April 11, 2007
Exalead's CEO On Wikipedia Search and Quaero Myths
We read with interest a Q&A this week with French search company Exalead's CEO where he dispels some of the myths about the much hyped Quaero project, which he said was falsely dubbed by politicians as a Google "killer".
Despite what some politicians have said, Quaero is not a collaborative effort aimed at creating a "Google killer." It is a research project on multimedia search technologies, period. In particular, image tagging, speech-to-text and machine translations, etc. It may very well produce technology or technology advancements that improve search, but Exalead is pursuing its own course of product development and go-to-market activity. What comes of Quaero will not determine what Exalead becomes or offers.
There is something Exalead has in common with Google, Yandex and Co
While its HQ is not as stylish as Russia's Yandex
Its team does have a sense of irony : April Fool's Day Logo
And in Neteco we read about how his firm has done some Wikipedia wizardry for better search access, apparently with the blessing of the popular online encyclopedia's IT team.
We've noticed an uptick in search driven traffic from Exalead to the a:c euro - it's nowhere near what we get from Google, but enough to make us notice. The French search engine is gaining some momentum it seems in its pitch to build a more consumer oriented search business on top of its enterprise search activities.
Read - Exalead Robot Assault Wikipedia (neteco)
Read - Q&A With François Bourdoncle, CEO Of Exalead (search engine land)
Posted at 05:14 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 02, 2007
France's Photoways Founder In New eCommerce Venture
We caught up with Michel de Guilhermier, the 44 year old founder and former CEO of Photoways, a venture-backed online photo printing service, last week.
He has a new startup in the works, which he revealed a bit about, and he also gave us his picks on other interesting startups in France and some tips on VC fundraising.
Back in 2005 Photoways tapped Highland Capital and Index Ventures in a $24M round, one of the largest for a consumer Internet venture at that time. In the meantime it acquired UK's Photobox. In October, it appointed a former AOL exec to its helm.
You were co-founder and CEO of Photoways until recently. What were your achievements there?
I grew Photoways from 0 to 30M€ sales in 2006, a European leader in its field, in the midst of intense competition. We lead the innovation trend, both in services and products.
What did you do before that?
I bought or created several other companies. And before that I was an executive at Dole Food Co then PepsiCo.
What is your new company Inspirational Stores Group all about?
It’s all about e-commerce. It’s a new way to sell stuff on the web. But I don’t want to say more at this stage...
[a:c euro notes: in the meantime Michel has posted a few more hints about the startup, how it is currently negotiating contracts with MySpace, AuFeminin, private sale site and YouTube. And an in-store promotion at Nespresso boutique/cafe on the Champs Elysée, with others to follow.]
Is this an idea that you have been thinking about for a while?
About a year !
Who are your co-founders?
Martin Genot, ex Managing Director at Photoways and another one whose name has to remain confidential, but he’s a top investment banker from a top tier house. We are presently building up the technology team.
Do you think you will raise VC again? If yes, what will you do differently this time, if anything?
Most probably I will. Number one, I will select VCs with a strong track record in e-commerce. Number two, I will not expect them to add value other than by injecting money. Number three, I will not let them put their hand into operations.
What one or two tips to other founders that read the a:c euro do you have for working with VCs. Do you recommend using a corporate finance advisor (Chausson, Aelios, Clipperton etc.) to help raise funds?
Fundraisers are most useful. We will definitely select one, either Chausson or Aelios. But we shall also select a lawyer for the process.
I strongly advise entrepreneur to use their own specific lawyers who will have the sole mission to protect their interests.
Looking around you in France, what are the most original or surprising startups you have seen lately?
I’m an e-commerce specialist and in this field there’s nothing striking yet. But I like what people like Spartoo, an online shoe seller, is doing. Zlio is an interesting model as well, but they are facing an e-commerce law, selling commodities doesn’t leave nice margins !
What is the most overhyped thing in Europe's venture market today?
Web 2.0 and trafic monetization. Most will fail.
What is the most underhyped?
E-commerce !
If you read French, Michel has a blog that talks about his passions, his new venture, entrepreneurship, eCommerce, innovation, consumer goods, design, and New York City.
Posted at 06:37 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 05, 2006
What's Your Social Media Biz Worth?
Over on the Equity Kicker blog we've been discussing social media sites and where to learn more about how the successful ones made a business out of it. One of many several sources is Startup Review, a blog sponsored by Sierra Ventures, a US venture firm.
The blog publishes case studies on web companies that meet its criteria for success. The profiles are quite detailed and describe what the service is on offer, how the businesses acquire new customers, generate leads, and earn money. The author also gives his take on how valuations are calculated.
One thing we noted is that the valuation estimates based on sales multiples in the US market look quite rich compared to European tech sector norms. Price to-earnings-ratio is also higher than the European norm for M&A deals, but not as far off as the PS ratio is, as the data from Regent Associates suggests below. It should be noted that Regent tracks tech sector deals in its database, not just Internet-related deals. Its data can include consulting companies and service-heavy IT companies. Its latest figures reflect first half 2006.
Current price to earnings ratio is 17.8 (price paid includes 50% of the expected contingent consideration in deals with earn-outs and apply to historic performance, trailing year's financial figures.)
If any readers have current data based on public and private European online company valuations at exit or last round, we'd be interested in it.
Read - Startup Review Case Study Index
Read - Regent Associates 1H06 Review (regent associates)
Posted at 08:13 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 04, 2006
Money Monday - Founders' Chance To Be Showcased On TechCrunch UK
Over at TechCrunch UK, there's a new feature called Money Mondays that will showcase startups looking for funding. Your a:c euro correspondent only just learned about it, so the first edition deadline is already passed. But we checked with TechCrunch UK's Mike Butcher today and he said there is still time to submit for the next editions. They will publish contact details and a short pitch for each startup selected. It is geared for startups that have not received any institutional or formal funding yet.
Here's the criteria and guidelines:
... a web or mobile startup which has yet to secure formal funding. They will have to have either an application of their idea up and running (e.g. a live web site) or a working demo or beta we can look at.Startups can submit a short ‘pitch’ (and we mean short - half an A4 page if you want a guide) to us by the preceding Friday. In particular, we’ll be looking for smart applications of the new wave of web and mobile techniques and strategies.
The goal here is to support the start-up community of entrepreneurs and to make this a pretty informal, accessible way of attracting attention from potential investors, even towards ideas coming out of the ‘back bedroom’.
It doesn’t mean we’ll ‘take the gloves off’ in our critique of companies. It’s not a formal competition, but we hope this will act as a useful shot-in the arm for the startup community.
Please use their Contact form to submit your project.
Read - Money Mondays First Deadline Is Today (techcrunch UK)
Posted at 06:05 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 02, 2006
TomTom Founders Take Home €455M
A year and a half after its IPO, a couple of TomTom execs and some founders -- the ones that created a billion euro company without the aid of venture capitalists -- cashed in some shares to the tune of €455M this week.
TomTom Has Some Amusing TV Ads For The British Market
It will be interesting to see if their new wealth makes its way into the startup economy, following in the footsteps of entrepreneurial angel investors like the Samwer brothers, the SAP co-founders, early employees and early investors in Skype, Martin Varsavsky, and Spreadshirt's Lukasz Gadowski, to name a few.
Posted at 10:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 30, 2006
Swiss/German Angel Network's First IPO Is A Fishy One
The floatation this month of Codfarmers, a Norwegian cod fish farm gives Brains-to-Ventures (b-to-v) , a corporate finance boutique that specializes in dealflow for business angels here, its first IPO of a company funded through its network this month.
Although b-to-v has a portfolio dominated by tech ventures, its first floation since founding in 2001 is an agribusiness called Codfarmers, one of the first companies to enter the cod farming industry in Norway. Founded in 2002, the company spents its first few years in R&D, selling its first generation of cod last year.
Its listing on the Oslo stock exchange in mid-October gave it a valuation of €44.5M.
Read - Erfolgreicher IPO von Codfarmers ASA (b-to-v)
Posted at 06:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 22, 2006
Fast Companies: Gameloft, Spreadshirt, lliotec And Others
BusinessWeek has published this year's fastest growing company ranking (includes both jobs and sales figures in the calculations) Out of the 500 fastest growing companies, a couple of them are tech ventures we recognized, such as mobile games developer Gameloft (1), online t-shirt personalization startup, Spreadshirt, which was number 5, while three solar energy companies Illiotec, Q-Cells and Conergy, made it into the top 40, along with Sophos, a security software firm.
Italy's Ferretti Yachts Also Made The Top Ten - It Isn't Tech But It Is Nice Design
Interestingly, Sophos is the only firm that raised VC money. It is backed by 3i. Surely some other VC-backed ventures should have made this list, or not? Anyway, hats off to these companies, especially Spreadshirt and Iliotec, both of which were started without venture capital, or even rich angel investors.
Read- BW Europe Hot Growth Companies
Posted at 06:36 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 02, 2006
Tech Ventures And Northzone's Six Lessons Learned
Northzone Ventures, which has backed over the years companies like Lastminute.com, Trolltech, Nextgentel, Envox, Mamut, and Fun Technologies, has published Key Take Aways From Past Mistakes.
We like it when VCs make this kind of thing public. It helps us to understand what kind of questions to be asking these days. And if you are looking to raise capital from Northzone, it's also useful. For example, if you've got an OEM agreement but no revenues from it yet, don't expect Northzone to be impressed.
Read - Key Take-Aways from Past Mistakes
Posted at 07:05 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 14, 2006
Tips On Creating A Billion Dollar Startup Or How To Be CSR
We've got some advice today excerpted from an article by John Hodgson, the former CEO of Cambridge Silicon Radio. It's the British company that went from zero to sales of greater than $700M in seven years, three of which were the worst to hit the tech sector in recent history.( Image source: Scottish Equity Partners Venturer newsletetter. Issue 4)
A couple of recent interviews with chip startup founders and their backers suggest that they might be the next CSR, with a bit of luck and lots of execution. To slant the odds a bit more in their favour we think that listening to what Hodgson has to say is worthwhile. He was CEO of CSR through its £20M pre-IPO VC round and its successful subsequent IPO.
Below is a quick stab at summarizing several points he makes in an article he wrote for Scottish Equity Partners' Venturer newsletter, followed by a link to the full text.
1. Raise more money than you think you need and spend carefully.
... raise far more money than you think you’ll need to avoid expensive and time-consuming additional rounds. The well-known cliché that “cash is king” is absolutely true, and the CFO needs to be a Scrooge at heart who can ensure that all levels of the organisation understand that each dollar raised can only be spent once.Many of us at CSR had to constantly travel around the world and we went everywhere in economy class. It meant miserable 10 hour trips squashed into a seat too small to even open your laptop but that was just the way it had to be. At the peak we were burning $5 million each quarter. There was no way we could justify extra expense where it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
2. Raise money before you need it
... and always set up a competitive process [he means make sure that more than two VCs are bidding for your equity] to ensure the valuation of a round is set by the market. Securing funding is more important than the source, although VCs and strategic investors with respected names do usefully lend their stature to an enterprise. The price of the money and consequent dilution is less important than getting enough resources to do the job, and it helps to remember that it always takes longer than you expect to deliver on the commitments made.
3. Hit milestones on schedule
Market, technology, and funding are only as useful as the practical execution. And here, timing is critical. The company must strive to hit its plans on schedule, and the solution that best meets the requirements as the market takes off is the one that will win. Being too early can be as disastrous as being too late. CSR was not the first to market. Pioneers Ericsson and Digianswer (acquired early on by Motorola) were first, but in the end failed to deliver competitive product when the market opened up.
4. Marketing costs more than product development, so be prepared
Technology and product development are relatively cheap compared to ramp-up costs for marketing and manufacturing where timing is essential and spending must be in phase with market developments. Setting up sales, marketing, and field applications organisations at the necessary locations around the world requires significant energy and money.
5. Know that getting design in wins is an order of magnitude harder than you think.
...Persuading customers, especially the high-volume, major corporations that you must win, is orders of magnitude harder than you can imagine. A new vendor is a major risk for a customer, and your products will be used only if you can deliver, and be seen to deliver, a significantly better solution than their traditional and trusted suppliers. Even that is not always sufficient to secure business.
Read - Smart venturing: CSR’s journey from Bluetooth to blue-chip (Scottish Equity Partners Venturer newsletetter )
Posted at 04:21 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 30, 2006
Kelbook: The Inside Story Of Kelkoo
We've just finished reading a book about how Kelkoo's management and backers created the European online shopping comparison company that was acquired in early 2004 by Yahoo for €475M.
Entitled Ils Ont Reussi Leur Start-Up: Le success story de kelkoo! , also known as Kelbook, it was written by Julien Codorniou and Cyrille de Lasteyrie, a Microsoft executive in France responsible for the software giants' relationships with venture backed companies in Europe, and a journalist, respectively.
It is the story of the deal that pretty much started off this cycle of venture capital investing in Europe and worth reading (if you read French). It entertainingly imparts a lot of lessons, ones that are more able to be emulated than some of the tech venture success stories that emerged during the bubble, without being dry and educational.
Structured as a timeline, the authors document the formation, the launch, the switch in business models, the near misses, the conversations, the penny-pinching, the bravado, and the deals made by Kelkoo's management, headed by Pierre Chappaz, and a host of supporters, on their way to creating a quick growing, profitable Internet company that was worth half a billion dollars.
The story climaxes with a dual track exit strategy and a showdown between Chappaz and Yahoo's top brass. It is worth buying for that chapter alone.
Although the Kelkoo deal was not the largest exit valuation to take place in Europe in recent times, nor did it deliver its VC backers their biggest return ever -- they quintupled their money -- the book is useful also as a source of insight into on some of the personalities active in the Internet and technology venture scene in Europe today: people like Chappaz, who was Kelkoo's CEO, and is today the Co-CEO of Netvibes (the personalized homepage company backed by Index Ventures and Accel), and Wikio (a news and blog aggregator with a user rating engine).
Or Dominique Vidal, who actually was working for one of Kelkoo's two principal venture capital backers, Banexi Ventures, and was then hired away by Chappaz to work for him at Kelkoo. Vidal now heads up Yahoo Europe.
Besides these two and a host of others, there are the three Bull engineers behind Kelkoo's core shopping engine that are also part of the story, and have gone on to new things, namely Maurizio Lopez, who had been heading up Bull's R&D unit and is now travelling, Remy Amouroux, now a chief software architect at Yahoo, and Christophe Odin, who now heads up Kapirsk, a business angel investment vehicle.
We're seriously thinking of translating the book, so stay tuned.
Link (Julien Codorniou Blog)
Link (Cyrille de Lasteyrie blog)
Posted at 09:43 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 28, 2006
BW Seek's Europe's Best Entrepreneurs Under 25.
BusinessWeek.com says it is "embarking on a search for Europe's Best Entrepreneurs Under 25". It's looking for people running their own companies, not business plans.
The editorial team is casting a wide net and doesn't specify that the startup has to be in the technology sector. That's a good thing as it wouldn't t find too many entrepreneurs under the age of 25 among venture-backed companies -- the rule of the day is to fund so-called serial entrepreneurs and few are that young.
Even Ehssan Dariani, co-founder of StudiVZ.com, the popular German Facebook clone (angel-backed by Lukasz Gadowski of Spreadshirt, and the Samwer brothers) is 26 years old.
StudiVZ Founders (l to r) Ehssan Dariani, Dennis Bemmann und Michael Brehm
Link - Europe's Young Entrepreneurs (businessweek)
Read - StudiVZ wächst schneller als OpenBC! (gruenderszene)
Read - Capitalist Manifesto (newsweek)
Posted at 01:41 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 23, 2006
Shoulder-Bag's Solar Panel Recharges Cellphones On The Go
Until technologists come up with longer life batteries, a Swiss startup that gave itself a trendy Chinese name, Dauchu Go (the Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger says it means "everwhere") has a chance with its synthetic shoulder-bags that come with a built in recharging unit driven by solar power. It can be used for recharging hand-held devices, including brand-name mobilephones and MP3 players, the company website says.
We found a report in the Tages Anzeiger about Dauchu Go that says the idea came from a couple of 20-year old university students. They source the bags from East Asia and assemble them in Staefa, near Zurich.
The flexible solar panels are removable (image left) and are sourced from Flexcell, another Swiss startup that recently received a strategic investment from Germany's Q-Cells, a solar cell manufacturer.
Read - Solarpower für Handy oder iPod (tages anzeiger)
Read - Qcells Invest in Swiss Solar (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 04:06 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 02, 2006
Tech Venture Business Models: Ten Levers & Sixty-odd Tweaks
We like Peter Rip's ideas on business model development for tech ventures that we found via the VCRatings blog. The ideas can be applied not only in the Web 2.0 and online services/content categories, but for software in general, as well as most other tech businesses.
The way we read it, he says there are ten areas where a tech company can establish an unfair advantage over the competition; e.g. economic scale, production costs, marketing costs and so on. For each area there are at least two, and sometimes many more tweaks, or tactics, to achieve and maintain these advantages.
In his Early Stage VC blog, he put it all together in nice graphic.
View image in full
Rip calls the ten areas "levers" for adding value to an investment.
But the a:c euro thinks the concepts are equally useful for would-be entrepreneurs: it can be used as a guide or list of things to think about when developing a robust business model for a technology venture.
The data is based on the business models that Rip sees in his investment practise at Leapfrog Ventures, which covers IT, software, communications/wireless, and technology-heavy consumer-oriented businesses.
Read - EarlyStageVC: Business Model, Schmizness Model(earlystage VC blog)
VC Ratings: Peter Rip's business model diagram goes beyond "advertising-based" (VC ratings blog)
Posted at 09:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 25, 2006
Europe's Recent Homeruns: Bootstrapped vs VC-backed
We have a lot of respect for bootstrapped ventures at the a:c euro and so does Max Bleyleben at Kennet Ventures -- mind you it is for different reasons -- Bleyleben because he wants to invest in owner-funded startups -- and us because we know how challenging it is to build a quick growth company in Europe.
In an article making the case for startups that can get to profitability without burning a lot of cash, he writes: for every venture-backed Skype or Kelkoo, there’s a bootstrapped uSwitch or Friends Reunited. All four represent so-called homerun exits for Europe.
The a:c euro provides the prices paid at exit for these ventures from publicly available source below, as it's not mentioned in the piece -- the article was written for Real Deals magazine whose readers would know well the prices paid because they have seen hundreds of powerpoint slides pointing out these homeruns.
(Full Disclosure: the a:c euro's team leader performs research for Real Deals transaction database Done Deals.)
=> Skype acquired by eBay for $2.6B plus $1.5B earnout
=> Kelkoo acquired by Yahoo $579M
=> uSwitch acquired by $366M
=> Friends Reunited acquired by ITV for £120M (€175 M) in cash and shares, plus a £55M earnout.
Bleyleben could also have mentioned other examples of ventures that grew without early stage VC, such as Meetic, which raised one round of capital from AGF Private Equity a year prior to its Euronext IPO and currently has a market cap of €389M (it's capitalization went as high as half a billion but has fallen lately to the figure quoted).
Or some of the Euro tech ventures that went straight from bootstrapped to IPO without passing the VC or the expansion financing stage, e.g. TomTom, the navigation gadget maker (current mkt cap= €2.9B).
Read - The case for bootstrapping (real deals)
Read - Why we like bootstrapping (technofile)
Read - Bootstrap your business for growth (technofile)
Posted at 07:15 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 24, 2006
Hasso Plattner Rocks
Hasso Plattner Played For Guests At Party At His New Incubator In Potsdam On Friday
We like the way that SAP co-founder, Hasso Plattner, is taking on retirment. No stories about big yachts, rather he's promoting his incubator for tech startups and university research commercialization in Potsdam, getting his son to manage a VC fund that backs long shots at biotech cures and other risky ventures, and being available to budding entrepreneurs. Update/Correction: The part about Plattner's son managing a VC fund to invest in biotech firms is incorrect. It is actually Dietmar Hopp, another co-founder of SAP, whose son is managing such a fund.
Read - Sommerfest Plattner Rockt Mit (press release from HPI)
Posted at 08:50 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 18, 2006
Dogster Metrics And Its Business Model
We mentioned Dogster in an earlier post today without explaining why it is on the alarm:clock euro's radar. It's because it is backed by Jeff Clavier, the French business angel based in Silicon Valley, now backing several emerging Web 2.0 ventures.
Since we attempt to track successful European tech entrepreneurial types no matter where they are, he's one we try to watch.
Clavier told us that Dogster and Catster are community sites for owners to share pictures and diaries of their pets. He announced back in March that he was backing the founders of Dogster Inc who apparently started up the sites as a parody of Friendster, and the like.
But the site became popular, now with a quarter of a million active profiles set up by pet owners that mainly hail from North America and the UK, said Clavier. Is is apparently a successful business that has built a brand with pulling power for targeted advertising, which surprised us here.
As an example of its success in targeting and serving a distinct segment of the consumer population, and "providing compelling brand integration to advertisers", Clavier points to Dogster's advertising rate (about $5 cpm currently). He said that it is higher than that of MySpace, some 50 times higher.
"Nice niche business indeed, when you consider that the pet industry is worth about $36B a year," said Clavier.
Some Dogster metrics for your perusal: the top dogs are labs and Chihuahuas. More than 18,000 Labrador Retrievers and 11,000 Chihuahuas are registered. Most "members" are purebreds, some 12000 or so, but mutts and rescues also have a good representation with about 6000 each.
powered by ODEO
Listen - Podcast Interview With Jeff Clavier By Weblogs Work, a Dallas-based marketing consultancy focused on social media. (odeo)
Posted at 07:40 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 17, 2006
No Obvious Business Model Required Says Grinda
Fabrice Grinda, a European serial entrepreneur who is also a business angel, says he is relaxing one of the basic requirements for funding a new venture, namely the need for a business model to be clear from the start.
In his blog, he writes: "as long as the idea has massive mass market appeal, I am now willing to start businesses where the business model may not be clear and understood from the get go."
Grinda's investment thesis is based on his ability to accept a high level of risk and the fact that requiring a valid biz model would have meant that Google would not have been financed in the early stage, nor would Facebook. And MySpace would not have been acquired by News Corp. (the a:c euro notes that while Google has found a big bang biz model, the other two are emerging and searching to find comparable ways to capitalize on their popularity).
Grinda's track record: created Zingy, a ringtone and mobilephone wallpaper download service (similar to Jamba), which was acquired for $80M and prior to that he founded Aucland, an eBay clone, which was acquired by QXL Ricardo.
Read - Top 9 Business Selection Criteria
(Fabrice Grinda's blog)
Read - And then there were 8 business selection criteria!
Posted at 08:01 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 14, 2006
Top 10 Things Investors Want To Know
We know that there are a lot of a:c euro readers that are having their first encounter with investors. So we've taken the Top 10 Questions Investors Asked Us list written by ParticleTree founder Chris Campbell and made some annotations to it.
For example: why do investors and VCs ask "who else have you spoken to" or why they want to know "who are your customers". All we've done below the jump is added some reasons why the moneymen (and women) ask those questions, plus shortened some of Campbell's comments.
Campbell is a freshly minted US-based entrepreneur and founder of a startup called ParticleTree who published the list in his company’s blog after a series of meetings with potential investors. It is written in the language of the founder and from his point of view, so we think it is more user-friendly than some of the lists that VCs have produced.
The Top 10 Questions Investors Asked Us
1) Who else have you spoken to?
"I think it’s because Silicon Valley is a lot like high school in that you’re basically as cool as the people who talk to you. Being funded by Sequoia, is not unlike dating the hottest cheerleader in the squad. Then again, maybe it’s just natural human curiosity. Either way, it’s a good idea to keep at the top of your head who you’ve talked to and their appropriate place in the pecking order."
[alarm:clock euro - Update: Take a look at alarm:clock euro reader Jennifer Carnegie comments below to get a more insightful commentary that what we've posted here. It is a quick way to understand if the deal is the right match for the VC in terms of stage, sector, and business focus. If another VC took the time to have a meeting with you, it also tells the investor you are currently talking to that there is a good chance it is a fundable venture. It tells the potential investor how long you've been fundraising, if there might end up being competition on the deal, and are there other VCs that could co-invest on this deal. Even if prior meetings with investors did not pan out it could also be helpful. For example, if it was “too early” or “too small a deal” for the other VCs, it might be just right for the current investor because he's just raised a new fund and is looking for early stage deals, for example.
2) How will you make money?
After one investor asked us this question, he quickly said under his breath in a little prayer : " Please don’t say Adsense". If you already have a million users, then the investors are going to listen to you no matter what you have planned.
[alarm:clock euro – The investor wants to know the business model, if there is already a path to profitability, and has the product achieved "traction" or customers and early adopters in the market.]
3) How will your company grow?
Investors want a return on their investment, and they naturally want to see you grow your market. Always good to have everyone on the same page about how things should pan out.
[alarm:clock euro - The investor is asking Is this business addressing a market big enough to make your company a sizable venture and will it cost a lot to grow the business. How would you go about getting big?]
4) What technologies do you use?
We’ve noticed that a lot of the investors are ex-programmers and enjoy showing off a little programming speak, but why they all care about this just stumps me.
[alarm:clock euro - The question is not really all about investors reliving their past lives as über geeks. They need to understand if the choices you have made are robust scalable - switching to another database supplier or programming language because the original one couldn't handle customer growth is something they want to avoid. If the target market is telecoms, is the underlying platform reliable enough. Are there costs associated with using the underlying technology. E.g if you are using one of Sun’s Java code components you might have to pay Sun a toll on every license sold. They also want to know if you are using standard technologies. A VC we know told us that although it happens “less often now”, but he has seen some startups that will develop their own programming language or database management system “because the existing ones are not optimised enough”. For a VC this is a red flag. ]
5) How easily can you be copied?
If you’re writing a web app, chances are there are a lot of other teams who could create a similar program (if you’ve got no competitors you might be working on the wrong thing). We tried to be as honest as possible when answering people.
[ alarm:clock euro – This is the “what are the barriers to entry” question VCs always ask. There are two things that this line of inquiry seeks to expose. a) how long would it take someone to copy your application or service and b) how long would it take them to replicate your success in the market.
Most investors will not be scared away from a deal if there is lots of competition, but they will then be looking for a demonstration that of market penetration and some proof that it is hard to copy that level of product acceptance. At least in some categories of technology, VCs will go for it.]
6) Can we see the demo?
Everyone in Silicon Valley has an idea, and many of them are similar. Investors want to see the goods. We had one investor invite us out to a casual dinner, and when we didn?t have our laptops with us, we ended up taking him to our messy apartment full of pizza boxes and soda cans because he wanted to see the demo then and there. We got a follow-up meeting and an offer out of it, so it's good to know that a working demo is more important than cleanliness. Basically, always assume they haven't seen your online public demo and have that localhost version on your laptop ready to go.
[alarm:clock euro - Many investors are wary of slideware - companies that only exist in powerpoint presentations. So being able to show a product running will go far with the investor crowd. But keep it short. One of our VC readers tells us that some companies tend to want to show too much and he warns of the "failing demo". A good point, we have seen too many demos go downhill, particularly in the mobilephone application category when founders fumble over a frozen phone, or start waving it in the air trying to "catch" a signal when they discover there is no network coverage in the meeting room.]
7) Who are your competitors and how are you better/different?
Unless you just invented a teleportation system, research your competitors and be ready to answer what you can do better than everyone else out there. Don?t even try and avoid this question because about two days after any meeting, you're going to receive an email asking you to detail how you?re better than 20 other companies the investor just Googled.
[alarm:clock euro - the VC speak translation is what is your unique selling point, differentiators, and market positioning. A Paris VC we know says that describing differentiators is going to inform him about why he should put bet on your venture rather than one of the 20 competitors. The two worst answers he says are: we do not have any competitors, or there is no real differentiator...]
8) Who are your customers?
The trick to this question is to be specific. You’ll want to have examples of who is using, who will use, and who wants to use your product. At Startup School, Ann Winblad from Hummer Winblad said they will even contact companies you mention as potential customers during the due diligence period to verify their legitimacy as a customer.
[alarm:clock euro - VCs will always contact customers during due diligence and if they don't, you have to wonder about their level of professionalism. Happy customers are key - a truism yes, but one that is often overlooked in the tech sector. Besides, investors are not the only ones that will be talking to your existing customers, other potential buyers, journalists, and market researchers will be consulting them too. ]
9) How will you spread the word about your product?
This was my favorite question, because we could usually nail it. Investors understand the power of word of mouth marketing, and you win bonus points if you can demonstrate the ability to quickly spread the word. One of our biggest selling points was the fact that we have a decent blog, we belong to the 9rules network, and we were able to reach over 50,000 unique people in a matter of days when we released our public interface demo.
[alarm:clock euro - The investor wants to understand the business development process. How the market will be approached - will the product be embedded into other things, or will partnerships with value added resellers be required – can viral marketing be used?]
10) What will your market penetration be?
This was actually only asked of us once, but I had to add it to emphasize that you don?t need to spew out a bunch of BS to impress investors. We could have made up something you probably heard in an MBA class, but instead just said, “We honestly don’t know.? And that’s the truth, because I can’t even begin to guess what percentage of the available form building market we are going to get. The investor was a little bit shocked with the answer, but it definitely wasn’t a deal breaker.
[alarm:clock euro – The investor wants an idea of what percentage of the market you are targeting your company could snag. Is it going for the lion’s share or the bits leftover? Is your startup a future global leader or is it a follower? One of our VC readers says that the worst answer is defining an unrealistically huge addressable market, and then saying that you can be a $100M company with 1% of that market.]
Posted at 06:55 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 06, 2006
Dutch Startup Founder's Tips On Pitching To VCs
We found a post entitled: Ten Tips For A Perfect Pitch in the Fleck.com blog about how to prepare for making a presentation to a venture capitalist.
We don't know if Fleck's founders, whose plug-in for Firefox is still in stealth mode, have actually raised capital, so the "perfect" in the title might be a bit hyperbolic -- nevertheless, the tips, if followed, would certainly give an entrepreneur more self-assurance and knowledge about his or her presentation in front of potential investors.
For example, it is suggested to make a video of the presentation. And to repeat the pitch on film until its without a flaw. This is a good one.
We've sat through too many pitch-fests where it is obvious that the founders hadn't invested the prep time. And the effect on the audience has varied from barks of derisive laughter and hisses, to people walking out, at worst, and at best, a marked increase of the Blackberry prayer bow: heads down and thumb-flicking.
If any of you do make a short video of your demo and pitch, we invite you to send us your final version, or send us a link to it. If we think it's good, we'll post it on the alarm:clock euro.
Read - 10 tips for a perfect pitch (fleck.com blog)
Posted at 07:38 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 28, 2006
Alfresco's Bathroom Positioning And Low-Budget Marketing Success
We've written about it before, how European founders are boasting about their lean R&D and low cash-burn marketing efforts, here is another example.
The management at Alfresco, an open source document management software company whose founders hail from big name software firms that spent lavishly on such efforts, seem to be having fun with taking a very different marketing approach this time around.
Alfresco's Booth At A Recent Trade Show Has A Retro Look - Reminds Us Of School Science Fairs And Yet It Pulled Traffic.
The secret apparently was being located near the public restrooms.
At the Expo, our booth has to have got to win an award -- for least pretentious and best home construction project. Compared to the multi-million dollar monstrosities of EMC, IBM, Filenet, Kodak, Xerox, etc., I think we only spent a couple of hundred dollars on it. At least you know that our money is going on product rather than fancy marketing. But because we were near the bathrooms, we got pretty good traffic. We got some fantastic leads and keen interest from our attendance.
If this is really a trend, how long until we're feeling nostalgia for the booth babes, the slick suits, the free beer, the blaring audio/video displays, and arm-breaking bags of freebies?
Read - Last Week at AIIM and Java One (John Newton's blog)
Posted at 07:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2006
French Linux Guru Starts Up Ulteo
As some people say, all it takes to create a new business is a resentment and a coffee-machine, or a case of Red Bull, if your under thirty.
And so it is with Ulteo, a French startup aiming to develop nothing less ambitious than a new open source approach to operating system software. Its founder is Gaël Duval, the key developer of Linux Mandrake, who was recently ousted from Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, with nothing but a thank-you (he writes) and a "two-month standard" severance package.
NewsForge says that Duval is suing his former company, but more interesting is that he has formed Ulteo.
We're looking into the startup effort and can report that it is using the Kubuntu/Debian distribution (according to Wikipedia).
Duval created Linux-Mandrake in 1998 which was based on Red Hat Linux and it became known as being the easiest-to-use version of Linux. The company he formed around it was called Mandrakesoft, and later Mandriva.
Mandriva came close to insolvency several months after it floated on the lightly regulated Marche Libre in France in mid-2001, raising a meagre €4M. Our research shows that two investors, a US hedge fund and a French investment firm called Remote Reward stepped in to shore up finances.
In the meantime, it has changed its market focus and business model, in an effort to reach profitability. It has also acquired several other open source firms, namely Conectiva in Brazil, Edge IT in France, and Lycoris in the US.
Ulteo is based on an idea that Duval had brought to the Mandriva's management team back in 2004 that was ultimately rejected, he writes.
We think that there is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming 18 months due to the hefty number of startups that VCs have shopped to larger technology companies in M&A deals as they seek to exit bubble era invetments (as opposed to IPOs where it is more common for founders to stay on, that is if the founders are still with the company by the time it floats.)
As the post-merger key-man lock-ins end, and related non-compete clauses get lifted, founders are not retiring to Toscana to live the dolce vita, they are setting out to either repeat their past success, or make more money than they did last time around.
Examples abound, such as the post M&A activity of the founders of Kelkoo, acquired by Yahoo, and Musiwave, acquired by Openwave, who have since created Wikio and Eyeka, repsectively.
There are also reports about departures at SUSE Linux (acquired by Novell in 2003). Our research show that several founders and early employees have subsequently joined or create new startups.
Although not all of them actually begin with a resentment, the trend for founders to become serial entrepreneurs is pretty clear from where we sit.
Read - Gael Duvall's Fired Message (personal web page of Duval)
Read- NewsForge | Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (newsforge)
Posted at 10:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 25, 2006
Meyer On Butt-Kicking Euro Techpreneurs And The Next Skype
The European entrepreneur: you've got to be willing to do deals that handle his lower tolerance for risk and sometimes you have to kick him in the butt, at least you do according to Neil Rimer of Index Ventures, for the former, and Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital, a technology company advisory firm, for the latter.
Meyer, who gets more press than any other European venture industry professional on our radar (relative to the size of her company), was profiled in European Business this month where there's some insight into her butt-kicking ways. She also predicts Zopa as the next eye-popping European exit a la Skype.
So who’s the next Skype on her books? “Zopa,” says Meyer without hesitation. Zopa, she explains, is a peer-to-peer lending network, web-based of course, “that matches lenders to borrowers”. Behind it is Richard Duvall, the man who created Egg in 1998, today the world’s largest purely internet bank.
And about the need to provide a kick to the entrepreneur:
... Zopa’s only a couple of years old, but Duvall came to Meyer for all sorts of advice including whether to start up in the US when the British side of the business was hardly begun. “I kicked him up the butt and told him that if he didn’t get going someone else would eat his lunch and he’d be the QXL to eBay instead of the eBay to QXL.”
Later on, Meyer was asked about the "relative paucity" of entrepreneurs in Europe, compared to America and what advice she has for wannabe tech entrepreneurs inside old European institutions, like Telecom Italia, looking to break out and startup a business. Here again the butt-kicking advice:
“Stop moaning about Telecom Italia,” she tells an imagined trudging employee. “If you have something to contribute to the world, get off your butt, tell the spouse it’s going to be a tough eight years ahead, and get on with it.”
Read -Read - Skype’s the limit: Cover Story June 2006 (European Business)
Read - Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs (dailyii.com)
Posted at 07:04 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 23, 2006
How To Work With European Entrepreneurs
Via the Infectious Greed blog we learned that Index Ventures co-founder Neil Rimer has penned an article entitled Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs for the Dailyii.com.
It's an interesting read. The essence of his strategy: be willing and able to back a geographically distributed startup company, and structure deals to meet the risk profile of European entrerpreneurs.
Read - Derisking Entrepreneurship (Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky)
Read - Five Tips For Working With European Entrepreneurs (dailyii.com)
Posted at 08:09 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 21, 2006
Uniqall Looks To Finance Its Challenge To Brooktrout, Intel Netstructure HMP and Co.
Makers of IP media servers, which are used for interactive voice response (IVR), voice mail, messaging, and conferencing applications, might be in for some competition from an unexpected place, in the form of a startup
coming out of Zagreb called Uniqall.
If, that is, Uniqall's founder successfully raises the capital required to ramp up sales and marketing.
Back in 2001, Uniqall founder, Boris Pavacic, decided to develop a software-only IP media server, counting on the fact that PC processors would be powerful enough to handle a software-only solution, and that VOIP was the
way the telecoms market was going.
He raised a relatively tiny amount of seed financing from local business angels and has since demonstrated that his vision was the right on the money. Pavacic says that Uniqall is generating revenues without having invested in sales and marketing, and continues R&D, having recently completed the third release of its software.
Croatia May Be Struggling To Get Ahead In This Year's World Cup, But This Team Is Doing Well In The IP Media Server Game
The Croatian startup's product is a good 20 times lower in price than the equivalent Intel hardware-based solution, according to Pavacic. Other competitors include Brooktrout, Audiocodecs, and Eicon.
To be sure, Intel is also developing a software-based IP media server product, called Netstructure HMP, which will compete with Uniqall's, but the startup's founder believes his agile and "legacy free" startup has a better
product and more incentive to drive market development.
The a:c euro is not an expert on IP media server market, but one thing we noted when comparing the two products feature sets that Uniqall's solution supports more operating systems than Intel's, including several Linux distributions and Solaris, for example, while Intel supports only Windows OS and an Intel modified version of a few Linux distributions.
Now Pavacic's next task is to find the right partner for the next stage of the firm's growth.
Posted at 10:42 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 20, 2006
WatZatSong Is Name That Tune With A French Accent
A team of three twenty-somethings in Paris have launched a music discovery site called WatZatSong.
A Kind Of Name That Tune For Digital Babies
It's meant to build a community around users who are looking to find the name of a song, either because they cannot remember the title, or they want to challenge other members.
Song seekers provide clues about a tune, the genre, era, and sex of vocalist, if known, and then hum, sing, or do the doodoodaada thing, which is recorded in an applet. It's set up so that other members of the community can guess what song is being sought by listening to the clips.
We checked it out. One thing we can say is that there are a lot of tone deaf and really bad singers seeking music titles so far.
Posted at 05:00 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 19, 2006
FON's Varsavsky Plots World of Warcraft: The Movie
Even multi-millionaire entrepreneurs are wannabe Hollywood screenplay writers, at least if FON founder and serial entrerpeneur, Martin Varsavsky, is an indication of such things.
He's too busy with his wireless telco business to do it himself, so he floated the "World of Warcraft" film idea, complete with plot synospsis on his blog. He is also offering to fund an enterprising writer willing to run with his idea.
Varsavsky says he was inspired by listening to Joichi Ito´s stories about the 200 person guild he runs at World of Warcraft. It seems that there are some US soldiers that are actually based in Iraq playing in his guild.
...the Iraqi members of the guild get kidnapped by Al Qaida operatives in Iraq while they play. The gamers can hear what´s happening, one of them speaks Arabic and starts translating to others the kidnapping scene. Everyone at the guild is shocked they stop playing and start a debate. Joichi (i love to turn my friends into movie heroes) decides that the guild has to do something about this and proposes a plan. Guild members will travel to Iraq and find the hostages. The rest of the movie is the rescue. How the guild gets organized to go. Clever tactics blending game and real life. How everyone arrives from the rest of the world to Iraq, how they meet, probably a love story as well, some humor.
Read - World of Warcraft, the Movie (Varsavsky' blog)
Posted at 11:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 15, 2006
G-Wiz It's A Little Green Car
Keith Johnston, Managing Director of GoinGreen, the company behind the G-Wiz electric city car, has been voted one of the UK's top 20 entrepreneurs in the BT sponsored Essence of the Entrepreneur.
GoinGreen Says G-Wiz Doesn't Cost The Earth
G-Wiz buyers can customize their car online. Price is £8000 (approx). Its speed limit is about 42mph.
Read - GoinGreen MD wins BT 'Essence of the Entrpreneur' Award
Posted at 10:59 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 07, 2006
Cambridge Broadband Founder Heads New Chip Startup
Peter Wharton, co-founder of wireless gear maker, Cambridge Broadband, is now heading a team of former Virata/Conexant engineers at startup Adventiq.
Until January Wharton was CEO of venture-backed Cambridge Broadband. Before founding that company in 2000, Wharton was part of the founding team of Adaptive Broadband, which was acquired by California Microwave, adopting the Adaptive Broadband name.
Adventiq is backed by Adder, a European manufacturer of KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches, and RealVNC (Virtual Network Computing), a four year old Cambridge-based developer of software that enables IT and support desks to take control of remote servers, PCs, keyboard, video or mouse signals via the Internet.
The plan is to put RealVNC's enterprise-grade software on a chip and then get those chips embedded into a range of devices to target what the firm says is an $800M market.
The ex-Virata team Wharton is leading has a pedigree too. Virata was a broadband chipmaker that provided its venture-backers with stellar returns when it floated on the NASDAQ at €266M during the last VC cycle here. (It later merged with Globespan which was acquired by Conexant).
Read - Adventiq launches KVM over IP system on a chip(press release)
Posted at 04:35 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 02, 2006
P2P Streaming Goes Live With Octoshape
Danish startup, Octoshape, is a developer of peer-to-peer software that enables live streaming of videos and radio broadcasts. It's been on our radar for a while and we noticed that lately it's been growing its customer reference list.
Last month we mentioned that the Eurovision Song Content used Octoshape's software to broadcast the show live online. But others such as the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships have used it recently, as well as the grand final broadcasts of World eSports Games, an online gaming tournament.
Niche markets to be sure, but the startup claims a 97 percent improvement over the costs of existing streaming methods and the ability to scale up for large audiences, so it has the potential to get bigger.
A media savvy sales team could do a lot with what Octoshape has to offer. Right now pricing plans are based on the size of the customer. Free trials for prospective buyers are available.
Octoshape is venture-backed and was founded in 2003 by two techies: Stephen Alstrup, CEO, and Theis Rauhe, CTO. Investors are Nordic Venture Partners and IVS.
Posted at 10:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Spanish VoiceTrust Rival Starts Up
For a university spinoff, Spain's Agnitio has managed to stir up the interest of not only the Spanish, but also Chilean, Columbian, German, and Korean police and justice departments.
Not because it is up to something sinister, but because the two year old spinoff of Spain's Universidad Politécnica de Madrid develops voice identification and voice verification software.
Intelligence agencies and police forces are signing up to trial and in some cases buy its voice verification software, which they use in the same way that they use fingerprints to confirm the identity of a suspect.
And in another market, Spain's BBVA, one of the country's largest banks, is using a product from Agnitio to authenitcate employees that have to reset their passwords.
The password reset business puts it in direct competition with VoiceTrust, which so far has been pionnering that market niche. The German startup recently raised a €2M round of finance from some well-known German business angels.
Agnition has raised seed financing from a Spanish venture fund, Webcapital, which belongs to finance group, Riva Y Garcia in Barcelona.
The public sector is one market they could exploit with this tech. Longer term we could imagine a mass market if oice identification and verification solutions get adopted by the likes of online banks and enterprise network access managers.
It would be less cumbersome and cheaper than issuing chipcards and electronic password generators to end users. With that in mind, we expect that we'll be hearing more about Agnitio.
Read - Webcapital Toma participacion (Yahoo Finanzas)
Posted at 08:00 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 30, 2006
Startup-job.net Très Web 2.0
Looking to work at a startup? Moovement, a French corporate communications and recruiting consultancy, has launched startup-job.net whose usability is très Web 2.0.
We've been hearing good things about Moovement's ability to reach highly sought after talent via its portfolio of specialized job blogs.
The startup jobs blog is only in French right now, but we checked with the site's co-creator Richard Menneveux and he said the plan is to go international.
Posted at 07:01 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 23, 2006
Ask Us Any Question As Long As You're In The UK
A UK mobilephone service startup says : Ask us Anything...
82ASK gamely offers to answer anything, except something illegal or offensive. Some examples:
Where can I buy a pink silk tie in Leeds?
In its interim results what was mmo2’s half year revenue and profit?
The service, only available in the UK at the moment, replies to users by text mesage. The answer costs £1.
Re5ult is the company behind 82ASK, and was founded by Sarah and Thomas Roberts, two former investment bankers. It is angel and founder backed. Business must be good because the company is hiring and has a few jobs on offer for what it calls "Textperts", people that sort through the questions sent in and answer them in a concise way, only 160 characters to work with, we note.
Posted at 03:57 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 19, 2006
What It Takes To Sell WiFi: Bunnies and Social Routers
We've been watching vpod.tv's coverage of Innovate Europe and this little WiFi guy was the buzz of the show.
It's the heart of a social networking service called Nabaztag, from French startup Violet,
which was founded by this straightalking guy, Rafi Haladjian,
who is also the founder of this Wifi telco,
which competes with this Wifi telco,
which doesn't have a bunny, but does have one of these.
It's Friday and we didn't have the bandwidth to find out what Fon means by "social router" (the WiFi router above), so if any Foneros read this, do tell.
Posted at 11:47 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 18, 2006
Ring2 Will Be Ringing Up VCs For Blackberry Conf Calls
Ring2,which offers audioconferencing services and software to manage calls, is going to be seeking funding this year to support "anticipated growth", according to a report in Computer Business.
The UK startup's software enables the initiation, muting, device switching, invitations, and general management of conference calls from a Blackberry device or a PC. It is integrated into its audioconferencing call service, which charges about 25 cents a minute for conf calls.
Shot from slick animated demo which offers a quick understanding of Blackberry app features
Ring2 was founded in 2003, raised an undisclosed first round of venture capital and seed funding from angel investors. It is London-based with an office in San Francisco.
Can innovation on the front end be enough to attract new customers to the Ring2 audioconferencing service? Is it a big enough market opportunity for VCs? We are not sure, but we'll keep our eye on Ring2.
Read- Ring2 Launch Conference Calling For Blackberry (Computer Business Review)
View - Ring2 Demo
Posted at 03:47 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 17, 2006
Back The Tough Guys
We find John Moulton's take on what makes good CEO material a refreshing change to what the b-schools are telling us. Citing evidence from the States, he says that the types that build large cap tech companies are "tough" and are not necessarily consensus building leader types. Therefore, he concludes "unreasonable and bright people" are the ones that investors should be backing. We've got the quote below.
It's worth remembering that in the US there are about a dozen CEOs running IT companies whose net worth exceed the market caps of Sage, the largest IT company in the UK, they don't get there by mistakes these guys are tough, we don't have them in the UK, we have a lot of guys who are good at running things efficiently but we really don't see as we poke around UK IT CEOs those who are competent at all aspects. We tend to have salesmen or accountants, we have very few from a technical back ground who are able to make the big creative leaps.The good ones are not consensus people, think of the guys who made a bundle in the States such as Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, they're not noted for their warm friendly approach to decision taking, they are people of vigorous opinions, not always right but they force them through, their big drivers, so actually the evidence of the US says, the guys who are fairly unreasonable and pretty bright are the people we should be backing in this industry. There are very few excellent CEOs in the UK, very few. Only a couple of names come up regularly, they are very thin on the ground, we have a lot of competent people but we haven't got very many serious Zars.
Moulton is the managing partner at Alchemy Partners (a private equity firm) and he's written his thoughts on US versus Euro CEO in a newsletter from corporate finance boutique, ICON, which is specialized dealbrokering for tech firms.
Read - John Molton Insights On How to Spot A Failing CEO And Private Equity (ICON 66 April Issue)
Posted at 09:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 13, 2006
It's Party Poker For Women
A British newspaper provides an update on the addition of social network features and the news about plans to expand into the US for King.com, the small-stakes casual gaming company.
The Independent Online published a "Day in The Life" profile of co-founder Toby Rowlands. It requires reading about the entrepreneur's glamourous wife, food choices, and the wealth of the family he was born into, but if we stick with it there are a few nuggets about the business.
(Image right, shows some of the online aliases of the ladies who play for money and online fame.)
Launched at the start of 2004, it hosted 40 million games in January as 84,000 paying customers logged on. In peak hours, 35,000 people play at the same time. The stakes are tiny, averaging 35p, but people don't really play for money, Mr Rowland says.It's the female Party Poker. Poker is all young guys between 18 and 35, what we do is women from 25-plus. They love the mental stimulation and the very small stakes."He adds: "There was nothing of this kind existing in Europe, and we thought the US sites weren't very good. It's a games site, but it's also a place where people talk to each other and make friends. They instant-message each other and have photographs of themselves and their dogs on the site."
The report says that King.com is going to expand its efforts in the US market. The business idea was originally copied from a US concept, but Rowland says they improved on it. They've been successful in the multi-lingual, multi-currency European market, and the next step is the US market. The firm is backed by Apax Partners, which owns a minority stake.
"European markets are the hardest ones to do because of the different languages and currencies, so we thought we'd do them first and then go for the US."
Read - Toby Rowland: The Acceptable Face of Capitalism Hits
Posted at 05:13 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 12, 2006
Famous Founder Looking For Next $M idea
Famous Founder Looking For Next Million Dollar Idea... That's how a handful of European serial entrepreneurs might word a classified ad, if they did things like that.
We've come across several that might be looking for their next fortune-making venture, having built at least two previous startups and walking away with a healthy return on their investments.
Fabrice Grinda (France) The 31 year old (far right, above) founded Zingy, a ringtone, wallpaper download service (similar to Jamba) in 2003. It was recently acquired for $80M. Prior to that he founded Aucland, an eBay clone, which was acquired by QXL Ricardo plc. Likes cloning. Now blogging at FabriceGrinda.com.
Marc Samwer (Germany) Co-founded Jamba, a cellphone ringtone and gaming portal, along with brothers, Oliver and Alexander, then sold it to Verisign for $273M. Prior to that founded Alando and sold it to eBay. Likes cloning.
Beat Heeb and Daniel Diez (Switzerland) The forty-something co- founders of Esmertec an embedded software developer for Javaphones - floated their firm on the SWX last year - leaving at the end of June. Prior to that the two co-founded Oberon Systems, a developer of programming and compilers technology. Smart techies.