NVCA presentation on the capital markets crisis from a venture and buy-out perspective, via PEHub.
Congrats to Felix, Stefan at Doughty Hanson and b-to-v. Now I understand why Christophe Maire couldn’t make Seedcamp Berlin on Friday :)
Sounds like Plazes found a good home to build on what was always a very interesting idea. The challenge of mainstream adoption that held the company back may not matter much to Nokia, as the edge informs what we all want to use 3-5 years down the line. And at least Felix is at reboot, which is a good sign!!
Stumped by all the talk around virtualization? It does indeed mean many things to many people. IBM has an overview of methods, architectures and implementations that is a good start into an area still wrestling with its own terminology.
The big private name to watch in this space is Parallels, formerly SWSoft, a Bessemer/Insight investment dating back to 1997. Definitely nearing the “should think about an exit soon-ish” date… current market conditions are pretty hard on successful companies such as this one.
It hit the wires while I was travelling (spoke at INSEAD’s GEF and Seedcamp Berlin) so didn’t get to break the news on Atlas Europe’s new tech deal, NTR Global. I’ve been pushing the software-as-a-service (SaaS) theme ever since joining Atlas in April last year and NTR perfectly fits the mold of what we like in a growth stage deal: a proven, visionary technology platform, fast revenue growth, a world-class management team led by CEO Luis Font, excellent capital efficiency (especially for a SaaS company) and tight execution, a highly skilled sales team, serious market upside in the US with European-based tech… it just all comes together here.
It’s Fred Destin’s newest deal. He is joining the board and is rightly excited about it. The round was led by Max Bleyleben at Kennet, one of Europe’s most savvy expansion stage investors. I spent two days with Max at the company in Barca and that in itself was a great learning experience (after our cheeky our blog comment exchange!).
NTR has a fantastic roadmap about which we’ll be able to speak more in the months ahead. Suffice it to say, if you are doing remote support in SMEs or large corporates, if you need remote login and access facility or if you need to administer a large number of machines across heterogeneous networks, you should give these guys a call. And talk about eating our own dogfood: the Atlas tech support signed up while we hadn’t even completed due diligence… if that isn’t proof enough! :)
I, for one, welcome our new Nintendo overlords.
Machinae Supremacy – Death From Above
Free download, courtesy of Last.fm.
Start a free online dating service that doesn’t suck.
Take what Plentyoffish has done, optimize and SEO the heck out of it. Translate into several European languages. Monetize by arbitraging traffic - acquire it free through SEO and WOM, then sell it to the Match and Meetics who are willing to pay up for customer acquisition. Believe me, Facebook and Co aren’t intention-driven enough. You want something that is between an online self-help questionnaire platform (for the girls) and AdultFriendFinder (for the men). With W3C-compliant XHTML/CSS please.
Read Josh Kopelman’s Penny Gap theory. Respect what Markus Frind has built - it’s an amazing achievement but one that can be improved on. Go meet folks like Marc Simoncini of Meetic (whom I haven’t seen since 2003, but who is a true rockstar), or Chris Vollmann, who built iLove (and is currently on a trip around the world following the sale of myvideo.de), or Joe Cohen of ex-Match.com fame (now running the fan-to-fan ticket exchange, Seatwave).
And please, as always, come see me for funding.
And now for something completely different. Came across this gem, don’t ask me how. I think based on this there’s a general rule of diplomacy which says “whatever you do, BE NICE TO FINLAND”:
Two friends of mine, Alan Bradburne and Stu Robinson, have created lastpixel, an agency for social software development. The development philosophy is firmly 37signals and they continue much of the fine work we did at IncrediblInc, where Alan was a co-founder and Stu worked on user interface (and more).
They’re some of the best “Rails and more” development talent in the UK (Alan has published the definitive Rails social networking book). I’ve tried getting them into Atlas companies full-time but they’d rather stay independent, as good coders will. They don’t take just any client but if your work appeals to them, you’ve gone a long way towards a finished, polished product (like this one). And they thrown in net-native consultancy as well.
If anyone wants an intro, do let me know.
Build an industry-focused social website for a large but niche-y global industry. Let’s take non-ferrous metals as an example, or even better, just the aluminium industry. Objective of the site is to become the social framework and user-contributed data platform for the entire industry. There are probably 50K executives working on aluminium. Nice captive audience.
Features should include messaging (become the standard chatty platform, like Bloomberg for financial markets), user-posted news/rumours/facts, a job board and highly-targeted relevant advertising. Launch should be through relevant industry organizations (e.g. European Aluminium Association), publications (e.g Metal Bulletin), events (e.g. International Aluminium Conference) and the financial industry that ties them all together (e.g. London Metal Exchange). And then charge a hefty price that is just within reach of individual corporate credit card users, e.g. ~$1000/per annum. Same model as XING in terms of free launch, then slowly start boxing people in to promote conversion.
Rinse, repeat as necessary per industry vertical. Then, profit.
The problem I have navigating on foot isn’t solved by PNDs: I am not tied to roads, but switch freely between network- and region-based systems. Google Maps helps, but it still fails me in specialized situations (see e.g. WhatAMap for inspiration), or when there is no network coverage. I wonder if there is some way to solve this on a truly small, personal device. Or MEMS-based. Or with a handset app. Hmmm.
P.S. This is starting to freak me out. Every time I look at a clock it’s 13:37…
And here's some photo goodness in case you need to find me in a crowd:
I look almost as tired in that as Jim Breyer in his. I must be doing something right :)