Posts Tagged ‘venture capital’

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

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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

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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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vt // 19.12.2008

Simplify your money management with SCRED: Kristoffer Lawson @ LeWeb

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The Finish start-up Scred.com, founded by Kristoffer Lawson, focusses on banking for the 2.0 generation. Its version 1 has been successfully launched with around 1000 users already using this basic version. Version 2 with more exciting content will come out before christmas. Lawson tries to revolutionize the banking system by offering easy and fun-to-use tools to handle money. As the creative director of Alternative party - an art event in Helsinki he finds that money has always been a real headache. Users of Scred.com can simplify their money management among friends or on a trip by using Screds calculation, currency conversion and distribution tools and services. They can track debts between people and use Scred on their mobile even without connection!
Lawson, who already designed computer programs at age 7, just loves technology. He wants to make Scred extremely big and has no interest in focussing on the Finish market even if 50% of Screds users are from Finland right now. With regard to the financial crisis Lawson finds that time has worked in our favor since money is becoming more important. He adds: If you fail, its a stupid excuse, that its because of the recession.
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vt // 17.12.2008

Easy and fun language learning with BUSUU: Bernhard Niesner @ LeWeb

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Busuu.com is a start-up, based in Madrid, which runs a free online community for learning languages. Launched in May 2008 by Austrian Bernhard Niesner and his university friend Adrian Hilti from Liechtenstein, busuu.com already has 50.000 users from 200 countries, some of them pretty remote. Niesner and Hilti decided to create a new concept of learning languages online and include also less known languages so that they do not extinct. The company name itself is a language spoken in Cameroon by only eight people!
Using an integrated video-chat application, students can connect with native speakers, i.e. an English language student from Sudan can directly practice his language skills with an American in New York City. With a high percentage of users in developing countries, busuu.com makes it easy and fun for everybody to learn a language and contributes to the diversity of languages all over the world. Busuu.com is also ideal to prepare a trip by making friends before visiting a country and thus make international friends. On busuu.com one can even learn the almost extinct whistling language Silbo Gomero, spoken by the people of the Spanish island La Gomera. 
Busuu.com can be used completely for free as a basis-member. To get access to additional learning tools and content, one has to pay a small amount per month. Therefore, Niesners christmas wish is not surprising:Unlimited google ad resources for one year.
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vt // 20.10.2008

put out your own talent contest: talentsplanet - Dick Rempt @ PICNIC

At the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam, there have been lots of business ideas flowing around. Dick Rempt is a venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, he calls himself a company builder. But just investing is not enough for him. Than he got in touch with the idea of talentsplanet, he could not resist and set up the startup himself. Watch the video to discover what talentsplanet is about and what Dick thinks about learning and failing.

Dick Rempt is driven by an approach of partnering and sharing so he is always looking for cooperations and new ideas. You have a service or product which would enrich or promote the idea of talentsplanet? Do not hesitate to contact Dick!

picnic conference amsterdam From 24th to 26th of September 2008, hundreds of creative minds from all over the world came together in Amsterdam for the third PICNIC. More information and pictures shot at the event you will find on the eventsite picnicnetwork.org
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vt // 14.10.2008

crowd funded music - sellaband.com - Pim Betist @ PICNIC

While the big labels get afraid of the fundamental changes the Internet and the general technological development causes them, there are some fresh ideas upcoming to revolutionize the music business enabling promising artists to get enough money to release their own album. Pim Betist, co-founder of sellaband.com, explains how anybody can become a micro-investor and fund new talents. Very frankly, Pim provides us with insights about the business model behind, which also entailed some criticisms.

The idea sounds simple, find 5.000 believers who buy one or more shares for $10 each. Once you reached $50.000 you will be the lucky one to get you album produced. The success of sellaband is impressing, 14 artists already reached the required $50.000 and have their albums produced, 12 more artists are funded and are on the way of album production. As sellaband takes an transaction fee for any money purchased and gets the interests of the stored money which is waiting to hit the $50.000 you can get an idea about the profitability of that business model. That also caught the attention of investors and that is maybe why sellabend got its $5 Million funding by Prime Technology Ventures for expanding in the US.

So it is no surprise, that there are lots of competitors on the market which also want to have a peace of the cake: forMyBand is a German variation of the same idea, at slicethepie the single investments start at $5. Justaloud.com and talentarena.de have a different approach but also enable independent music and artists to fame, both are based in Germany. A similar concept but for independent films offers indie maverick.
Also established bands use their fans to receive a pre-financing. The veteran U.K. progressive rock band Marillion could raise $725.000 by selling deluxe versions and gifts related to their new album like going to the studio with them and participating in the recording. That might also be a very cost-effective sales channel for the musicians because as their audience pays in advance they will save a lot of money for marketing and distribution.

picnic conference amsterdam The interview with Pim Betist, co-foounder of sellaband.com, was realized at PICNIC08, where creative minds from all over the world came together to share ideas and thoughts. It took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands from September 24th to 26th 2008.
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vt // 27.08.2008

Partechvc.com - Andreas Schlenker

Andreas Schlenker from Partech International talks about venture capital, which kind of businesses could be interesting to invest in and also where the trends are going.
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vt // 25.08.2008

mediaventures.de - Nico Lumma (in german)

Nico Lumma calls himself an evangelist for the web 2.0. Working several years in this function at mediaventures, he started projects like shoppero.com or mabber.com and is always looking for great investment oportunities.
Update: Nico decided to watch out for new challenges and is going to leave mediaventures.
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