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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
Posted on November 16, 2007 11:46 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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