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 | 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
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April 29, 2008
UK's Autoquake Raises Gbp6M
Used care online retailer Autoquake has closed a Gbp6M ($11.8M) second round of venture capital funding led by Highland Capital Partners with existing investor Accel Partners. Accel Partners had invested Gbp3M 2006.
Autoquake assists sellers in listing autos on the online auction site by taking photographs of each vehicle and writing up descriptions and specs.
The service initially got some great free publicity by helping England's celebrity's hawk their used vehicles, such as famous footballer David Beckham's first trophy car on eBay - which sold for £6M.
View - site
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March 18, 2008
The UK's Travel Startup Isango Raises $8M
Isango has raised $8M led by Spark Ventures with Beringea and others.
Isango specializes in information about holiday tours, sightseeing, attractions, activities and best things to do in 50 countries. It also offers a private label package and has done deals with the likes of Hertz.
The startup is led by Ranjan Singh who was Managing Director of eBookers.
View - site
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March 06, 2008
LiveBookings Restaurant Reservation Biz Raises Gbp6.5M
We continue to hear success stories about US Internet-based restaurant reservation systems, particularly OpenTable. So its no surprise to see a European equivalent. London-based LiveBookings has raised Gbp6.5 million in VC funding led by Balderton Capital.
Livebookings says it has 17K restaurants online and more than 500 partners.
LiveBooking's Reservation Console
View - site
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February 20, 2008
Russia's LogneX Funded For Web-based Inventory Management
Yakov at Quintura tells us that Ambient Sound Investments, the investment fund that we have reported on from four founding Estonian engineers of Skype, invested $200K for a 30% stake in LogneX, a Moscow-based software development company that will shortly launch MoySklad (Russian for MyWarehouse). MoySklad is online inventory management Web service to small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. It's similar to products like NetSuite . Users will pay a monthly subscription fee of $50 per user.
The startup was founded in January 2008 by Oleg Alexeev and Askar Rahimberdiev who both previously worked at OilSpace.
View - site
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February 15, 2008
UK's Holiday Watchdog Site Bought By TripAdviser
TripAdvisor has paid an undisclosed amount for Holiday Watchdog, a UK-based user-generated travel site.
TripAdvisor is a US powerhouse in the travel sector which is owned by Expedia Nasdaq: EXPE).
Holiday Watchdog says it gets around 1M unique users each month. Holiday Watchdog, which was launched by Chris Brown and Chris Clarkson in 2004, will join Seatguru, CruiseCritic and TravelPod in the TripAdvisor Media Network of sites.
View - site
Posted at 05:11 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 12, 2008
Seatwave Raises $25M for Euro StubHub
SeatWave has raised $25M in Series C funding. Fidelity Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners and Adinvest. The company had previously raised $11M. Fidelity has profited from this space as it had previously invested in StubHub which was bought by eBay.
Seatwave is an online fan-to-fan ticket exchange. The UK site launched in February 2007 and Seatwave is already in the top 5 ticket sites according to Hitwise. Seatwave launched in Germany in September and Holland in October. More European markets will follow soon.
Seatwave faces competition in Europe from VC-backed Viagogo, however, there are a number of different models in online ticket sales and at least for now Viagogo and Seatwave are on different tracks. Viagogo is doing deals with large European clubs to sell their tickets whereas Seatwave is really more of a Craigslist for people to post and sell their spare tickets.
The company is led by Joe Cohen who has a sharp resume. He was COO/SVP International at Match.com, VP/GM, Europe at Ticketmaster.com and new markets GM at Citysearch.
Get your Dizzee Rascal tickets on Seatwave while they last
View - site
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August 13, 2007
B2B Portal Mercateo Taps Local Investor for €1M
Munich-based Mercateo AG, an e-procurement platform with about 270 vendors, has raised €1M from BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH to staff up its software development teams.
Target Partners, a German VC, has been backing the company since 2004 after it was acquired from early investors by management in an MBO.
Mercateo did a little over €23M in turnover last year, as we reported back in February.
Read - Mercateo Expecting a:c euro
Posted at 09:55 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 11, 2007
The Daily Mail Pays ₤10M for JobsGroup.net
One of the hottest areas for buyouts in the UK has been older media companies buying online job boards. The latest is the Daily Mail which has bought JobsGroup.net portfolio of Web sites for ₤10M ($20.2 million) plus a three-year earn-out.
JobsGroup.net sites include:
* JustEngineers.net
* JustRail.net
* JustConstruction.net
* Just4Aviation.net
* JustUtilities.net
* DefenceJobs.com
* Just4Finance.net
* JustSalesandMarketing.net
* Just4Executives.net
* Just4Graduates.net
* JustTechnicalJobs.net
* JustForums.net
* JobsinaBox.net
JobsGroup.net calls itself the UK’s largest independent operator of niche job sites. Established in 2000, JobsGroup.net recently won Best Online Service at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2006; Number One Site for Placements for the third year in the OnRec Top 100; Finalist for both Innovative Online Marketing and Best Technical Innovation at the OnRec Awards 2006; and Finalist in the Best Specialist Jobsite category at the National Online Recruitment Awards (NORA) 2006.
View - site
Read - PaidContent post
Posted at 10:54 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 06, 2007
Viagogo Raises $30M With Eyes on US Market and Stubhub
We have been tracking the loser leave town battle for the European online ticket sales market which pits Viagogo vs. Seatwave and of course eBay's Stubhub.
Seatwave raised an $8M B round with Atlas who brought in Mangrove Capital. It has been one-upped by Viagogo today which has just closed a $30M in a 3rd round. Viagogo was formed by StubHub co-founder Eric Baker. Backers include Index Ventures, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, German media man Herbert Kloiber and financier Jacob Rothschild. Viagogo has now raised $50M to date. Interestingly, it plans to use the new funding to enter the U.S. market. So Baker is both going to make a small fortune from the sales of his Stubhub shares to eBay and compete with eBay on its native soil? That's ballsy.
Says investor Danny Rimer at Index Ventures said, "The U.S. secondary ticketing market is stagnant; innovation both on the service side and the consumer experience side has stalled. As co-founder of Stubhub, Eric and his team understand this market implicitly and are well-positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. Viagogo has quickly become the leader in Europe and is now poised to disrupt the U.S. market."
View - site
Read - Press release
Posted at 09:37 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 19, 2007
Photoways Funded By US Backer
Created by the merger of Photoways and Photobox last year, Photoways Group has closed a new round of funding at €10M. New investor HarbourVest Partners out of Boston is leading the Series B round, with early investors Index Ventures and Highland Capital Partners back in the round.
Photoways and Photobox offer a service for online photo sharing, storing and printing.The Photoways group was founded in 1999 in France and is now in 15 European countries. The company merged with the UK's Photobox in April 2006. Pierre Chappaz, founder of Kelkoo and Netvibes, is Chairman of the Board and Stan Laurent, formerly COO at AOL Europe, is President & CEO.
Read - press release
Posted at 06:03 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
BuyVIP Continues Private Shopping Club Momentum
We covered pan-European exclusive (invite-only) Internet shopping site, BuyVIP, a few months back when we spotted a Euro trend in online shopping clubs. Today 3i announced an investment in BuyVIP.
BuyVIP offers luxury fashion and lifestyle brands to registered users. BuyVIP has German and Spanish language versions of its site. In March it raised €2M from MCI (a family office advised by Active Capital Partners), Grupo Intercom (VC arm of Spanish Internet holding co.) and a pool of investors represented by Valkiria Network International Holding. It was founded by Gustavo Garciá Brusilowsky and Gerald Heydenreich. The two previously build PORTUM, an auction and procurement platform that did €5B in turnover, which was acquired by IBX Europe in 2006.
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This is the latest early stage investment for 3i's global venture capital team who will bring 3i's retail experience (Gant, Interflora, Hobbs, Defimode, Home Decor, PCDStores, Republic) to help BuyVIP to expand from its Spanish, German and Italian bases.
The startup was founded in Madrid in 2006 and has seen great growth. In March they told us they had 200K members and now they say the number is up to 500K. They peg the growth rate at 70K members and over 40 campaigns each month. Its campaigns offer luxury branded products from Joop, DKNY, Apple, Alessi, Mandarina Duck, Nike, Puma and Columbia and others.
View - site
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July 09, 2007
France's Zlio Raises $4M From Mangrove
France's Zlio has raised $4M million from Mangrove Capital Partners, the first institutional investors in Skype. Zlio had been bootsrapped. The company's CEO gets in touch to let us know about Zlio's growth both on the French
and the US fronts.
+ The site is now attracting over 2.5M monthly unique visitors and has over 100K created!
+ It has over 3M products
+ Zlio wil be launching its UK branch in the very near future.
Zlio competes with RightCart, MyPickList, WhatsBuzzing, ShopWiki, Kaboodle, Crowdstorm, Pepperjam and Jellyfish, StyleHive, ThisNext and Wists. Several of these are showing a good number of users so we can expect even more competitors who will need to differentiate with a twist. Zlio may find that its European center of gravity to be a strength.
View - site
Posted at 09:21 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 19, 2007
Ex-Photoways CEO's New Venture Gets eCommerce Stars As Angels
Michel de Guilhermier, the French founder of VC-backed Photoways who parted ways with his startup's board about a year ago, has pulled together an impressive group of ecommerce business angels for his new stealth-mode venture called Inspirational Stores [via Altaide].
He says in his blog that his venture is seed funded for an undisclosed amount and the founder team retains the majority of shares.
Regular readers will not only recognize his name, but also most of his advisors and angels, we've profiled some of them over the past year or so. In our recent interview with de Gulhermier he revealed a little about ISG. Three or four of his angels have US market chops.
Robert Keane - Vistaprint founder an online business card printing biz whose mkt cap is $1.5B on Nasdaq
Fabrice Grinda - founder of Zingy (ringtones) and now working on Craigslist clone OLX
Loic Lemeur - whose blogging company was acquired by Six Apart a few years ago, he started LeWeb confabs, and is one of the top 2 bloggers in France. He is leaving Europe for Silicon Valley now, according to his blog.
Graham Hobson : co-founder of PhotoBox whose firm Photoways acquired in 2006
Jérémy Berrebi : who is on his second venture, the popular Zlio online shop building company
Patrick Robin : Imaginet founder which was acquired by Colt telecom and now runs a members only ecommerce site called 24h00.fr
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet : founder of fast growing Price Minister, a top e-commerce site in France
Michael Copsidas : founder of Guide, a price comparison engine tradiing with a valuation of €60M.
Patrick Hannedouche, founder justeatemps.com, an ecommerce biz that delivers drinks on demand
Posted at 05:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 05, 2007
French Online Travel's Go Voyages Raises Euros55M For Buyout
European Capital (LSE: ECAS) has invested euro 55Min Go Voyages, an online travel agent in France. European Capital's investment supports the acquisition of Go Voyages by Financiere Agache Private Equity and takes the form of senior and junior mezzanine bonds plus common equity.
Founded in 1997 and with 300 employees, Go Voyages markets scheduled airline tickets, charter
flights, car rentals, hotel accommodations and packages. Its primary focus is on low-cost scheduled flights (its homepage promotes the Polish airliner LOT most prominently.
Read - announcement
Posted at 07:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 28, 2007
Lastminute Founders Return And Raise £5M for MyDeco.com
Lastminute founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox have co-founded a new business and have raised close to $10M in funding for the venture. Pre-launch, UK-based Mydeco.com aims to provide advise on home decoratation their homes. The site will have a social networking angle where members will be encouraged to critique decoration decisions.
Hoberman and Lane Fox
Backers include Tom Teichman of New Media Spark and Thomas Hoegh of Arts Alliance, both early investors in Lastminute.
Lastminute was the UK's biggest travel website and made the founders very wealthy when it floated stock in 2000. Lastminute was bought out by Travelocity for $1.07B. The takeover made Hoberman about £26M and Lane Fox £13.5M. We were not aware that Lane Fox survived a near fatal auto accident. She is in demand as she is on the boards of Marks and Spencer and Channel 4.
Read - Times Online
Posted at 03:32 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 08, 2007
London's TotallyLegal Bought For for £11M
Trinity Mirror has bought UK-based online recruitment site TotallyLegal.com for £11.8M ($23.6M) in cash. This is a career site for the UK legal profession and also operates a sister site serving the financial sector, TotallyFinancial.com.
Trinity Mirror has smartly been making acquisitions of web sites. It bought martnewhomes.com, Email4Property, and has a stake in Fish4Jobs job search joint venture.
Read - release
Posted at 03:30 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 03, 2007
Swiss CEO Garners $18M Investment Led By Index In Russia's OZON.ru
OZON.ru has raised $18M led by Index Ventures with Holtztbrinck and Cisco. Baring Vostok, a private equity investor, did a $3M acquisition in 2000 of a controlling stake in OZON.ru.
OZON.ru claims to be Russia's largest eCommerce site. It sell books, CDs, DVDs, software, games, electronic products, etc. It says that it delivers more than 3K orders per day. OZON plans to use the capital to build out more distribution centers in Russia.
OZON.ru is led by Bernard Lukey, a Swiss citizen who graduated from Université de Lausanne. Perhaps he met his Index backers back home.
OZON and Baring Vostok held a press conference in Moscow yesterday where Ozon reported sales of $53M and net income $0.6M in 2006, up 77% from 2005, and plans to grow sales by 65% in 2007. They brokedown sales as books (40%), movies on DVD/videotapes (19%), consumer electronics (19%), and others.
Today, Cisco announced that it would focus on Russian VC opportunities.
Read - $18 Million Investment to OZON.ru Led by Index Ventures
Posted at 09:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 31, 2007
Euro eCommerce Trend: Off-Price Fashions For Members Only
We've noticed a spate of investment across Europe in new eCommerce sites set up to sell off designer fashions and accessories at discounts to "members-only". In the retail world, the equivalent might be off-price shop that only sells to card-carrying members.
The latest is a Spanish/German venture called BuyVIP. Others include UK-based Koodos.com, Privalia, also Spanish, and two French ones 24h00 and AchatVIP
BuyVIP offers German and Spanish language versions of its site. Just raised €2M from MCI (a family office advised by Active Capital Partners), Grupo Intercom (VC arm of Spanish Internet holding co.) and a pool of investors represented by Valkiria Network International Holding. It claims 200K members and was founded by Gustavo Garciá Brusilowsky and Gerald Heydenreich. The two previously build PORTUM, an auction and procurement platform that did €5B in turnover, which was acquired by IBX Europe in 2006.
Read press rel.
Privalia, also from Spain, recently raised €400K from , according to Carlos Blanco's blog from Internet entrepreneurs and two strategic investors.
Koodos.com is an English language, private sale site selling luxury brand-name items, backed by Atlas Venture. Its longer term plan is to sell through consumer facing ecommerce sites, according to Robin Klein's blog.
Olfo, the company behind AchatVIP.com raised €3.5M in January from Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners and OTC Asset Management.
France's 24h00 also recently raised capital in February when AGF Private Equity invested €6M. It also sells brand name items at special prices for a limited time only.
Posted at 05:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 28, 2007
ePayment's Moneybookers Bought Out By PE Firm For €105M
London's Moneybookers, an online payment provider and the UK's first FSA-licensed e-money issuer, says that private equity firm Investcorp Technology Partners has bought-out of the company for €105M. The company was 100% owned by Gatcombe Park Ventures in London.
Moneybookers says its processed transaction volume reaching more than EUR2.5B with 3M account holders. Moneybookers customers can pay and at more than 3,500 online shops that are using Moneybookers without entering their payment details. Moneybookers charges never exceed EUR0.50 for sending money worldwide.
So why are people using Moneybookers rather than PayPal or Google Checkout? It seems that Paypal still does not work or work well in a number of countries.
View - Press release
Posted at 06:36 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 06, 2007
Kiala Goes From Zero To €25M In Five Years
Most of the companies we write about are concerned with moving bits around, but Belgium's Kiala moves parcels around in four countries in Europe and its making a bundle.
On the back of all that trucking Kiala's generating €25M in annual revenues, the VC-backed startup said in its latest financial press release (via Tornado Insider).
We've written about the firm's famous founder Denis Payre and it looks like he is executing well in this latest venture.
It might be a largely offline business, but a lot of Kiala's clients are using it to support their online businesses, such as Carrefour, Esprit, Ikea, Kiabi, Maty, Pixmania, and including a partnership with eBay.
The company, which also has deals with big brands for after sales support, such as Nokia and Nespresso, is getting ready to expand in the UK. Denis Payre, co-founder Kiala (and France Business Objects in a previous venture) said in a statement that financial results for last year enabled the company reach breakeven in the four countries it operates in - Belgium, France, Luxmebourg and Netherlands, now it is time to expand in Europe.
View Financial press rel. (tornado insider)
Read - alarmclock euro quiz (a:c euro)
Posted at 04:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 01, 2006
DealJaeger Founder Eyes Financing For New Twist On Price Comparison
BusinessWeek published an article last week deliving into how price comparison sites rank results, telling readers to be wary that the sites are not necessarily in the business of providing links to items at the best prices. Articles like that will be making Sven Schmidt, co-founder of DealJaeger GmbH, pretty happy.
He's just started up a new company called DealJaeger GmbH - in English “bargain-hunter” - which runs a German language site meant to enable users to find the best prices for goods based on user recommendations. The buzzword on this is "social shopping", we believe.
The company is a spinoff of ICS Internet Consumer Services GmbH, which Schmidt co-founded along with Daniel Grözinger. The same team also co-founded GetGo.de, an online ticketing company acquired by CTS Eventim in 2002 where they were employed until leaving to start up ICS. We tried to pry the acquisition price out of Schmidt, but he's not saying.
DealJaeger has some of the elements that have made eBay successful as it enables its power users to make money and it moves online something that has mainly been offline and unorganized (eBay moved flea markets online - DealJager put the preisagenturen concept online).
Schmidt confirmed what BW hints at: "comparison shopping sites only list deals from merchants who pay per click", and he added, "--they mainly list big shops. Hence, the user rarely finds the best deals [or prices] there. What is more, you can only compare prices if you know exactly what you want."
He's currently looking to raise a €2M Series A round for DealJaeger. The plan is that after launching in Germany, it will go international. "Our technology and partners like shopping.com allow for that. We are thinking of taking funding for that roll-out," he said.
We asked him if Dealjaeger.de is a clone. His reponse and his answers to a couple of other questions are below the jump.
Is Dealjaeger a clone?
There are other similar social shopping sites but we have four things that combined make it unique.
1. "Steal the Deal". A user posts a great deal, but you know where to get it cheaper? Steal the deal from the user and get all his points
2. "Jaeger des besten Deals". A reverse auction to find the best deal for a given product. Right now we post one deal per day and ask the community to find the best price for the product (winner gets a Dealjaeger.de T-Shirt).
3. "Direct Deal". Plug-ins for the IE and Firefox let users post a deal on Dealjaeger.de with one click
4. "Weltrangliste". Users get points for all activity on Dealjaeger.de. The world ranking is updated every 5 seconds
What is the business model of Dealjaeger.de?
We will monetize the generated click-outs through partnerships with for example shopping.com, direct deals with merchants or affiliate programs. In addition we will monetize the reverse auctions. An example: My mom looks for a washing machine. She has found it herself for €699. But she is not sure whether it´s really the best deal. So she asks the Dealjaeger.de community to find her the best deal. And she promises to pay Dealjaeger.de 30% of the price differentials. We in return will share that 50/50 with the user who finds the best price. If that price is €499, my mom pays Dealjaeger.de €60 ( (699-499) * 0.30 ) and we will pay the winning user €30. And my mom still saves €140 ( 200-60=140).
Why would anyone bother to spend time helping other shoppers find bargains?
We will share the money generated through the click-outs with the community. At start we will probably pay the best ten users per month. That number will increase with time and traffic to 50 or 100. And users will directly get money if they win a reverse auction. While building up traffic, revenue sharing probably won´t be sufficient. Right now we are evaluating if we can pay the top Dealjaegers €400 tax-free per month on a mini-job basis. In Germany, so-called mini-jobs are tax exampt up to €400 for the employee, while the employer has so pay social fees of about €100. We think that would be a pretty good starting point.... Students and people looking for some pocket money, as well as those that live in countries where the cost of living is much lower could see this as an income.
alarm:clock readers that want to try out the beta can register with username "alarm" and password "clock”
Read - For Shopping Sites, Buyer Be Wary (businessweek)
Posted at 07:58 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 29, 2006
French VCs Back Fishy Dotcom
Pecheur.com, a French ecommerce company focused on hunting and fishing gear, has raised €1M from Sofimac, OTC Asset Management and BP Creation. The Gannat-based firm sells gear for the hobby gamesman. The new capital will be used to add more merchandise in related areas, such as pets and camping gear.
Everything You Need To Smoke Today's Catch
The company was founded in 2000 but really started to develop in 2004 with the addition of a new executive to the team. Sales in 2004 were €380K, growing to €900K in 2005 and on track for €1.5M in 2006. Prices, depth of product range, and its distribution have contributed to sales growth, the firm said in a statement.
Read - SOFIMAC Partners participe à la levée de fonds de Pecheur (press rel.)
Posted at 05:28 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 24, 2006
Pigsback.com Raises €4M For UK Growth
Pigsback.com, a consumer website that distributes coupons and discounts, raised €4m from Hotbed, a UK private investor network, and other shareholders.
The firm was founded in Ireland in 2000 and launched in the UK last year. The new capital will be used to intensify UK marketing activity. It claims over 340,000 active UK members, forecasting 500,000 by year end and a million by the end of 2007.
Posted at 05:18 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 23, 2006
Online Tire Vendor To Raise €38M In IPO
VC-backed Delticom, the German tire ecommerce company, plans to float this week on the Prime Standard in Germany. The IPO is expected to raise about €38M, if it goes out in the middle of the bookbuilding range. The companies implied valuation will be €131M. If demand is strong, old shareholders will sell about €14M worth of shares (including greenshoe).
This seems like a fairly low valuation for a company that did €129M in sales last year with a 60 percent growth rate. Maybe it was a relatively narrow margin that brought it down: its pre-tax profit was €5.6M.
Founded in 1999, this one has been very much a founder driven company, despite it raising €3M in 2000 in venture capital from DVC (Deutsche Venture Capital) back in 2000. The two founders plan to remain major shareholders post-IPO. DVC owns 10 percent of the company's shares. The founders together own about 78 percent.
Read - Price range for Delticom shares fixed between 33 and 45 EUR (euro adhoc)
Read - Delticom Mulls IPO (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 17, 2006
Samwer's Back US Startup's European Entry
European early stage specialists have taken a stake in LA-based Leadpoint, an online "leads" exchange marketplace. In a Series C round, Leadpoint said it had raised $2M from the European Founders Fund, the Samwer brothers investment vehicle (via Josh Stomel ).
When we last spoke to the Samwers, they had mentioned a deal they were hoping to get in on in the US market. It looks like they are following through, which is good to see.
Founded in 2004, LeadPoint has developed a marketplace (B to B) to exchange business leads about potential borrowers looking to secure loans for real estate, as well as other consumer-oriented credit.
The company plans to tap its new investors' European know-how to drive growth in the UK and the rest of Europe. Early investors in LeadPoint are Redpoint Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
In a statement Oliver Samwer, principal of the European Founders Fund said:
"What is revolutionary about LeadPoint is that it brings an auction style model to the lead generation business. Buyers can bid for the specific types of leads they are looking for and lead sellers can reach the broadest possible range of pre-screened buyers in one location, making the entire lead gen value chain more efficient and profitable for all parties involved."
Read - LeadPoint Secures $2 Million in Series C Financing from European Founders Fund (press rel.)
Read - Samwers European Founders Fund Interview (a:c euro)
Posted at 08:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 16, 2006
Commercetools Finds Seed Capital For An eShop SaaS Play
Munich-based Commercetools, which offers eShop software delivered via the Software as a Service strategy has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Astutia Ventures, a business angel network investment platform, the High Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Seed Fonds Bayern.
Offering eshop software as a service is not exactly new. And since Commercetools' website is still in development, we cannot tell you what is different about this one.
Read - High-Tech Gründerfonds, Seedfonds Bayern und Astutia Ventures unterstützen die commercetools GmbH durch eine Seedfinanzierung (press rel.)
Posted at 12:22 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 14, 2006
Softbank Invests In Asknet's Japanese Market Expansion
Asknet, an online software distribution platform company, has sold a 10 percent equity stake to Softbank BB Corp of Tokyo. The investment was part of an increase in Asknet's capital. Further terms were undisclosed.
The two had announced a joint venture to cover the Japanese market a month ago.
Asknet is a spinoff from the University of Karlsruhe that was founded in 1995. It claims to be the number two independent supplier of integrated shop solutions for software producers. It also operates its own software download site.
Sales in 2005 were €35M. It is backed by German VCs, including AdAstra, HVB, and Süd Private Equity. Institutional investors plus Softbank own 65 percent of the company. Before this round it raised €12M in total, we believe.
Posted at 06:36 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 29, 2006
More Cash For Online Shoe Shop Sarenza
As sister-site alarm:clock has been pointing out online shoe stores are a "bright lite" among ecommerce ventures these days. It also seems to be the case in Europe. France's Sarenza, which sells sometimes hard-to-get, trendy, and well-known brands of footwear, has taken on €4M in new capital, just a few short months after raising €2.5M from Galileo Partners and business angels. It's first round was announced in December.
Clean, Clear Web Design And Shopping By Brand Is The Mode At Sarenza
Francis LeLong, Co-CEO of Sarenza said that sales in France are growing faster than it expected, which inspired the team to raise new capital to "consolidate" its position in France, and to begin to expand into the UK and Germany. The firm's marketing chief said that it will be "adapting" the model it established in France as it crosses borders, working with local ecommerce partners in each country as it goes along.
For this round SGAM (Societe Generale Asset Management) joined Galileo in leading the round. SGAM said that Sarenza is ahead of its competition in a statement explaining why his firm's VC funds were allocated to the startup.
Read - SARENZA.COM, leader de la vente de chaussures sur Internet en France, lève 4 millions d’euros auprès de SGAM et GALILEO PARTNERS (vecteurdimage)
Read - 8 mois après le précédent, 2nd tour de 4M pour Sarenza (chausson finance blog)
Posted at 05:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 08, 2006
UK's MoneySuperMarket Buys PeoplesChampion
London-based MoneySuperMarket has acquired control of the start-up PeoplesChampion’s for £250K ($476K) via loan notes to PeoplesChampion’s four founders. MoneySuperMarket already operates MoneySupermarket.com, which allows visitors to compare financial products like mortgages, car loans, and insurance. The PeoplesChampion site will do the same, using the MoneySupermarket search engine, but also feature editorial content.
This is a funny deal. Not sure what MoneySuperMarket is really paying for. PeoplesChampion just seems like a crummy URL with no there there. So its doing M&A to buy editors? Big whoop.
Still, we found MoneySuperMarket to be an interesting company. It' s not really a Web publisher - that is a front. Over 90% of its revenue comes from the introduction fees payable by the product providers when you buy a loan, credit card, current account etc through the site. The company says it employes about 300 in Chester, UK. It says it has turnover rising from £3m in 1999 to £40m in 2003.
MoneySupermarket Founder/CEO Simon Nixon
Read - Uk Gets Finance (red herring)
Posted at 01:28 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 24, 2006
Irish FX software company buys itself back from VC - touts quick growth
Foreign exchange trading platform vendor, Cognotec, was in the news in Ireland this weeked. Its founder bought his firm back from venture backer Softbank -- at a much lower price than the Japanese company paid for its stakes acquired in 1999 and 2000, reports Times Online.
The report suggests that the deal takes place just as the firm returns to profitability after several years of losses due to investment in product development.
The current valuation of Cognotec is $33M, according to the same source, which also reports Cognotec's operating profit at $3.7M on annual revenues of $28.1M last year.
Read - SoftBank takes €32m hit as it abandons Cognotec (times online)
Read - London is top global centre for foreign exchange and Ireland's Cognotec is a global leader in FX e-commerce (finfacts)
Posted at 05:19 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 18, 2006
a:c euro exclusive: Spreadshirt Raises Series A From Accel Partners
We had posted on Spreadshirt recently and now have an exclusive on its first round of funding. The amount of Series A funding is undisclosed. As part of the deal, Accel’s Harry Nelis joins the Spreadshirt board of directors and Judy Gibbons, formally corporate VP in Microsoft MSN’s Division, joins as advisor.
Spreadshirt is Europe’s answer to the US custom printed product start-ups that have been terrific success stories. The grand-daddy is Café Press, which is Seqouia Capital’s dog in the pit which goes up against Kleiner Perkins’ Zazzle.
Spreadshirt was founded in 2002 in Leipzig, Germany by Lukasz Gadowski. Mark E. Seremet has joined Spreadshirt as its North American head. He was the co-founder of Take Two (nasdaq:ttwo) - the publisher of Grand Theft Auto.
Read - Spreadshirt's User Generated Shop (a:c euro)
Read - The Web T-shirt Contest (a:c)
SPREADSHIRT SECURE FIRST ROUND INVESTMENT
Online market place for customized products Spreadshirt announces completion of series A funding for further Expansion
17 July 2006: Europe’s leading marketplace for customized products Spreadshirt today announced the completion of series A funding from Accel Partners, a technology focused private equity firm based in London and Silicon Valley. The undisclosed sum means Spreadshirt becomes the first European company of its kind to receive venture capital funding.
Spreadshirt produce and supply personalised merchandise which customers can design and order online. The business is one of the most successful and innovative of its kind in Europe and includes features such as ‘create your own shop’, allowing website owners to design and sell their own range of customised merchandise. Spreadshirt members have created over 5 million unique products on customizable merchandise ranging from t-shirts and hats accessories to mugs and mousemats.
Spreadshirt also have a vibrant network of over 200,000 shop partners including private individuals, charity organisations, artists and corporations who can create merchandise with their own designs on a range of over 70 printable items. Setting up and managing a shop is simple and free and, shop partners can set their own prices for every item sold through their shop. Examples of shop partners include:
The Guardian cartoon shop – selling t-shirts with work from satirical cartoonists Steve Bell, Martin Rowson, Nicola Jennings, Harry Venning and Stephen Appleby
Couchcartofelsalat – selling apparel and underwear with the popular ‘Ulkbaer’ designs from German based comedian Falk
Hellomagazine.com – selling their own branded t-shirts and offering a design your own t-shirt option
Jerkassclothing.com – a t-shirt company powered by Spreadshirt offering unique t-shirts with comic slogans and designs.
As part of the deal, Accel’s Harry Nelis joins the Spreadshirt board of directors and Judy Gibbons, formally corporate vice president in Microsoft MSN’s Division, joins as advisor.
Current board members include: founder & CEO Lukasz Gadowski an entrepreneur and active private investor in the online market and founder & CTO Matthias Spiess previously director of product development for the CRM systems provider Llynch Meta Media.
Founder and CEO Lukasz Gadowski said of the funding: “Spreadshirt is already present in twelve countries and we intend to spend the additional funds on improving our services and strengthening our presence in international markets. In addition a flagship offline Spreadshirt store has just been launched in Berlin that we hope to develop and build. ”
Harry Nelis, Accel partner and Spreadshirt board member said: “Spreadshirt are a very exciting company who challenge the imagination of their clients whilst simultaneously offering them a reliable and easy to manage platform from which to run their own business. This kind of innovative thinking and passion is exactly what Accel are looking to invest in and grow.”
“I’m very excited to work with Accel” Michael Petersen, CFO and VP of Sales at Spreadshirt commented “besides the reputation and experience especially the global scope of Accel as well as Harry Nelis as a person convinced us, that Accel is the right partner for Spreadshirt.”
Ends
Note to editors:
About Accel Partners
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long legacy of excellence and innovation in the venture capital business. The firm is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs to build world-class Internet, software and networking companies. Accel Partners has more than $4bn under management from its offices in Palo Alto and London, and its portfolio companies have completed IPOs that have created well over $150 billion in market capitalisation. Representative current and former investments include Brightcove, Comscore, Double Fusion, Facebook, Glam, Macromedia, RealNetworks, and The Cloud. For more information visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com
For more information about Accel Partners please contact:
Emma Ap-Thomas (00) +44 207 025 6533 emma.ap-thomas@redconsultancy.com
About Spreadshirt:
Founded in 2002, Leipzig-based Spreadshirt offers an online marketplace for customised products. The online shop system lets every website owner to create a branded shop of customised textiles without setup costs or minimum sales. Nearly 120,000 shop partners take advantage of this offer, with users ranging from large companies, organisations, artists and private individuals. Large companies make use of the extensive, customised merchandise services. End customers can design and order individualised textiles “on demand” online. Spreadshirt currently has over 200 employees.
For more information as well as current press releases, please see www.spreadshirt.net
Posted at 10:54 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
France's Wanimo Petshop Pings VCs
Online pet shop Wanimo just raised €2M its first round of VC from Alven Capital and Entrepreneur Venture, reports Journal du Net. As the folks over at Dogster (a community website for dog lovers - a kind of Friendster for puppies) know its a great time to be offering services for pet owners. It is something that the founders of six year old Wanimo know too.
The etailer was launched back in 2000 with about half a million in angel finance. Its founder, Isabelle Vidal, told the JDN that her company now employs five and had a turnover of €2.7M in 2005. It hit breakeven in January and expects to grow by 70 percent this year.
The a:c euro notes that Wanimo was mentioned in a post here about a startup competition in Paris in late April. The JDN report suggests that the firm raised its VC money within a few weeks of that event.
Read - Wanimo lève 2 millions d'euros (Journal Du Net)
Read - Paris Startups With Winning Ways (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:50 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 12, 2006
My-Hammer Nails Holtzbrinck Networxs
In May Holtzbrinck NetworXs AG, the new media arm of German newspaper and magazine publisher George von Holzbrinck, took an undisclosed equity stake in My-Hammer AG, an auction platform for home hardware and tools. We just learned of the deal today.
The size of the investment was not disclosed but the German press says that publicly traded Internet holding company, Abacho AG, maintains a majority interest. My-Hammer hosts about 6,000 auctions daily in Germany with a volume of €10M. The new capital is to enable expansion of the platform into Switzerland and Austria.
Read -
holtzbrinck networXs AG erwirbt Beteiligung an der Auktionsplattform My-Hammer.de
Posted at 06:14 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Spreadshirt's User Generated Shop
Spreadshirt, one of the hottest non-venture-backed ecommerce startups to come out of Germany since the bubble burst, has built a successful and profitable business for customized T-shirts online.
Now it has opened a trendy shop in Berlin. We asked founder Lukasz Gadowski, what that is all about?
Our goal with the store is it, to give spreadshirt partners more exposure and open up a new sales channel. Basicaly bringing user gernerated content offline.In other words, the store, which is called Derby, will sell some of the more popular T-shirts designed by Spreadshirts customers. And if successful the high-street shop concept will be rolled out in other locations.
Posted at 06:08 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 29, 2006
Brandalley Aims For Breakeven This Year
Reuters is reporting that Brandalley expects to hit breakeven this year, forecasting sales of 5 million to 7 million euros ($6-9 million).
Banexi Ventures-backed Brandalley is a French clone of Overstock, that sells discounted clothing and accessories from top tier brands, but also many local and less expensive European labels. It only launched a year ago in France and more recently in the UK..
Proving Designer Swimwear Can Be As Ugly As No Name Labels: Orange Kenzo Swim Trunks
Read- French luxury website sees breakeven this year(iTnews.com.au)
Posted at 06:58 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 28, 2006
BT Buys Major UK eTailer Dabs.com
It not stated how much BT paid for online retailer Dabs.com but in the year ended March 2005, dabs.com revenues were £180m with gross assets valued at £42m. The online retailer has close to 1M consumer and business customers across the UK and France and processes 75K orders each month.
Dabs began as Dabs Press, a publisher of technology books.
Posted at 06:31 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 24, 2006
eBay Acquires Sweden's Tradera.com - VCs Exit
eBay said today it had acquired Tradera.com for about $48M. Launched in 1999, Tradera.com enables auction-style trading for buyers and sellers throughout Sweden. Its largest venture backers was Swedish VC firm IT Provider, which owned 48.9 percent of Tradera's share equity.
Read - eBay acquires Tradera.com (finextra)
Posted at 01:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 04, 2006
Turkish eBay Clone Attracts VC
iLab Ventures, has invested an undisclosed amount in GittiGidiyor.com, a Turkish consumer online auction company.
GittiGidiyor seems to do well in the Alexa rankings, and according to the press release, the auction site has 500,000 registered members, close to 300,000 daily visitors and over 200,000 daily auction opportunities.
We don't get many deals from Turkey at the alarm:clock euro, so we did a llittle research and found that iLab has several stakes in Internet business, including a vertical exchange for the chemical industry, ChemOrbis, with focus on plastics. The SteelOrbis Turkish steel e-marketplace was launched in May 2002. It also has Kariyer, as the name says it is a job search portal, and Sigortam.net, which appears to be an insurance policy site, among others.
Read - iLAB invests (online recruitment)
Posted at 11:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 03, 2006
French Agendize Brings In VC For Its Web Gadgetry
French investors have pumped €1.5M into Agendize, a three year old company that makes buttons for websites, but not just ordinary buttons. These buttons, when clicked, open a popup window that enables a web surfer to copy the website owner's contact info into a contact list of their choice: the contact list can be on the mobilephone, the PDA, Outlook Express application, and so on.
The website owners gets the surfer's email address and phone numbers plus a commission from the advertiser if the surfer afterwards follows up with a phone (a pay per call model). Agendize's platform also supports copying events info from a website into agendas.
The firm says it has patented the technology that enables copying contact details directly from a website to an electronic address book or agenda.
BNP Paribas Private Equity joined the firm's equity with this round, along with existing investors Champagne Ardenne Croissance, IRPAC and Aube Investissement, according to Neteco.
The alarm:clock can report that we tried out Agendize and it works just the way it is supposed to. But we are thinking that marketing and selling this software is going to be a challenge. It can address a global market of yellow pages publishers, directories, and local search sties, but how do you tap these markets cost-efficiently?
Selling direct means hiring a lot of sales people, as well as paying to promote the software to potential cusotmers, or to those that deal directly with its potential customers, such as web and web integration consultancies.
Alternatively, the startup can use resellers and partners, but are margins thick enough and the price per license sold substantial enough to make it worth a reseller's time? Maybe the new investors will bring the savvy required to overcome the challenges facing Agendize.
Read - AgendiZe lève 1.5 millions d'euros
Posted at 04:19 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
No Buyers For Insolvent Austrian eBay Power-seller Qentis
Wienweb, an Austrian online publisher, reports today that no new buyer could be found for Vienna-based Qentis Holding, which has claimed to be one of the largest power sellers on eBay over here (sales of €17M last year).
None of the potential acquirers, who emerged when the firm filed for Austrian equivalent of bankruptcy protection, were willing to invest the €5M required to keep the firm solvent.
Qentis announced in January that after a failed financing round it had begun proceedings to file for insolvency. Apparently the firm had invested quite heavily in importing electronics from East Asia. It also commissioned manufactures to produce things like scooters, cameras, bicycles, car audio, and tripods under its own brand, which it in turn would sell via eBay.
Read - Keine Hoffnung für Quentis
Posted at 12:45 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 28, 2006
London's Zopa Takes $15M To Move Into the US
London-based Zopa has raised $15M in Series B funding from Bessemer Venture Partners as well as existing investors Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners. Zopa plans to open its California office this year. The company is just one year old but has a head of steam, claiming 55K members. Zopa pioneered person-to-person lending, which seeks to lower borrows rates and give personal lenders a higher investment rate than savings accounts.
Zopa's chief rival is Prosper.com - which we assumed borrowed Zopa's business model. Zopa is led by executives who previously launched Egg PLC. Bessemer Venture's Rob Stavis, who led the financing of Skype, will join the Zopa board of directors, so of course Zopa is comparing itself to Skype.
Read - Zopa Raises $15 Million in Funding to Launch in California (Press Release)
Posted at 01:47 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 27, 2006
French mobilephone and gear etailer raises first round
Expansys might have some new competition in France as MeilleurMobile.com has just raised €1M from Paris-based Galileo Partners. (Update: Or maybe not if Alexa traffic ranking is indicative. See below.)
MeilleurMobile sells cellphones, accessories, and provides price comparison information on operator subscriptions and packages.
According to a recent article in 01Net, all the founders are under 24 years of age. They founded the firm in 2004 and generated sales of almost half a million euros in their first nine months in business. These types of sites seem to do well and this one has smartly covered the mobile network operator pricing schemes, which are becoming increasingly difficult for consumers and businesses to navigate, with a comparison engine.
Read - MeilleurMobile.com lève 1 million d'euros auprès de Galileo (Neteco)
Read - Meilleurmobile.com, un comparateur de prix pas comme les autres (01net)
Posted at 02:53 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 10, 2006
IPO makes all the right moves for UK real estate site
Rightmove, a British online real estate ads site has just completed a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange, raising some £76 M ($132 million), according to Reuters. Its stock price climbed 17 percent on its first day of trading after achieving 35 times oversubscription on its book. The IPO valued the company at £425M.
Reuters drew parallels with floats during the bubble.
“The high demand echoed the IPO of Lastminute.com six years ago -- Britain's most hyped Internet flotation at the time although shares in the online retailer fell below their issue price soon after listing.”--Reuters
It is true that Internet stocks have been doing well in recent IPOs on this side of the Atlantic. Interhyp, an online mortgage broker in Germany also did well. But one big difference between the bubble and now is that both of these firms were profitable and sizable in terms of sales.
One thing is for sure, its new investors didn't value Rightmmove so highly because of its whizz bang web technology.
Rightmove might offer to help find the perfect home, but its website is as quaint and old-fashioned as this country cottage. It takes way too many clicks to browse by region and there is no overview for a quick price comparison.
Read- Rightmove shares rush higher on first day
Read - Best VC exits were in Germany
Posted at 04:04 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 24, 2006
Meetic acquires Dutch dating site
Neteco reports that Meetic is spending some of its IPO money by acquiring Lexa.nl for €11.5M from SKMG. The online journal says that Lexa had 30.000 customers and sales of €4M. This is the French firm's second acq