alarm:clock euro: January 2008 Archives

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January 31, 2008

Clear2Pay's Backers Put in €10M More

Tornado Insider is the source for the news that Clear2Pay, an international provider of next generation payment technolgy and solutions, has raised a €10M internal round, led by Iris Capital and an investor since November 2006.

Clear2Pay has been an acquisitive startup since it started up in 2001, and as a result has operations in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, China, Malaysia and Singapore. China is next and that was the reason given for the new financing round.

It currently employs 340 staff.

Posted at 11:07 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Shozu Raises C Round, Brings in New Investors

Tornado Insider has the news that ShoZu, a UK mobile social media company that has its own client software, raised €8.1M in Series C deal. It was led by new investor SEB Venture Capital, a UK-based venture capital arm of Swedish financial services firm Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. Existing backers Atlas Venture, Crescendo Ventures and TTP Ventures also participated.

According to the Tornado report ShoZu's client will ship pre-installed on more than 50 million mobile phones in 2008 and 100,000 users are registering every month.

Posted at 11:00 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Top 10 VC-backed IPOs and M&A in Tech in Europe

As a result of last week's Puzzler, your a:c euro reporter, Valerie Thompson, was able to put together this list of top ten VC-backed trade sales and IPOs over the past 12 months. We can't guarantee that it is the last word on the topic but it's pretty close. (Please note that the source for numbers 1,3, 6, and 7 is VentureSource via a reader.)

The companies names bolded in the table were backed to best of our knowledge by VCs that describe their strategy as early stage. We converted the currencies into Euros.

All in all we gathered a list of about twenty transactions above €100M involving privately-owned tech companies (non-life science nor medtech). Twelve are above €200M.

The largest of all was the valuation of MoneySupermarket.com at IPO at about €1126M, which was not venture backed so not on the above list.

Here is another list we compiled from your input (and our archives) involving publicly traded companies). The valuation is for the company name bolded.
M&A of Publicly Traded firms
Navteq acquired by Nokia $8B
TeleAtlas by TomTom $2.56B
Telelogic acquired by IBM for $745M
Boursorama acquired OnVista AG $138M
IXEurope acquired by Equinix $396M
Axel Springer acquired d'AuFeminin.com for €284M

And if you want more, we wrote about the hottest M&A sectors here.

Posted at 03:31 PM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink

Puzzler Winner - Big Deals

We asked readers to send in three examples of tech M&A or IPOs over €100M. The winner is Chris Grew, a partner at HellerEhrman Venture Law Group. His answers are listed below.

Last.fm (backed by Index) sold to CBS for $280m
Apertio (backed by Add Partners, Eden Ventures, etc.) sold to Nokia Seimens for $200m+
IPO of Blinkx on AIM, raising $50m (market cap of over $300m) founder led spinout from Autonomy.

Chris Grew is a partner in the Venture Law Group of Heller Ehrman who joined the firm in 2007.

Together with four other partners from WilmerHale, he helped establish the London office of Heller Ehrman, which he described as one of the foremost law firms in the world focused on venture capital and technology companies.

He is a two time winner on the Puzzler. We take it this Puzzler was easy for Grew, as he represented Last.fm in its investment by Index Ventures, Add Partners in their investment in Apertio, and his colleague Richard Eaton represented Blinkx in their spin-out and IPO.

We don't have a second winner this time because less than 12 emails landed in the inbox (despite close to 1,400 views of the Puzzler on the site and in RSS feeds between posting and Monday afternoon).

We're wondering why more of you did not participate. Is it not good form in Europe to admit that visions of vibrant valuations in your field of endeavour serves a benchmark or a target to be surpassed?

Some readers who did write in, like Alessio Beverina at Sofinnova and Simon Cook of DFJEsprit had several to report. That combined with other entries enabled us to create a list for your viewing pleasure. See Top 10 VC-backed Europe

Posted at 03:16 PM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink

Virtensys Backers Invest Another $12M

Another internal round to report this week as Virtensys raises $12M. VirtenSys, which has a virtualization solution for data centers, said it has raised $12M in an internal Series B round. It is backed by Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), Celtic House Venture Partners (CHVP), and GIMV.

The pre-revenue company, which recenlty brought in a new CEO and opened a US headquarters, said in the funding announcement the capital will be used to launch the first products and grow operations at home and abroad.

Before Virtensys on the left, and After on the right

View Virtensys

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January 30, 2008

Scottish Startup Makes 10X Smaller PDFs

Ten X claims catch our attention, which is the reason we did not pass on a PR from Crisp Documents, a Glasgow-based startup that sent us the news that it won an industry award (industry awards don't normally get coverage here).

Instead we dug up a couple of reports on the company in the local newspaper, The Herald to learn more about the business and its patented encoding software that it says reduces dramatically the size of a PDF and other file types.

Even with broadband, we know that PDF docs are still a pain.

It seems the company had a profitable first year, generating £800K in sales using its vPDF software (see examples in the images we snagged from one of its website) to underpin a new document archiving and management service.

Its latest contract win is with the US DoD in December. It looks like for organizations that run heavy on the documentation side, better file compression is much wanted.

The founders, Greg Stobie and Lorne Campbell, liquidated their pensions and re-mortgaged their homes to start the business, turned down an offer from Microsoft early on, and are intent to run the 15-person strong business at speed with an eye on the US market.

View Crisp

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Why Too Early Mobile Social Startups Are Heading To The US

Europe has a reputation for being ahead of the US when it comes to mobile services but for mobile social networking ventures that have had some early success in Europe, the US is the place to be. Why? Because mobile network operators there are reportedly rolling out flat rate data plans faster than elsewhere, which startups hope will enable some quick growth.

Maybe mobile social networking is compatible with making money-- if you have a good few years to work at it, are able get brands like MTV to sign marketing deals, and are able to balance working with cellcos, while building up something off-deck, at least that how it sounds for Australian startup FunkySexyCool and Germany's GoFresh.

GoFresh is a white label mobile service provider that also runs its own wap site called itsmy.com. Five years old, self-funded, it employs 15 people full time. The company generates revenues by selling advertising on its own site, and collecting fees from the mobile network operators that use its platform.

It has also developed new software to better manage the ads and advertising sales aspect of the business.

We recently talked to Mikko Saarelainen who co-founded the company along with his brother and two other ex-Iobox employees. Right now what he's concerned with expanding penetration of the US market. He said that operators there have more wholeheartedly rolled out flat rate data models - key to growing the itsmy branded site.

The US market is also the current target for FunkySexyCool, another similarly-oriented venture, that has made some headway getting on-deck with operators in Germany and its home market Downunder. This one we read about in profile in the Australian edition of The Age. .

It has been in business for more than four years but "drawing traffic and building the brand" is still its focus. Although it is generating some revenues, the article says its raising capital for a push into the US after it put the foundation in place for greater volumes of users. Its founder said he's looking for growth there but also sees the US as providing the exit opportunity.

View GoFresh
View Funky Sexy Cool

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January 29, 2008

Cachelogic Investors Put Up $25M More and Other Fresh Euro Deals

7Digital, not to be confused with We7, has raised a £4.5M (about €6 M) reports techcrunch.

Cachelogic, which has been sniffing packets and moving content for five years now, has raised a $25M (about€17M) internal round reports paidcontent

Intershop co-founder and Demandware founder, Stephan Schambach has invested along with other business angels in emigo a vendor of easy to set up online shop packages, according to a report in Handelsblatt. emigo will compete we assume with Zlio and commercetools to name two recently funded rival types.

Posted at 01:03 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 28, 2008

Nokians and Trolls in €105M Deal and Other Fresh Euro Deals

Nokians and Trolls in €105 Deal Nokia has an announced an offer to buy publicly traded Trolltech for about €105M. The transaction has been widely reported. We found the press release fairly cryptic. So we turned to Bal Balaji, whose software company DeviceDriven develops products for the mobilephone industry, for some commentary on what impact the deal might have on the mobile OS competitive environment.

Balaji writes: " Nokia already has a significant investment in Linux. So I see this as a defensive measure as opposed to a vote of confidence for Linux as an OS for mobile phones. Is Nokia trying to protect itself against Android?"

With that comment in mind, if Nokia starts acquiring other Linux proponents like PurpleLabs (recently financed by Euro VC) or it buys A La Mobile, or one of the other Linux for mobile device vendors, then the strategy might become clearer.

Zubka's looking for another round of capital. And is talking up the riches to be made with online job referral applications.
Read - Exec Digital UK Site : News : Zubka unique recruitment - Web 2.0 referral recruitment - recommendation

Microbial Solutions raised £1.2M for waste water treatment. We're all for new technologies being applied to issues like what to do with polluted and dirty water, but this one had us feeling a bit queasy. It is about using toxic-and-metal-hungry bacteria and flushing the resulting so-called grey water back into the sewage system.

"Microbial Solutions uses a simple bioreactor ... containing a meshed plastic grid on which a variety of non-pathogenic bacteria are cultivated - each bacterial species feeds off different components of the metal working fluids, together ‘eating’ the polluting and toxic elements. The resulting grey water is disposed of to sewer, removing the need to transport to landfill, and the next batch of metal working fluid is added to repeat the process.
The technology has been successfully trialed with a leading car manufacturer, the firm said in a statement.
Read Tornado Insider - Microbial Solutions Ltd

Posted at 03:09 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Europe's Techies Want Into Our Ears

Swiss R&D Center, CSEM is showing a prototype of a heart rate monitor fitted into a earclip-type headphone called Pulsear. The PR says it is a Walkman brand integration. No bulky chest strap required. It is called the Pulsear and we assume it is available for licensing.

Meanwhile German designers have come up with ear drop in devices that play one song, one time. It is called Music Drop from Design Reactor. We're assuming this is more of a concept for design discussion as opposed to a licensing-ready solution.

Posted at 01:58 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 25, 2008

Startup Takes Pain Out of Coding for 700 Cellphone Types

Altaide blog has the news that Mobile Distillery, a startup from the Southern French city of Marseille, has raised €2M from Innoveris and Viveris Management. The two-year old company's software tools and directories make it easier to port mobile applications, mobile marketing campaigns, and mobile content for the myriad of handsets out there including Javaphone types, BREW phones, and the Android platform.
View Mobile Distillery

Posted at 05:15 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Angels Back German Woot Clone

Preisbock an ecommerce startup emerging from the Intershop crew in Jena said in a statement today it has raised an undisclosed amount of financing from ARGIV GmbH (an investment vehicle of one of Intershop's founders) and TowerVenture eG (a seed stage investment club established in July 2007).

If you know Woot, then you know what Preisbock is about: price specials on a different product each day that last as long as they're in stock. The startup launched last summer and claims 10K visitors a day.
Read Intershop Founders' New Ventures (alarm:clock euro)
View Preisbock

Posted at 02:40 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Puzzler: Hundred Million Euro Ventures

Name three tech ventures out of Europe that floated or were acquired last year with a valuation greater than €100M. The ventures selected can be VC-backed (growth or early stage) or they can be founder-driven - any category as long as it is the kind of technology we cover on these pages.

We will call the first (original post said third for some reason - we meant first) and twelfth to write in as the winners. You will win a moment of fame, if not fortune in this week's winner post. We'd like to say you would receive a Pacemaker portable music-mixing handset (which we wrote about yesterday) or a year's subscription to StrategyEye but the sponsors of this world haven't found us yet.

Posted at 08:43 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink

January 24, 2008

A Chocolate-bar Sized Loudspeaker and More

It's a slow news day today so the Novium news had us thinking about gadgets and gear out of Europe. Here are a couple we recently heard about.

This indoor loudspeaker for MP3 devices is using a sound panel from Plastic Electronic, an Austrian startup that's developing electronics on plastic devices for several types of applications. (images source:Green Lama)

The thin loudspeaker (10mm thick and weighing 90 grams) costs €40 and uses Varta's polyflex micro-batteries that recharge via a USB. Green Lama designed it and also sells the gadget on its website.

d3o Labs is a VC-backed startup in the UK that has developed a new material that changes its rigidity depending on speed. Its being used in motorcycle jackets, footballs, and downhill mountain biking protective apparel.

For example, the Spyder Ultimate Chamois bike short is worn under loose shorts and has d3o padding across the hips, thighs and tailbone "to shield against impact". (image source: 3DO website)

We also heard that sales are on the upwards trajectory at VC-backed Iqua, out of Finland, which just launched its Bluetooth earwig in the US. It recharges via a photovoltaic panel. Engadget published a positive review earlier this month.

We wrote about Iqua back in January 2006 here.

Posted at 05:32 PM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink

Give This Pup Some Solar Power

We received news that veterinary products company, Virbac, is offering in France a service to locate lost pups via a GPS-based collar attachment that provides info to the cellphone (using Orange) or the web.

Apparently, 600K dogs a year go missing in France. Most of them make it home again, but 15K don't. To improve that ratio, pet-owners can pay €15 per month to use Virbac's service.

We're looking at the specs on the dog collar unit and thinking it might have been better to create a solar-powered version. If someone is absent-minded enough to lose their dog, they might also forget to recharge the unit. The way it is now, this has to be recharged for four hours a week.

View Backhome GPS

Posted at 01:42 PM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink

Pacemaker for Nordic VCs

It is changed days in Europe if a consumer-oriented gadgetmaker can attract venture capital money. That was our first thought when Via Venture sent us the news that it had invested in Tonium, whose first product is a pocket-sized digital music mixer, called Pacemaker, targeted at DJs and wannabe DJs. It had positive reviews on several of the top gadget blogs but it is not shipping yet. Its website suggests it's taking orders first.

The Swedish company raised 23 SEK, about €2.4M from Nordic region VC funds, including new investor Via Venture Partners along with existing investors Industrifonden and Arvid Svensson and Ekstranda Media.

View Tonium

Posted at 10:39 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 23, 2008

Deals in the News: MoMail, Dibcom, Cember.Net, TheCloud, Alfresco, and ipaccess

News from the venture market sees Xing buying Turkish socnet Cember.net, TheCloud making a German acquisition, while Cisco adds to the syndicate of investors backing ip.access in the UK. Elsewhere, Alfresco raised capital, a Swedish mobile email startup tapped investors for a nice sized first round, and a new board member for Dibcom suggests an IPO is in the works.

XING AG acquires cember.net, Turkey’s leading online business Network. About the acquisition, Xing's CEO Lars Hinrichs said: We view Turkey as being one of Europe’s fastest growing national economies. As well as proving a profitable company, cember.net has the key advantage of already being an established brand within Turkey. "
Read - XING Corporate Information

The Cloud Make German Buy To add 5,000 Hotels Networks VC-baced wireless network provider TheCloud has acquired GlobalAirNet AG (Ganag), for an undisclosed amount. Ganag, based in Munich Germany, claims 5,000 Wi-Fi access points located in over 300 hotels. The UK-based company now has a footprint that covers Germany, Sweden,Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands.

In a statement TheCloud's CEO predicted that the mobile network operators will "continue to wrestle with poor performing data networks over the coming 12 to 18 months" to his firm's benefit.
Read - THE CLOUD ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ACQUISITION IN GERMANY

Alfresco, an open source content management system provider, has raised $9M in a series C round led by SAP Ventures. Early investors Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund also participated. ZDNET queries SAP's involvement in the round, but it also had a stake in recently acquired MySQL, so it is not the first time.
Read - Alfresco Secures

Momail Taps Angels and Institutional Investors for First Round. Momail a mobile email platform provider has raised a first round of funding of SEK 35 million ($5.4M), reports PEHub. Investors include the Swedish 6th Pension Fund and Bonnier Invest, as well as individual investors from Sweden, England, Russia and South Africa.
Read -Private Equity HUB - Momail Raises First Round

Former CSR Exec on Dibcom Board: Seen as Pre-IPO MoveEETimes is reporting that mobile TV chip startup DiBcom, based in Palaiseau, France, has brought on board Glenn Collinson , a co-founder and former exec at Bluetooth chip group CSR to its board, and suggests that move "another indication of DiBcom's plans to go for an IPO or stock market flotation soon".
Read - EETIMES Collinson

Cisco Backs UK-based Small-sized Basestation Firm. Also from EE Times comes the news that Cisco has taken a stake for an undisclosed amount in femtocell startup ip.access (Cambridge, England).
Read - Cisco invests in femtocell pioneer ip.access

Posted at 07:52 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Global Mobile Roaming Startup Bags Big Round

We received the news today that United Mobile, a low-cost roaming mobile operator that markets its own SIM cards, has closed a $15M round of equity financing in a deal led by Accel Partners and Grazia Equity. The business angels involved in the financing are names regular readers will recognize: Morten Lund, Thomas Geitner, former global CTO of Vodafone, and Robert Zacconi, CEO of King.com.

We wrote about the first part of this fundraising last year in a post about the Lime Green sofa trend.

Posted at 11:07 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 22, 2008

Index Ventures Gets Growth Money

Index Ventures sent us the news that it has added a new €400M fund that can invest in so-called growth, or expansion phase, ventures. It has a dual focus, life science and tech, with plans to invest in 15 companies.

The fund is targetting entrepreneurs whose businesses are already generating quick growing sales and who want to grow the business more before doing an IPO or a trade sale.

Investment activity is directed by Index co-founder Giuseppe Zocco (left) and Dominique Vidal (right), previously CEO of Yahoo! Europe and co-founder of Kelkoo. He was with Paris-based Banexi before that. (Image source: Index Ventures)

Going straight from self-funding to a pre-IPO round, or a pre-trade sale round, has become more common in Europe in recent years. We can think of several examples in the French market particularly.

AGF Private Equity, acquired a minority stake in French dating site Meetic.com (IPO) and was able to get a relatively rapid return when the firm floated a year or so later, while 3i did well with Seloger.com (IPO), also in France.

US venture funds like Summit Partners have for several years been active in the growth sector in Europe. For example, it acquired a majority stake in the Samwer brothers Jamba venture back in 2003 for $40M and then did a dual track IPO/M&A strategy which led to the company being acquired in 2004 by Verisign for $273M.

It recently acquired a stake Vente Privée, the fast growing French private sale company.

Other VC firms that say they are active in the later stage European tech venture market and that have raised new funds since the post-bubble-downturn include Invision, Kennet and Iris Capital.

The fact that Index has now also entered this stage in addition to its early stage foucs, and was able to raise the fund quickly, suggests that limited partner types see plenty of opportunity in Europe these days.

Zocco said as much in a statement: “There is now a critical mass of companies that have the potential to be market leaders and make a global impact. With the growth fund, we have the ability to find and support these companies, helping them get to the next level.”
See also Index Ventures fund eyes maturing European tech | Special Coverage | Reuters
Index Sets Sights l Financial Times

Posted at 08:09 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

VC Money Piles Into UK Web Ventures: W7 and TouchLocal

The European market might have seen a dip in Web investments in 4Q07 as TechCrunch writes, but this quarter is looking like that might change. After reporting a flurry of deal announcements last week, we've got two more to report today.

=> We7, a UK-based music download service driven by advertising sales, has raised a $6M Series ‘A’ round led by musician turned investor Peter Gabriel and Spark Ventures. Also joining was early stage British VC firm Eden Ventures.

The founders of We7 are John Taysom, chairman, and CEO Steve Purdham. This is not Purdham's first venture. He was also the founder of SurfControl, a publicly-traded firm that was acquired by Websense last year for about £204M (about $400M at the time).

After one year of trading We7 reports it has 90,000 registered download users and delivery of over one million free to download, ad-supported music files from its growing music catalogue of 80,000 tracks.

The companyappears to have some interesting advertising technology to support it, with some finely tuned demographic targetting. So far, it has run advertising trials with Microsoft, for Xbox 360, and campaigns for Sony Ericsson, Café Direct and Sicko, the Michael Moore film.

Joining the board is Eden Ventures, Charles Grimsdale, who co-founded music distribution service OD2 (along with Gabriel), in Nokia's hands since 2006, and is a co-founder of Eden Ventures.

=> Another UK firm, TouchLocal has raised £7M (about €9.4M or $13.6M) from Balderton. It is going for a local search service, one that combines a yellowpages kind of business model (charging local business for positioning in its pages) with a community of recommending/reviewing users.

The company was founded back in 1999 and recently went through a Web 2.0 makeover. The Guardian has a good analysis of its position in the market and TechCrunch UK lists several rivals in an article entitled Qype launches in France, as local reviews space hots up, mentioning Qype, Welovelocal, Tipped, and Trustedplaces.

Posted at 07:57 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

January 21, 2008

Telco Magnate Invests in NanoIdent

Austrian printed sensor startup Nanoident has raised new capital of an undisclosed amount from Istanbul-based MV Holding, an investment vehicle that was founded by Murat Vargi, a Forbes 2007 billionaire, and one of the founding shareholders of one of Europe's largest GSM operators.

We recently profiled Nanoident for more details about the company.

The new capital is to be used to develop and grow the business. Nanoident has built one of the first commercial fabs for printing semiconductor devices worldwide.

Vardi said in a statement: “MV Holding has always invested carefully and selectively. After an extensive review process, we are confident that NANOIDENT will provide a strong and sustainable ROI (return on investment), and look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with this innovative company.”

Posted at 05:38 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

European Angel Money Finds gBox

St. Gallen, Switzerland-based b-to-v sent us the news today that its investor circle is backing an early investment in Cupertino-based gBox, a digital music shopping enabler. The startup developed a widget that can be placed on blogs, personal websites, and socnet homepages (it lists myspace, friendster, and facebook on its website) to show your personal MP3 file wishlist.

The same widget enables members to buy music tracks listed on the wishlists for friends and family as gifts. (See TechCrunch review of gBox for more).

The plan is to add other types of gifts to the catalogue and to make some inroads into the European market, according to the announcement. It also said that it provides a revenue source for social media companies, so it must be able to support revenue sharing.

We don't normally cover US VC deals on this page but the news that gBox has a Euro connection throught its founders and now its investors. gBox is a spinoff of ecommerce service provider Navio, a Calif. based started led by former Brokat co-founder Stefan Roever.

The Brokat connection is what we assume enabled gBox to tap b-to-v for seed financing.

The deal was led by b-to-v member Michael Jansen, a co-founder of Brokat AG. He was CFO from 1994 until 2001, responsible for the arrangement of several venture capital transactions and the firms stellar IPOs (Neuer Markt and NASDAQ) and at one point it had a $6B mkt cap and $250M in sales, according to Roeever.

The company failed to weather the downturn and Jansen led the restructuring in 2001. On his b-to-v profile it says: "He restructured the company from 1,400 people to zero, by selling basically all assets to domestic and international investors." (See Members – About b-to-v )

Posted at 10:19 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 18, 2008

WAYN Backers Invest in German Travel Community and Other Fresh Deals

austriamicrosystems, a SWX traded semiconductor firm, and New Scale Technologies, of Vector, NY annouced the completion of a Series B round with the European chipcom making a $6M investment in exchange for a 25% minority share in the company. New Scale makes very tiny piezo motors (shown above) for cameraphone autofocus, electronic locks, and other applications.
Read - austriamicrosystems AG - Financial News

Deutsche Startups has the news that AdScale, a Germany-centric online ads service provider (based on auction-model) has raised new capital from early investors Holtzbrinck and European Founders Fund. It also recruited to the management team Matthias Pantke who drove TradeDoubler's business in the DACH region. Industry insider Oliver Thylmann recently reviewed AdScale and OpenAds (funding announcement earlier this week). Worth reading to learn more.
Read - OpenAds Getting

Tornado Insider is reporting a rare space-related VC funding deal. A Dutch/German real-time game engine company, iOpener, has raised capital from German venture capitalist Triangle. It looks like the startup aims to embed satellite nav system chips in racing cars and use its software to enable regular folks to join games and compare themselves with the professionals and "when an actual live event is going on" .
Read - ESA spin-off scores €4.1 million for real-world, yet virtual, gaming

Howzat Media, an investment vehicle of two British Internet entrepreneurs, who also invested in WAYN, an online travel community, has made its first investment in Germany, backing trivago, a two year old travel community that has reviews of holidays, accomodation, and destinations. Deutsche Startups has a report with details on other investors. And TechCrunch UK has some reporting on rumors about WAYN being acquired.
Read : HOWZAT media

Computer Business Review reports that Audiotube, an online music video portal, has acquired video encoding and playback products and technologies from CineFX, a UK-based software development company.

Posted at 12:34 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 17, 2008

SponsoredPost: Plugg Wants Your Pitches

The alarm:clock euro is a media sponsor of the upcoming Plugg conference. The March 19th conference in Brussels promises to be a chance for you to get up to speed on Web 2.0 in Europe.

Our first announcement in the run up to the one-day event is that the registration for European start-ups is open. Companies can now submit their profile sheet online to qualify for a chance to pitch at the conference.

Entries will be judged by a number of industry professionals and 20 of them will eventually get to pitch at the Plugg conference.

Deadline for registration is Friday the 8th of February.

Posted at 03:38 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Sun's Acquisition of MySQL - What The VCs Said

Yesterday Sun announced that it was acquiring open source database company at a valuation of $1B (€680M) in a deal that is expected to close later this year. In the meantime, one of its investors (see the full list here) Balderton Capital, formerly Benchmark Capital Europe, issued a statement, congratualting the firm, saying that it held about 15% of MySQL.

We checked in with Index Ventures this morning to see if it had a statement too. Danny Rimer - who counts MySQL as the first investment he did as a partner at Index - responded to our email writing that "it’s been exciting for us to watch the company grow as the leader in the open source industry. Now, with the ability to leverage SUN’s global distribution and enterprise support, we look forward to seeing MySQL technology spread even further around the world.”

He pointed out that Index invested in the $19.5 million Series B round in June 2003. Other Open Source companies that Index invested in over the years include: Trolltech, Zend, OPenads and Pentaho.

A comment he made on the European market is worth noting.

"Index believes we’re entering a really interesting time where the power of the European and global markets will now be felt. The startups of 5 to 10 years ago are entering strong growth phases," said Rimer.

Our only comment on the deal from the a:c euro's outsider point of view is that with currency rates the way the are these days, a billion dollar exit is not as sexy as a billion euro exit.

Posted at 02:43 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Wellington Raises New and Oversubscribed Tech Fund

Wellington Partners has raised a new technology fund of € 265M, which is €15M over target. Its last one was raised just as this new cycle was getting off to a slow start back in 2004.

In the meantime, the firm which invests across Europe, has had several portfolio firms acquired such as ImmobilienScout24 by Deutsche Telekom, while SAF and Xing.com made the IPO move.

Existing investors, LPs, came back for this one, which indicates that the venture firm is making money. The fact that it also brought in new LPs, such as GIC Special Investments, Pantheon Ventures and Skandia Liv Asset Management, suggests that the outlook is positive for the coming few years too.

Wellington Partners will open an office in London with Eric Archambeau (left) and Frank Böhnke (right), managing it.

Eric Archambeau said in a statement that the "new office in London will help us become even more accessible to entrepreneurs across Europe.”

Posted at 02:10 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Bessemer Invests in Russia and other Fresh Euro Deals

Q-blog is reporting that Enforta, a WIMAX broadband telecom operator active in Russia, raised $40M in a C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, along with earlier investors Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP), Sumitomo Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Kinkaa.de, an AJAX travel search site, has raised a seed investment from High Tech Gründerfonds, which sent us a note on the deal. The almost two year old site is available in a couple of languages already.

Sunmachine, a Munich-based startup that develops mini-heating and power generators to homeowners, is currently raising about €12M to ramp up production this year. It has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft as part of the round.

Sunmachine has patents on a generator that burns either gas or wood pellets and is based on a Sterling Motor, which produces heat and electricity for buildings of 280 m² or less. According to the website, a solar powered unit is in the works too.

The investor said in a statement that some 60 companies have signed up for distribution licenses in Germany and Europe. Delivery of 5,000 units are planned this year.

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FillFactory Alumni's Startup Goes Large

Cmosis, a semiconductor startup out of Belgium, has a seasoned team and some key patents for making very large imaging chips with large-sized pixels. It is freshly founded and has raised seed capital.

EE Times reported this week that Cmosis NV has raised €1.2M from Capital-E and the founders to fund its operations as it builds up a business developing image sensor products.

The founders are ex-FillFactory people, namely Guy Meynants, Jan Bogaerts, Tim Baeyens, Gerald Lepage and Lou Hermans.

We checked in with Guy Meynants (CEO) because we wrote about FillFactory several times in the past for other publications. Plus, it's memorable because it was one of the first venture-backed exits after the post bubble downturn chilled dealmaking in Europe for several years. The IMEC spinoff was acquired by Cypress Semiconductor for $100M in cash in June 2004.

As an aside to this discussion, another FillFactory alumni, Luc De May, its former CEO, is now with AsicAhead, a venture backed WIMAX chip startup, also based in Belgium.

Meynants said that Cmosis offers image sensor design services, as well as handling the manufacturing of chips for its customers who are mainly in Europe and Japan; typically companies creating new medical imaging (such as X-ray machines) and industrial vision products.

It is a different market than the one that Cypress is addressing with the CMOS image sensors tech that it acquired in the FillFactory deal, but an interesting one.

"X-ray machines use typically very large chips with large pixels," said Meynants. As such, they are hard to manufacture, but this startup has patents on processes that improves the yield and reduces the crosstalk between pixels.

View CMOSIS

Posted at 12:50 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

A View From Paris on French VC Trends

We checked in with Pascal Mercier of Aelios Finance, a corporate finance advisory firm in Paris, for his view on early stage venture trends in France.

Aelios did 20 transactions last year, many of which are listed on its website.

One thing notable is the size of the early stage rounds it helped to raise for companies like Kayentis, AirinSpace, BlueKiwi, and 24:00h (all of which we've covered in these pages). It also advised Criteo on its €7M round announced this week with Index Ventures as the lead investor.

Here is what he said on capital available in France...

The French venture funds raised a very high amount of capital last year. The FCPI- type of funds typically raise about €30M every year, but in 2007 we saw firms raising €50M and €70M. Regular “LP GP” funds, such as Ventech or Alven raised large amount of Capital also based on their good performances. [FCPI investors receive a tax break and are similar to VCTs in the UK].

That Means It is Easier for Founders to Raise Capital?
Yes but even with a lot of liquidity in the market, there are still high hurdles to qualify for capital.

What are VCs Looking For?
Internet related ventures. They know that France has some great entrepreneurs in the Internet industry, and a good ecosystem with a lot of success stories.

The software sector is another story.

Within the Internet category, online advertising-related ventures are of interest, as are companies that can provide Web 1.0 companies with next generation or Web 2.0 innovation. A typical transaction that illustrates the point is Expedia's acquisition of TripAdvisor. They paid a lot of money for that startup.

And music industry related Internet ventures. It's the size of the market that is attractive and the knowledge that business models are changing. There will be new business models.

Another area where we see interest from investors is in companies that provide Web and eCommerce know-how to brands.

Just three years ago, it was taboo for good brands to sell via the Internet. Now Dior and Louis Vuitton are online. The others will follow and many are too small to do it themselves.

Beyond the Internet?
Everybody, including early VCs are looking for cleantech investments, but they need to find companies that have a capital requirement cycle similar to the life of a VC fund. There are not a lot of such ventures, typically they are long on R&D, and are selling into markets with very long product design or implementation schedules. As a result we don't have many such transactions, yet. Biotech and medtech remain good business areas.

How would you characterize the past two years [of venturing] in France?
2006 was the year of online video
2007 was eCommerce

And how do you see the coming year?
2008 will be more ecommerce and advertising innovation, particularly firms that can make advertising less costly than it is now.

Posted at 08:17 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack | Permalink

Puzzler Winners - Brands That Become Verbs

We asked for some recent examples of tech-related brands that have become part of the vocabulary, standing for a whole category of product, like Band-Aid, Biro, or Scotch Tape. Occasionally they become verbs e.g. hoovering and xeroxing.

We said that the first and tenth to write in with examples would win this week's Puzzler.

The first was Quintura co-founder and CEO Yakov Sadchikov (picture right -- who has won a couple of times before, we note).

He offered up some examples from Russia. He writes: people can say that they need to get new Kaspersky rather than say to get new security software. The other example has to do with email. He said that almost every Russian internet user has an email account on Mail.ru, some 28m in total. As a result, Mail (as in mail.ru) is associated with email.

The other winner this week is Gennie Chen (picture left), who is in executive strategy at Highbridge Capital Management, a New York-based global multi-strategy hedge fund. She was previously part of the technology investment banking team at Goldman Sachs.

The examples Chen gave: google (verb), as in to Google or lookup something in a search engine, and fedex (verb) to send a package using a private postal service.

A lot of you wrote with Google and Skype as verbs, and did so in several languages. For example, Neuhaus Captial Partners' Paul Jozefak wrote that "Googlen“ is common in German, as is Zippen (a verb that means to compress files from the product of the same name). We hear those brand/verbs in Switzerland too.

DuMont Venture's Philipp Moehring wrote in from Cologne, mentioning Google, but also said that the term wikipedia has become the word analysts use for wikis, in the same way that intels became a term for x86er processors.

Interestingly, not one reader suggested Spam...

Posted at 07:41 AM | Posted to quiz | TrackBack | Permalink

January 16, 2008

Euro VCs Report Flurry of Online Deals Today

Index Ventures and Atlas notified us with news of a few new online service and ad-related investments.

Atlas Ventures, as well as several UK business angels, are backing the founders of a new real estate portal for the UK market called Zoopla. Fred Destin, a general partner at Atlas Ventures, has a post in his blog on the startup with info about the founders and the service it provides. He also provides some rationale for the investment, saying that thhere is competition but Zoopla claims better tech, such as its algorithm for analysing data relating to home prices, economic trends and property characteristics in given geographic areas. Estimates are refined by the firm's staff, according to a statement it issued this week.

The venture has raised over £1.5M to date and has plans to raise additional capital as the business develops, it said in a statement.

Over in France, Criteo, which develops a web-based recommendation engine, has raised €7M in Series B round led by new investor Index Ventures, joined by earlier local investment firms. The press release says that Criteo's real-time personalized recommendations targeted at consumers is attracting more than 50M unique visitors from more than 4,000 ecommerce sites over the past year.

And in London (corrected: not the US as stated earlier), OpenAds, raised a €15M Series B round, led by Accel Partners. Earlier investors in the Series A round (which was led by Index Ventures) also participated, including Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital, First Round Capital, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. OpenAds is an open source ad server software firm which it says is used by 20,000 publishers across 140 countries in 20 languages. The new capital is to be used for a hosted version of the product, according to the press release.

Posted at 11:36 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Hottest M&A Sectors

In its latest review of the M&A activity in the tech sector Icon, the British corporate finance advisory firm, identified sectors that were "particularly hot" in 2007. (See the list below the jump.)

Overall M&A activity measured in number of transactions was down last year compared the previous couple of years, as Icon's graphic illustrates.
globaltechm&A.jpg

Security: Altiris, Iron Port, Protect Data AB, CyberTrust, SurfControl Postini,

Online Marketing: Double Click, Trade Doubler, Aquantive, Right Media, Blue Lithium, Hitwise 24/7 Real Media. It notes that all of these examples were acquired at "very high" valuations of up to 10 x sales;

Search Engine: Spannerworks

Business Intelligence Software: Hyperion, Spotfire, Business Objects, OutlookSoft and Cognos;

PLM: UGS and Agile Software;

Digital Mapping : MapInfo, Multimap, TeleAtlas;

IT Services: Xansa, Getronics, Covansys, Mandator.

The report also points to media companies hunger for digital media assets to address changes in consumer behaviour. It says the prices paid for such ventures "reflect demand". For example, Disney acquired Penguin Club social networking site for $350M. Icon says that price was 35 x forward sales.

As for IPOs, Icon focused on the the UK market, which had a "reasonably good year" for new listings. Icon writes:

The largest IPO was Moneysupermarket.com, the finance price comparison website which raised £170m in July. Telecity also did well raising £96m in October well after the credit crunch had hit, it said.

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January 15, 2008

Newly Funded Hello2morrow Keeps Java Coders on Track

mic AG, a listed German investment company specialized in early stage tech ventures, has taken a 25 percent stake in Hello2morrow, a software development toolmaker whose flagship product helps to avoid "structural erosion" on medium and large scale Java projects.

It has a long list of reference customers, some of which have now become reseller partners, which is a good sign. It has also been used in several open source distributions.

Two of the founders of this three year old venture, also founded ootec, which was acquired by the French Valtech group in 2000 and counts the likes of Siemens, BMW, and Thyssen-Krupp-Stahl as customers.

View Hello2morrow

Posted at 10:30 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

German Angels On Drugs 2.0

Two well-known German web business angels, Lukasz Gadowski (who founded spreadshirt) and Oliver Jung (an entrepreneur turned full time investor - he was an early backer of Xing and StudiVZ) have invested an undisclosed amount in apomio.de, a price comparison portal for medication and prescription drugs.

A quick look at the site shows that its got some Web 2.0 features like one-click price comparisons (to find the cheapest offer on a featured product), a search-cloud for quick links to popular medications (aspirin and other names for the over the counter pain medication seems to be popular), and a widget for calculating your BMI.

The new capital is meant to finance "community features".

In a statement, the new investors cited changes in the German regulatory environment as paving the way for more online drugstores. It did not mention, but we will, the fact that it is a proven market too. A pioneer in the field, DocMorris, was acquired last year by Celesio and is doing about €200M in annual sales these days.

Gadowski said in a statement that apomio is active in the "most dynamic and fastest growing market" out there.

Posted at 09:56 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Tips for Getting The Attention of VCs

When we were looking for background info on the recent Fidelity Ventures investment in MFG.com the other day, we came across some presentations from a Fidelity Ventures' portfolio insider networking event.

The pdfs are available for download on topics like The Joy of Fundraising (the slide entitled Qualifying - or how VCs get a free education - is refreshingly frank), and Positioning Technology Companies for Success (pdf). The latter, by the CEO of Neverfail has tips on how to influence analysts and get quoted by "lazy" journalists.

Some VCspeak examples:
•“we’re researching this space” = we want to invest in your competitor
• “we would like to review your model” = I don’t understand the economics of the industry
• “how do you size your market” = I don’t like paying for research
• “we’re in if you can find a lead” = Let’s see if someone else figures out how to make this deal work

And while we're on the topic of advice for entrepreneurs, this video clip has a funny take on pitches. [5min video via]

Posted at 09:39 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink

January 14, 2008

Monday Euro Deal Roundup

Renewable Energy World reports that Scottish and Southern Energy is to acquire Irish wind power company Airtricity for a total cash consideration of €1,826.5 million.

Dibcom, the French mobile TV chip startup, has raised some more capital from two Japanese investors. Clipperton Finance advised the startup on the deal.

Bucharest-based security software startup BitDefender gained new financial impetus in December with a €7M round from a syndicate that included Rumanian American Enterprise Fund (RAEF) and the Balkan Accession Fund (BAF) .

Fidelity Ventures announced that it led a $26M round of financing for MFG.com a global online marketplace for the manufacturing industry. Co-investing was the European Founders Fund (EFF). Last year MFG.com acquired sourcingparts.com, a Swiss dotcom survivor and rival.

Posted at 01:19 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

CrowdSpirit Seeking Capital For New Gadget Design Platform

French newspaper L'Express in a profile of CrowdSpirit, an ambitious web project out of Grenoble that aims to promote and launch new consumer electronics gadgets created by its community, is the news that the startup is looking to raise capital (See Fiche d’identité at end of article).

Gizmodo calls CrowdSpirit's crowdsourcing platform "gadgets-by-committe" in a review of one of the first products to win over members of the community.

The platform, which is still in beta, was co-founded by Lionel David (interviewed here in English) who draws parallels between what he wants to do and what platforms like Cambrian House and Sellaband (in Germany) are doing.

We're thinking that software and digital music have quite different supply chains and production cycles compared to consumer electronics manufacturing. It could be a long wait before contributors see some revenue-shares, at least from what this reporter learned about how long it takes to go from functional spec to selling products while working at jobs in the electronics industry.

But then again, maybe they've figured out how to shorten that process too. We don't know all the details of the venture's business model.

Posted at 01:14 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

January 11, 2008

Nao That's News: French Robot Firm Funded

First it was Nabaztag, now from France comes Nao. Move over Spyke which also interestingly has a French connection.

Alderbaran Robotics, a company developing small-sized humanoid robots, has raised €5M from CDC and iSource, two local venture capital firms, reports Neteco.

Its first product is Nao, a shapely WiFi robot, that the founders hope will impress at the next Robocup shootout. It is based on a Linux platform and scripted with Urbi, the programming language from another French startup we wrote about a while ago. Labs will get the first units off the production line, but the company plans to sell to the public by end of the year.

Posted at 04:22 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Peratech Acquires Eleksen Assets

2_big(2).jpg
(Image Source: Bagir)
Remember Eleksen? We wrote about its technology being used in foldable keyboards and ski-jackets with integrated iPod controls. The suit from Bagir above also exploited the tech.

Eleksen's assets have been acquired from insolvency administrators, reports EE Times . New owner is Peratech, also based in the UK.

Eleksen failed to get the financing it required subsequent to a reverse merger on AIM. While one of its pre-IPO backers made some money on the listing (see bottom of front page in this pdf) the company did not raise enough, apparently.

Peratech said that Eleksen's fabric keyboards are in production. It also recently signed a MoU with Keybo Technology license the tech.

Posted at 08:16 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink

Sensor Tech Attracting European VC

Sensor technology has been attracting venture capital in Europe with several deals in recent weeks. We reported the Movea deal earlier this week and the €25M Series B for SensorDynamics in Austria. But there have been a few others.

Back in November, Nordic Venture Partners invested a hefty €12M in Exensor, a Swedish military system vendor specialized in perimeter security systems. Its products use the kind of sensor technology that Scottish startup Pyreos develops.

Edinburgh-based Pyreos has raised $3.8M from Braveheart plc, along with Siemens Technology Accelerator and the Scottish Venture Fund, according to an EE Times article this week.

(Image source: Exensor.se)

Exensor sells systems that include a wireless mesh networking communications package linking its sensor units (that include infra red, acoustic and three other sensors) to a database that detects and counts passing vehicles, humans (and whether or not they are gun-toting), and even animals. It has been winning sales deals in Germany and Finland.

(Image source: Pyreos.com)
Founded in July 2007, Pyreos is commercializing infrared sensor tech that came out of Siemens. Its CEO is Jeff Wright was co-founder of MicroEmissive Displays, which he helped lead from start-up to flotation on the London Stock Exchange, according to the startup's website.

The Pyreos sensor tech is good for motion detection, flame detection, and people counting, it says. The startup claims small size and lower cost, compared to existing IR sensors.

View - Pyreos
View - Exensor

French Social Shopping News

Neteco is reporting that Vozavi.com has raised €750K for its social shopping platform. It is a rival to 3i-backed Twenga, which raised €2.4M in December.

Some numbers on its performance since launch in November 2006, are provided by Neteco, which the tech pub suggests are too bad considering the amount of competition it

alarm:clock euro