Posts Tagged ‘vc’

mg // 19.03.2009

Joerg Binnenbruecker – DuMont Venture: Like a marriage @ Start Up Camp Cologne

In his interview with Viktoria, Joerg Binnenbruecker – managing director @ DuMont Venture – shares precious insights from the venture capital industry: „You have to be both committed, passionate and authentic. And you have to be able to explain your idea within five minutes so that someone like me who’s not into the details can understand it. If I go for an investment, it’s like a marriage for five years and I want to know who I am going to marry...Of course, there are also the typical things like huge market size and growth.“ Although Joerg admits that these are „tough times“, he says that „there’s money in the market and we are looking for things that will survive, i.e. we are investing in digital media and are looking for the game niches.“ Joerg - who started his career as a lawyer at Seyfarth, Fairweather & Geraldson in Chicago – first got in touch with venture capitalism as a strategic consultant when of his clients was a VC: „I found that really cool, since I like innovative entrepreneurs.“ Before joining DuMont Venture, he worked as Senior-Investment Manager at High Tech Gründerfonds. Although he admits that he doesn’t answer all his e-mails, you can still write him to joerg.binnenbruecker@dumontventure.de and your e-mail will be forwarded to his secretary or to one of his four „brilliant investment managers“: „We’ll then put it in a dealflow access database and talk about it in a dealflow meeting“, promises Joerg. Still, if you want him to remember your face, it’s best to contact him at events or conferences. Only make sure to be really passionate ;) More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne will follow in the days to come @ www.tiburon-tv.com
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mg // 16.01.2009

Carlos Diaz – blueKiwi Software: Corporate Facebook, part 2 @ LeWeb08

As pointed out in part 1 of Viktoria's interview with blueKiwi's CEO and co-founder Carlos Diaz, the company has a pretty clever subscription based business model. Carlos now talks about the importance of looking at the size if one is editing software:
„Most of the software will be provided on size tomorrow. The size model is very interesting and also quite disruptive. Companies used to buy software making an investment first, then command and pray so that there will be no errors on their software. With size this is not a problem anymore since you pay only for the users you have.“
He adds that another advantage of a subscription based model is that you have all the maintenance, helpline and evolution of the product already included in the annual user fee:
„People want to start with your solution very simply and quickly and leave it when they don’t believe in it anymore.“
Talking about blueKiwi’s market, Carlos points out:
„In the field of social software most of the big players like jivesoftware or Teligence are American. Within the next three years, we want to demonstrate that a European player can become a leader. We know who our competitors are and with whom we are going to be fighting.“
Last but not least, Carlos’ advice for starting a company is:
„Work on your business model and keep it simple. If you can raise money today, do it. Then take the money and run!“
If you want to learn more about blueKiwi Software, also watch „Carlos Diaz – blueKiwi Software: Corporate Facebook, part 1“
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mg // 15.01.2009

Carlos Diaz – blueKiwi Software: Corporate Facebook, part 1 @ LeWeb08



BlueKiwi Software.com, founded 1 ½ years ago, provides social networking solutions for large organizations. Like a „corporate Facebook“, blueKiwi provides tools to manage an organization’s relationships to the people they care about: Clients, partners and employees. As CEO and co-founder Carlos Diaz points out
„if the enterprises don’t jump into social networking, employees will do it without them. What’s happening right now on the web is not congruent to what’s happening within the organizations.“

According to Carlos, organizations
„spent a lot of money in building up their information system – what they now need to do is to build up their relationship system.“

BlueKiwi’s software mixes people together in a private and confidential network in order to strengthen relationships between employees, partners and clients, share ideas and best practices, get feedback, create innovation and thereby accelerate time to market.

Right now, blueKiwi has around thirty customers, mostly large multinational organizations like BNP Paribas, Societé Générale, Alcatel and Dassault Systemes. Since blueKiwi’s solution is provided with a subscription model based on a fee per user per year, for Carlos it is „mandatory to make our clients happy with our product.“ A quite clever business model, as Viktoria from Tiburon-TV points out, especially with clients like Nokia growing from 100 to 5000 employees ...

Watch out for Part 2 of Viktoria’s interview with Carlos, which will be shown tomorrow.

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mg // 14.01.2009

Raphaël Labbé – Ulike.net: Sharing your tastes
@ LeWeb08

Ulike.net is an entertainment suggestions website, co-founded three years ago by French entrepreneurs Mathieu Léronde & Raphaël Labbé. According to Raphaël, they spent one year on the algorhythm before having the website running two years ago. Ulike is all about sharing what you like or hate and getting recommendations: It offers 50 different categories with subgroups, i.e. books, music, movies, people, characters, cities or countries. Based on your ratings in these categories, Ulike gives you recommendations matching your interests so that you can discover new things. So it acts as a filter for any kind of entertainment. Raphaël points out that when it comes to music or books on the web, making discoveries „is ok right now, for example with LibraryThing“, but what’s new with Ulike is its broad approach and the possibility of building bridges from one content to another. I.e. Ulike will recommend a book based on your movie and music taste. Furthermore, it helps you to meet other people with the same tastes. With 70.000 - mainly European - users and 6 mio. ratings on its website, there are already 300.000 items on Ulike’s website. Each day 200 items are added by its core contributors. „Hopefully one day our userbase will be as big as the one of Last.fm“, says Raphaël. He points out that „we are still early in the process of having the personalized, collaborative, filtering algorhythm deployed around content.“ In order to broaden Ulike’s market, Raphaël wants „to evangelize the possibilities of that recommendation“ through TV or press content. Ulike raised money from French insurer AXA and has „good Business Angels“. In order to get a feel for Ulike, check out Raphaël’s lounge http://www.ulike.net/leafar
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mg // 13.01.2009

Laurent Feral-Pierssens – Silentale: Bouncing boards all over the place @ LeWeb08



Silentale.com, founded by Laurent Feral-Pierssens and based in Paris, will be opening in a limited beta version starting in January. Using archival and search tools, Silentale aggregates personal conversations by e-mail, voicemail or chat and brings it to one secure place online. Since we all talk to the same people through different channels, Silentale can help us to put a thread between all conversations and provide a history of them. Laurent stresses that the information is personal, very well secured as well as not visible. No data mining will be done. Silentale’s service is subscription-based and users pay for the service they get: „Our customers value their information and they want to feel that relationship between them and us“ remarks Laurent. Silentale will be rolling out API and thereby be extended to Outlook Desktop Agent, iPhone SMS, iPhone App and Android.
Within Silentale’s preparation process of over two years, Laurent initially considered advertising, but finally decided „not to touch user data and not to put any ads.“ Silentale is backed by a very wide North-American and European group of investors that have funded successful companies before. Laurent finds it of utmost importance „to keep one’s value chain as short as possible. Be careful if you need three partners or four ways to make money“. His goal for Silentale is „to simply have a number of users“ in 2009 without being specific about it. With bouncing boards and jumping boards all over the place, Silentale tries to make its first impression everywhere at the same time, then penetrate in a marketing sense of way the markets locally. As Laurent says: „One needs to have a global approach and execute locally“. 
Silentale brought back the People’s Choice Award from LeWeb08. Users can participate in its beta by going to www.silentale.com
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mg // 08.01.2009

Igor Smirnoff – Pressdisplay.com: Successful migration @ LeWeb08

Igor Smirnoff from Newspaperdirect.com explains how traditional businesses like newspapers and magazines migrate their products successfully into the digital realm. Newspaperdirect’s online resource is called PressDisplay.com and offers more than 850 newspaper and magazine titles. Publications have been optimized so that you’ll be able to access your favorite paper using a smartphone, an iPhone, an iPod Touch or a BlackBerry device and browse it at your convenience. Besides the above mentioned devices, Igor introduces two other units with a smaller and a larger format: An E-Reader, the first foldable paper device which is also a phone and the new iRex DR1000 - a sleek and lightweight portable digital reader with a10-inch screen. Unlike the Amazon Kindle which offers only limited editions of papers, the iRex device presents full editions as they were published. Being a technology evangelist, Igor believes „you need to be passionate about what you do and believe in it. Things that five years ago sounded outrageous are standard today. Know your stuff, know your market and opportunities and dream in a huge way!“ Last but not least Igor advices: „Attend events like Le Web. These are phantastic networking opportunities.“ ...
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mg // 07.01.2009

David Hornik – August Capital: Relationships matter @ LeWeb08

David Hornik has an eclectic educational background: He holds an B.A. in Computer Music from Stanford University, an M.Phil in Criminology from Cambridge University and a Law Degree from Harvard Law School. But as soon as David started working with startup companies he found it „completely addictive“ and figured out that this was what he loved. When he got to know people from August Capital in 2000, they asked him to consider to come on their side of the table. He decided to join them and still finds it was the right decision: „I’m very grateful and couldn’t be happier.“ Having no particular expertise David calls himself „a collectic“ and finds that a lot of successful investors are generalists. With August Capital, David funded a broad set of companies, amongst others  a blogging company called Six Apart, the media ad platform VideoEgg, the U.S. payroll company Paycycle and the search engine Splunk. Furthermore, he seed-funded Technorati. With regard to the economic downturn, David finds that „entrepreneurs that endure tough times and make their businesses work despite the economy end up building valuable businesses.“ According to David, August Capital will be raising a new fund and „is always looking for smart teams that are developing interesting technology .“ In order to get funded by August Capital David advises: „It’s best to get introduced to me by someone trust. Then feel free to write an e-mail to hornik --@-- augustcap --.-- com.“ David stresses the importance of relationships: „You have to be engaged in the community and build relationships. I honestly think business is a very personal thing. For starting up a company find the right people first. We’re at August Capital are much more likely to fund a team than a technology. Who you have joined forces with to build a startup will mean a lot more than what you are up to.“ David Hornik is also a lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and the Harvard Law School as well as the author of VentureBlog and VentureCast.
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mg // 05.01.2009

Scott Rafer – Lookery = High volume, low cost @ LeWeb08

Scott Rafer, U.S. serial entrepreneur since 1992, founded Lookery.com in July 2007 after his former company MyBlogLog.com has been sold to Yahoo. Lookery.com started off as a Facebook advertising network right after the Facebook platform was launched. According to Scott „Facebook was great for start-ups at the beginning. Then, after a year it was a great place for big companies and not so good for start-ups.“ Having understood that, Scott took Lookery out of the Facebook platform. He now finds it important to use Facebook Connect and its free distribution and to have an extra strategy, since he expects Facebook Connect to be dead next fall. Lookery.com sells user targeting data - mostly small, privacy-friendly profiles including age, gender and a keyword - to the top 20-30 big advertising networks in the world. Scott says: „We’re the high volume/low cost people. There is no one in the business who sells a huge number of profiles really cheap.“ Scott believes in simple business models: „Anything complex is terrible. The older I get and the more experienced I am, the less I attempt. I try not to get any venture capital – business angels are the only people I deal with if I have to take any investment at all.“ Scott’s advice for starting a company is to „do the simplest thing you can, take small amounts of money and get profitable very quickly!“
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mg // 02.01.2009

Ibrahim Evsan und Thomas Bachem: Neues von Sevenload (German) @ LeWeb

Ibrahim Evsan und Thomas Bachem gründeten 2006 Sevenload.com, Deutschlands führende Social Media Plattform für Fotos, Videos, interaktives WebTV und User Generated Content. Inzwischen sind T-Online Venture Fund, Burda Cross Media, Media Ventures GmbH und dw capital GmbH an der sevenload GmbH beteiligt. Auf seiner Plattform zeigt sevenload über 600 interaktive Sendungen in thematisch sortierten Kanälen: „Das ist ein Kraftakt, auf den wir ziemlich stolz sind und der eine unglaubliche Herausforderung bedeutet“, meint sevenload-Geschäftsführer Ibrahim Evsan, kurz „Ibo“. Als Europas grösster WebTV-Anbieter will sevenload im nächsten Jahr mit WebTV-Shows möglichst bald die 1000er Grenze erreicht haben. „Unser Ziel ist, dass Leute mit WebTV-Wissen ohne Ahnung von Technik sich bei sevenload eine Präsenz aufbauen können. Wir sind vor allem ein Dienstleister und wollen den Leuten einfach die Instrumente an die Hand geben, um sich selber zu vermarkten.“ „Sevenload will erwachsen werden, mit aller Macht und Kraft“. Deswegen hat Ibo im Rahmen der Unternehmensvergrösserung seinen CEO-Posten an den sevenload-Seed Investor Axel Schmiegelow weitergegeben. Chief Operating Officer ist seit Oktober 2007 Andreas Heyden. Angesprochen auf die Finanzkrise betont Ibo, dass „der Markt Druck macht. Sevenload hält dennoch an seinem Geschäftsmodell fest“. Thomas Bachem rät jungen Startups: „Nicht aufgeben!“ Einig sind sich die beiden sevenload-Repräsentanten auch darüber: „Die schönsten Momente sind immer die, wenn die Mitarbeiter sich freuen – egal worüber.“
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vt // 23.12.2008

Peter Vesterbacka: Tough times generate great opportunities @ LeWeb

Peter Vesterbacka is a serial entrepreneur from Finland who left HP two years ago with the intent to build further start-ups. Peter had already founded MobileMonday in 2000, a grass roots community for people in the mobile business that has grown into the world’s leading mobile community present in 70 cities around the globe. Peter is also the founder of ConnectedDay, a community site aimed at enriching the dialogue between professional daycare centres, parents and children. Furthermore, Peter co-founded Star Wreck Studios, that has been hugely successful with its first feature film production „Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning“, a film in Finish language with 8 million downloads. Peter has now created WreckAMovie.Com, a new service around fim production. Another new service is Zipiko – described by Peter as „a cool business model all around intention“. Zipiko works well on high-end mobiles and lets your friends know what you would like or are planning to do. Peter started working with Zipiko a while ago and finds „they have a great team and are definitely going to go places. If you know people’s intent, it’s hugely valuable for marketing purposes.“ Although there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, Peter is positive that „this is the best time to start a company. It’s cheap and people will have lots of time to participate“. As an advice for start-ups, Peter points out: „I’m a big believer in ecosystem. Stand up, look around the ecosystem, ask yourself who your competitors are and with who you could partner with. That’s the best way to understand the big picture.“

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