March 20, 2008
London's Spinvox Gets Agro With $100M Investment
Goldman Sachs together with GLG Partners, Blue Mountain Capital Management and Toscafund Asset Management have invested $100M in London-based Spinvox, which converts voice mail to email. This third round of funding gives SpinVox a valuation greater than $500M. Spinvox had previously raised $100M.
SpinVox has deals with 12 cell phone carriers led by Canada's Rogers Mobile and Alltel Wireless.
$200M invested in a startup led by a 31 year old is a big bet. But CEO and founder Christina Domecq appears confident. (She is an American-educated member of the Domecq sherry dynasty.) And apparently Spinvox has won in the hundreds of thousands of users who have brought the company close to break-even despite a three hundred person head count.
View - site
Posted at 06:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 06, 2008
Finnish Mobile TV Middleware Startup Raises
Nexit Ventures announced it has invested in Finland-based Axel Technologies, a DVB-H mobile TV middleware vendor that also supplies the mobile client software. The product name is Salmonstream.
Co-investing in this undisclosed-sized round is existing investor Finnish Industry Investment Ltd., a state-backed fund manager.
Pekka Salonoja of Nexit Ventures said in a statement, "The company is already positioned among the top five developers of mobile TV middleware globally, with a track record of successful deployments at top-line customers including AMD and Thomson.".
Posted at 12:01 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Former Skype Team Invests With Intel in FlowPlay
Showing that it can bring in some VC specialists to portfolio firms, Ambient Sound Investments (an investment firm formed by several former Skype engineers) has brought in Intel Capital for a $3.7M Series A round of financing for casual gaming technology company FlowPlay.
The Estonian fund informs us that it co-led the new round after making a seed investment mid-year 2007.
Crunchbase describes FlowPlay, which is based in Seattle, as a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games.
Posted at 08:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed Affiliate Marketing Firm in UK Acquired By AOL
We received the news yesterday that AOL has acquired the VC-backed company behind buy.at, a five year old UK affiliate marketing company. No disclosure on transaction size.
It is the second acquisition that AOL has made in Europe in recent months to bulk up its Advertising.com business. The other was its acquisition of AdTech in Germany
This deal, as paidcontent points out is meant to give some affiliate marketing mojo to advertising.com.
Europe's M&A has seen several affiliate marketing-related M&A deals of greater than €100M this past year or so, as we have reported, with Zanox getting bought for €214M (it was not VC-backed, we note) and Tradedoubler doing some acquiring too. Publicly-traded Tradedoubler was itself the target of a failed multi-hundred million euro bid to acquire by AOL (see second paragraph in this link).
AOL ACQUIRES UK’S BUY.AT AFFILIATE NETWORK FOR ADVERTISING.COM
Leading Provider of Ecommerce Affiliate Solutions Will Expand Advertising.com’s Performance Based Offerings to Advertisers and Publishers
LONDON – Feb 5, 2008 – AOL announced today that it has acquired buy.at, a leading independent affiliate network that provides a platform for performance based e-commerce marketing programs to advertisers and publishers. buy.at will operate as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com, part of AOL’s Platform-A organization.
“This transaction will position Advertising.com to serve merchant and retail advertisers with the industry's most comprehensive set of e-commerce offerings,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Advertising.com. “By leveraging our web advertising network and search engine marketing services and now buy.at’s innovative affiliate network we can provide advertisers a wide array of marketing solutions to drive sales and other transactions. We are looking forward to accelerating the expansion of buy.at’s affiliate network in the United Kingdom, United States and other European countries.”
buy.at, recently named the UK’s 9th fastest growing private technology company in the Sunday Times Tech Track, is an affiliate marketing network in which affiliates (publishers) partner with advertisers (merchants) to enhance sales growth by driving consumers to those companies' websites. Unlike traditional display advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) models, an advertiser only pays when a visitor to its site takes action (such as making a purchase or signing up for a free trial). buy.at has consistently been a leader in technology innovation and development, with recent releases such as its ContentEngine, which allows retailers to promote their products and offers dynamically on affiliate websites. buy.at was also the first network to launch an integrated affiliate solution for users of social networking sites, working with WAYN, the travel-focused social network. And through its buy.at leads division, the company sources high-quality consumer leads for merchants in the financial services industry. The buy.at affiliate network was founded in 2002 and is backed by venture capitalist DFJ Esprit.
“The combination of Advertising.com and buy.at provides a significant opportunity for advertisers to leverage an expanded publisher base with even more tools and services, creating a unique offering in the market,” said Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at. “buy.at has always focused on providing top-class customer service and customized technology to leading retailers and e-commerce businesses and we are looking forward to extending that to Advertising.com’s client base. Planned investment from AOL and Advertising.com will also allow the buy.at affiliate network to continue its growth and to maintain and even accelerate its market-leading offerings of products and services for our existing clients as well.”
“Within this fast-paced environment, only networks that can grow, develop and innovate with their advertisers and publishers will continue to deliver higher levels of incremental revenue opportunities,” said Brendan Condon, Managing Director of Advertising.com International. “Advertisers are increasingly coming to realize that along side display and search engine marketing, affiliate marketing needs to be an important part of their online strategies. We are excited to begin working with buy.at as we continue to increase our network offerings in the UK and throughout Europe.”
The acquisition comes as affiliate marketing in the UK grew by an estimated 45% in 2007. According to research published in E-consultancy’s Affiliate Marketing Networks Buyer’s Guide, total affiliate marketing sales were more than £3 billion compared to £2.16 billion in 2006. This research continues to illustrate the increased acceptance by advertisers to embrace this form of marketing as a way to drive online sales.
With offices in London and Newcastle in the United Kingdom and in New York in the U.S., buy.at employs approximately 70 people and offers affiliate marketing in both the U.S. and UK and counts over 200 leading ecommerce businesses as its clients. Advertising.com also has operations in the U.S. and ten other countries, nine in Europe plus Japan. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
buy.at is the fifth advertising acquisition AOL has made in the past 12 months. Last year, AOL acquired Quigo, a contextual advertising firm; TACODA, a behavioral targeting firm; Third Screen Media, the leading mobile advertising network and software provider; and AdTech AG, the leading international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2006, AOL acquired Lightningcast, a leader in delivering advertising solutions for on-demand, live and downloaded video content across the Web. AOL acquired Advertising.com, which operates the largest third-party display network, in 2004.
About AOL
AOL® is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.
About Advertising.com
Advertising.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL LLC, is a global online advertising services company. The company offers a fully integrated suite of online advertising solutions, including display advertising, search engine marketing, managed affiliate placements and video advertising. These solutions are powered by Advertising.com’s award-winning optimization technology and industry-leading third-party display advertising network, which reaches more unique visitors each month than any other online property.
About buy.at
buy.at, backed by DFJ Esprit and founded in 2002, is leading the next generation of affiliate marketing and drives significant online sales for over 200 leading ecommerce brands. With a specialized affiliate network focus, buy.at is committed to producing campaigns that add value to their client's current marketing strategy and drive maximum online results. Each client benefits from a customized package of industry leading commercial and technical innovations, supported by a pro-active account management team of marketing and technical experts. Having pioneered the idea of an 'open network', buy.at ensures that its clients build strong relationships with leading affiliates, managing their brand more effectively and driving market-leading sales volumes. buy.at is the trading name for Perfiliate Limited and Perfiliate Technologies Limited.
Posted at 06:02 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 05, 2008
VC-backed Lovefilm Gets Amazon as Investor and Wins Its UK/German Biz
Lovefilm, an online DVD rental service provider, is taking over Amazon Europe’s DVD business in the UK and Germany in a deal that could increase the UK's company's subscriber base to 900K.
The transaction subject to regulatory approval, will also make Amazon its largest shareholder, according to CEO Simon Calver in an interview with alarm:clock euro. "It has a minority stake, but it is the largest shareholder now," he said.
Lovefilm has several other shareholders as a result of its merger with Video Island in 2006 (a 50:50 merger), namely Arts Alliance Media, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit.
This is the latest example of consolidation in this relatively young category of DVD rental and video downloads, what with Glowria, which did several acquistions itself, getting folded into Netgem (our report here).
On that topic Calver said: "Starting up a DVD rental business is easy, but getting the customer experience right is not as easy."
He said that some £20M has been raised by the firm, which has been invested in branding, marketing, and some small acquisitions, as well as in infrastructure (e.g. CRM software). Lovefilm's platform some features like a recommendation engine. Paidcontent describes some of the other services in an analysis of the deal.
Calver did not disclose sales figures. But it was reported last year in Times Online that the firm did £26M in 2005, a figure that has seen some quick growth and was recognized last year.
Posted at 09:48 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Venere.com Acquires Italian Online Travel Biz
Advent International, a private equity firm, sent us the news that its portfolio company Venere.com, a 13 year old online hotel bookings provider, has acquired Italy's Worldby.com. No disclsoure on terms or size of the transaction.
Venere.com does 20 percent of its business in Italy and has operations in Paris and London. It could be that further acquisitions are in store covering other European countries, as Advent says it likes the "buy and build" strategy.
View Venere.com
Posted at 06:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 04, 2008
Norwegian Fund Invests in US-based Efficient Motor Team
Norway's Energy Ventures has led a $12M B round in Cerritos, California based Direct Drive Systems Inc, a two year old venture that manufactures high speed permanent magnet motors and generators of the multi-megawatts size. The units have no need for a gearbox, said the firm's backers in a statement, and are smaller, lighter and less maintenance intensive than conventional machinery.
We're reporting it because Energy Ventures is European and one of the handful of VC funds here that has experience in backing growth ventures that sell into the oil and gas industry, which is not exactly the easiest market for startups to break into.
A recent success story is MTEM, one of the top 10 vc-backed trade sales last year. It just raised a new $234M fund on the back of several good exits from previous funds. Energy Ventures has offices in Aberdeen, Stavanger and Houston. The firm is currently recruiting VC professionals.
Read - Energy Ventures announcement pdf
Posted at 11:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Germany's Odersun Raises $90M for Factory
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures (DHTV) sent us the news this morning that portfolio company Odersun, a thin film solar cell venture, has raised some €61M (about $90M) in finance, including grants, to build its second factory.
A €40M Series B round, is included in that total.
(Image Credit: Odersun)
We checked in with DHTV and it confirmed that Odersun has "proven that it can manufacture in volume" these new thin-film solar cells and modules. The firm's first manufacturing factory is up-and-running and shipping product.
This new equity round was led by Virgin Green Fund (US/UK) with participation from PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (US) and AGF Private Equity (part of Allianz Group) in addition to existing investors DHTV and Advanced Technology & Materials (China).
Caption: Panels are flexible, which means its tech can be used as solar rechargers built- into shoulder bags, but also panels that can be integrated into building facades, and windows.
Odersun says it is using a “reel-to-reel” manufacturing process, which is proprietary to the firm. Its cells are based on Copper-Indium-diSulphide materials (as opposed to silicon which is more common) and their "efficiency is comparable to other thin-film technologies", said DHTV's spokesman.
Greentech Media has a photo of its flexible copper-substrate panel if you are curious.
View Odersun
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February 01, 2008
Collanos Collaboration Company Raising Series A Round
Collanos, a Swiss/US startup that runs a workplace collaboration platform, sent us the news that it is raising a €3M Series A round, beginning with an investment by Zürcher Kantonalbank.
The company was founded in late 2003 and has raised between $2M and $3M to date, the firm's CEO Peter Helfenstein told the alarm:clock euro.
Collanos Workplace is currently preparing for the release of version 1.3. "It will have a new replication algorithm making team synchronization much more efficient and changes much more available to other team members," he explained.
It is the foundation for upcoming premium services, such as Collanos Permanent Peers (available end of Q2) via Collanos' partners like Translumina Networks, and Collanos Phone premium to launch at end of Q1.
Helfenstein said a roster of 15 people are working for Collanos, some part time or subcontracted, in Switzerland (Zurich), in the U.S. (San Francisco, Provo/Utah, Ukraine (Kharkov) and India (Hyderabad).
Since the launch of version 1.1 Collanos in mid-May 2007, about 10’000 users are registered.
Posted at 09:37 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 31, 2008
Clear2Pay's Backers Put in €10M More
Tornado Insider is the source for the news that Clear2Pay, an international provider of next generation payment technolgy and solutions, has raised a €10M internal round, led by Iris Capital and an investor since November 2006.
Clear2Pay has been an acquisitive startup since it started up in 2001, and as a result has operations in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, China, Malaysia and Singapore. China is next and that was the reason given for the new financing round.
It currently employs 340 staff.
Posted at 11:07 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Shozu Raises C Round, Brings in New Investors
Tornado Insider has the news that ShoZu, a UK mobile social media company that has its own client software, raised €8.1M in Series C deal. It was led by new investor SEB Venture Capital, a UK-based venture capital arm of Swedish financial services firm Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. Existing backers Atlas Venture, Crescendo Ventures and TTP Ventures also participated.
According to the Tornado report ShoZu's client will ship pre-installed on more than 50 million mobile phones in 2008 and 100,000 users are registering every month.
Posted at 11:00 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Virtensys Backers Invest Another $12M
Another internal round to report this week as Virtensys raises $12M. VirtenSys, which has a virtualization solution for data centers, said it has raised $12M in an internal Series B round. It is backed by Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), Celtic House Venture Partners (CHVP), and GIMV.
The pre-revenue company, which recenlty brought in a new CEO and opened a US headquarters, said in the funding announcement the capital will be used to launch the first products and grow operations at home and abroad.
Before Virtensys on the left, and After on the right
View Virtensys
Posted at 10:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 30, 2008
Scottish Startup Makes 10X Smaller PDFs
Ten X claims catch our attention, which is the reason we did not pass on a PR from Crisp Documents, a Glasgow-based startup that sent us the news that it won an industry award (industry awards don't normally get coverage here).
Instead we dug up a couple of reports on the company in the local newspaper, The Herald to learn more about the business and its patented encoding software that it says reduces dramatically the size of a PDF and other file types.
Even with broadband, we know that PDF docs are still a pain.
It seems the company had a profitable first year, generating £800K in sales using its vPDF software (see examples in the images we snagged from one of its website) to underpin a new document archiving and management service.
Its latest contract win is with the US DoD in December. It looks like for organizations that run heavy on the documentation side, better file compression is much wanted.
The founders, Greg Stobie and Lorne Campbell, liquidated their pensions and re-mortgaged their homes to start the business, turned down an offer from Microsoft early on, and are intent to run the 15-person strong business at speed with an eye on the US market.
View Crisp
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Why Too Early Mobile Social Startups Are Heading To The US
Europe has a reputation for being ahead of the US when it comes to mobile services but for mobile social networking ventures that have had some early success in Europe, the US is the place to be. Why? Because mobile network operators there are reportedly rolling out flat rate data plans faster than elsewhere, which startups hope will enable some quick growth.
Maybe mobile social networking is compatible with making money-- if you have a good few years to work at it, are able get brands like MTV to sign marketing deals, and are able to balance working with cellcos, while building up something off-deck, at least that how it sounds for Australian startup FunkySexyCool and Germany's GoFresh.
GoFresh is a white label mobile service provider that also runs its own wap site called itsmy.com. Five years old, self-funded, it employs 15 people full time. The company generates revenues by selling advertising on its own site, and collecting fees from the mobile network operators that use its platform.
It has also developed new software to better manage the ads and advertising sales aspect of the business.
We recently talked to Mikko Saarelainen who co-founded the company along with his brother and two other ex-Iobox employees. Right now what he's concerned with expanding penetration of the US market. He said that operators there have more wholeheartedly rolled out flat rate data models - key to growing the itsmy branded site.
The US market is also the current target for FunkySexyCool, another similarly-oriented venture, that has made some headway getting on-deck with operators in Germany and its home market Downunder. This one we read about in profile in the Australian edition of The Age. .
It has been in business for more than four years but "drawing traffic and building the brand" is still its focus. Although it is generating some revenues, the article says its raising capital for a push into the US after it put the foundation in place for greater volumes of users. Its founder said he's looking for growth there but also sees the US as providing the exit opportunity.
View GoFresh
View Funky Sexy Cool
Posted at 05:04 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 29, 2008
Cachelogic Investors Put Up $25M More and Other Fresh Euro Deals
7Digital, not to be confused with We7, has raised a £4.5M (about €6 M) reports techcrunch.
Cachelogic, which has been sniffing packets and moving content for five years now, has raised a $25M (about€17M) internal round reports paidcontent
Intershop co-founder and Demandware founder, Stephan Schambach has invested along with other business angels in emigo a vendor of easy to set up online shop packages, according to a report in Handelsblatt. emigo will compete we assume with Zlio and commercetools to name two recently funded rival types.
Posted at 01:03 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 28, 2008
Nokians and Trolls in €105M Deal and Other Fresh Euro Deals
Nokians and Trolls in €105 Deal Nokia has an announced an offer to buy publicly traded Trolltech for about €105M. The transaction has been widely reported. We found the press release fairly cryptic. So we turned to Bal Balaji, whose software company DeviceDriven develops products for the mobilephone industry, for some commentary on what impact the deal might have on the mobile OS competitive environment.
Balaji writes: " Nokia already has a significant investment in Linux. So I see this as a defensive measure as opposed to a vote of confidence for Linux as an OS for mobile phones. Is Nokia trying to protect itself against Android?"
With that comment in mind, if Nokia starts acquiring other Linux proponents like PurpleLabs (recently financed by Euro VC) or it buys A La Mobile, or one of the other Linux for mobile device vendors, then the strategy might become clearer.
Zubka's looking for another round of capital. And is talking up the riches to be made with online job referral applications.
Read - Exec Digital UK Site : News : Zubka unique recruitment - Web 2.0 referral recruitment - recommendation
Microbial Solutions raised £1.2M for waste water treatment. We're all for new technologies being applied to issues like what to do with polluted and dirty water, but this one had us feeling a bit queasy. It is about using toxic-and-metal-hungry bacteria and flushing the resulting so-called grey water back into the sewage system.
"Microbial Solutions uses a simple bioreactor ... containing a meshed plastic grid on which a variety of non-pathogenic bacteria are cultivated - each bacterial species feeds off different components of the metal working fluids, together ‘eating’ the polluting and toxic elements. The resulting grey water is disposed of to sewer, removing the need to transport to landfill, and the next batch of metal working fluid is added to repeat the process.
The technology has been successfully trialed with a leading car manufacturer, the firm said in a statement.
Read Tornado Insider - Microbial Solutions Ltd
Posted at 03:09 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Europe's Techies Want Into Our Ears
Swiss R&D Center, CSEM is showing a prototype of a heart rate monitor fitted into a earclip-type headphone called Pulsear. The PR says it is a Walkman brand integration. No bulky chest strap required. It is called the Pulsear and we assume it is available for licensing.
Meanwhile German designers have come up with ear drop in devices that play one song, one time. It is called Music Drop from Design Reactor. We're assuming this is more of a concept for design discussion as opposed to a licensing-ready solution.
Posted at 01:58 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 25, 2008
Startup Takes Pain Out of Coding for 700 Cellphone Types
Altaide blog has the news that Mobile Distillery, a startup from the Southern French city of Marseille, has raised €2M from Innoveris and Viveris Management. The two-year old company's software tools and directories make it easier to port mobile applications, mobile marketing campaigns, and mobile content for the myriad of handsets out there including Javaphone types, BREW phones, and the Android platform.
View Mobile Distillery
Posted at 05:15 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Angels Back German Woot Clone
Preisbock an ecommerce startup emerging from the Intershop crew in Jena said in a statement today it has raised an undisclosed amount of financing from ARGIV GmbH (an investment vehicle of one of Intershop's founders) and TowerVenture eG (a seed stage investment club established in July 2007).
If you know Woot, then you know what Preisbock is about: price specials on a different product each day that last as long as they're in stock. The startup launched last summer and claims 10K visitors a day.
Read Intershop Founders' New Ventures (alarm:clock euro)
View Preisbock
Posted at 02:40 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 24, 2008
Pacemaker for Nordic VCs
It is changed days in Europe if a consumer-oriented gadgetmaker can attract venture capital money. That was our first thought when Via Venture sent us the news that it had invested in Tonium, whose first product is a pocket-sized digital music mixer, called Pacemaker, targeted at DJs and wannabe DJs. It had positive reviews on several of the top gadget blogs but it is not shipping yet. Its website suggests it's taking orders first.
The Swedish company raised 23 SEK, about €2.4M from Nordic region VC funds, including new investor Via Venture Partners along with existing investors Industrifonden and Arvid Svensson and Ekstranda Media.
View Tonium
Posted at 10:39 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 23, 2008
Deals in the News: MoMail, Dibcom, Cember.Net, TheCloud, Alfresco, and ipaccess
News from the venture market sees Xing buying Turkish socnet Cember.net, TheCloud making a German acquisition, while Cisco adds to the syndicate of investors backing ip.access in the UK. Elsewhere, Alfresco raised capital, a Swedish mobile email startup tapped investors for a nice sized first round, and a new board member for Dibcom suggests an IPO is in the works.
XING AG acquires cember.net, Turkey’s leading online business Network. About the acquisition, Xing's CEO Lars Hinrichs said: We view Turkey as being one of Europe’s fastest growing national economies. As well as proving a profitable company, cember.net has the key advantage of already being an established brand within Turkey. "
Read - XING Corporate Information
The Cloud Make German Buy To add 5,000 Hotels Networks VC-baced wireless network provider TheCloud has acquired GlobalAirNet AG (Ganag), for an undisclosed amount. Ganag, based in Munich Germany, claims 5,000 Wi-Fi access points located in over 300 hotels. The UK-based company now has a footprint that covers Germany, Sweden,Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands.
In a statement TheCloud's CEO predicted that the mobile network operators will "continue to wrestle with poor performing data networks over the coming 12 to 18 months" to his firm's benefit.
Read - THE CLOUD ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ACQUISITION IN GERMANY
Alfresco, an open source content management system provider, has raised $9M in a series C round led by SAP Ventures. Early investors Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund also participated. ZDNET queries SAP's involvement in the round, but it also had a stake in recently acquired MySQL, so it is not the first time.
Read - Alfresco Secures
Momail Taps Angels and Institutional Investors for First Round. Momail a mobile email platform provider has raised a first round of funding of SEK 35 million ($5.4M), reports PEHub. Investors include the Swedish 6th Pension Fund and Bonnier Invest, as well as individual investors from Sweden, England, Russia and South Africa.
Read -Private Equity HUB - Momail Raises First Round
Former CSR Exec on Dibcom Board: Seen as Pre-IPO MoveEETimes is reporting that mobile TV chip startup DiBcom, based in Palaiseau, France, has brought on board Glenn Collinson , a co-founder and former exec at Bluetooth chip group CSR to its board, and suggests that move "another indication of DiBcom's plans to go for an IPO or stock market flotation soon".
Read - EETIMES Collinson
Cisco Backs UK-based Small-sized Basestation Firm. Also from EE Times comes the news that Cisco has taken a stake for an undisclosed amount in femtocell startup ip.access (Cambridge, England).
Read - Cisco invests in femtocell pioneer ip.access
Posted at 07:52 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Global Mobile Roaming Startup Bags Big Round
We received the news today that United Mobile, a low-cost roaming mobile operator that markets its own SIM cards, has closed a $15M round of equity financing in a deal led by Accel Partners and Grazia Equity. The business angels involved in the financing are names regular readers will recognize: Morten Lund, Thomas Geitner, former global CTO of Vodafone, and Robert Zacconi, CEO of King.com.
We wrote about the first part of this fundraising last year in a post about the Lime Green sofa trend.
Posted at 11:07 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 22, 2008
Index Ventures Gets Growth Money
Index Ventures sent us the news that it has added a new €400M fund that can invest in so-called growth, or expansion phase, ventures. It has a dual focus, life science and tech, with plans to invest in 15 companies.
The fund is targetting entrepreneurs whose businesses are already generating quick growing sales and who want to grow the business more before doing an IPO or a trade sale.
Investment activity is directed by Index co-founder Giuseppe Zocco (left) and Dominique Vidal (right), previously CEO of Yahoo! Europe and co-founder of Kelkoo. He was with Paris-based Banexi before that. (Image source: Index Ventures)
Going straight from self-funding to a pre-IPO round, or a pre-trade sale round, has become more common in Europe in recent years. We can think of several examples in the French market particularly.
AGF Private Equity, acquired a minority stake in French dating site Meetic.com (IPO) and was able to get a relatively rapid return when the firm floated a year or so later, while 3i did well with Seloger.com (IPO), also in France.
US venture funds like Summit Partners have for several years been active in the growth sector in Europe. For example, it acquired a majority stake in the Samwer brothers Jamba venture back in 2003 for $40M and then did a dual track IPO/M&A strategy which led to the company being acquired in 2004 by Verisign for $273M.
It recently acquired a stake Vente Privée, the fast growing French private sale company.
Other VC firms that say they are active in the later stage European tech venture market and that have raised new funds since the post-bubble-downturn include Invision, Kennet and Iris Capital.
The fact that Index has now also entered this stage in addition to its early stage foucs, and was able to raise the fund quickly, suggests that limited partner types see plenty of opportunity in Europe these days.
Zocco said as much in a statement: “There is now a critical mass of companies that have the potential to be market leaders and make a global impact. With the growth fund, we have the ability to find and support these companies, helping them get to the next level.”
See also Index Ventures fund eyes maturing European tech | Special Coverage | Reuters
Index Sets Sights l Financial Times
Posted at 08:09 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
VC Money Piles Into UK Web Ventures: W7 and TouchLocal
The European market might have seen a dip in Web investments in 4Q07 as TechCrunch writes, but this quarter is looking like that might change. After reporting a flurry of deal announcements last week, we've got two more to report today.
=> We7, a UK-based music download service driven by advertising sales, has raised a $6M Series ‘A’ round led by musician turned investor Peter Gabriel and Spark Ventures. Also joining was early stage British VC firm Eden Ventures.
The founders of We7 are John Taysom, chairman, and CEO Steve Purdham. This is not Purdham's first venture. He was also the founder of SurfControl, a publicly-traded firm that was acquired by Websense last year for about £204M (about $400M at the time).
After one year of trading We7 reports it has 90,000 registered download users and delivery of over one million free to download, ad-supported music files from its growing music catalogue of 80,000 tracks.
The companyappears to have some interesting advertising technology to support it, with some finely tuned demographic targetting. So far, it has run advertising trials with Microsoft, for Xbox 360, and campaigns for Sony Ericsson, Café Direct and Sicko, the Michael Moore film.
Joining the board is Eden Ventures, Charles Grimsdale, who co-founded music distribution service OD2 (along with Gabriel), in Nokia's hands since 2006, and is a co-founder of Eden Ventures.
=> Another UK firm, TouchLocal has raised £7M (about €9.4M or $13.6M) from Balderton. It is going for a local search service, one that combines a yellowpages kind of business model (charging local business for positioning in its pages) with a community of recommending/reviewing users.
The company was founded back in 1999 and recently went through a Web 2.0 makeover. The Guardian has a good analysis of its position in the market and TechCrunch UK lists several rivals in an article entitled Qype launches in France, as local reviews space hots up, mentioning Qype, Welovelocal, Tipped, and Trustedplaces.
Posted at 07:57 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 21, 2008
Telco Magnate Invests in NanoIdent
Austrian printed sensor startup Nanoident has raised new capital of an undisclosed amount from Istanbul-based MV Holding, an investment vehicle that was founded by Murat Vargi, a Forbes 2007 billionaire, and one of the founding shareholders of one of Europe's largest GSM operators.
We recently profiled Nanoident for more details about the company.
The new capital is to be used to develop and grow the business. Nanoident has built one of the first commercial fabs for printing semiconductor devices worldwide.
Vardi said in a statement: “MV Holding has always invested carefully and selectively. After an extensive review process, we are confident that NANOIDENT will provide a strong and sustainable ROI (return on investment), and look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with this innovative company.”
Posted at 05:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
European Angel Money Finds gBox
St. Gallen, Switzerland-based b-to-v sent us the news today that its investor circle is backing an early investment in Cupertino-based gBox, a digital music shopping enabler. The startup developed a widget that can be placed on blogs, personal websites, and socnet homepages (it lists myspace, friendster, and facebook on its website) to show your personal MP3 file wishlist.
The same widget enables members to buy music tracks listed on the wishlists for friends and family as gifts. (See TechCrunch review of gBox for more).
The plan is to add other types of gifts to the catalogue and to make some inroads into the European market, according to the announcement. It also said that it provides a revenue source for social media companies, so it must be able to support revenue sharing.
We don't normally cover US VC deals on this page but the news that gBox has a Euro connection throught its founders and now its investors. gBox is a spinoff of ecommerce service provider Navio, a Calif. based started led by former Brokat co-founder Stefan Roever.
The Brokat connection is what we assume enabled gBox to tap b-to-v for seed financing.
The deal was led by b-to-v member Michael Jansen, a co-founder of Brokat AG. He was CFO from 1994 until 2001, responsible for the arrangement of several venture capital transactions and the firms stellar IPOs (Neuer Markt and NASDAQ) and at one point it had a $6B mkt cap and $250M in sales, according to Roeever.
The company failed to weather the downturn and Jansen led the restructuring in 2001. On his b-to-v profile it says: "He restructured the company from 1,400 people to zero, by selling basically all assets to domestic and international investors." (See Members – About b-to-v )
Posted at 10:19 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 18, 2008
WAYN Backers Invest in German Travel Community and Other Fresh Deals
austriamicrosystems, a SWX traded semiconductor firm, and New Scale Technologies, of Vector, NY annouced the completion of a Series B round with the European chipcom making a $6M investment in exchange for a 25% minority share in the company. New Scale makes very tiny piezo motors (shown above) for cameraphone autofocus, electronic locks, and other applications.
Read - austriamicrosystems AG - Financial News
Deutsche Startups has the news that AdScale, a Germany-centric online ads service provider (based on auction-model) has raised new capital from early investors Holtzbrinck and European Founders Fund. It also recruited to the management team Matthias Pantke who drove TradeDoubler's business in the DACH region. Industry insider Oliver Thylmann recently reviewed AdScale and OpenAds (funding announcement earlier this week). Worth reading to learn more.
Read - OpenAds Getting
Tornado Insider is reporting a rare space-related VC funding deal. A Dutch/German real-time game engine company, iOpener, has raised capital from German venture capitalist Triangle. It looks like the startup aims to embed satellite nav system chips in racing cars and use its software to enable regular folks to join games and compare themselves with the professionals and "when an actual live event is going on" .
Read - ESA spin-off scores €4.1 million for real-world, yet virtual, gaming
Howzat Media, an investment vehicle of two British Internet entrepreneurs, who also invested in WAYN, an online travel community, has made its first investment in Germany, backing trivago, a two year old travel community that has reviews of holidays, accomodation, and destinations. Deutsche Startups has a report with details on other investors. And TechCrunch UK has some reporting on rumors about WAYN being acquired.
Read : HOWZAT media
Computer Business Review reports that Audiotube, an online music video portal, has acquired video encoding and playback products and technologies from CineFX, a UK-based software development company.
Posted at 12:34 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 17, 2008
SponsoredPost: Plugg Wants Your Pitches
The alarm:clock euro is a media sponsor of the upcoming Plugg conference. The March 19th conference in Brussels promises to be a chance for you to get up to speed on Web 2.0 in Europe.
Our first announcement in the run up to the one-day event is that the registration for European start-ups is open. Companies can now submit their profile sheet online to qualify for a chance to pitch at the conference.
Entries will be judged by a number of industry professionals and 20 of them will eventually get to pitch at the Plugg conference.
Deadline for registration is Friday the 8th of February.
Posted at 03:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Sun's Acquisition of MySQL - What The VCs Said
Yesterday Sun announced that it was acquiring open source database company at a valuation of $1B (€680M) in a deal that is expected to close later this year. In the meantime, one of its investors (see the full list here) Balderton Capital, formerly Benchmark Capital Europe, issued a statement, congratualting the firm, saying that it held about 15% of MySQL.
We checked in with Index Ventures this morning to see if it had a statement too. Danny Rimer - who counts MySQL as the first investment he did as a partner at Index - responded to our email writing that "it’s been exciting for us to watch the company grow as the leader in the open source industry. Now, with the ability to leverage SUN’s global distribution and enterprise support, we look forward to seeing MySQL technology spread even further around the world.”
He pointed out that Index invested in the $19.5 million Series B round in June 2003. Other Open Source companies that Index invested in over the years include: Trolltech, Zend, OPenads and Pentaho.
A comment he made on the European market is worth noting.
"Index believes we’re entering a really interesting time where the power of the European and global markets will now be felt. The startups of 5 to 10 years ago are entering strong growth phases," said Rimer.
Our only comment on the deal from the a:c euro's outsider point of view is that with currency rates the way the are these days, a billion dollar exit is not as sexy as a billion euro exit.
Posted at 02:43 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Wellington Raises New and Oversubscribed Tech Fund
Wellington Partners has raised a new technology fund of € 265M, which is €15M over target. Its last one was raised just as this new cycle was getting off to a slow start back in 2004.
In the meantime, the firm which invests across Europe, has had several portfolio firms acquired such as ImmobilienScout24 by Deutsche Telekom, while SAF and Xing.com made the IPO move.
Existing investors, LPs, came back for this one, which indicates that the venture firm is making money. The fact that it also brought in new LPs, such as GIC Special Investments, Pantheon Ventures and Skandia Liv Asset Management, suggests that the outlook is positive for the coming few years too.
Wellington Partners will open an office in London with Eric Archambeau (left) and Frank Böhnke (right), managing it.
Eric Archambeau said in a statement that the "new office in London will help us become even more accessible to entrepreneurs across Europe.”
Posted at 02:10 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Bessemer Invests in Russia and other Fresh Euro Deals
Q-blog is reporting that Enforta, a WIMAX broadband telecom operator active in Russia, raised $40M in a C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, along with earlier investors Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP), Sumitomo Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Kinkaa.de, an AJAX travel search site, has raised a seed investment from High Tech Gründerfonds, which sent us a note on the deal. The almost two year old site is available in a couple of languages already.
Sunmachine, a Munich-based startup that develops mini-heating and power generators to homeowners, is currently raising about €12M to ramp up production this year. It has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft as part of the round.
Sunmachine has patents on a generator that burns either gas or wood pellets and is based on a Sterling Motor, which produces heat and electricity for buildings of 280 m² or less. According to the website, a solar powered unit is in the works too.
The investor said in a statement that some 60 companies have signed up for distribution licenses in Germany and Europe. Delivery of 5,000 units are planned this year.
Posted at 01:55 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
FillFactory Alumni's Startup Goes Large
Cmosis, a semiconductor startup out of Belgium, has a seasoned team and some key patents for making very large imaging chips with large-sized pixels. It is freshly founded and has raised seed capital.
EE Times reported this week that Cmosis NV has raised €1.2M from Capital-E and the founders to fund its operations as it builds up a business developing image sensor products.
The founders are ex-FillFactory people, namely Guy Meynants, Jan Bogaerts, Tim Baeyens, Gerald Lepage and Lou Hermans.
We checked in with Guy Meynants (CEO) because we wrote about FillFactory several times in the past for other publications. Plus, it's memorable because it was one of the first venture-backed exits after the post bubble downturn chilled dealmaking in Europe for several years. The IMEC spinoff was acquired by Cypress Semiconductor for $100M in cash in June 2004.
As an aside to this discussion, another FillFactory alumni, Luc De May, its former CEO, is now with AsicAhead, a venture backed WIMAX chip startup, also based in Belgium.
Meynants said that Cmosis offers image sensor design services, as well as handling the manufacturing of chips for its customers who are mainly in Europe and Japan; typically companies creating new medical imaging (such as X-ray machines) and industrial vision products.
It is a different market than the one that Cypress is addressing with the CMOS image sensors tech that it acquired in the FillFactory deal, but an interesting one.
"X-ray machines use typically very large chips with large pixels," said Meynants. As such, they are hard to manufacture, but this startup has patents on processes that improves the yield and reduces the crosstalk between pixels.
View CMOSIS
Posted at 12:50 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 16, 2008
Euro VCs Report Flurry of Online Deals Today
Index Ventures and Atlas notified us with news of a few new online service and ad-related investments.
Atlas Ventures, as well as several UK business angels, are backing the founders of a new real estate portal for the UK market called Zoopla. Fred Destin, a general partner at Atlas Ventures, has a post in his blog on the startup with info about the founders and the service it provides. He also provides some rationale for the investment, saying that thhere is competition but Zoopla claims better tech, such as its algorithm for analysing data relating to home prices, economic trends and property characteristics in given geographic areas. Estimates are refined by the firm's staff, according to a statement it issued this week.
The venture has raised over £1.5M to date and has plans to raise additional capital as the business develops, it said in a statement.
Over in France, Criteo, which develops a web-based recommendation engine, has raised €7M in Series B round led by new investor Index Ventures, joined by earlier local investment firms. The press release says that Criteo's real-time personalized recommendations targeted at consumers is attracting more than 50M unique visitors from more than 4,000 ecommerce sites over the past year.
And in London (corrected: not the US as stated earlier), OpenAds, raised a €15M Series B round, led by Accel Partners. Earlier investors in the Series A round (which was led by Index Ventures) also participated, including Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital, First Round Capital, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. OpenAds is an open source ad server software firm which it says is used by 20,000 publishers across 140 countries in 20 languages. The new capital is to be used for a hosted version of the product, according to the press release.
Posted at 11:36 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 15, 2008
Newly Funded Hello2morrow Keeps Java Coders on Track
mic AG, a listed German investment company specialized in early stage tech ventures, has taken a 25 percent stake in Hello2morrow, a software development toolmaker whose flagship product helps to avoid "structural erosion" on medium and large scale Java projects.
It has a long list of reference customers, some of which have now become reseller partners, which is a good sign. It has also been used in several open source distributions.
Two of the founders of this three year old venture, also founded ootec, which was acquired by the French Valtech group in 2000 and counts the likes of Siemens, BMW, and Thyssen-Krupp-Stahl as customers.
View Hello2morrow
Posted at 10:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
German Angels On Drugs 2.0
Two well-known German web business angels, Lukasz Gadowski (who founded spreadshirt) and Oliver Jung (an entrepreneur turned full time investor - he was an early backer of Xing and StudiVZ) have invested an undisclosed amount in apomio.de, a price comparison portal for medication and prescription drugs.
A quick look at the site shows that its got some Web 2.0 features like one-click price comparisons (to find the cheapest offer on a featured product), a search-cloud for quick links to popular medications (aspirin and other names for the over the counter pain medication seems to be popular), and a widget for calculating your BMI.
The new capital is meant to finance "community features".
In a statement, the new investors cited changes in the German regulatory environment as paving the way for more online drugstores. It did not mention, but we will, the fact that it is a proven market too. A pioneer in the field, DocMorris, was acquired last year by Celesio and is doing about €200M in annual sales these days.
Gadowski said in a statement that apomio is active in the "most dynamic and fastest growing market" out there.
Posted at 09:56 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 14, 2008
Monday Euro Deal Roundup
Renewable Energy World reports that Scottish and Southern Energy is to acquire Irish wind power company Airtricity for a total cash consideration of €1,826.5 million.
Dibcom, the French mobile TV chip startup, has raised some more capital from two Japanese investors. Clipperton Finance advised the startup on the deal.
Bucharest-based security software startup BitDefender gained new financial impetus in December with a €7M round from a syndicate that included Rumanian American Enterprise Fund (RAEF) and the Balkan Accession Fund (BAF) .
Fidelity Ventures announced that it led a $26M round of financing for MFG.com a global online marketplace for the manufacturing industry. Co-investing was the European Founders Fund (EFF). Last year MFG.com acquired sourcingparts.com, a Swiss dotcom survivor and rival.
Posted at 01:19 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
CrowdSpirit Seeking Capital For New Gadget Design Platform
French newspaper L'Express in a profile of CrowdSpirit, an ambitious web project out of Grenoble that aims to promote and launch new consumer electronics gadgets created by its community, is the news that the startup is looking to raise capital (See Fiche d’identité at end of article).
Gizmodo calls CrowdSpirit's crowdsourcing platform "gadgets-by-committe" in a review of one of the first products to win over members of the community.
The platform, which is still in beta, was co-founded by Lionel David (interviewed here in English) who draws parallels between what he wants to do and what platforms like Cambrian House and Sellaband (in Germany) are doing.
We're thinking that software and digital music have quite different supply chains and production cycles compared to consumer electronics manufacturing. It could be a long wait before contributors see some revenue-shares, at least from what this reporter learned about how long it takes to go from functional spec to selling products while working at jobs in the electronics industry.
But then again, maybe they've figured out how to shorten that process too. We don't know all the details of the venture's business model.
Posted at 01:14 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 11, 2008
Nao That's News: French Robot Firm Funded
First it was Nabaztag, now from France comes Nao. Move over Spyke which also interestingly has a French connection.
Alderbaran Robotics, a company developing small-sized humanoid robots, has raised €5M from CDC and iSource, two local venture capital firms, reports Neteco.
Its first product is Nao, a shapely WiFi robot, that the founders hope will impress at the next Robocup shootout. It is based on a Linux platform and scripted with Urbi, the programming language from another French startup we wrote about a while ago. Labs will get the first units off the production line, but the company plans to sell to the public by end of the year.
Posted at 04:22 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Peratech Acquires Eleksen Assets
(Image Source: Bagir)
Remember Eleksen? We wrote about its technology being used in foldable keyboards and ski-jackets with integrated iPod controls. The suit from Bagir above also exploited the tech.
Eleksen's assets have been acquired from insolvency administrators, reports EE Times . New owner is Peratech, also based in the UK.
Eleksen failed to get the financing it required subsequent to a reverse merger on AIM. While one of its pre-IPO backers made some money on the listing (see bottom of front page in this pdf) the company did not raise enough, apparently.
Peratech said that Eleksen's fabric keyboards are in production. It also recently signed a MoU with Keybo Technology license the tech.
Posted at 08:16 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
French Social Shopping News
Neteco is reporting that Vozavi.com has raised €750K for its social shopping platform. It is a rival to 3i-backed Twenga, which raised €2.4M in December.
Some numbers on its performance since launch in November 2006, are provided by Neteco, which the tech pub suggests are too bad considering the amount of competition it has, namely Ciao, Looneo, Twenga, Wikio Shopping and AcheterFacile.
Read Avis d'internautes : Vozavi.com lève 750 000 euros
Posted at 07:49 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
PoLight Looking For More Investors for Cameraphone Lenses
Norwegian optics component developer PoLight ASA, (fka Ignis Display AS) has brought in a SINTEF VC fund to its equity in a €500K deal. SINTEF now owns about 22 percent of the company.
The startup, which has 7-year history under the Ignis Display business, is developing autofocus lens components that can be used in cameraphones and other optical imaging systems.
A regulatory filing from Ignis suggests that PoLight is currently looking for further financial and strategic investors to go to the next level.
View - Ignis news
Posted at 07:19 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 10, 2008
Trivid Funded For DIY Music Video Service
Trivid GmbH, a German company that runs a web-based music video clip composition service called clipgenerator, has raised an undisclosed amount of VC from L-EigenkapitalAgentur part of L-Bank Baden-Württemberg (L-EA) and SEED.
Trivid has several patents, according to its web site, for its technology that lets users create short multimedia files to download or email afterwards.
We could see that several premium services are available for acquiring music file licenses. The files generated support playback on mobilephones, PC and TV networks. Judging from the press announcement, clipgenerator is just one of several services that this company aims to provide.
View Clipgenerator
Posted at 11:28 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Mindquarry Team Resurface At Swiss Software Co
Day Software, a content management software company, is the new employer of the founders of Mindquarry, a German open source collaborative software platform provider that had been funded by Hasso Plattner Ventures (we wrote about its insolvency earlier this week).
A December-dated announcement from Day says that Mindquarry founders: Alexander Klimetschek, Alexander Saar and Lars Trieloff, have joined Day's product development team and will bring their AJAX and social mediaknow how to the Swiss company.
Day does about Sfr 20M a year in sales. A dotcom bubble-era IPO gave this company a massive valuation (as the chart below shows). It survived the downturn and makes most of its turnover with services and support. It employs 110.
Posted at 10:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink