Nice overview of the Boston venture scene. Additions/modifications are requested at the PEhub site.
Filed under: Venture Capital
May 8, 2010 • 2:31 pm 3
Thoughts on Entrepreneurship
I gave a talk a few weeks back in Bilbao on entrepreneurship- I focused on a few key areas that startups/entrepreneurs should keep in mind. It was only a 20 minute talk, but there were 7 key areas I covered. I’ll be turning those into a series of posts over the coming weeks.
Stay tuned.
Filed under: Europreneurship, Venture Capital
April 17, 2010 • 9:35 am 1
Wired Up
I picked up the May copy of Wired’s UK edition this week. I’ve always preferred the US version since I’m not in the US- it keeps me up to speed on what’s happening there- but it hit me how powerful the UK version is for the European start-up scene.
Enter the Wired 100 People.
Everyone knows the legends in the Valley, and everyone goes on and on about the Valley (it *is* a special place afterall). I’ve been here for 10 years and Europe has always had problems gaining start-up momentum – there’s no epicenter, there’s no critical mass- and there are no Heros.
Wired is creating local Heros, and I applaud them for it. Singling out successful entrepreneurs, investors, inventors- and holding them up – is something Europe desperately needs. It’s not going to instantly make a scene- but the Wired 100 + the Silicon Alley map they produced last year + …. starts to create a sense of community. And that’s just what Europe needs.
(Also, special congratulations to you Reshma for coming in at number 12. Reshma Sohoni is CEO of Seedcamp- another group that’s doing a great job building a strong European start-up scene. If you’re just starting out, and you don’t know about Seedcamp- you need to get to one of their mini seedcamps as soon as you can.)
Filed under: Technology, Venture Capital
December 15, 2009 • 7:19 pm 0
Venture’s Back II
Last month I posted suggesting that Venture might be back… The post below from trueventures makes a strong case, that yes, indeed, Venture is back.
http://www.trueventures.com/blog/2009/12/02/venture-is-back-baby/
Also, I was at Noah earlier in the month; company after company spewed out fantastic stats:
Betfair- online betting, 6.5m trades per day, 5 bn pageviews per month, 2.5m registered users, 600k active users, £13bn annual deposits, £300m revenues- £150M UK; £150M international
Delticom – online tire sales (yes, tires) €200M Revenues, €53M gross profit, €15M Ebitda, €10M net profit
Zed- entertainment (http://www.business.zed.com/)
Started off as mobile content player, expanded into everything – including tv
$700M revenue;
Bigpoint – browser gaming; playstation 2 quality Free
games, community based 1000 distribution partners TV partnerships with rev
streams to broadcasters Virtual goods/currency- micro transactions Subscription
= one price; virtual goods means variable pricing 95M registered users, 250k
new registrations per day
Spotify- online music, 6m users (3m UK), 15k new registrations per day 120 staff Avg engagement: 94 min per
day;
Stardoll- online "paper" dolls, 40m members, Avg age 13.8, 12m uniques/month
There were several billion dollars of revenue on stage that morning – representing some of Europe's more mature startups… with companies like these in VCs portfolios, and the exit market opening up- it's easy to understand why venture's back.
Filed under: Venture Capital
September 15, 2009 • 8:24 pm 1
Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker Series
Hussein Kanji has organized a venture capital and entrepreneurship lecture series starting in October, which will be held at London Business School. Current speakers announced are:
Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group, Thursday Oct 1
Stan Bowland, Icera, Thursday Nov 5
Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm, Thursday Dec 3
Bernard Liautaud, Balderton, Thursday Feb 4
Jos White, MessageLabs, Thursday March 4
Herman Hauser, Amadeus, Thursday, May 6
Mike Hedger, KVS, Thursday June 3
Other speakers will be announced in the near future.
If you're interested in venture capital and entrepreneurship; then this is the series of speakers you need to get to…and it's FREE. It's a stellar lineup, and the price is right. Full details and bios available at the London Business School website or on Hussein's blog.
See you there.
Filed under: Europreneurship, Events, Conferences and Panels, Venture Capital
May 7, 2009 • 7:23 pm 0
Qualcomm Ventures – Business Plan Competition
Today we announced the Qualcomm Ventures Business Plan Competion.
It's open to startups in the US, Europe, China and India. Semi-finalists from each region will win $100k, and then compete for a further $150k at the Qualcomm Ventures CEO Summit in November.
We're looking for companies that impact the wireless space in the following areas:
- Consumer/enterprise applications and services
- Communication devices
- Semiconductor and component technologies
- Mobile platforms
- Digital media and content
- Healthcare technologies and services
- CleanTech
Additional details on the Qualcomm Ventures' QPrize competition and submission guidelines are available at www.qprize2009.com. Deadline for business plan submissions is July 31, 2009.
Filed under: Venture Capital
April 16, 2009 • 7:56 pm 0
European Startups… Still alive and kicking
Just in case you thought innovation was dead (or maybe non-existent) in Europe, the guys over at Mashable have pulled together a short list of European startups. If you missed the The Next Web conference and are interested in monitoring the space, The Next Web is a great resource (with pretty swell twitter too).
Filed under: Events, Conferences and Panels, Venture Capital
September 7, 2008 • 3:24 pm 1
Dropbox- how file sync should be
My beta invite for Dropbox (funded by Y Combinator) arrived this weekend - and my initial impression is very positive. I’ve migrated my home mac use to a client/server (MacBook Pro/iMac) set up- with my iMac doing most of the heavy lifting.
I’ve tried multiple back up services and even tried to use iDisk as a “dropbox”, but it never worked like it should. I’m now sharing my “Current” folder between the two macs seamlessly- and can even get access via the web if needed. Essentially, Dropbox is what iDisk should be – seamless cross-platform file sharing, complemented by web access:
Apple should acquire these guys ASAP and switch out iDisk for Dropbox…and getting access to these files via my iPhone would make a nice addition to MobileMe too.
Filed under: Apple, Internet, Venture Capital
September 3, 2008 • 9:31 pm 0
Wii Sports Resort: MotionPlus
Normally, I don't post anything portfolio related, but one of our companies, InvenSense, is launching some very cool technology inside the upcoming Wii Sports Resort. The best part is the Jet Ski demo at 2:24….
Filed under: Games, Venture Capital
August 27, 2008 • 8:45 pm 0
European VC takes a nose dive
Don't say you weren't warned: It's back…. VC Doom and Gloom.
According to Venture Source and the NYT, European Venture has hit it's lowest point since 2000. Investment dollars declined by 35% to $1.3 billion and companies receiving investment were down by 42% to 167.
The upshot is that early stage investing isn't dead:
“Venture capitalists are being
very selective about the companies they back but they’re by no means
abandoning the European market. In the first six months of the year,
44% of venture deals in Europe were seed or first rounds—we haven’t
seen this level of early-stage interest since the first half of 2001."
Which is great, b/c these companies can grow up during the downturn and hopefully come out swinging when times are better. For portfolio companies that are long in the tooth though…Fred is rumored to be lurking in his Vadar mask.
Filed under: Venture Capital
