June 20, 2008
German Kinder Site Smoodoos Raises First Round
Community sites for kids have proven to be a winner. Just ask the founders of Club Penguin or Webkinz. But it has to start out in a genuine way. It cannot be the product of corporate AOL's Q4 goals. With that, it seems that Smoodoos is off to a good start as the startup was founded by a husband/wife duo who say they were inspired by their children's behavior online. Smoodoos was founded in in 2006 by Saskia and Justus Schneider (he was Head of Global Marketing at Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars).
Like Webkinz, Smoodoos is an online/offline double-threat. Kids are welcomed to the site with safe chatting and play, and then encouraged to buy toy pets offline.
The German VC firm Earlybird says that is has made an investment in Munich-based Smoodoos, although the amount is not disclosed. The plan is to grow Smoodoos outside of Germany.
Smoodoos is dropping some Marks on commercials like these.
View - site
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June 03, 2008
Samwer Brothers' European Founders Fund Invests $1M In EventBrite
img alt="eventbrite.png" src="http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/eventbrite.png" width="227" height="103" />
We have passed by San Francisco-based Eventbrite any number of times as it shares offices in a building with a great number of other VC-backed startups. Today the startup says that it has raised its first round of funding (amount undisclosed) from the Samwer Brothers' European Founders Fund.
Eventbrite is well known within the tech event space but that doesn't make it a huge business. It must either expand to other event sectors or expand into the tech realm by offering further functionality, or both. Eventbrite tells Mashable that it is profitable, earning a commission (2.5%) off of each ticket sale, and that it plans to expand its social networking functionality with tie-ins to larger platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
Eventbrite is led by CEO Kevin Hartz who has numerous affiliations: Board of Directors at BluBet; Principal at Youniversity Ventures; Principal at Outlook Ventures; and Co-Founder at Connect Group. His bride Julia Hartz is a co-founder and President.
Eventbrite Tutorial
View - site
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Dutch Startup Wakoopa Raises $1M For Apps SocNet
img alt="wakoopa.png" src="http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/wakoopa.png" width="168" height="54" />
Wakoopa is a social network site for software users. It allows you to track what you've been using on your desktop, share that with others, and discover new applications and games. The Amstedam-based startup has just closed a $1M led by Big Bang Ventures and HENQ Invest. The startup was incubated by Meganova. It was founded in May 2007 by Wouter Broekhof & Robert Gaal.
Team Wakoopa
Wakoopa works like Alexa in that it has users volunteer to download a small app to track what applications they are running and how much time they spend on those apps.
Just as Alexa is interesting to publishers and advertisers, Wakoopa should be interesting to app developers. Given the proliferation of mini-apps in the Web 2.0 world there is a great deal to track. The company runs ads on its site (Adsense to start) but there may well be further business angles.
View - site
Posted at 07:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 14, 2008
Salesforce.com Launches 1M Pound Investment Contest
Salesforce.com and Eden Ventures have launched a 1M pound investment challenge. The winner will have the opportunity to negotiate with Eden Ventures for a potential investment of up to 1 million pounds.
We have to say this strikes us nothing more than a press stunt. There is no comitment on the part of Salesforce or Eden.
View - site
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February 20, 2008
Autodesk Buys Parisian Gaming AI Firm Kynogon
Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK) is acquiring Kynogon, which makes Kynapse artificial intelligence middleware. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Kynapse is used by game developers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, Bethesda Softworks, Lionhead Studios, Midway, Real Time Worlds, SEGA, Sony Online Entertainment, Spark Unlimited, THQ and Turbine. Available for the PlayStation2, PLAYSTATION3, PSP, Xbox, Xbox360, GameCube and the PC, Kynapse has been used in the development of more than 60 game titles including Crackdown, Alone in the Dark 5, Fable 2, Sacred 2 and The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Kynapse has also been used outside the gaming sector by EADS and British Aerospace Systems as an AI solution.
As seen in this video, Kynapse gives characters spatial awareness, enabling them to realistically navigate digital environments.
Kynogon was founded in 2000 by Pierre Pontevia.
View - site
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February 13, 2008
Sun Buys German/Russian Innotek
Sun Microsystems says it will acquire Innotek for an undisclosed amount. Founded in June 2000, Innotek is a Germany-headquartered, Russian build vendor of open source desktop virtualization software.
Since its release in January 2007, VirtualBox was downloaded over 4M times. The product competes with another Russian developed product Parallels from SWSoft. According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.
Read - Quintura blog
Posted at 06:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 12, 2007
VC-Backed Coding Technologies Acquired By Dolby for $250M
Stockholm-based Coding Technologies, a ten year old developer of audio compression tech for mobilephone, digital radio, and Internet content is to be acquired by Dolby for $250M net of cash.
The Swedish/German company is behind several de-facto standards, points out EE Times, including aacPlus and MP3pro. It received early stage backing from CIMON, a Swedish early stage investor.
The a:c euro notes that Verdane, formerly Four Seasons Venture, lists Coding Technologies as a portfolio company too.
[via]
Read - EETimes.com - Dolby pays quarter billion dollars for Coding Technologies
Posted at 06:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 07, 2007
Xtract Says It Can Monetize Digital Communities
Xtract out of Finland is is getting its board in place, typically a prelude to a financing round of some sort, as it pulls out the stops to promote its behaviour analytics software to social networking communities and communications companies.
The startup says its software solutions help to 'monetize' digital communities. Up until last month, Xtract had been turning on its algoritms at insurance companies and mobile network operators (Telia Sonera and Blyk). Now it says that T-Online is trialing its software for community 'link' analytics.
We had a read at some of its marketing material and can only say that you better hope that your mobile network operator, instant messaging service provider, or the socnets you belong to, do not identify you as an 'alpha user'.
Because it'll probably mean more offers, more freebies, and more pressure from marketers finding its way to your inbox, homephone, and your real post box too.
But then again, if you are a real alpha user (probably comparable to a Maven in Tipping Point terminology) then you'll more than likely be delighted about receiving extra goodies and offers to try and buy new things.
Xtract has some data to mull. The last one is particularly piquant.
- person to person flows of communication are between to 2 to 10 times greater than all other web traffic depending on the time of day (is that email?)
- mobile social networking is worth $6.9B in 2007 (are they counting SMS traffic as social networking?)
- 65 to 70% of all purchase decisions are made via word-of-mouth.
- In the UK Google makes more profit than broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 combined
The Finnish startup raised €2M earlier this year from Eqvitec.
View xtract
Read - Extract is Also mentioned as a fundraising candidate in Library House's Newsletter this week
Posted at 07:25 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 22, 2007
This Startup Sells Its Software On The Net At A Five Digit Price Point
A self-financed software venture out of Germany that has been selling its software on its website to telecommunications service providers at a price of €10K per seat license.
You won't find too many telco/ISP infrastructure software startups that can sell their products via their website, or ones that can point to using Google AdWords to draw those potential buyers. And we suspect that it is an even smaller number, that after an online demo can sell a product for a price of upwards of €10K via their websites.
But self-financed Enterest GmbH in Norderstedt, Germany is doing it.
On the sidelines of DEMO in Munich last week, we met by chance Martin Laesch, an Enterest co-founder and manager who was there as a guest, not a demonstrator. (That is him on the far right.)
When he told the alarm:clock euro that Enterest's software has generated orders of up to €50K via its website and that it has direct sales customers its team has never met, we were intrigued. His statement said a thing or two right away about the ease of use of its product, and its value in the market it targets.
In a follow up interview, we learned that the Internet is not the startup's only channel -- in the meantime it has some of the sector's top tier systems integrators on board, including Atos, T-Systems, Accenture, and EDS -- but Laesch said that the Internet has proven to be the "best channel to spread the word and get prospects interested".
It counts telcos like swisscom mobile, Vodafone, T-Mobile, and O2 as customers.
The four-year old startup was founded by a team that previously created Solution42 AG, a wireless voice mediation, provisioning and rating technology firm. It was acquired by Portal Software in 2000, and Portal in turn was acquired by Oracle last year.
Enterest's flagship application, “EDR Workbench”, is specialized software. As we understand it, the application is used by different kinds of communications service providers to make sure they collect fees from customers based on the usage of services on offer.
Laesch described it like this: The software is used for a variety of challenges around processing usage information, which in turn is generated through the services provided on networks like mobile, fixed net, IP and content.
The three letter acronym we picked up from Enterest's website is CDR, call data records. It also says it can handle several other types of data records, that is xDR, from the operators' systems.
The founders are Martin Laesch, Andrew Tan and Bernd Niedergesaess.
View Enterest
Posted at 05:57 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 11, 2007
Capman Invests €8M in Maxwell's eHealth -Growth Deal
(image source: maxwell oy)
Finland-based Maxwell Oy has raised €8M in growth capital from Capman. The six year old company provides business intelligence software, as well as the tech to enable patients to do more 'self-care' and hospitals to manage their digital images and clinical data. [via Tornado Insider]
It sells through partners like GE Healthcare. Maxwell employs 120 and expects €10M in sales this year.
And one last thing, we note that Maxwell is yet another venture that has tapped EU funding for R&D. If this keeps up we're going to have to change our very-long-held opinion on the small impact that the European Commission's funding for research has on the startup economy. It looks like a few participants are making the transition now from filing research project applications to writing (and winning) RFPs.
View Maxwell
Posted at 07:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 11, 2007
Wales' vBulletin (aka Jelsoft) Bought By Interent Brands
Wales-based vBulletin (Jelsoft) has dominated the bulletin boards space as long as we can remember. Now the Welsh startup had been bought by Internet Brands. The deal happended just after the vBulletin suite , which is comprised of a forum software and a project management tool, just released a blogging module.
vBulletin has a huge base of loyal users that Internet Brands might be able to bring into the age of blogging. Its a contrarian investment by Internet Brands but we believe it will turn out to be a shrewd one that stands in sharp contrast to the lofty valuation paid by investors for Ning yesterday.
Read - announcement
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June 29, 2007
RoyaltyShare Buys UK's Musicalc
I a minor deal, RoyaltyShare, which sells digital royalty solutions to the entertainment industry, has bought out Musicalc, a UK-based provider of royalty accounting software for the music industry. Musicalc has been in business for 25 years and has about 100 clients.
Read - announcement
Posted at 10:27 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 09, 2007
Luxembourg's KNEIP Raises €37M To Do BPO For Hedges
KNEIP Communication, a Luxembourg-based business process outsourcing company for the investment fund industry, sold a minority ownership position for €37M in private equity funding from 3i Growth Capital.
The company says it represents 9.000 funds.
Founder Bob Kniep has done well enough that he has a valued art collection that he opens to the public once a year.
View - site
Posted at 06:11 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 17, 2007
Jan Baan's Cordys Raises 60M Euros
This is one of the largest VC investments that we have seen in Europe in some time. Putten, Netherlands-based Cordys has raised Euro 60M in equity financing led by Argonaut Private Equity, giving Argonaut a significant minority stake in the company. Jan Baan, founder and majority shareholder of Cordys, also participated. The funds will predominantly be used to expand Cordys' operations in the US.
Cordys sells business process management suite (BPMS) enterprise software. The company claims 40 customers and nearly 500 employees.
Cordys notes that in addition to being the founder of Baan Software, Jan Baan made early investments in Top-Tier (acquired by SAP) and WebEx (acquired by Cisco).
Read - Cordys Secures $80 Million Investment to Meet Fast-Growing Market for Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Software (release)
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April 13, 2007
Italy's Expert Systems Bought by Mobile Voice Search's AskMeNow
Irvine, CA-based AskMeNow (OTCBB:AKMN) is acquiring Italy’s Expert Systems, a developer of natural language query technology. The two companies had been partners on AskMeNows mobile Q&A service whereby users could vocally search the Internet via natural language queries rather than key word search.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read - AskMeNow In Talks To Acquire Expert Systems (MocoNews)
Posted at 07:19 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 29, 2007
Hot Betas: Whisher, Total Immersion, And Collanos
Image source: The Warning Sign Generator
We burned our eyeballs looking through the long list of company's presenting at the upcoming DEMO conference in the US to find a couple of European startups that will be making their pitch - we found Whisher, which is a beta, and Total Immersion, which isn't. We also have an update on Collanos, the Swiss/US startup taking on Groove in the US. It's in the hot betas section because its got some interesting and even amusing marketing going on in its blog.
Whisher - Spanish WiFi network operator. Still in stealth mode but some blog posts suggest that it's a competitor for FON. Big in Balbao, apparently.
Total Immersion - French developer of augmented reality software. It plans to present at DEMO its ready to ship version of its platform D'Fusion.
Collanos
Collanos asked some folks to provide one liners to promote its upcoming marketing event.
As the father of 4 small children, nothing is more important to me than team collaboration. Alas, no matter how much I nag, my kids refuse to update the homework wiki. I really should force them all to use their Blackberry’s. Particularly my 5 year old. He’s such a luddite.
(Dave Hornik)
35% of the lessons learned in our class surround the cross-disciplinary nature of the innovation experience. Given that the class focuses on the innovation process and not on team dynamics, there must be something to the team collaboration thing.(Sara Beckman)
Often the coordination of a geographically distributed team is like herding virtual cats in Second Life!”(David Coleman)
Read - One Liners (collanos blog)
Read - DEMO 07 Participants
Posted at 06:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 02, 2007
Lie Detector Addon For Skype Users
Next time you use Skype, you might want to think twice before giving out inflated website traffic numbers. The person you're calling might be using KishKish, a downloadable client that claims to detect lies by measuring the variation or stress signals in a person's audio stream.
We Don't Know Much About This Cowboy's Ability To Detect Tall Tales, But His Footwear Seems All Wrong To Us
According to the firm's website, the Lie Detector is the latest in a series of products which Kishkish has designed to enhance the Skype experience. Other tools include: voice mail, call recorder, book and mobile, with further additions expected in the near future. Kishkish is a wholly owned subsidiary of BATM and also works closely with hardware manufacturers to provide the best quality solutions for Skype™ related products.
Read - Israeli lie detector keeps Skype users honest (israel21C)
Posted at 03:42 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 28, 2006
The Devil Wore Malware And WiFi Worms On Planes
Selling software to secure computer data and online services is kind of a dull business, unless of course someone like F-Secure's Mikko Hyponnen is doing the talking, and then it sounds like the trailer for an upcoming Hollywood thriller.
Our fllippancy here is only a pose, we actually believe that a few more tech executives Europe could be learning about public relations from Hyponnen. F-Secure's stock performance over the past five years would be one reason we've formed that opinion.
The security software company's chief research officer is interviewed by Bruno Giussani, a journalist and conference producer, over at the Lunch Over IP blog. It is an entertaining piece that describes the latest scary security threats: WiFi worms and professional bands of malware software developers whose intent is to separate PC users from their savings.
F-Secure was ahead of the curve in identifying wireless security threats and Hyponnen recalls that the first mobile phone virus was found in 2004 and since then 335 mobile phone viruses have hit the airwaves. Then he talks about what's next:
Wi-Fi worms, jumping from one Windows laptop to another, reaching organizations' internal network as people physically carry the infection in, bypassing corporate firewalls.
The Wi-Fi worm threat sounds a bit Like Snakes On A Plane, but we've little doubt that F-Secure has the right call on this one.
Hyponnen also talked about the evolution of viruses and their creators too.
In place of widespread malware assaults, 2006 has been characterized by targeted attacks which generally do not make the headlines and which have typically one single motivation: money. . . practically all new Windows viruses are written to make money. We're no longer fighting teenagers and hobbyists. We're fighting criminals. We're fighting professionals. We're fighting organized activity.
Read - Mikko Hypponen on the next data-security threat: beware the wi-fi worms( Lunch Over IP blog)
Posted at 06:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 15, 2006
Nordic VC Backs Polar Rose's Visual Search Innovation
Malmö, Sweden-based Polar Rose has raised a nice sized Series A round of $5.1 m (€4 m, SEK 37 m) from Nordic Venture Partners to make a business out of its facial recognition technology applied to searching and identifying images on the Web.
Details on the firm's commercial service are sketchy. But knowing Nordic Venture Partners from interviews over the years and recent conversations with its partners, the company is meant to make money and it is being built for a global market.
What we know so far is that it's software can do some three-dimensional processing of images (3D extrusion) and applies cutting-edge facial recognition algorithms. This combined with labeling and input from users - to sort and add context to images -- is the basis of the service.
Here's what Polar Rose tells potential users:
Polar Rose works with any public photo. No matter if you're using flickr, 23, Kodak gallery, or any other website, Polar Rose lets you discover people in pictures. Learn who people are, and help improve results by tagging pictures together with other users.
Read - Euro Rivals For Riya (a:c euro)
Posted at 06:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 13, 2006
Euro Rivals For Riya -> Pixsta and Polar Rose
Updated with Comment from Alexander Straub, who is a co-founder of Pixsta and an investor in Truphone, see end of this post.
At the a:c euro we like visual search, image search, anything to do with computer graphics, actually. Startups in these categories have the goods - like smart algorithms and brainy founders (in other words: Intellectual Property/High Barriers To Entry), and there just might be some new markets and applications emerging for these technologies.
We came across Pixsta this morning via Paul Jozefak's blog, which led us to Polar Rose. Pixsta is based in London, and Polar Rose, out of Malmo, Sweden. Both are developing image search products. 
Pixsta, which has a demo site, is looking to apply its technology to online shopping, similar to the idea behind Like.com (an application launched this week from US-based Riya). Polar Rose, which is soon to launch in beta, is about finding photos of people and its commercial plans are not public.
These technologies can be applied to a number of businesses areas, online retailing as suggested above, but we guess they could also be used in search tools for developers of logos and corporate identity art, and possibly in search engines for stock photo and graphic art vendors.
Pixsta Helps Shoppers Find Similar Items
On Pixsta's demo site, Chez Imelda, we decided to look for some orange sandals and found a selection without having to enter a single search word. It delivered up the results without a click through, showing where to buy the new footwear.
Here's how pixsta describes its software.
"Pixsta software reaches beyond the current text-based approach to search by automatically extracting visual content from images. we can organise large image collections into hyperlinked networks of visual similarity, so that users can browse the network to find images that come close to what they want, and also spark off new searches."
Our only criticism is the name of the company - maybe we're suffering from startup overload, but we find it hard to remember and the spelling tripped us up in our search for info on the company.
Polar Rose's commercial intentions are not public. Right now it is aiming to find out what people do with the application when it launches in a beta pilot. We couldn't try it but got some screenshots. Its search engine plugs into your browser, finds the faces in a photo, asks the user to confirm, or select the face to be matched, and then seeks similar faces on the web or locally.
Polar Rose Finds The Faces
Asks You To Select And Label The Image To Search For
And Serves Up The Resuls With Some Information From Other Users
Alexander Straub of Straub Ventures and a co-founder of Pixsta writes in:
Just to point out you can click from the image on www.chezImelda.com to the retailers site. When above the button with a mouse two little logo’s appear, one to drag and drop the image into a depository (just if you like it) or click to the retailers landing page.
Example of ChezImelda: You are looking for Crocs (the one Brad Pit wears – click on the orange sandal, you get an orange crocs, click on the crocs and half of the page is filled with the crocs in different shapes and colours. We basically offer 89 x 10 to the power of 10 = 89 trillion ways of shopping for 89,000 shoes. We need 89 trillion calculations to come off with the relative matrix of shoes all linked together by visual clues.
Update: VentureBeat has a thoughtful review of Like.com, and mentions Pixsta too.
Read - Visual Search Good For Shopping (venturebeat)
Read - Do I Really Like It (Paul Jozefak blog)
Read - Science Fiction News (Technovelgy)
Pixsta - visual browsing (Heiko's Blog)
Read - Suchmaschine erkennt Gesichter (DiePresse)
Read - Like.com Image Search Enging Launched (e-consultancy)
Posted at 04:40 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 24, 2006
Dutch DocZone For A Multi-Lingual World
In his Lunch Over IP blog, journalist Bruno Giussani, writes about the battle that Systran, the French translation software company behind Babblefish, is having with the European Commission over unauthorized modification of its code. It is a dramatic reminder of some of the unexpected risks of protecting valuable IP (as in intellectual property).
It also reminded us to publish our profile of DocZone, a Dutch software company that wants to mitigate the costs of producing multi-lingual documentation with an XML solution, which it sells via the software as a service model.
DocZone's has already invested its own money in the development of the application, offering it to those that have to publish product documentation, training manuals, and web sites in multiple languages and want output to "any format" cheaper and faster.
Doczone's Cool Showcase Customer is Spyker, The Dutch Supercar Maker. (image: SpykerCars)
It calls its software an "all inclusive XML solution" that has among others things, a built in content management system (based on X-Hive CMS software - Docato) and workflow support, as well as integrated translation technology. It is sold as a service at a monthly fee - which means it's easy for customers large and small to begin to use it, according to co-founder Frank Ter Reehorst.
The three-man founding team have all run businesses in the content management or translation areas before starting up. Along with Reehorst, the founders are Henk de Jonge, who established and still owns translation agency Scriptware and Dan Dube who is the managing director of the US operations, who has experience in implementing standards-based CMS systems.
Read - The EU Commission's intellectual property problem (lunch over IP)
Read - Spyker Cars signs 5-year contract with DocZone.com | DITA
Posted at 06:56 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 20, 2006
Germany's Itedo Acquired
Parametric Technology, a US engineering software company, has acquired Hennef, Germany-based Itedo Software GmbH and its US subsidiary, a technical-drawing software company, for $17 million. Itedo employs 34, launched its first product back in 1990, and is best known today for its IsoDraw software, used in creating and maintaining technical illustrations.
As far as we can see Itedo was a bootstrapped venture that grew over the years to establish itself a niche in CAD and tech illustrations in the aerospace, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. The company's founders are now newly minted millionaires, which made us think of something we read in Baytech Ventures' new newsletter this morning.
The founding partner writes that the issue with Germany is not a lack of entrpreneurs - it's that VCs have work to do in order to convince smart founders to take their money and make the case for a venture type growth (at least that's how we read it).
Contrary to popular opinion, there has always been a strong entrepreneurial culture in Germany, although perhaps not one attuned to the VC mindset. Don't forget that the "Mittelstand" - a term related not so much to the size of a company but to its private ownership status is still the backbone of the German economy. This was only made possible by a class of entrepreneurs.These start-ups are not confined to the VC-investment areas such as IT, communications and life sciences, but cover the whole business universe and many of them never grew to a dimension where venture capital become necessary while others had no inclination to attract it.
So I don't really see a shortage of capable founders and entrepreneurs, just the fact that not all of them have a propensity towards venture capital, because they intend to retain full ownership in the company or want only to answer to themselves. In my opinion, it's our industry’s challenge to sell the advantages of VC-backing to as many founders as possible.
Itedo is an example of what he is talking about, we'd say. And there are many others bootstrapped startups in Germany that one of these days we'll get around to profiling.
Read - Baytech Briefing 09/2006 · Interview
Read -PTC pays $17M for German software firm - Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology (bizjournals mass hightech)
Posted at 11:09 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 16, 2006
iMotions Taps Angels For $1.7M
We're getting caught up with some deals announced while we were motoring around Northern Italy last week. On Monday, October 9th, Danish startup iMotions, which makes software that seems to measure consumer response to packaging, ads and product design, has raised $1.7M from angel investors. We say it "seems" to make the software because we could not see any screenshots or user support docs on its website, not even a user "success story" or case study could give this journo a hint as to what iMotions is actually selling.
The Copenhagen-based company was founded in 2005 and employs 18 people and has a raised at least two rounds of angel funding prior to this.
Read -imotions raises $1.7M (press rel.)
Posted at 11:45 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 22, 2006
German eHealth Startup To Cross Borders
InterComponentWare AG, an eHealth software company, has a new strategic investor, the German utility, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg. The utility acquired a minority stake for an undisclosed amount to provide cash for R&D and to push international marketing. (Note the blog and social-tagging-friendly press release this company sent out, below.)
It joins existing private investors already backing the 8 year old company, including SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp.
ICW has developed LifeSensor, an online personal health web site that can be used for storage of personal medical records, uploading data from things like glucose monitors (remote device monitoring), as well as keeping track of immunization and fitness goals. It also introduced an eCard for health in Austria and advised the German Ministry of Health on a German electronic health card.
The utility company said it was interested in InterComponentWare’s remote device data monitoring software that could also be applied to EnBW’s network.
Peter Vest, from EnBW joined the supervisory board of ICW, as well as Paul Wahl, the former CEO of SAP America and former President and COO of Siebel Systems.
Read - Energy for Electronic Health: EnBW Acquires Interest in eHealth Specialist ICW (press release)
Posted at 03:16 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 14, 2006
Stellent Acquires VC-Backed SealedMedia
US-based Stellent, a content management solutions company, has acquired SealedMedia, a digital rights managagement software firm, for $10 million in cash and up to $5 million based upon the achievement of certain financial milestones. The startup had raised more than $15M in venture financing, the latest being an internal round of $8.5M about a year ago, funded by Crescendo and Pond Ventures.
So this exit was probably not a big winner for the backers. The company founder will join Stellant.
SealedMedia is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) software provider that has a patented ability to give content owners control over files even after they've been downloaded and used by end users. It supports a lot of different file formats, including PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, GIF, JPEG, MP3 and QuickTime) and gives the rights to purchasers, rather than a particular device, the company said.
Read - STELLENT STAKES LEADERSHIP CLAIM IN CONTENT SECURITY WITH TWO ACQUISITIONS (stellent PR)
Posted at 12:03 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 03, 2006
Fast Looking To Acquire Search Startups
Norway's Fast Search & Transfer, which is on a quick growth path now with 60 percent sales increase and 1H06 sales of $71.3M, says in latest earnings report that it is still open to making more acquisitions after two smaller one in the April and May.
It is looking to buy in the "emerging search enabled markets", such as info management, risk management, surveillance and enterprise eCommerce. It also is looking for companies that are developing key technologies that Fast wants such as predictive analytics, "hyper-personalization and contextual synergy".
It recently acquired Norwegian IT consulting firm bWise, which had expertise in one of Fast's flagship products, and Corporate Radar, a web-based portal engine for business intelligence updating. FAST paid $8 million for Corporate Radar and has agreed to pay a performance based earn-out of up to a maximum of $4 million over a one year period.
Posted at 05:41 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 24, 2006
Irish FX software company buys itself back from VC - touts quick growth
Foreign exchange trading platform vendor, Cognotec, was in the news in Ireland this weeked. Its founder bought his firm back from venture backer Softbank -- at a much lower price than the Japanese company paid for its stakes acquired in 1999 and 2000, reports Times Online.
The report suggests that the deal takes place just as the firm returns to profitability after several years of losses due to investment in product development.
The current valuation of Cognotec is $33M, according to the same source, which also reports Cognotec's operating profit at $3.7M on annual revenues of $28.1M last year.
Read - SoftBank takes €32m hit as it abandons Cognotec (times online)
Read - London is top global centre for foreign exchange and Ireland's Cognotec is a global leader in FX e-commerce (finfacts)
Posted at 05:19 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 19, 2006
French Video Codec Startup Taps Starbucks' VC
The US-based venture capital company that backed Starbucks and Costco has invested €3M in Actimagine, a French (now a Delaware company) startup that has developed a software video codec used by brand-name consumer electronics manufacturers such as Nintendo and Fisher Price to run movie clips on their devices.
The new capital is to secure the three year old company's sales channel in North American and Asian markets.
The Actimagine team has done what a lot have tried and failed to do, commercialize a non-standard video codec. It is a lean (fits on a 128MB memory card) all software solution that runs primarily with ARM chips. It also offers a content management system for movie and games contenet developers.
The firm's software can be used to store and playback movies from a memory card, as well as games.
It is now apparently winning licensing deals in the smartphone segment, it mentions Nokia and Sony Ericsson, due to its ability to enable handsets equipped with "standard batteries" to run "more than 7 hours of video playback without recharging".
Interesting to note that recently funded Mobitween, also French, uses Actimagine's content management software to develop Flash games for mobilephones.
Read - Video on Mobile: Actimagine Raises 3M Euro From GRP Partners (businesswire)
Read - Flash Games Mobitween Funding (a:c euro)
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June 27, 2006
US Giants Buy Two Euro Photo Software Startups in Past 2 Days
Microsoft has bought the London's iView Multimedia. The purchase brings both consumer and professional-level digital media asset management products to Microsoft, products that could position Microsoft to more closely compete with Apple's iLife, and Google's Picasa as well as Adobe.
iView sells software for Mac and Windows and all are centered around the management and viewing of digital image, sound, and movie libraries. Yesterday, we reported that Adobe had bought an iView competitor - Denmark's Pixmantec.
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VC-Backed Norkom Floats
Norkom Technologies floated on the Dublin (IEX) and London (AIM) exchanges this week, achieving a market cap of $126M and raising $26.4M, according to Finextra. The profitable company develops anti-fraud and anti-money launder software for used by banks and insurance companies.
New capital will be used for acquisitions and to strengthen its market leading position.
Norkom raised about €30M ($37.8M) in funding from investors including Trinity Venture Capital and Island Capital, according to ThePost.ie. The founders retained about 40 percent of shares pre-IPO.
Read - Norkom Technologies begins trading on IEX and AIM (Finextra)
Read - Dublin software firm forecasts €24.5m in revenues (ThePost.ie)
Posted at 08:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2006
Denmarks' Pixmantec Bought By Adobe
Adobe has gone up-market and bought the Denmark photo startup Pixmantec. Pixmantec sells workflow software for high-end cameras that enables digital photographers to download, browse, view, prioritize, compare, edit, correct and convert large batches of digital camera RAW image files.
Pixmantec's Flagship Software Package
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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 17, 2006
Spotfire Predicts World Cup Soccer Results
Spotfire, a business analytics software company, has not escaped World Cup fever that we are all currently enjoying, and it is has made its software (you need to download a Citrix client) avaialbe for predicting outcomes. Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico to reach the World Cup 2006 semifinals, according to its number crunching. (If Mexico plays the way it did on Friday night - it's not going to make it, we say.)
Spotfire's on-demand software is typically used by researchers inside pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and consumer goods organizations.
Spotfire's World Cup Freebie
The company is backed by European VCs and comes out of Sweden (it was co-founded by Christopher Ahlberg who is still CEO of the company). After moving to the US quite early in its development, it has had something like 16 quarters of year-over-year revenue growth.
We think it won't be long until Spotfire makes a move for an IPO on the NASDAQ, and we don't need its software to help with that prediction.
Read - Goooaaalll!! – Analytics Software predicts (press release)
Posted at 06:07 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 15, 2006
Sybase Acquires Germany's Solonde
Sybase has acquired Solonde AG, which is based in Hamburg (registered in Delaware), for an undisclosed amount of cash. The German software company develops and sells data integration software, known as an extract, transform and load (ETL) solution that it offers on-demand. It was founded in 2002.
Extract And Transform Mass Data From SAP Systems.
Sybase Acquires Data Integration Provider Solonde AG (press release)
Posted at 04:39 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 06, 2006
Tribold Geek Completes All-female Greenland Ice Trip
Who says geeks are pale skinned, anorak-wearing folk with poor muscle tone? A software engineer at VC-backed Tribold just crossed Greenland's ice sheet, as part of an all-female and all British team that battled the elements on skis for 650 kilometres in 16 and a half days to reach Ammasillik on the country’s east coast.
OK, the anorak part might be right but it's worn here of necessity.
Software Engineer Jenny Pugh (far right) And The Arctic Fox Team.
Jenny Pugh of Tribold, a two year old software company in the UK whose products are used by telcos to manage the product lifecycle (so-call PPM tools), trained for eight months and took two months off from her job at the startup to complete the journey for a local charity organization.
Tribold is on our radar. It was founded in 2003 by Simon Muderack, who serves as CEO, and Catherine Michel, CTO, both former Accenture execs. It recently raised capital from Eden Ventures, one of the few early stage European tech VC to have raised a new fund this cycle. It's doing more than putting out brand building press releases - from what we are hearing it's making headway selling into enterprise and operations units of some good-sized telcos.
Read- Tribold software expert Jenny Pugh succeeds in historic all-female crossing of Greenland's ice sheet
