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March 30, 2007
LiveNation Buys UK Music Concert Chain Academy Music Group For $114M
We think that LiveNation [NYSE: LYV]has a very interesting strategy where it is buying up cool music venues then turbo-charging profits buy running concerts online. By owning the venues, LiveNation not only gains but it makes events cooler (because they are live broadcast globally) and it makes money from the Internet audience.
Today LiveNation Live Nation and Gaiety Investments completed the acquisition of a 56% interest in Academy Music Holdings Limited from RJD Partners. AMG owns and operates 12 live music venues which host over 2,500 events attracting 3M+ fans annually.
The transaction values AMG at $114M, including the assumption of $56.9M of bank debt and third-party shareholder loans. For the twelve months ended December 2006, AMG generated $11.6M of adjusted EBITDA.
Read - Live Nation Acquires Significant Stake in Academy Music Group (Release)
Posted at 06:25 PM | Posted to Media | TrackBack
MSFT Social Networking Spin-out Wallop Raises $1M More
Hercules Technology Growth Capital has invested $1M in Wallop, the Microsoft Research social networking spin-off. Wallop did two VC rounds totaling $13M from Consor Capital, Bay Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, with an IP for equity stake by Microsoft.
There is an interesting post from Mashable speculating that Wallop will face a tough up-hill battle.
Hercules' press release indicates that it also invested $1M in another LA-based social network but won't say who.
Read - Hercules invests $1M each in two social networking companies (Silicon Valley Business Journal)
Posted at 06:11 PM | Posted to Social Networking | TrackBack
Find Your Stolen Truck Tech Cartasite Raises $4.35M In 1st Round
A professional driver recently took off from Boca Raton en route to New York in a Budget rental truck was to haul furniture, photos, sculptures and rare paintings worth $1.5M. He decided not to go to NYC and instead to sell the stuff on eBay. Fortunately for the owner, the truck was equipped with a GPS tracking module from Cartasite and cops were able to bust the thief.
Denver's CartaSite has now raised $4.35M in Series A funding, according to a regulatory filing/PeHub. Backers include Canterbury Partners and Acadia Partners.
View - site
Posted at 05:33 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack
Business Blog/Wiki Platform iUpload Raises $7M
Canada's iUpload has raised $7M in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, according to a regulatory filing and PEhub. We have demo'd iUpload and have been impressed with the product. However, it has seemed slow to gain market penetration.
The company was founded in 2000 as a Web content management system for businesses but unlike Interwoven and Vignette it made an impressive product transition to new publishing concepts like blogs and wikis. iUpload has competition from 6Apart whose Movable Type has moved into business blogging as well as business wiki publishers like Google's wiki platform (Jotspot).
View - site
Posted at 05:15 PM | Posted to Enterprise Software | TrackBack
United Villages: Bus-powered Net Connectivity With Solar Powered PCs To Rural Tribes Raises $2M
The poor are really hot right now. Yesterday Sequoia invested in a micro-financing company that targets the poor. Today, United Villages, a Cambridge, MA startup that sells wireless network services to isolated rural villages, has raised $2M in Series A, says PEHub from a regulatory filing. The round's investors are Omidyar Network, Cambridge Light & Power Corp. and Gray Matters Capital Foundation.
United Villages distributes pre-paid cards to locals in remote villages who can write emails or record phone messages at solar powered computer kiosks installed in schools and community halls. United Villages deploys buses tricked out with short-range Wi-Fi antennas which pass through villages, automatically picking up stored emails and voice messages as they go. Once a bus reaches a city with Internet connectivity, it relays the emails and messages to their appointed destinations via the web.
Apparently the company has operations in Rural areas of Costa Rica, Rwanda, India, Cambodia and Paraguay.
United Villages has received an extraordinary amount of press coverage and former Xerox Park-man John Sealey Brown joined the advisory board.
The plan
In addition to buses, Villages also uses vehicles like this Honda motorcycle to pick up Internet dumps.
Or Donkey-powered. The company got its start thanks to a $50K prize from an MIT contest.
View - site
Posted at 04:52 PM | Posted to Communications | TrackBack
SportsVite Raises $2M for Recreational Athlete Social Network
We had reported recently that NYC-based SportsVite had raised its first round of financing. We now learn the startup has raised $2M from Grace Drive Management. The site claims 20K registered members who use the site to organize teams and league plan.
SportsVite was hatched by 212Media, which operates 3 other sites/business:
* Bodvod, a Bollywood music and movies VOD service available on Time Warner, Cox, Rogers and other digital cable households.
* New Play Media, a rich media casual gaming publisher that works with major media brands (TBA),
* Conscious Content / Stories for Heroes, a celebrity spoken work label with major children's properties (Arthur - Little, Brown & Co., Curious George - Houghton Mifflin & Co. and several others), celebrities such as Kevin Bacon and Kelly Ripa and charitable beneficiaries such as Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, National Education Association and others.
View - site
Read - Sportsvite = MeetUp + Sports + First Financing (the a:c)
Posted at 01:52 PM | Posted to Social Networking | TrackBack
Indian Casual Game Business Games2Win Raises $5M
Mumbai-based Games2Win has raised around $5M in Series A funding. Clearstone Venture Partners led the deal and was joined by SVB Financial Group. Games2Win was seed funded by Contests2Win.
The business gets a lot of traffic in India, thanks largely to games that are created for this distinct cultural market. ContentSutra reports that the company will be launching a multiplayer game this month.
If you don't see any posts on the a:c for a while, its because we are addicted to Bombay Taxi
The company is led by co-founder/CTO Mahesh Khambadkone who came from a consulting background and has only been full time less than a year and CEO Cyrus Oshidar who was an MTV exec.
View - site
Read - Games2Win Gets $5 Million Funding From Clearstone Venture Partners And SVB Financial Group (Content Sutra)
Posted at 11:00 AM | Posted to Games | TrackBack
Naturally Curly - CurlMunity/CurlMart - For Ladies With Curly Hair Raises Angel Funding
We had to check to see if this is April Fool's day when we came across this funding announcement. It's not and indeed the Austin-based business Naturally Curly has raised $600K from some big Texas tech investors that include: Jim Treybig (NEA Partner founder of Tandem Computers, and entrepreneurs Dr. Philip Sanger and Tim Wall. Founded 9 years ago, the site says it has nearly 10,000 daily visitors.
Naturallycurly.com founders
Read - Web site devoted to curls lands cash (Austin Business Journal)
Posted at 10:36 AM | Posted to Social Networking | TrackBack
How To Go From Angel To VC Partner: Saar Gur Joins Charles River
We spoke today with angel investor Saar Gur who has told us that he has joined Charles River Ventures. Saar was a VP with Adteractive until 2006 when he locked in on angel investing. In 2006, he made angel investments in a good number of promising Web 2.0 companies. Thus far none of his investments have seen liquidity events but several have seen huge growth in traffic and valuations from subsequent investors. Saar's angel investments include:
Social network for films buffs. TechCrunch reports that LightSpeed Ventures invested $2M in a very competitive round.
Slideshow company Rockyou raised $11M in a second round at a $50M post money valuation, most or all from Partech, reports TechCrunch. The company had previously raised $1.5M from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Mobile ad marketplace AdMob has raised $15M in Series B funding led by Accel Partners and joined by return backer Sequoia Capital.
Pre-launch email analytics startup Xobni has secured $1.5M of a $4.26M Series A round led by Khosla Ventures.
VoiceStar is a pay per call lead generation network. First Round Capital and Felicis Ventures invested an undisclosed amount.
The SMS contest companies closed $2.3M led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Video ad network BrightRoll closed a series its A round raising a total of $1M from 9 angel investors plus True Ventures.
Posted at 01:06 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack
This Week In Euro Tech
Investments
+ <ZBD, a UK company that has commercialized what it calls e-paper (bi-stable displays) has raised a further $20M.
+ Sweden's eye-tracking technology maker Tobii Technology has raised $14M.
+ Burda takes stake in German video portal SevenLoad.
+Scottish startup MTEM seeks £25M to grow oil- and gas detecting biz.
+ France's Ipercast raises capital to grow Internet video distribution biz.
+ Streetcar - London's pay as you go car rental business raised £6.4M and plans IPO by year end.
+ Estonia's Ambient backs GPS' Oskanda Eurosat deal.
+ Universal Music Group has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Trace.tv.
+ Austria's UC4 Software is buying Bellevue, WA's AppWorx. The company makes the claim to be the first truly global and independent provider of IT process automation and optimization solutions. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
+ French VC Backs UK's Webjam.
+ Novintel and C-squared raise VC funding.
M&A
+ ePayment's Moneybookers bought out by PE firm for €105M.
+ Germany-based business social network Xing buys Spanish competitor eConozco.
+ France's WebWag acquires fellow French startup Mobease.
IPO
+ Euronext Internet IPOs - more dotcoms. Euronext has supported a few more dotcom IPOs:
Notrefamille (mkt cap €16.9M on Alternext)
Referencement.com (mkt cap €16.5M Marche Libre)
Entreparticuliers (mkt cap €52.6M on Alternetxt)
News & Analysis
+ Top 5 fast digital startups in the UK - King.com is king.
+ alarm:clock euro Puzzler
Which of the following statements is most accurate?
a) Germany has 4 business angel networks?
b) Germany has 40 business angel networks?
c) Germany has 14 business angel networks?
Posted at 12:17 AM | Posted to Euro Ventures | TrackBack
March 29, 2007
Sequoia Invests $11.5M in Micro-finance Fund
Sequoia is getting some nice TV coverage today on MSNBC's Closing Bell for its $11.5M investment in Indian Microfinance bank SKS. SKS says it is now one of the fastest growing Microfinance institutions in the world and the first for-profit microfinance lengder. The company says it grew by 160% with a 99% on-time repayment rate last year. SKS currently provides loans to its 600K members in 7,200 villages in rural India.
SKS says that the new capital will go towards giving loans to over 5M poor families by 2010. SKS estimates that its loans have a return on equity of 23%. In fact, 23% is the standard interest rate for its loans, which seems to us like loan sharking but we understand the poverty level folks that get these loans don't have many other options.
Sequoia's investment includes an exit clause. In the next three to five years, SKS will either have an initial public offering or be acquired.
Here's an interesting quote from another SKS investor: “Established markets never took poor people seriously. They neglected the obvious business opportunity. The larger banks and some of the larger institutions have not gone into this business systematically. This creates an opportunity for an entrepreneur like Vikram and a company like SKS.” Unitus Equity Fund, Chris Brookfield.
Read - Sequoia Invests $11.5 Million in Microfinance Fund (CNBC)
Posted at 04:21 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack
UK Search Company Magpie Earns Funding
Magpie which makes its HQ in Brighton, England has raised funding from London Seed Capital and Tennants Ventures.
The company's flagship search product can be run on sites a search engine with no advertisements and without taking users off to other sites. Results are then displayed in clusters, allowing users to refine their search further. Alerts can be set up on the basis of any search string. Magpie also has a brandwatch tracking product so that users can track Internet buzz or lack thereof of their product or company.
Founded in 1999 as a Web builder called Runtime Collective, we have been building database-backed websites since 1999 the company has morphed and developed 3 product lines around its custom search engine.
Posted at 03:59 PM | Posted to Search | TrackBack
Personal Empowerment Social Network Zaadz Angel Funded By Whole Foods CEO
Sustainability, empowerment, bliss, authenticity, conscious capitalism - these is the kind of language that you will find on the LA-based social network Zaadz. The company recently raised a round of seed financing from Whole Foods CEO John Mackay. There is now word if Mackay will use marketing leverage at this starts to promote Zaadz.
Zaadz Profile of its Founder/CEO
View - site
Posted at 03:42 PM | Posted to Social Networking | TrackBack
SMS Games' Frengo Launches With Funding From Index and Khosla
In August 2006 Frengo completed a seed round of $2.3M led by Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures and angel investors like Saar Gur. Frengo has a partnership with Boost Mobile. The company is led by a group of people who all seem to have worked at Verisign.
Frengo combines two venture trends: content for mobile messaging and contests.
The initial release includes familiar online contests:
+ Mobile versions of Fantasy Football.
+ Entertainment-based contests such as “Celebrity Lies” where members win points for spotting the truth among a pack of lies.
+ Posting of content comments and pictures to MySpace pages from a mobile phone.
Read - Frengo Launches Industry’s First Intelligent Platform for Mobile Social Play
Posted at 02:01 PM | Posted to Games | TrackBack
Pre-launch Search Physics Funded For Iterative Search
San Francisco-based Search Physics has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding. The pre-launch startup says it has developed a search engine that extracts the information content of websites and stores additional information about each site in a database that can be used for other purposes. One use is to classify the links, and the other is to assist the users in narrowing down their search results.
We can agree with their case that search searches return too many URL's irrelevant to the search topic. and it difficult to judge relevance from the URL list, so each must be visited individually, which can be a time sink.
Search Physics says it not only reduces the number of irrelevant URL' in the returned list but also gives a brief description that makes it easy and quick to judge the relevance of the site.
At this point we don't know if Search Physics will be a stand-alone search site, a tool-bar or sit on top of other search engines. Investors Stanley Wong and David Shen both came from Yahoo. The company's CEO/founder is Dr. Minh Duong-van physicist in the field of theory of chaos and quantum theory.
View - site
Posted at 12:45 PM | Posted to Search | TrackBack
Inside Building-B: Former Sony CTO's Startup To Bring US Affordable Premium Video
The a:c's cable bill is a killer. We'd love to have HBO and some premium sports channels so we could watch the European soccer league action but when we add up how much we would pay for that over a year we back-off.
Building-B is building a net-based premium video system that targets folks like us - they actually say they are going after middle America. It looks like this might require some kind of set-top box, which we hate - but this is not certain. The company is led by former Sony CTO and Liquid Audio co-founder Phil Wiser and CEO Buno Pati.
Wiser told PC Magazine: "We found this gap in the field within the last year. There are a few basic changes in the entertainment patterns of consumers overall. One of those is on-demand [video]. Anyone who has been able to access on-demand video, certainly will go back to that. The other element is mobility. Consumers have gotten used to having access to their entertainment on the go. And the other primary shift is the fragmentation between traditional TV viewing, Internet viewing, and gaming, so we're looking at these habits and optimizing the service to meet those."
Recently, Wiser and Pati surfaced as the board of directors of the recently funded Fliptrack, which enables personalized music video creation.
View - site
Posted at 12:13 PM | Posted to Digital Home | TrackBack
Boston's Neosaej Raises 1st Round For eCommerce Tools
Stealth-mode eCommerce infrastructure software, Neosaej has secured $505K of a $1M Series A round led by Stata Venture Partners, according to a regulatory filing dug up by PEHub. These guys are hiring up but are tight-lipped about what they are up to so we will have to be patient. The company was founded only 3 months ago by Rohit Goyal, who was a network engineer at Enterasys Networks.
View - site
Posted at 11:49 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack
Liberty Media's TruePostion Buys Mobile People Finder Tech's Useful Networks
TruePosition, which sells wireless location solutions and is a subsidiary of Liberty Media has bought Useful Networks.
Useful Network's technology allows social networks, local search companies, mobile advertisers, and mobile gaming companies to add location-based elements to their services while keeping user location data secure and protected in accordance with wireless carrier policies. Useful was recently founded, in 2006, and has yet to get out to the market.
Useful was founded by Brian Levin, who previously started Mobliss, which built the SMS text voting
system for American Idol.
View - site
Posted at 11:32 AM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack
Linux Cluster's Penguin Computing Raises $9M
San Francisco-based Penguin Computing has closed $9M in a second round of financing which was led by vSpring Capital, and also included prior investors San Francisco Equity Partners, Weber Capital, and Convergence Partners. Penguin Computing is developing cluster management and virtualization software for high performance Linux computing.
Painful Linux Geekiness
View - site
Posted at 10:56 AM | Posted to Enterprise Software | TrackBack
SuperMicro Computer's IPO Not So Super. More Like Micro.
Super Micro Computer raised $64M in its IPO that was priced well below a forecast range.
The offering of 8M shares sold for $8 per share, compared with its $9.50 - 11.50 forecast range, set by its underwriter led by Merrill Lynch. The shares trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SMCI.
The San Jose-based company founded in 1993 has a market cap of $325.2M on revenues of $328M and net income of $18M.
Posted at 10:42 AM | Posted to Hardware | TrackBack
March 28, 2007
LightSpeed Funds Newly Launched B2B Lead Gen Network Tippit
The B2B lead generation space tends to piss off editorial purists who write for an audience first, then figure out how to monetize it. Companies like Tippit figure out which leads pay the most, then create sites to target that audience. Often the content is licensed and in some cases the lead generation sites are sham sites.
Tippit is building a B2B content network that now includes:
+ VoipNews
+ Daily Wireless
+ It Management
+ IT Security
+ Homeland Security Weekly
Rather than licensing content, Tippit seems to have hired freelance bloggers and program managers to publish content for each of its sites. The quality of the content seems better than the average.
This is the kind of lead generation 'call to action' that you might find on a Tippit site...
Tippit was founded by CTO Shane Holland, who was VP Engineering/CTO at Adteractive and CEO Scott Albro who was VP Business Development at Covalent. The company has raised funding from Lightspeed Ventures.
Posted at 06:38 PM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack
The WebVan of Minneapolis, SimonDelivers, Raises Funding
It looks like the home grocery deliver service SimonDelivers may be up for sale. The company's sales have been flat the past couple of years, says InternetRetailer, and it recently received a new amount of undisclosed funding from Denali Partners, a private equity firm that targets businesses that need between $1M and $5M in investment capital for growth, expansion or buyouts.
In 2006, SimonDelivers posted revenue of about $60M, a decrease of 7.2% from web sales of $64.7M in 2005.
View - site
Posted at 06:30 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack
Visa Invests in DotMobi
Dotmobi is one of those domains that we tend to forget. But Visa brings it back into focus, joining a growing list of investors in a consortium built around promoting the dotmobi domain sector. Other investors are: Ericsson, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM and Vodafone. Apparently about 500K dotmobi domains have been registered.
Read - dotMobi Announces Strategic Investment From Visa
Posted at 06:14 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack
Home To Budweiser, St. Louis Alcohol Fuel Cell Co. Akermin
Akermin has raised $3.5M in venture capital which ads to the nearly $3M that Akermin raised in 2005. Akermin's product eventual goal is creating an array of fuel cells that last a long time and can be instantly recharged by replacing a small alcohol cartridge. Corn-based ethanol is a likely source of fuel because there is a ready supply, but the cells can run on vodka, gin and even beer.
Akermin's prototype is just approaching the amount of power generation sufficient to fuel a cell phone. Creating a device that could run a laptop computer is years away, Akers said.
Competitors include Oorja and Polyfuel.
Read - Company here raises funds for fuel-cell breakthrough (St. Louis Today)
Posted at 06:04 PM | Posted to Alternative Energy | TrackBack
Pre-Logo Loudspeaker Startup AudioPixels Raises $4M
Lightspeed Ventures, DCM and a group of private and strategic investors have invested $4M in thin loudspeaker developer AudioPixels, says Globes
AudioPixels' CEO Daniel Lewin founded the company six months ago. The company says that its technology enables the production of thin high-performance loudspeakers suitable for a wide range of devices.
We have posted on a few new age speaker companies that have received funding, including:
+ Gecko Audio
+ G-lab
+ Iosono
Read - Audiopixels raises $4M (Globes)
Posted at 05:52 PM | Posted to Digital Home | TrackBack
Cisco Buys SpansLogic For $6M Or So
Cisco has bought Mountain View-based SpansLogic for around $6M. SpansLogic makes a specialty memory-type good for storing large routing tables. LightReading reports that the deal might make Cisco supplier NetLogic want to barf. 61% of NetLogic's revenues came from Cisco last year, and now Cisco owns competitive technology that may slow down this gravy train.
ATA Ventures fund invested in SpansLogic.
Read - Cisco To Buy Spans Logic (Light Reading)
Posted at 04:50 PM | Posted to Networking | TrackBack
China's P2P Video Startup PPStream Raises $10M
Sorry, but this logo character is a blatant rip-off of Kenny from SouthPark and the the name of the company is definitely one that the show would run with.
Now that we have that out of the way, we learn today that Shangai-based PPStream has raised about $10M funding from Qiming Ventures and its existing investor Ceyuan Ventures.
PPStream offers P2P video on demand and has done partnerships with ESPN Star China, Sina and Yahoo among others. And of course, BitTorrent sites are enormously popular in China.
PP Stream competes with Google portfolio company Xunlei as well as with UUSee which recently raised its series B funding at $20M.
Read - PPSTream Closes Series B Funding
Posted at 04:31 PM | Posted to Video | TrackBack
Tattooes For Whoosies Startup - Freedom2Ink - Raises $1.5M
Apparently there is a sizable population of people who want to take part in the tattoo fad but who anticipate that their tats will look gross when they are old. The NYC-based startup Freedom-2 has raised $1.5M in Series A for its inks that are used for permanent but removable tattoos. The financing was led by Brightleaf Capital and a healthcare angel investors. Previous investors Jamestown Investments and the Center for Innovative Ventures at Partners HealthCare participated in this round.
Look like Alan Iverson now. Remove when you want to look like Alan Alda.
If you need a technical explanation for how the process works, here it is: Freedom2Ink uses microscopic bioabsorbable pigments and dyes that are encapsulated in a biocompatible polymer forming a microencapsulated colored bead. The tattoo is "easily" removed by a single, standard laser treatment that breaks the polymer beads allowing the body to naturally expel the dye trapped inside.
View - site
Posted at 03:17 PM | Posted to eHealth | TrackBack
Biofuels' Mascoma Wins $4.9M Grant from Department of Energy
Cambridge, MA-based Mascoma has won $4.9M in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy . The funding is specifically for the development of fermentative organisms that speed the conversion of cellulosic biomass into ethanol. The grant is part of President Bush's Twenty in Ten Initiative, which seeks to reduce domestic gasoline use by 20% in 10 years.
For investors and execs at Mascoma such a grant must seem like found money. Mascoma had already raised significant VC funding: $39M in three funding rounds from investors led by Khosla Ventures with Flagship Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Vantage Point Venture Partners, Atlas Ventures, and Pinnacle Ventures. Mascoma also received a $14.8M matching grant from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to build and operate a biomass-to-ethanol demonstration plant in or near Rochester, NY.
Read - Mascoma Secures $4.9MM Funding from U.S. Department of Energy
Posted at 03:07 PM | Posted to Alternative Energy | TrackBack
WindFarmers UPC Wind Raises $44M
Boston-based UPC Wind says it has secured equity financing for its Mars Hill Wind Farm. Proceeds totaling approximately $44M were funded by JPMorgan Capital Corporation and WFC Holdings (Wells Fargo). The investment will go towards reducing debt on UPC's Mars Hill Wind Farm in Maine, which it says is New England's first utility-scale wind project and is currently suppling approximately 42 megawatts or electricity.
In May 2006, DE Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners "made a significant investment in UPC Wind while the firm's original investors retained a substantial stake in the company."
Read - UPC Wind Secures Equity Financing
Posted at 02:46 PM | Posted to | TrackBack
Sequoia Invests In Wireless Testings' LitePoint
Sequoia has invested an undisclosed amount in LitePoint in Sunnyvale. The startup sells test equipment to wireless chipset vendors (Atheros, Beceem, TI), OEMs (Gemtek, RAFI, Sercom), and consumer electronics systems makers (AVM, NETGEAR).
Read - LitePoint Receives Funding from Sequoia Capital
Posted at 02:39 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack
Universal Music Group Invests in France's Urban Music Biz Trace.TV
Universal Music Group has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount. In addition to cash, Universal will provide Trace with global music and video rights, a weekly slot on Universal's International Music Feed and cross promotions, including an urban music partnership to sell mobile content in China.
Launched in 2003 in Paris, France, TRACE began as a print magazine and now runs urban music programming in multiple languages across Internet, cable, satellite, radio, IPTV and mobile platforms. It expects to launch in the US market in 2007/8. In 2003, Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group made an investment.
Trace celebrates the 10th anniversary of the death of Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G,
Read - Universal Music Group (UMG) to Invest in Alliance TRACE Media (TRACE)
View - site
Posted at 02:19 PM | Posted to Media | TrackBack
Stealth Mode Data Center Play FastScale Raises $6.5M And Other Fresh Deals
Investments
+ SAN JOSE, CA FastScale Technology has raised $6.5M in Series A led by ATA Ventures with Leapfrog Ventures and Hunt Ventures. (Stealth mode: technology for scalable web farms & data centers)
+ EMERYVILLE, CA Streamcore has raised $7M in Series B (Application performance and network optimization space)
+ LONDON, UKWebjam has raised £1M from iSource Gestion, a French venture capital firm (Social Networking)
M&A
+ CHALFONT, PA Optium [Nasdaq: OPTM] to acquire Israel's Kailight Photonics for $35M in up-front cash plus a stock earnout of up to $5M. Kailight has raised around $12.1M in VC funding (40Gb/s optical transmission products)
+ TWICKENHAM, UK wickenham<strong>Sonus buys Zynetix for $13M ( IP-based GSM system-in-a-box)
+ AUSTRIA & BELLEVUE, WA UC4 Software is buying AppWorx for an undisclosed sum. (Business application automation and batch integration technology)
Posted at 01:54 PM | Posted to News & Updates | TrackBack
UK-based PayPalish Startup Moneybookers Bought For €105M
London's Moneybookers, an online payment provider and the UK's first FSA-licensed e-money issuer, says that private equity firm Investcorp Technology Partners has bought-out of the company for €105M. The company was 100% owned by Gatcombe Park Ventures in London.
Moneybookers says its processed transaction volume reaching more than EUR2.5B with 3M account holders. Moneybookers customers can pay and at more than 3,500 online shops that are using Moneybookers without entering their payment details. Moneybookers charges never exceed EUR0.50 for sending money worldwide.
So why are people using Moneybookers rather than PayPal or Google Checkout? It seems that Paypal still does not work or work well in a number of countries.
View - Press release
Posted at 01:15 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack
Q&A With Vinod Khosla
We recently asked alarm:clock readers to mail in questions for VC titan Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, who has been busy lately making investments in alternative energy. Here some top questions with his responses.
Q1 from Scott Eblen, Library House: I'm interested in hearing Vinod's thoughts on the unintentional effects of the heightened demand for clean technology. One specific example of this is the new competition between "corn as a food" versus "corn as a fuel". The impact of US ethanol demand on Mexican tortilla prices was a dramatic example of how this can play out. I've outlined this situation and some alternative solutions here if you're interested in background:
Vinod Khosla: "I think the effects are widely overstated in their impact – moreover, most of our proposals advance beyond corn-based ethanol in the long run, towards usage of biomass, waste, algae and other items where fuel isn’t competing with food for resources. A lot of what we propose is an addition to current production, not a replacement of its current usage. Mexico’s tortilla crisis has been a function of their import restrictions. The developing world has been asking from reduced farm subsidies and corn ethanol caused a $6b reduction in farm subsidies last year compared to the $3b in ethanol subsidies. This is the main hangup in the Doha round of trade talks."
Q2 from Kory Holback: It seems that the utilities industries can be heavily hindered or motivated by legislation and political action. As we saw with the divestiture of AT&T, and then the deregulation of telecom in the 90's (conveniently coinciding with a massive increase in bandwidth usage) - various political acts can create fantastic opportunities for start ups, if done at the right time.
What kinds of things do you see taking shape politically (or should take shape politically) that might act as a 'catalyst' in the alternative fuels industry over the next 5-10 years?
Vinod Khosla: "At this point, a Carbon cap-and-trade scheme is a “when”, not an “if”- and even industry (note the recent statements by the Global Roundtable on Climate Change and the US Climate Action Partnership statements supporting such a proposal) has come around on it. Global warming is pretty much a scientific consensus at this point, and I think there’s support across the political spectrum for addressing it. The continued instability in the Middle East also reinforces the idea of energy security."
Q3: The web site The Oil Dream, which is published by an oil industry executive, ran a lengthy debunking of your views on ethanol. . It aroused 215 comments. What milestones would you set to show that your views prove correct and the oil industry, as represented by The Oil Drum, is incorrect?
Vinod Khosla: "Their views were pretty nonsensical. The main advance has been in cellulosic ethanol. DOE went looking for three plants to fund and found six good projects. Things have accelerated a lot since that debate -- they kept claiming it was six years away and events are proving them wrong."
Q4: Do you any your fellow investors (Steve Case, former World Bank President James Wolfenson, Hollywood Producer Steve Bink, etc.) in the new Brazilian ethanol refinery called Brenco have any concerns that you might suffer PR blowback from the risks of investing in Brazil? The country is known for political corruption, labor abuses, and the burning of forests to make room for cash crops.
Vinod Khosla: "We have a very professional management team."
Q5: Do you have any investments in solar companies? If not, why are are you less interested in solar than in alternative fuel?
Vinod Khosla: "I am very interested in solar, and we do have a few investments in that regard, especially with regards to CSP technology. However, I don’t believe solar technology is likely to power vehicles anytime soon. We are investors in both solar photovoltaic (Stion) and solar thermal (Ausra) ventures."
Q6: Are you thinking primarily about US consumption when you make your alternative fuel investments? For example, is the ethanol produced by Brenco bound for the US?
Vinod Khosla: "Ethanol has a worldwide market. Energy security and a better environmental profile is just as important (if not more so) to India and China as it is to the US."
Q7: You have made a couple of recent investments in Internet companies - iSkoot and YuMe. What are are you looking for in Internet investments these days?
Vinod Khosla: "It’s the same as always. New value propositions that can grow without lots of marketing dollars. Usually happens when something is very different than what has been done before and the value proposition is very compelling or easy to explain without direct contact."
Q8: I saw a picture of you with a Chevy Tahoe powered by ethanol. Are there any other ways things that you do in your personal life?
Vinod Khosla: "I’ve try and be carbon neutral by purchasing carbon credits.
Q9: Was there an a-ha moment for you when you read something or heard something that made you concerned about the environment? Was there a similar moment when you decided that there might be good VC investments here?
Vinod Khosla: "I have had a continuing interest in the environment for quite some time."
Q10 What do you like to do outside the office? Do you play sports? Watch Sports? Watch movies? Do you like Bollywood films?
Vinod Khosla: "I don't really like to talk about my personal life."
Posted at 12:44 PM | Posted to Venture Capital | TrackBack
Personalized Music Video Startup Fliptrack Does First Funding Round
Ever want to take Michael Jackson's spot in the Thriller video or sing White Snake to Tawny Kitaen? Fliptrack is a newly launched site where users submit photos and video clips that are combined with soundtracks to produce personalized music videos.
With it HQ in Mountain View, Fliptrack has raised around $1.53M in Series A funding led by Mohr, Davidow Ventures with angel investors. It had previously raised $500K in angel funding. The company is led by Derek Reisfield (Vice Chairman, SVP). He was co-founder of Marketwatch, Luminant, and i-hatch Ventures and was the founding President of CBS New Media after the Marketwatch deal went down.
Fliptrack's music library is week. It has only 8 songs in the punk/metal category, for example, and none of them rock. Well, to be fair, You've Got Another Thing Coming, by Judas Priest does rock.
View - site
Posted at 12:25 PM | Posted to Video | TrackBack
Coghead Raises $8M For Web Application Builder For Dummies
Coghead is one of new bread of Web application frameworks that is meant to be used by visual designers wh in the past probably felt that they were in over their head with application development Coghead is primary used to create business applications and sets new standards of making business forms creation accessible through drag and drop functions.
Coghead faces competiton from the likes of Dabble DB, Zoho Creator and WyaWorks.
Today, Mountain View's Coghead has raised $8M in second-round funding led by American Capital Strategies led the deal with new investor SAP and they were joined by return backer El Dorado Ventures. Coghead's CEO, Paul McNamara was an EIR at El Dorado. Before that he was BD VP at Red Hat and took part in their IPO lucre.
Coghead says that since launching its public beta program in October 2006, it has attracted more than 16,000 developers with its "No coding required" message.
For pricing, Coghead says: "We're still working on pricing, and will share more with you as we get closer to launch. That said, our pricing will be extremely competitive. We can tell you that we will offer a free trial account, and a subscription model with tiered pricing plans.To give you a rough ballpark, our average user plans will be less than basic cable TV per user per month."
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Posted at 11:50 AM | Posted to Web Development | TrackBack
MobileLime Buys Out Grocery Tech's Cuesol
Watertown, MA's Mobilelime has acquired Quincy, MA's Cuesol for an undislosed amount. Cuesol was founded in the UK as Unipower Systems in 1990 and moved to Quincy in 2001.
Mobilelime sells software to enable consumers to make purchases via mobile phones while Quesol sells technology nteractive shopping and self-service for grocers.
Mobilelime has raised around $15M in VC funding from Ignition Partners, Seapoint Ventures and Oak Investment Partners.
This is Quesol's Cart Companion. Functionality includes targeted marketing, self-scan in the aisle, specialty department ordering from the cart, and personalized location-based coupons.
Quesol's ShopWatch technology uses infrared location beacons that are installed in the ceiling. The second component is a small tracking device that is attached to each cart. These tracking devices receive location identifications from the beacons and transmit them and cart identification.
View - Mobilelime site
View - Quesol site
Posted at 11:25 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack
Report: DoubleClick Up For Grabs. MSFT Sussing.
Online advertising firm DoubleClick. is exploring a sale and is in talks with Microsoft and other potential buyers including IAC and is seeking a $2B valuation, says the Wall Street Journal.
The New York-based company has retained Morgan Stanley to find a buyer, or take it back to Wall Street for another IPO. The company was taken private and is majority-owned by San Francisco private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman.
If the effort indeed works, Hellman & Friedman will look smart. They bought DoubleClick in 2005 for approximately $1.1B, then sold off a number of divisions and brought focus to the business. DoubleClick has sold its e-mail marketing service for about $90M and in December agreed to sell its Abacus data-management and analytical unit to Alliance Data Systems for around $435M. It also doesn't hurt that the online ad business is peachy but many online ad observers have been impressed with the resurgence of DoubleClick.
We think this would be a smart move by Microsoft for a number of reasons. DoubleClick has many of the pieces that Microsoft lacks including ad server know-how, long-term relatioinships with publishers and advertisers. DoubleClick has also been working on technology for the next generation of Internet advertising including video. And as the Journal reports, Google is expected to get into DoubleClick's brand advertising kitchen soon so the timing would be great for both companies.
Here is a complimentary opinion from AG Edwards:
"DoubleClick provides a web-publishing platform for Internet ads that we believe would provide a boost to Microsoft's online services ambitions which have so far been lackluster. According to the (WSJ) article DoubleClick is seeking at least a $2 billion valuation and has about $150 million in annual revenues. This would be far less a purchase of Yahoo! by Microsoft which has been long rumored and feared by investors, though Yahoo! has a much broader portfolio that DoubleClick."
The flipside argument is that Microsoft has also put a great deal of effort into developing its own system, and so could go it alone. It has dedicated $2.4B to building out AdCenter. However, DoubleClick itself has bought competitive ad servers, including Falk eSolutions in Europe recently. In this market you are really buying the relationships.
Posted at 11:01 AM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack