price, we set out to expose value investments of the consumer kind, and maybe help to avoid the duds.
The task was not an easy one for our alarm:clock euro reporter, Valerie Thompson. That's because when people like Graham O'Keeffe of Atlas Venture, Henry Seydoux, the founder and CEO of wireless innovation factory Parrot SA, or Alexander Straub of Straub Ventures, to name some that we talked to, get her on the other end of the phone they have a one-track mind: to promote their investments, their company, or their latest product.
That's the way it should be, no doubt, but this time we had our own agenda.
Inspiring Post
The inspiration was a post by Martin Schaedel in Hello Martin. The Scandinavian business adviser and peripatetic startup executive wrote that he was craving an ultra compact portable Sony Vaio G.
He described it as "weighing in at wispy 0.89 kg... a carbon-fiber baby" and that it is meant to replace his Panasonic W and R series.
Because of who he is and the amount of traveling he does, what he buys is interesting and could be quite useful information for others with similar requirements, went our thinking.
Schaedel is a former partner at Lund Kenner, the Nordic "venture capital firm without the capital". He's currently working with FareCompare, a Dallas-based airfare information publisher that has become a media darling and a port of call for hedge fund managers looking for an edge on their airline investment bets.
Read on for the first in the series Buy, Hold, Sell with Alexander Straub.
Read - Buy, Hold or Sell with Henri Seydoux of Parrot SA
Read - Buy, Hold, or Sell with Joe Cohen (Seatwave)
Posted at 08:03 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
UK's Email Systems Bought By Webroot
Anti-spyware's Webroot is buying UK-based security as a service firm Email Systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The merged firm will be called Webroot. Founded 5 years back, Email Systems says it protects an estimated 2.5M email boxes for 1,500 businesses worldwide. It competes with MessageLabs.
In February, 2005 Webroot raised $108M. It has since hired a new CEO and announced its intention to go public. Webroot got its start in fighting malware but has moved to expand to other areas of security.
View - site
Posted at 12:29 AM | Posted to Security | TrackBack | Permalink
November 27, 2007
updated: SEP Leads €26M Kiala Deal
Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) informed us today that it led a €26M investment in Kiala, the Pan-European package delivery company founded and led by serial entrepreneur Denis Payre (photo of the stylish Euro founder above).
We've been covering Kiala's trajectory for several years and it is certainly on a growth track.
SEP was joined by several other investors, including funds related to La Poste and TPG (TNT Post Group). GP Bullhound advised Kiala on the round.
This post may be updated as we've requested more information from SEP about the investment, if it was a capital increase, or involved purchasing of a stake from an early shareholder.
Update: SEP has confirmed that investment is in a new share issue at higher valuation than the previous round. No further terms are being disclosed. The new capital is to be used to expand the business into further key European markets.
Read- Kiala Goes From Zero to Hero
Posted at 04:23 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Nanofreeze Adds New Seed Investor
We just confirmed with Northzone Ventures that Nanofreeze, has raised an additional $1M from Northzone and new inestor TeknoSeed AB. The augmented seed capital should enable it to get its first proof of concept prototype out of the lab.
The company develops semiconductor technology that it hopes will be the next generation thermoelectric element of choice. Nanofreeze is hoping to get its components into refrigerator compressors, electronics cooling systems, and into heat pumps that can extract energy from the engine of a car to power the electrical system. If it works this is tech wizardry at the cutting edge.
Read Earlier alarm:clock euro coverage of Nanofreeze
Posted at 01:09 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Prague's 1C Buys Moscow Games Studio From Akella
Prague-based 1C Publishing has acquired Akella’s “Sea Dog” in-house development studio, which specializes in XBox games. The acquired Moscow-based team has worked on titles like Sea Dogs, Pirates of the Caribbean and Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales.
Akella, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Moscow, is a leading developer, publisher and distributor ofcomputer games in Russia, CIS and Baltic countries. It has a large localization team too. Akella’s shareholders include Quadriga Capital and Intel Capital
1C’s newly acquired studio will develop a wide range of innovative titles for multiple game platforms. Through the deal Akella has also acquired the worldwide publishing rights to PT Boats: Knights of the Sea.
1C Publishing EU says it releases quality PC games from leading Russian and Central European developers through its global network of independent distribution partners.
View- 1C company
Posted at 08:03 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
eCommerce Pioneers See Potential in Shopping Site iliketotallyloveit
Malte Goesche, the co-founder and CEO, of a new kind of social shopping platform - think Digg combined with an amateur version of BoingBoing/Engadget, wrote in to point out we had neglected to cover iliketotallyloveit.com's early stage investment round.
Indeed we did miss the German deal and have to say it's due to lack of resources, rather than lack of interest on our part.
Because if we had seen the release and who the business angel investors were, two German eCommerce pioneers and a veteran venture capital professional, it would have snagged our attention.
Goesche said it was an introduction by a mutual colleague that introduced the startup to Intershop co-founder Stephan Schambach, who now heads up Demandware (see our where are they now piece for more info).
Schambach in turn brought in colleagues from Argiv GmbH, an investment vehicle that belongs to Karsten Schneider, who not only co-founded Intershop but also subsequently created photo publishing site Pixaco (which was acquired by HP), and Stefan Friese, a former venture capital professional who worked at Technologieholding/3i in Germany. They have invested an undisclosed amount in the venture.
Goesche says the beta has attracted a 4-digit number of product reviewers and raters to the site. He also confirmed that the links to online shops where the goods are available are not paid for links and there are no lead generation or performance-based payments going to his venture, nor the reviewers.
There have been plenty of positive reviews of the site by top blogs, like Mashable, and news sites, like Wired. And indeed we can see how users might be attracted to surfing the site to view new gadgets and find things they didn't know they wanted, but what we are wondering is will people continue to contribute to Web sites where all you get is kudos and no cash or cash equivalent for your efforts.
It's the same thing that goes on with sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, or Mister Wong, pointed out Goesche.
The revenue model is yet to be revealed.
View - iliketotallyloveit
Posted at 07:16 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Hedgies Invest in Baltic and E European Job Seekers Site
The jobs market in Eastern Europe is booming we read in eetimes Europe (Disclosure: the title is now one your alarm:clock euro reporter freelances for). So it is interesting to note a deal that one of our readers, Jüri Kaljundi in Tallinn, drew to our attention this morning.
Startup CV Market, which serves jobseekers and selected recruiters in the Baltic and Eastern European countries, has sold a majority stake to a consortium of investors at a valuation of about €9M (consortium is paying 75 percent paid now with 25% in three years).
The investors are Digital Sky Technologies, Bexley International Investments Limited, and one of the Tiger Global Management funds, according to Kaljundi, who is a small shareholder in a rival online recruitment venture.
He points out that the largest share of sales come from Estonia, and also listed several other investments made by Tiger Global in the region.
A quick search of news sources reveals that both Digital Sky Technologies and Tiger have been active as a team in the past year in buying and selling shares in privately owned tech startups on this side of the Atlantic. For example, an exit here and here and a recent investment here.
Read - Jüri Kaljundi blog
Posted at 06:19 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Maeglin Raises Capital To Acquire Ipracom For Mobile Data Exchange
France's Maeglin Software raised capital to acquire Ipracom, which develops peer to peer software for mobile and PC data exchange applications. Funded by grants until now, Maeglin appears to have tapped Ipracom's investors to enable the transaction.
Maeglin says it is a B2B startup that offers Fidelio, a barcode-driven mobile marketing service, and Pleex, which is a multimedia exchange application platform. It was founded in 2006.
Source: Maeglin Software : Maeglin Software accueille à son capital CDC Innovation, Innovacom, et CapDecisif - News-Eco
Posted at 06:08 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 26, 2007
Fuel Cell Startup Raises £2M
We heard from the backers of fuel cell components startup Bac2 that it has raised £2M of private funding from London Business Angels. Its ground breaking conductive polymer ‘Electrophen’ is seen as a key enabler of lighter and lower cost fuel cells. Its website says its ready to ship in prototype to production volume levels.
The latest funding round was led by London Seed Capital and London Business Angels who supported the continuing success of their original investment in 2006 by helping to raise this round.
View - Bac2
Posted at 03:03 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Alt Energy Consultancy Semplice Attracts Venture Finance
Semplice Energy Limited, a systems integrator of the green energy kind, has raised $1.23M from BIP Fund, a recently established Bahamas-based VC business. Semplice consults the likes of McDonalds, Tesco, and Mothercare on how these organizations can deploy new lighting solutions, or adopt cutting edge voltage and power management soluutions, even use wind power to save money and use renewable energy systems to reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions. It then manages the ensuing projects.
Due to our limited resources at the alarm:clock euro, we did not have time to determine if Semplice is actually devloping its own hardware, in addition to sourcing gear from third parties.
We figure that this startup will find plenty of potential customers. The news we read in our feeds and in news aggregators suggests that corporations are indeed looking at savings, but also the PR effect, and sustainability points they get from adopting greener energy strategies.
We know from another startup, Asset4 in Zug, Swtizerland, that stock market analysts are starting to rate publicly traded companies that can demonstrate sustainability in their operations more highly.
View Semplice
Semplice Energy Secures Investment Funding
Thursday November 22, 3:00 am ET
BIP Fund (I) Limited Partnership Invest in Semplice Energy for Continued Company Growth
READING, England, November 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Semplice Energy Limited, a leading provider of green energy solutions including advanced energy saving and renewable energy systems to reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions, today announced it has secured US$1.23 million in funding from BIP Fund (I) Limited Partnership, a Bahamas based venture capital business.
Semplice Energy has recently been expanding rapidly with a strong customer base including McDonald's, Mothercare, Tesco, The National Trust and The London Fire Brigade. The investment capital will be used to fund future company growth, drive industry initiatives and expand research and development activities.
David Johnson, investment adviser to BIP and a director of Semplice said "We are delighted to have made this investment. We are very impressed by Mark Truswell (Chief Executive Officer, Semplice Energy) and Natalie Barker (Founder and Chief Operations Officer, Semplice Energy) and what they have achieved already. We believe that their highly commercial approach and technical expertise will continue to give the company a competitive advantage." BIP is also well-placed to lead the syndication of further rounds of funding as necessary.
In addition, Semplice announces the appointment of Neeta Dalal as Chief Marketing Officer. Ms Dalal joins Semplice with 11 years of marketing experience including a series of positions with Informix, Documentum and EMC Corporation.
About BIP Fund (I) Limited Partnership:
BIP is a privately held business established in 2006. BIP focuses on investments in early stage and start up businesses across a number of sectors including financial services and technology. The directors are active investors working closely with management to build an in-depth understanding of their business so as to add maximum value.
David Johnson started his professional career as a lawyer in the City and the Far East, and has spent the last 10 years as an in-house commercial lawyer first at Virgin Group and then at Capital One.
About Semplice Energy:
Semplice Energy is a provider of technically advanced energy saving and renewable energy solutions to reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions. Based in Berkshire, UK, Semplice Energy was founded in 2005 by a team of environmentally conscious technology and corporate investment professionals. Through the team's passion for the environment and in depth technological expertise they are redefining the landscape of energy solutions.
Focusing on the key areas of energy consumption, Semplice Energy works with world class partners such as Steinel, Baldor, Fluoresave, Salicru, Schuco, NeoSave, Fortis Wind Energy, Zephyr and Atlantic Orient Canada. Customers of these energy saving and renewable energy products are seeing significant cost savings through improvements in efficiency, onsite electricity production and a reduction in CO2 output.
Semplice Energy is the trademark of Semplice Energy in the United Kingdom and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Posted at 06:59 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 25, 2007
Applied Materials Buy Italian Solar Cell Equipment Maker for €225M
Applied Materials has announced its second acquisition of a European solar cell processing equipment manufacturer. The US-based semiconductor equipment manufacturer said it is to acquire Baccini S.p.A., a supplier of equipment used in the manufacture of crystalline silicon photovoltaic wafers for €225 million (about $330M at today's currency exchange rates).
Founded way back in 1967 in Treviso, Italy, Baccini’s photovoltaic product line enables manufacturers to minimize the use of silicon material, which now represents more than 60% of solar cell manufacturing cost, the firm said in a statement. The Italian venture is led by founder Gisulfo Baccini.
In June of ths year we reported that Applied also bought a Swiss wafer slicing technology company for $475M. And according to Tech Confidential Behind the Money Blog it bought US based Applied Films Corp., a supplier of equipment for manufacturing flat-panel displays and solar cells last year.
Read - Applied Materials News
Read- Applied Materials takes Italy's Baccini
Posted at 07:16 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
South Africa's Synthasite Raises $5M from Luxury Label's Corporate VC Arm
Synthasite, an AJAX-based web site publishing tool provider, raised $5M from Compagnie Financière Richemont’s subsidiary, Columbus Venture Capital, based in Geneva. The startup plans to open its platform to third party developers next year, in order to allow them to create widgets, templates and plugins for the platform.
Richemont owns a portfolio of leading international brands and it wholly owns Columbus Venture Capital, which invests in the global branded consumer goods markets, information technology and digital media.
In a statement, the investor said that it believes that the luxury sector will benefit from enabling technologies in things like electronic retailing, channel e-commerce, data security and authentication.
Read - alarm:clock's profile of Synthasite
Read Synthasite Raises $5m Series ''A'' Round
Posted at 07:02 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 23, 2007
Warburg Pincus Invests in Spectraseis
Zurich-based Spectraseis announced this week hat it has raised Sfr 36M (US$ 32.5 Million) from Warburg Pincus in a deal that sees the investor acquiring a "significant minority stake" in the geographical surveying technology company.
It is active in a market that has proven to be lucrative for venture capital investors with some good sized exits this year.
The four year old company has developed an imaging and detection system to map oil and gas reservoirs more effectively, cleanly, and at lower costs than existing systems. Earlier investor, StatoilHydro Venture Capital maintains a stake in the company, together with Spectraseis' management team.
Your alarm:clock euro reporter first wrote about Spectraseis back in 2003 when co-founder and CEO Ross Newman had a prototype, some fresh R&D, and a pitch he was making to investors at the European Tech Tour and b-to-v's Investorenkreis conferences. (No links because back then we wrote subscription-only publications)
In the meantime, he attracted early investors, and today his company has customers like Petrobras, StatoilHydro, Pemex, as well as operators in the Middle East.
Warburg Pincus will get two board seats with the deal.
Hot Sector
The growth stage investor might be hoping that it will achieve another homerun in the oil and gas sector with this one, like it did earlier this year with ElectroMagnetic GeoServices (EMGS), which it floated in Oslo at €1.5B plus valuation.
We've been scraping together information on this year's largest VC-backed exits-- by hand, we might add because we don't have access to one of the well stocked databases, like VentureOne or MergerMarket, which are available for deeper pocketed press organizations -- and so far our research shows that two of the largest VC-backed exits are indeed in the same sector as Spectraseis, namely MTEM (a Scottish Equity Partners homerun) and the aforementioned EMGS.
Posted at 08:36 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Airtricity Wind Co. Up for Sale at €2B
Irish wind energy power generating company Airtricity is in play with a €2B valuation, according to the Irish Indpendent. Currently lobbying to build a state of the art Supergrid, Airtricity has wind farms in the US and the UK/Ireland regions. (image source:airtricity.com)
Despite being a capital intensive business, the early investors in this eight year old venture stand to make stellar returns. The shareholders include private investors, a utiltiy company, and investment firm One51, as well the firm's CEO, according to a report in the Irish Independent. The article details the multiples expected.
Posted at 06:20 AM | Posted to Alternative Energy | TrackBack | Permalink
November 22, 2007
Puzzler Winners- Latin Lovers
Earlier this week the Puzzler asked what modern day cities are referred to when you hear these Latin place names along with some clues. Here are the answers:
Revalia - Tallin
Turicum - Zürich
Lutetia - Paris
Emona - Ljubjana
Holmia - Stockholm
Thank-you to all the alarm:clock readers for taking the time to write and take part in the quiz this week. Responses came from as far away as Zagreb, and as nearby as Zürich.
Despite several geographies being represented by participants, both winners, the first and fourth to write in, are from Germany.
They are Ulf Morys, who heads up sales in central and northern Europe for Advanced Mobile Applications Ltd, one of the latest ventures from the French Guillemot brothers, and Falk Müller-Veerse, the managing partner at Cartagena Capital, a corporate finance advisory headquartered in Munich.
Morys, a self-confessed gadget-happy startup junky, said he was happy to put his dusty high school Latin knowledge to use.
Based in Düsseldorf, this is the second Guillemot venture that Morys has worked for. Prior to AMA, which Morys said is pre-IPO (and knowing a little bit about the track record of the Guillemots - they've already floated three tech companies, we'd say that his is probably a fair assessment), he built and led the local Gameloft branch. Developping the market in Germany and adjacent countries kept him busy there for 6 years.
He makes the mobile entertainment sector sound attractive, pointing out that the field exploits IT, telecommunications, and media knowledge. "In terms of high-pace startup industries, this covers pretty much everything except bio and nano tech," wrote Morys. His firm's website is here.
Falk Müller Veerse was the fourth to write in, saying that he thinks that Mandarin should be a language option for kids instead, or at least as well as, Latin and English. His company, which has expanded lately with partners in France, UK, Finland and the US, works for venture-funded businesses in the wireless, telecom, software and digital media markets, advising them on trade sales and fundraising.
Your alarm:clock euro adds an interesting nugget to his profile: Cartagena advised the only founder in Europe to sell his mobile sector venture to the Walt Disney company.
Prior to his career in corporate finance, Veerse worked on the investment side for Durlacher, now part of Panmure Gordon, and Mobile Application Holding, after working for firms Nokia, Gartner and LogicaCMG. More on Cartagena here..
Posted at 08:31 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink
Tokiva Seeded For Chinese Mobile Services Biz
We just confirmed with early stage investment specialist Brains-To-Ventures AG 's Jan Bomholt that it, along with business angel William Bao Bean, are backing a seed round in Tokiva, a Chinese mobile communication platform company that provides services, such as discounted mobile calls. The deal size is not disclosed.
The company is based in Beijing, with headquarters in Toronto.
As we understand it, the first service it offers - still in beta - works similar to Jajah's original concept, where users enter into a Web form the calling number and the target number. Tokiva calls back the call initiator once the call is set up. It also supports mobile email and community, according to its website.
The venture was founded by Tong Li, CEO, and Qianfei Wang, who worked together previously in a company the two founded in Toronto, Jatheon Technologies, an enterprise search and compliance management company targeting the financial services sector.
Bao Bean is on the firm's advisory board and is a partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, an early stage venture capital firm.
So how did this Swiss-based investment organization get access to a deal so far abroad? The answer is its network, which has people living in the region, and its members that are willing to travel in order to make investments.
Bomholt said that b-to-v met Tokiva's founders during privateDC 2007, a one-week trip to China in early 2007 where 25 Chinese startups presented to the“b-to-v Investorenkreis” (the name of its club of active business angels).
He added that the club is planning to invest €80M over the next three years and that it has scheduled a comparable investment trip to Russia and the Ukraine in June 2008.
View Tokiva
View b-to-v
Posted at 07:59 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 21, 2007
Romanian eMail Server Software Company Sells Stake to VCs
Gecad Technologies, the company behind AXIGEN Mail Server software, has raised a first round of capital from Global Finance, the 3TS-Cisco Growth Fund III and several other undisclosed investors. The deal size was €2M and the founder, Radu Georgescu, retains 88.24% of shares post investment.[via ]
Earlier this month 3TS, which has been active in Eastern Europe for several years, announced Cisco as an LP in its third fund, which aims to invest growth capital in deal sizes up to €4M, targetting in small and medium-sized companies in technology, media and communications sectors.
Read Axigen Announces
Posted at 03:29 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
November 20, 2007
Cint Platform Matches Publishers, Consumer Panels, and Brands
We just took a look at CINT out of Sweden and are thinking that online media companies seeking to boost revenues might do well to check out this company's offering, as it could deliver a source of income in addition to advertising.
Or if you have a successful brand in Italy and want to know how it will do in Helsinki or San Paolo, this Stockholm-based venture could also help to find the answer.
Recently funded for expansion, CINT has created a new kind of online platform that matches consumer panels (their owners, actually) with big name brands that want to survey consumers in key markets and regions abroad.
It doesn't own the survey panels, rather it connects the panels owned by market research firms and agencies (it vets them first), with researchers that want access to them.
CINT provides its platform, SaaS model, as a tool to panel-owners enabling access to consumers in 21 countries. Each day about 20K individuals are answering surveys provided through its platform, says CINT.
It's also currently recruiting online publishers as partners. One advantage of working with CINT, it says, is that the surveys are done by email, so if a media company wants to, it doesn't have to give up realestate on the webpage.
The Swedish company provides the platform to all parties involved, and its revenue model is transactional.
CINT was founded back in 1998 by Bo Mattsson, a leading light with several Internet brokerages in his home market, and sits on the board of Nordnet, an online brokerage.
It was not until 2003, however, that he decided to take the lead at CINT to direct it on its current course and business model. Mattson owns 52 percent of the company and has raised venture capital from Creandum to expand internationally. Two mega markets in mind are the US and China. The 28M SEK (€3M) deal was announced earlier this month.
There is not a lot of competition that we could see that has the same international scope and a focus on professionally run consumer panels.
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alarm:clock euro Puzzler - Latin Lovers
In some ways venture capital in Europa is like the Romans, it is attracting talent to these shores, mobilizing capital and investments in various hotspots, and to a degree it is driving innovation. Latin was the language of the Romans. This fact and that notion inspired this week's Puzzler.
Here is a list of Latin place names. What modern day cities do they refer to?
Revalia - Skyperesearchanddevelopementonia
Turicum - the city on whose outskirts the alarm:clock euro office is located
Lutetia - Sofinnovaville
Emona - a young Eastern European city with more than 50,000 students and some interesting Web startups (dragon visual clue above)
Holmia - the capital of a Nordic country that has seen US giants acquire three of its cutting edge startups in the past year or so (audio compression, web conferencing, and data visualization)
The first and the fourth readers to write in with the correct answers will win fame, if not fortune, by being profiled here. We wish we could offer the reader who knows the answers without having to look any of them up in Wikipedia or Brittanica a special bonus prize, like an all expense paid trip to Londinium, but sponsors are just not aware yet of the value of being seen here.
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November 19, 2007
Scottish Equity Partners Invests in Skyscanner
SEP wrote in to say that it is backing the founders of Skyscanner to create a flight search engine that has the ambition of covering every commercial flight in the world. The deal size is £2.5M.
We met one of the founders of Skycanner on the Scottish Tech Tour, rather fittingly in the hanger of a museum that houses one of the Concorde's last year, and thought back then that it sounded like some pretty good algorithm work being done.
No doubt It would have to be some pretty strong IP for the team to be able to get SEP to make an investment in an Internet-oriented startup.
The flight databse is up to more than 180 airlines now and about 5,000 destinations. Skyscanner is headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland and also has an IT engineering base in Poland.
View Skyscanner
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VCs Cuts Out the Executive Search Middleman
Munich-based Wellington Partners put out a PR today announcing that it has "challenging jobs" for techies on its website at wellington-partners.com (don't forget the hyphen or you end up on a Canadian exec search firm's website).
The Pan European VC is using VentureLoop's technology, a jobs engine startup from Silicon Valley that has seen surprise success and take up amongst well-known VC firms. The a:c euro has heard it even surprised itself.
Other Euro VCs that use VentureLoop include Index Ventures and Atlas Venture.
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Tech Tour Web Summit Review of Six Pitches
Here's some of what we heard and saw on Thursday at the European Tech Tour's Web & Communities Summit where selected companies were able to make their pitches for free to a roomful of investors from all over Europe. There are only six because the alarm:clock euro arrived late and only eyeballed that many.
We talked to pros from Silicon Valley Bank, SAP Ventures, Earlybird, Holtzbrinck, Wellington, Endeavour Vision, Sardis, and Highland Capital. There were others too but the alarm:clock did not get a chance to meet them.
Wikio co-founder Pierre Chappaz (above) demoed Wikio's news aggregation power, talking a bit about the relevance engine, but also about its revenue generation potential, which includes things like affiliate marketing, shopping channels, and advertising.
The a:c euro was skeptical at first about the content and power of the engine but we have been accessing Wikio lately and can report that it's French version has enough usage and content now to become a power-tool for us.
We expect to use the English version too, once it reaches the same level of development and usage as the French one. And it looks like Chappaz has the basics in place to turn the traffic growth, which he also demonstrated, into a moneymaker.
NEO- Stylish, young founding team developing smart algorithms (they call it a social discovery engine) for consumer-oriented online services. Insider nugget: if you have heard of httpool media network , then you'll be interested to know that its CEO Timotej Gala, has signed on as NEO's head up the online advertising and media operations at NEO. It comes out of Slovenia with German connections, targeting the high growth Eastern European market.
That is NEO's co-founder and CEO Andrej Nabergoj. This is not his first venture. And he's also got connections to httpool.
Xcerion - CEO Daniel Arthursson, gave a low key presentation, which belies this startup's disruptive proposition. He talked about the CloudOS concept his firm has in place. To be clear, he said, it is not a WebOS, rather the code executes inside the browser and taps about 20 percent of the host computer's OS.
Xcerion needs to attract developers to churn out XML apps for the platform and believes that big name software vendors will develop Xcerion versions of their software, or risk its ecosystem doing knockoffs. The company faces several challenges on the user takeup side, but also on getting developers to work on apps, plus there's competition and a lack of understanding (ours included) on what's the difference between a CloudOS and WebOS. But this is one startup and definitely an emerging market segment that we have to take a closer look at the alarm:clock euro.
Flashgames 24/7 - Founder Shazad Mohammed has speaking skills and chutzpah, along with an English accent that disarms North American ears (sounds like Amy Winehouse's). He would be a natural for a consumer-oriented pitchfest like DEMO, where dexterity with PowerPoint is a negative.
Although he was a bit over the top for the panel's moderator Morten Lund who criticized his financial projections, this young founder has built up a profitable casual games business that claims 7 million unique visitors a month, about $800K in turnover this year, with a half a million in profit expected, of which all but $120K gets invested back into the company. He's looking for venture capital to hire up, develop an MMO game or two, and to hire his own advertising sales team to 'cut out the middleman' to whom he is now paying 50 percent commissions for ads.
Goojet has not launched yet but we a saw demo of a user-friendly, and potentially useful new application. The interface reminds us of the Mac Book Pro. When it comes to software that claims to bridge the Internet applications and the mobilephone, it is unusual for it to look so friendly.
Goojet enables users to drag and drop applications, content, links, and messages from the web to your phone's memory. Although we could only see a simulated demo, the founder invited the audience to see it working on a mobilephone during the break. Goojet is meant for Javaphones, which is the largest of the installed base of application executable phones.
Insider's nugget: Goojet CEO Marc Rougier, founded and led Meiosys, which was acquired by IBM in 2004, and subsequently integrated into the US company's virtualization products, and Ludovic Le Moan, CTO, who also founded Anyware Technologies, a 70-person strong engineering company that developed the Joost backend.
COO is Guillaume Decugis held the same position at Musiwave, which was acquired by Openwave, which in turn is being acquired by Microsoft. The venture is backed by Elaia Partners and Partech.
Zyb - Stylish CEO and co-founder Tommy Ahlers made it clear that Zyb won't be offering its contact backup, calendering, and communication platform as a white label. He plans to keep this SyncML-enabled company independent, although he is looking for strategic investors. Despite insisting on promoting its own brand, several mobile network operators (such as home country operator TDC Mobile in Denmark, E-Plus in Germany and Smart Philippines) have signed on with Zyb. Ahlers said two global deals are in the works.
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November 17, 2007
Agenda Setter: Vente Privée Unconventionally Successful
Every year Silicon.com does a jury-vetted list of Agenda Setters in the IT world. While this year there were a few entrepreneurs from this side of the Atlantic that made the list (see below), the selection is typically dominated by CEO's of US-based businesses.
Maybe next year, we will see the French founders of Vente Privée make the list. There is no doubt it has a trend-setting ecommerce business model, what with all the copycats in its home market, but also in the US and other parts of Europe.
At the moment, the 7 year old company is an 'order of magnitude' larger than its closest competitor, with a turnover of some €300M annually, a fact that helped it win a special jury prize at this year's Audemars Piguet Changing Times Award for entrepreneurship.
There are a lot of things that are untypical about this venture. It has seven founders, for one. They were all wholesale jobbers who decided to follow CEO Jacques Antoine Granjean's idea to put their businesses online in 2001, according to COO Xavier Court who accepted the prize on Thursday night.
Its members-only track was also unconventional. We have not confirmed it with the founders, but as we hear it, the idea behind making it a members only site, a practise that is similar to the way catalogue mail order businesses encourage customer to recommend neighbours and friends, came about so that it could authenticate new shoppers and help reduce fraud.
The company also does everything in-house from photography and video production to email marketing and logistics.
Godet Cognac On Sale. The left link will show a short video trailer pitching the product. The right link reserves your order.
It's a bit like home shopping TV, with its limited number of items and time limit on prices, combined with the user-paced aspects of online shopping. Daily emails invite inform shoppers.
The Journal Du Net has an excellent photo reportage inside Vente Privée's headquarters here to see it all in action.
Court also talked to us about how the company builds its 'brand', once again in unorthodox ways. For example, Vente Privée just launched its own glossy women's fashion title. "It is not a catalogue, it's a beauty and fashion magazine," said Court. That's the cover of magazine, Rosebuzz, on the right there.
The startup also demonstrated 'a never say die attitude', according to the jury of the Changing Times Award.
Court tells it like this: After a couple of years online, sales had not taken off the way the founders had hoped and fixed costs were causing a cash burn that had three of the seven ready to call it quits. They could be making more money doing other things.
But they were outvoted and the business stayed open. In 2004 and 2005, sales skyrocketed and they have not looked back since. It was the advent of xDSL that turned things around, according to Court.
Related stories from alarm:clock euro
eCommerce Gurus From France
Summit Partners investment in Vente Privée
Euro eCommerce Trend
Selected Agenda Setters for 2007 From Silicon.com
Rorie DevineBetfair's CTO who recently became CEO and is expected to lead the company to an IPO
Charles DunstoneCarphone Warehouse CEO
TomTom co-founders Pieter Geelen and Peter-Frans Pauwels : more than 10M units sold
BT Global CIO
The UK-based inventor of the wind up radio
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November 16, 2007
A Montreux Backdrop for European TechTour's Web Summit
In one of his rare posts on Tornado Insider, Jerome Mol, its founder, wrote about his participation in yesterday's European Tech Web Summit Event in Montreux. The alarm:clock euro was also there too. A quick review is in now online too.
Mol said that despite being distracted by the "fantastic views of the Evian mountain across Lake Geneva" he was able to consider the 20 or so companies that made their pitches to investors yesterday.
The Storied Chateau Chillon on Lac Leman ( which in typical Swiss fashion is also know as Lake of Geneva, Genfersee, and Lac de Genève)
He writes:
Interesting to note is that over half of the selected companies have been really capital efficient, getting to this stage with capital raised ranging from zero to €2 million. A total of 8 companies received between €2 million and €10 million: Mythings (€8.3 million), Refresh (€6 million), Seatwave (€8 million), Smeet (€6 million), Wazap (€9 million), Wifi (€4.6 million), Wengo (€6.5 million), Wikio (€5 million), and Xcerion (€9 million).
Just two companies pulled in more than €20 million to date: Truphone raised €21 million and Dailymotion secured a whopping €32 million
Most companies claim not to be looking for money...
That fact, in his mind, casts doubt on the aspirations of the ventures. He posits that without VC they might not reach mountain-high valuations.
The a:c euro suspects that if a founder is pitching at a Tech Tour event, he is there because is considering his options, how the business could to develop without VC, and how it could be developed with the right VC.
Mol currently heads up GPXS, a Blackberry productivity software developer. A Dutch serial entrepreneur - he sold his IT company Prolin to HP during the last venture cycle.
Update: Fred Desitin, a partner at Atlas Venture also wrote up his thoughts on the conference here.
Read - Hot European Web communities shine at Montreux investor fest
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Musiwave Sold On To Microsoft
Sister site alarm:clock has the news that Microsoft is to acquire mobile music track provider Musiwave for $46M plus the assumption of about $4M in debt.
Musiwave, was a VC-backed French venture that was acquired by Openwave for $121M in September 2005. Apparently Openwave has been undergoing a turnaround and this sale was part of a plan to focus on 'core assets' of the business (see below).
Openwave did not do as well with its Eruopean acquisition as Verisign did with ringtone provider Jamba, which was also a VC-backed mobile sector venture, which it bought in 2004. In January of 2007, the US security and Interent technology firm sold a 51 percent stake to NewsCorp for $187.5M, according to moconews , a deal valuing the venture at $375M, a good $100M more than what it paid in 2004.
Openwave Executes Definitive Agreement with Microsoft
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© Business Wire 2005
2007-11-15 16:38:06 -
- Openwave Systems Inc. Mike Bishop, 650-480-4461 (Investor Relations) investor@openwave.com Vikki Herrera, 650-480-6753 (Public Relations) Vikki.Herrera@openwave.com Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:OPWV), today announced the execution of a definitive agreement for Microsoft to acquire Musiwave, a leading provider of mobile music entertainment services to operators and media companies, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Openwave.
"Musiwave's strong customer
relationships, superior quality of services, and leadership position in mobile music were attractive to Microsoft and contributed to the ultimate purchase price," said Robert Vrij, president, CEO and interim Chairman, Openwave. "As we committed to our investors, the divestiture of Musiwave was an important component of the plan developed by the Openwave Board and management team to focus on driving market leadership in the core assets of our business, including service management, messaging, client and location."
Financial Terms and Schedule
Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Microsoft will acquire Musiwave for $46 million in cash and assume net debt. As of September 30, 2007, Musiwave had a net debt of approximately $4 million. The transaction is expected to close following the completion of customary closing conditions including regulatory approval. Merrill Lynch & Co. served as exclusive financial advisor to Openwave in the transaction.
"Microsoft is committed to delivering connected entertainment experiences for all consumers, including the access to rich music content," said Pieter Knook, senior vice president of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft. "With the acquisition of Musiwave, we are deepening our position in the mobile entertainment market with an innovative provider to help broadly deliver a breadth of music software and services."
About Musiwave
Musiwave is a leading provider of mobile music entertainment solutions, including software, marketing and content management, to operators and media companies worldwide. Musiwave provides mobile music entertainment services to 30 mobile operators in 25 countries and powers more than 20 full-track mobile music services. For more information, please visit www.musiwave.net.
About Openwave Systems
Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:OPWV) is one of the world's leading innovators of software applications and infrastructure designed to enable revenue-generating, personalized services, including merchandising and advertising, which converge the mobile and broadband experience across all of a user's devices.
As the communications industry intersects with the Internet, Openwave software enables service providers to converge services, increasing the value of their networks by accelerating time to market and reducing the cost and complexity associated with new service deployment. Openwave's unique product portfolio provides a complete range of service management, messaging, location and client technologies. Openwave is a global company headquartered in Redwood City, California.
Openwave is a trademark of Openwave Systems Inc. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
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Tech Influential: Russia's Serguei Beloussov
Charismatic, ambitious, visionary, stubborn, and humble are some of the founder traits that it takes to build an internationally successful tech venture out of Europe. And from what we saw yesterday, Serguei Beloussov, the Russian-born co-founder of eight year old SWSoft, has that and more.
The CEO of the server virtualization software company told a gathering of about 270 investors, entrepreneurs, and journalists last night that the software brands that belong to SWSoft (Acronis, Parrallels, and SWSoft) currently generate 'hundreds of millions' in sales each year, employ 1,300 people around the globe, are profitable, and achieving 130 percent growth year on year.
(For more see BusinessWeek's Jennifer Schenker-written profile of Beloussov and Russian tech here.)
The alarm:clock euro spoke to Beloussov, who hasn't spent more than two weeks in one place in the past couple of years, briefly about his venture capital experience.
SWSoft was intially self-funded and it was not Beloussov's first venture. He tried to raise VC in the US in 2001, yes that fateful September, but after three weeks he let it go. In hindsight, he said not raising VC at the point was a good thing. It made him build a lean, cash generating business.
It wasn't until 2005 when investors started approaching him that he eventually decided to sell a minority stake to Insight Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners to fund growth.
Beloussov also told us that the his company is only part of the way to achieving the technological vision he has had in mind since day one and he's agreed to disclose more to us in an upcoming interview.
His achievement was recognized last night at the second annual Audemars Piguet Changing Times Award, which is from the same team that runs the European Tech Tour.
It was held this time in Gland, in the Dinemec sound studio. There we learned that for all the buzz about digitization of everything, antique analogue amplifiers are still used in music recording, and that Pink, Phil Collins, Quincy Jones, as well as classical artists like Dimity Sitkovetsky have trecked to this tiny village near Geneva to put down tracks.
Disclosure: This reporter was invited as a guest to the gala dinner after the press conference catered by the Michelin-starred chef Philippe Rochat. But if the alarm:clock euro husband thinks that it lets him off the hook for the anniversary dinner at Rochat's restaurant at l'Hôtel de Ville in Crissier, he is wrong.
Posted at 08:29 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
November 15, 2007
Puzzler Winner - Italian Contacts
The answer to the question:
Name one of the two venture capital firms that backed MutuiOnline, the Italian online mortage broker that went public this year on the Milan stock exchange, at a mkt cap of about €245M, delivering a 20 times money return to early investors.
was Net Partners (now 360 Capital Partners) and Jupiter Venture.
Thanks from the alarm:clock euro to the other readers who participated in the Puzzler. This week's winner is Atlas Venture's Max Niederhofer who was the first to write in with the correct answer. Unfortunately, we do not have a second winner as there were not 13 correct answers.
It was a matter of recall for Niederhofer as he had met Fausto Boni not too long ago at a Northzone Ventures private event. Boni is a co-founder Net Partners and now 360 Capital Partners.
Recruited earlier this year by Atlas Venture, Niederhofer was a co-founder and COO of myblog.de, the German weblogging community. He said he also founded IncrediblInc, an enterprise software developer.
One of his business angel investments prior to Atlas was Last.fm, the music recommendation site that was acquired by CBS, a good investment, he told us. But he also admits to selling GOOG at $400.
An avid PC gamer, this VC professional knows from overclocking. That interest and his past experience inform his area of work at Atlas, online and software investments in Europe, focus on Germany. He has a blog on tech, innovation, and VC in Europe.
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November 14, 2007
Fresh French Venture Capital Investments
PolySpot Is Crawling The Enterprise
A French startup called PolySpot, which is specialized in enterprise search software has raised €1.2M from a local VC. Neteco says the six year old company competes with the likes of Exalead, Sinequa, Autonomy, FAST, and Google. If it has survived this long without outside funding and all this competition, it must have something going for it. The answer we think may lie in its its spidery ability to probe all kinds of files and systems. Its website says it handles shared servers, intranet, Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), Relational Database (RDBMS), proprietary databases, personal files, mail boxes, Web sites, search engine, on-line services, RSS feeds). And it is compatible with over 300 file formats. [via ]
View Polyspot
ShoeCommerce
Spartoo.com, a French shoe e-tailer, has raised €4.3M, according to Neteco. The investors are French VC funds who join after an earlier business ange round of €1.2M. It is doing about €4M in turnover and get 1.4M visitors per month, more than arch rival Sarenza, says Neteco.
Read - E-commerce : Spartoo lève 4,3 millions d'euros par Neteco.com
Digital Forms for Digital Pens
Kayentis, which has developed applications targetted at the health care, aerospace, and public sectors on top of the Anoto platform, has just raised € 6 million from Xange and Seventure.
[JDN and Blognation France]
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November 13, 2007
Lithuanian Startup GetJar Financed By Accel Partners, Moves To London
GetJar, which runs a WAP and web portal for downloading mobilephone and PDA applications, announced it has raised a Series A round with Accel Partners. The three year old venture was founded by Ilja Laurs, CEO, in Lithuania. It has enabled 100M downloads with a global user base.
With the investment it is moving its headquarters to London and two Accel partners, Heikki Makijarvi and Kevin Comolli, join the board.
View GetJar
Read press rel.
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Eden Gets Into Huddle for $4M
Eden Ventures, the UK venture fund known for some making good returns in the music downloads and enterprise software markets, has led a Series A round for Huddle.net, a UK-based SaaS venture specialized in collaboration tools for project teams and co-workers.
It charges monthly subscription fees for access to the applications suites. Your alarm:clock euro reporter is suffering from sign-up and registration fatigue, and the demo wasn't very detailed about the kinds of applications available, so here are some links to reviews and analysis elsewhere:
Read - Huddle: MySpace for the enterprise (infoworld)
Read - Why Pay For a Web Conferencing Tool When You Can Build Your own (Collaboration blogs)
Read - Online Collaboration Tools (blogism)
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German Web Investment Roundup
We're catching up on recent early stage deals in Germany's Web world.
Adscale
German text and banner ad network startup, Adscale, has raised an undisclosed amount of early stage financing from Holtzbrinck Ventures, along with the European Founders Fund and business angels, Oliver Jung and Lukasz Gandowski.
Just selling and serving ads for all the web projects these four investors have would probably be enough to keep this startup in business for a while. For US readers, if you know Adbrite, then you will know what Adscale is like.
Adscale is currently selling text and banner ad campaigns that run on websites with 100 page impressions up to 500K page impressions a day. It launched in September 2007.
Weblin
The company's platform lets users create an avatar to surf the web together (formerly Zweitgeist which we covered a while ago) has received a strategic investment of an unidisclosed value from T-Online Venture fund. Its other investors include High-Tech Gründerfonds, and Swiss-based Mountain Partners.
Youmix
IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft (state-backed fund), along with seed stage investors Mountain Partners, Tiburon, T7M7 and Oliver Jung, and YMC, a content management system vendor out of Switzerland are providing financing for Youmix, a platform for bands and fans. Youmix launched "Project Famous" which offers every band that successfully invites 5K people to the platform (directly or through a Flash widget provided by Youmix) gets funding for their first record.
Looking at the logo - could it be a red sofa trend next?
Townster
We eyeballed a PR from this local search startup announcing it almost raised finance. That was a first.
[via deutsche-startups.de]
Posted at 06:58 AM | Posted to News And Updates |