Europe’s Next Net Giants? Part 2.
GOING DUTCH
Mr. Rueb, 34, and co-founder Onno Bakker, 37, who are trying to raise a first round of venture capital financing to expand eBuddy, met and became friends in 1995 while both were completing internships at IBM in the Netherlands. After a series of jobs, the duo decided in 2003 to use their own funds to start New York City-based numberportability.com. The idea was to help people get the best deals when changing carriers.
The partners still own and operate the company, which ditched its old business model to become a storefront for a mobile phone reseller. While in New York, Mr. Bakker reconnected with a former colleague, an inventor named Paulo Taylor at Dutch unified messaging service provider Xoip. Mr. Taylor was working on a way to get MSN Messenger onto a phone without downloading software. Seeing the possibilities, the Dutch entrepreneurs decided to form a company with Mr. Taylor. They first called the company emessenger and have since renamed it eBuddy. They moved back to Amsterdam in 2004.
eBuddy, which formally launched on May 1, 2004, and is already profitable thanks to advertising revenues, claims it is growing by as much as 100,000 users a day. The company beat the U.S. venture-backed Meebo to the starting gate and has more clients—some 30 million—including many outside of Europe. About 40 percent of its registered users are in Europe, 35 percent in Latin America, 10 percent in Asia, and 15 percent in the U.S. and Canada, says Mr. Rueb. Most use eBuddy via a web browser on their PCs but the company already offers mobile phone service to 3 million users and is hoping a new, more user-friendly mobile application will cause those numbers to explode.
TRADING PLAZES
German natives Mr. Petersen, 30, and Stefan Kellner, 37, met while working at the Cologne-based multimedia agency Antwerpes & Partner as creative directors. In mid-2004, they quit and started working on Plazes, a software program that identifies a user’s location either via a router connected to the Internet or their IP address. Users who register and download Plazes software can be automatically located and connected to other nearby Plazes users. The software determines not only what city other Plazes users are in, but whether they are at work, home, or at a conference.
To date, they’ve raised an undisclosed amount from business angels, including Mr. Andreesen and Mr. Varsavsky. Now Plazes, which currently has about 25,000 users, is seeking venture funding to help develop its application into a mass-market product. It is beta testing a version of its software for mobile phones, which will open up the possibility of finding Plazes friends anywhere, and is working with FON on a service to give users info on the nearest Wi-Fi hotspots.
FRENCH TWIST
Kewego, a web-based technology platform for television and video services, is the second company launched by French entrepreneurs Michel Meyer, 34, and Olivier Heckmann, 35. They met in Silicon Valley in 1995 and teamed to start an online magazine called The Virtual Baguette, an irreverent view of France that was an instant hit with Francophiles.
The two returned to France in 1996, and with the help of funding from French venture capital firm Sofinnova, launched MultiMania, a web-hosting site that became the third-largest site in France, just behind France Telecom’s Wanadoo and Yahoo. MultiMania, the first Internet company to go public in France, was 112 times oversubscribed. The company, which had a market cap of €250 million at the time of its IPO on March 9, 2000, was worth double that at its peak. MultiMania was taken over by Lycos in 2001 and Mr. Meyer became director of Lycos France, and Mr. Heckmann took over web page hosting for Lycos Europe.
A little over a year later, Mr. Meyer decided to take a year off. Mr. Heckmann followed suit. Both became restless and decided it was time to create Pulsevision (now called Kewego) in 2003. Kewego has already acquired two companies, Grenoble-based Tedisys, which specialized in digital signage systems and local television, and Paris-based Pooxi.com, a web site that, like YouTube, allows users to upload, view, and share video clips.
Kewego is targeting three markets: the online creation of local TV ads—it has already sold 600 campaigns on 18 channels in France, Switzerland, and Germany (SpotRunner offers a similar service in the U.S.); the creation of digital signage, for advertising or corporate TV, with clients such as Airbus and Nestle (U.S.-based Scala is a competitor on this service); and, finally, a service allowing consumers to view and share videos.
If Kewego were based in the U.S., investors would tell it to focus on just one of the three areas, says Mr. Meyer. But that would be a mistake in Europe, he argues. The company’s ambition is to become pan-European, but the market is so fragmented and the approaches required so different that it would take too long and be too risky to bet on just one of the three. Hence the French twist: Go for a hat trick.
In April, Kewego raised €5 million in venture capital from French firm Banexi Ventures Partners. Kewego has just opened a Berlin office and plans to roll out its services across five other European countries between now and the end of the year, says Mr. Meyer.
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
German native Lars Hinrichs, 29, says his education at the “school of hard knocks” has helped him build OpenBC, a social networking company geared to business people. In 1998, he turned down a chance to attend an elite German university, instead preferring to start politik-digital.de, a site aggregating German election news and hosting live chats with politicians. Then came the boom years, with the meteoric rise and rapid fall of Böttcher-Hinrichs, the venture capital-financed multimedia agency he co-founded, which went bankrupt in September 2001, following the tech market crash.
Undaunted, in 2004 he founded OpenBC. But this time Mr. Hinrichs did it with his own cash, vowing not to depend on outside funding. Before he got angel funding, Mr. Hinrichs financed his company by charging premium users €72 ($88.36) upfront for the service and then €5.95 a month. Today about 10 percent of OpenBC’s more than 1 million users pay the annual fee, and while the company is not profitable due to recent expansion, Mr. Hinrichs says the social networking site generates enough cash to operate comfortably. OpenBC is using a 2005 $6.9-million investment from Wellington Capital and business angels largely to fund acquisitions.
OpenBC offers its software in 15 languages, including Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Although growth in China is rapid, the company is still much stronger in the German-speaking realm than elsewhere (it doesn’t give a market breakdown). That’s something Mr. Hinrichs says he is trying to rectify with an acquisition.
Source link: redherring.com...
To be continued tomorrow..
Mr. Rueb, 34, and co-founder Onno Bakker, 37, who are trying to raise a first round of venture capital financing to expand eBuddy, met and became friends in 1995 while both were completing internships at IBM in the Netherlands. After a series of jobs, the duo decided in 2003 to use their own funds to start New York City-based numberportability.com. The idea was to help people get the best deals when changing carriers.
The partners still own and operate the company, which ditched its old business model to become a storefront for a mobile phone reseller. While in New York, Mr. Bakker reconnected with a former colleague, an inventor named Paulo Taylor at Dutch unified messaging service provider Xoip. Mr. Taylor was working on a way to get MSN Messenger onto a phone without downloading software. Seeing the possibilities, the Dutch entrepreneurs decided to form a company with Mr. Taylor. They first called the company emessenger and have since renamed it eBuddy. They moved back to Amsterdam in 2004.
eBuddy, which formally launched on May 1, 2004, and is already profitable thanks to advertising revenues, claims it is growing by as much as 100,000 users a day. The company beat the U.S. venture-backed Meebo to the starting gate and has more clients—some 30 million—including many outside of Europe. About 40 percent of its registered users are in Europe, 35 percent in Latin America, 10 percent in Asia, and 15 percent in the U.S. and Canada, says Mr. Rueb. Most use eBuddy via a web browser on their PCs but the company already offers mobile phone service to 3 million users and is hoping a new, more user-friendly mobile application will cause those numbers to explode.
TRADING PLAZES
German natives Mr. Petersen, 30, and Stefan Kellner, 37, met while working at the Cologne-based multimedia agency Antwerpes & Partner as creative directors. In mid-2004, they quit and started working on Plazes, a software program that identifies a user’s location either via a router connected to the Internet or their IP address. Users who register and download Plazes software can be automatically located and connected to other nearby Plazes users. The software determines not only what city other Plazes users are in, but whether they are at work, home, or at a conference.
To date, they’ve raised an undisclosed amount from business angels, including Mr. Andreesen and Mr. Varsavsky. Now Plazes, which currently has about 25,000 users, is seeking venture funding to help develop its application into a mass-market product. It is beta testing a version of its software for mobile phones, which will open up the possibility of finding Plazes friends anywhere, and is working with FON on a service to give users info on the nearest Wi-Fi hotspots.
FRENCH TWIST
Kewego, a web-based technology platform for television and video services, is the second company launched by French entrepreneurs Michel Meyer, 34, and Olivier Heckmann, 35. They met in Silicon Valley in 1995 and teamed to start an online magazine called The Virtual Baguette, an irreverent view of France that was an instant hit with Francophiles.
The two returned to France in 1996, and with the help of funding from French venture capital firm Sofinnova, launched MultiMania, a web-hosting site that became the third-largest site in France, just behind France Telecom’s Wanadoo and Yahoo. MultiMania, the first Internet company to go public in France, was 112 times oversubscribed. The company, which had a market cap of €250 million at the time of its IPO on March 9, 2000, was worth double that at its peak. MultiMania was taken over by Lycos in 2001 and Mr. Meyer became director of Lycos France, and Mr. Heckmann took over web page hosting for Lycos Europe.
A little over a year later, Mr. Meyer decided to take a year off. Mr. Heckmann followed suit. Both became restless and decided it was time to create Pulsevision (now called Kewego) in 2003. Kewego has already acquired two companies, Grenoble-based Tedisys, which specialized in digital signage systems and local television, and Paris-based Pooxi.com, a web site that, like YouTube, allows users to upload, view, and share video clips.
Kewego is targeting three markets: the online creation of local TV ads—it has already sold 600 campaigns on 18 channels in France, Switzerland, and Germany (SpotRunner offers a similar service in the U.S.); the creation of digital signage, for advertising or corporate TV, with clients such as Airbus and Nestle (U.S.-based Scala is a competitor on this service); and, finally, a service allowing consumers to view and share videos.
If Kewego were based in the U.S., investors would tell it to focus on just one of the three areas, says Mr. Meyer. But that would be a mistake in Europe, he argues. The company’s ambition is to become pan-European, but the market is so fragmented and the approaches required so different that it would take too long and be too risky to bet on just one of the three. Hence the French twist: Go for a hat trick.
In April, Kewego raised €5 million in venture capital from French firm Banexi Ventures Partners. Kewego has just opened a Berlin office and plans to roll out its services across five other European countries between now and the end of the year, says Mr. Meyer.
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
German native Lars Hinrichs, 29, says his education at the “school of hard knocks” has helped him build OpenBC, a social networking company geared to business people. In 1998, he turned down a chance to attend an elite German university, instead preferring to start politik-digital.de, a site aggregating German election news and hosting live chats with politicians. Then came the boom years, with the meteoric rise and rapid fall of Böttcher-Hinrichs, the venture capital-financed multimedia agency he co-founded, which went bankrupt in September 2001, following the tech market crash.
Undaunted, in 2004 he founded OpenBC. But this time Mr. Hinrichs did it with his own cash, vowing not to depend on outside funding. Before he got angel funding, Mr. Hinrichs financed his company by charging premium users €72 ($88.36) upfront for the service and then €5.95 a month. Today about 10 percent of OpenBC’s more than 1 million users pay the annual fee, and while the company is not profitable due to recent expansion, Mr. Hinrichs says the social networking site generates enough cash to operate comfortably. OpenBC is using a 2005 $6.9-million investment from Wellington Capital and business angels largely to fund acquisitions.
OpenBC offers its software in 15 languages, including Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Although growth in China is rapid, the company is still much stronger in the German-speaking realm than elsewhere (it doesn’t give a market breakdown). That’s something Mr. Hinrichs says he is trying to rectify with an acquisition.
Source link: redherring.com...
To be continued tomorrow..
mljevar - 1. Aug, 00:01