« May 2008 | Main | July 2008 »
June 30, 2008
London's Wahanda Funded As Online Spa Network
img alt="wahanda.png" src="http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/wahanda.png" width="195" height="105" />
Wahanda is a health and wellness community plus e-commerce marketplace where local spa and wellness businesses, pros and consumers mix. The company has raised a seed round of funding from the former engineering founders who built Skype, the investors behind last.fm and a former top exec at Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. We got in touch with Ambient Sound Investments to confirm that it was indeed them who invested in Wahanda but they say they have yet to make a formal announcement.
Wahanda is led by Salim Mitha who was Senior European Director - Search & Social Search at Yahoo! and Lopo Champalimaud who was Managing Director European Lifestyle at lastminute.com.
Via Wahanda, we learned of a trendy man-spa in Covent Garden where we can get a botox treatment. Useful.
View - site
Posted at 05:35 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2008
Skype Founding Engineers Invest In Paris' Online Real Estate Site Drimki
Ambient Sound Investments has made a seed investment in Paris-based Drimki. The startup runs an online real estate platform for at residential real estate buyers and sellers. The amount of the investment was not disclosed. Ambient Sound is the investment vehicle for the founding engineers of Skype. Drimki had raised seed funding from the co-founders of Kelkoo, which was acquired by Yahoo! in April 2004.
Drimki is interesting to us because it is starting out as a Paris-only service. We don't see that happening state-side real estate sites funded for NYC only. But maybe its a good idea given what Drimki has to offer.You get geolocation properties. Maps that provide analysis on pricing in the region during past 5 years, with info nearby shops, schools, bus stops, hospitals, etc.
Le Charm
View - site
Posted at 05:41 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
June 24, 2008
German/Swiss Location Startup Plazes Bought By Nokia
Nokia has bought Germany location-based Web 2.0 and mobile firm Plazes for an undisclosed amount. as our sister site the a:c euro reported, Plazes is a Swiss company that was founded in December 2005 with R&D is in Berlin. Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures invested €2.7m in its first round in February 2007. In 2006, Plazes won seed financing from well-known angel investors Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen) and Martin Varsavsky (FON founder).
Pazes is a website that users exploit to locate friends, colleagues, and wireless hotspots. The user downloads a client which sends the users' location back to the Plazes database and that spot or location can then be searched, mapped and located by other registered users. It can also be edited with photo, text descriptions, and other bits of info.
Plazes doesn't seem to get much traffic and certainly there is no business model to speak of so we suspect that Nokia got a good bargain with this one and can certainly figure out how to evangelize usage for a product that should have appeal beyond its current geek crowd.
The German narrator here makes Plazes seem as dull as dirt, but you still get a good idea of how it works.
View - site
Posted at 04:59 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
June 20, 2008
German Kinder Site Smoodoos Raises First Round
Community sites for kids have proven to be a winner. Just ask the founders of Club Penguin or Webkinz. But it has to start out in a genuine way. It cannot be the product of corporate AOL's Q4 goals. With that, it seems that Smoodoos is off to a good start as the startup was founded by a husband/wife duo who say they were inspired by their children's behavior online. Smoodoos was founded in in 2006 by Saskia and Justus Schneider (he was Head of Global Marketing at Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars).
Like Webkinz, Smoodoos is an online/offline double-threat. Kids are welcomed to the site with safe chatting and play, and then encouraged to buy toy pets offline.
The German VC firm Earlybird says that is has made an investment in Munich-based Smoodoos, although the amount is not disclosed. The plan is to grow Smoodoos outside of Germany.
Smoodoos is dropping some Marks on commercials like these.
View - site
Posted at 06:04 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
June 13, 2008
Barcelona's Migoa Real Estate Listings Raises Further €1M
We understand that the Spanish real estate market caught fire over the past few years but like the US market has fallen off a cliff. So its curious to see a real estate site for Spain (with plans for Germany) get funded. Barcelona's Migoa (site name is Nuroa) says it has raised more than €1M from Spanish VC firm, Highgrowth Partners.
This estate on the Spanish island of Mallorca is selling for 125M euros. 17 bedrooms, two pools, a helicopter pad and an ancient castle of course.
The startup celebrates its new funding round
The site allows visitors to search for Spanish and German market property listings and for sellers to list their properties for free. It makes a living via ad sales.
Founded in October 2007, Migoa had raised more than €1M from angels and the government. In addition to its real estate listings, the company has aspirations to launch further vertical search sites in the future.
A bit of friendly feedback for the Migoa team on their marketing message - "like Google but for property" just doesn't fly.
View - site
Posted at 04:59 PM | Posted to Online services | TrackBack | Permalink
June 03, 2008
Samwer Brothers' European Founders Fund Invests $1M In EventBrite
img alt="eventbrite.png" src="http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/eventbrite.png" width="227" height="103" />
We have passed by San Francisco-based Eventbrite any number of times as it shares offices in a building with a great number of other VC-backed startups. Today the startup says that it has raised its first round of funding (amount undisclosed) from the Samwer Brothers' European Founders Fund.
Eventbrite is well known within the tech event space but that doesn't make it a huge business. It must either expand to other event sectors or expand into the tech realm by offering further functionality, or both. Eventbrite tells Mashable that it is profitable, earning a commission (2.5%) off of each ticket sale, and that it plans to expand its social networking functionality with tie-ins to larger platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
Eventbrite is led by CEO Kevin Hartz who has numerous affiliations: Board of Directors at BluBet; Principal at Youniversity Ventures; Principal at Outlook Ventures; and Co-Founder at Connect Group. His bride Julia Hartz is a co-founder and President.
Eventbrite Tutorial
View - site
Posted at 07:30 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
Dutch Startup Wakoopa Raises $1M For Apps SocNet
img alt="wakoopa.png" src="http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/wakoopa.png" width="168" height="54" />
Wakoopa is a social network site for software users. It allows you to track what you've been using on your desktop, share that with others, and discover new applications and games. The Amstedam-based startup has just closed a $1M led by Big Bang Ventures and HENQ Invest. The startup was incubated by Meganova. It was founded in May 2007 by Wouter Broekhof & Robert Gaal.
Team Wakoopa
Wakoopa works like Alexa in that it has users volunteer to download a small app to track what applications they are running and how much time they spend on those apps.
Just as Alexa is interesting to publishers and advertisers, Wakoopa should be interesting to app developers. Given the proliferation of mini-apps in the Web 2.0 world there is a great deal to track. The company runs ads on its site (Adsense to start) but there may well be further business angles.
View - site
Posted at 07:26 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
