Europe’s Next Net Giants? Part 3.
EUROPE’S INCROWD
Incrowd Media’s Mr. Bogaert is also addressing multiple markets, but he doesn’t want to raise venture capital to achieve his goals. “European entrepreneurs have learned their lesson with VC liquidation preferences,” he says. Incrowd runs social networking communities in Dutch (Redbox & Obox), Spanish (Gentebox), French (Coolbox), German (Iobox), and English (Bingbox).
A former freelance telecommunications consultant, 30-year-old Mr. Bogaert co-founded Incrowd with Toon Coppens, 24, who cut his teeth as an entrepreneur by starting a social networking site in Belgium in 2000 called ASL.TO (later renamed Redbox). When Incrowd got its start in 2003, the founders tried unsuccessfully to get seed capital from regional VCs. “The Belgian government preferred to give seed funding to a pizzeria in Brussels over an innovative company in the Internet industry,” gripes Mr. Bogaert.
The pizzeria, he notes with satisfaction, is now bankrupt, whereas Incrowd is debt-free and, he says, thriving. “We know how to run a profitable company,” he says, although he won’t give financial details. Incrowd finances itself through advertising deals.
The number of registered members in its communities has steadily risen to 7 million, with 100,000 new users per month. Regional uptake has varied; in Germany, Iobox has drawn only 300,000 users since its launch in February, whereas Spain’s Gentebox attracted 3.5 million users after only six weeks. Bingbox, an English-language community, attracted 500,000 members worldwide within two weeks, leading Incrowd to quickly strike a deal with U.S. online advertising agency Casale Media.
Incrowd’s rivals include Stockholm-based LunarStorm, which has communities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Denmark, and Berlin-based StudioVZ, a German equivalent to Facebook that claims over 100,000 students in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Hungary.
PERSEVERANCE PAYS OFF
Timing may be everything, but as 34-year-old Swedish entrepreneur Jörgen Bertilsson has learned, perseverance can also pay off.
Mr. Bertilsson, who now runs a budding e-commerce software maker called Incordia, started his first venture at 13, developing games with two friends for Commodore and Amiga computers, a hobby that turned into a lucrative business. Later, while he was studying engineering at Kalmar’s Institute of Technology in Southeastern Sweden, he founded Berima Trading, a company that imported Asian computer peripherals. Mr. Bertilsson says he sold the profitable company to a friend for €50,000 in 1991. After that, he focused on investing his own money in the then-booming Swedish stock market, passing his own tips for high-tech investing along via a web site, aktiespek.com.
Until that point, Mr. Bertilsson’s timing had always been near-perfect. But when he launched his third company, Incordia, in 2000 just as the technology bubble was bursting, it looked like the lucky streak was ending. “The timing was really crappy,” he recalls, “but we thought we had a great product and forged ahead.” Managers had to forgo salaries, but by 2001, the company had won several large customers, including the Swedish Yellow Pages and telecom operator Tele 2, which today uses Incordia’s products to allow its customers to order a new cell phone or sign up for broadband services via the Net.
Incordia currently has 1,000 customers in Scandinavia, 20 employees, annual revenue of roughly €2 million to €3 million and profits of about €500,000 —all achieved without a penny of venture capital. The company is now looking to expand into Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
As for Mr. Bertilsson, he is already plotting his next venture, and looking for a replacement for himself as CEO. “Whenever you’re creating a new company you learn a lot,” he says. “It makes me want to take what I’ve learned and do it again better and faster.”
EAST MEETS WEST
Having built and sold a successful social networking business in his own country, Hungarian native Peter Petrovics is now looking to expand his company iwiw into 13 other markets. A former IT consultant with Unisys Hungary, Mr. Petrovics, 30, left the corporate IT environment in 2000 to start IT services company Virgo Systems, alongside Attlila Szantner, 33, and Akos Gordon, 30, gaining customers such as the Hungarian Post and telecom operator Matav. Mr. Petrovics used the profits to help fund iwiw, a Budapest-based social networking site he started with software developer Zsolt Varady in 2003, at a time when social networking software wasn’t all that well understood.
Mr. Varady left the company and since then Mr. Petrovics and two other partners have rehauled iwiw’s software to make it more scalable and easier to use and translated it into 13 other languages. Subscriber growth has taken off, with some 760,000 users signing up since the October 2005 relaunch, says Mr. Petrovics. Using advertising deals, the company already turns a profit, and about 15,000 users log on daily.
Mr. Petrovics recently sold the company to T-Online’s Hungarian subsidiary for €4 million. But he only sold the Hungarian version, and kept the rights to the iwiw software for the other 13 languages he developed. Now he has plans to launch iwiw in other European countries.
SUNSHINE, AND WINE
Seasoned entrepreneur René Lönngren’s venture is already pan-European. Mr. Lönngren, 34, who was born in Norway but carries a Swedish passport, emigrated to sunny Barcelona in 2002 for lifestyle reasons. But before he knew it, he found himself starting up Le Cool, an online publication geared to hip young trendsters who want to know where to go out in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and London.
Mr. Lönngren wanted to keep costs way down, well remembering not only the bankruptcy of Filibaba.com, his Stockholm-based online food delivery service in 2000, but a lot of closed doors for his ideas after that. “They [venture capitalists] would say, ‘we don’t do Internet,’” he recalls.
Mr. Lönngren developed a simple program based on mySQL that allowed him to simplify and speed up the online layout process. And since there isn’t a physical magazine, costs are very low.
Mr. Lönngren was astounded by how fast the magazine grew. Today Le Cool has 60,000 subscribers, representing a 150 percent growth rate since it was launched last year.
Advertisers have taken notice: he claims the magazine turns a profit, and expects to triple revenues from advertising to about €300,000 by year’s end. Like other Web 2.0 companies on the Continent, Le Cool has its own European twist. Forget fueling employees with pizza and Red Bull Americano style. Says Mr. Lönngren: “We like to take a two-hour lunch and drink red wine.”
Source link: redherring.com...
Incrowd Media’s Mr. Bogaert is also addressing multiple markets, but he doesn’t want to raise venture capital to achieve his goals. “European entrepreneurs have learned their lesson with VC liquidation preferences,” he says. Incrowd runs social networking communities in Dutch (Redbox & Obox), Spanish (Gentebox), French (Coolbox), German (Iobox), and English (Bingbox).
A former freelance telecommunications consultant, 30-year-old Mr. Bogaert co-founded Incrowd with Toon Coppens, 24, who cut his teeth as an entrepreneur by starting a social networking site in Belgium in 2000 called ASL.TO (later renamed Redbox). When Incrowd got its start in 2003, the founders tried unsuccessfully to get seed capital from regional VCs. “The Belgian government preferred to give seed funding to a pizzeria in Brussels over an innovative company in the Internet industry,” gripes Mr. Bogaert.
The pizzeria, he notes with satisfaction, is now bankrupt, whereas Incrowd is debt-free and, he says, thriving. “We know how to run a profitable company,” he says, although he won’t give financial details. Incrowd finances itself through advertising deals.
The number of registered members in its communities has steadily risen to 7 million, with 100,000 new users per month. Regional uptake has varied; in Germany, Iobox has drawn only 300,000 users since its launch in February, whereas Spain’s Gentebox attracted 3.5 million users after only six weeks. Bingbox, an English-language community, attracted 500,000 members worldwide within two weeks, leading Incrowd to quickly strike a deal with U.S. online advertising agency Casale Media.
Incrowd’s rivals include Stockholm-based LunarStorm, which has communities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Denmark, and Berlin-based StudioVZ, a German equivalent to Facebook that claims over 100,000 students in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Hungary.
PERSEVERANCE PAYS OFF
Timing may be everything, but as 34-year-old Swedish entrepreneur Jörgen Bertilsson has learned, perseverance can also pay off.
Mr. Bertilsson, who now runs a budding e-commerce software maker called Incordia, started his first venture at 13, developing games with two friends for Commodore and Amiga computers, a hobby that turned into a lucrative business. Later, while he was studying engineering at Kalmar’s Institute of Technology in Southeastern Sweden, he founded Berima Trading, a company that imported Asian computer peripherals. Mr. Bertilsson says he sold the profitable company to a friend for €50,000 in 1991. After that, he focused on investing his own money in the then-booming Swedish stock market, passing his own tips for high-tech investing along via a web site, aktiespek.com.
Until that point, Mr. Bertilsson’s timing had always been near-perfect. But when he launched his third company, Incordia, in 2000 just as the technology bubble was bursting, it looked like the lucky streak was ending. “The timing was really crappy,” he recalls, “but we thought we had a great product and forged ahead.” Managers had to forgo salaries, but by 2001, the company had won several large customers, including the Swedish Yellow Pages and telecom operator Tele 2, which today uses Incordia’s products to allow its customers to order a new cell phone or sign up for broadband services via the Net.
Incordia currently has 1,000 customers in Scandinavia, 20 employees, annual revenue of roughly €2 million to €3 million and profits of about €500,000 —all achieved without a penny of venture capital. The company is now looking to expand into Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
As for Mr. Bertilsson, he is already plotting his next venture, and looking for a replacement for himself as CEO. “Whenever you’re creating a new company you learn a lot,” he says. “It makes me want to take what I’ve learned and do it again better and faster.”
EAST MEETS WEST
Having built and sold a successful social networking business in his own country, Hungarian native Peter Petrovics is now looking to expand his company iwiw into 13 other markets. A former IT consultant with Unisys Hungary, Mr. Petrovics, 30, left the corporate IT environment in 2000 to start IT services company Virgo Systems, alongside Attlila Szantner, 33, and Akos Gordon, 30, gaining customers such as the Hungarian Post and telecom operator Matav. Mr. Petrovics used the profits to help fund iwiw, a Budapest-based social networking site he started with software developer Zsolt Varady in 2003, at a time when social networking software wasn’t all that well understood.
Mr. Varady left the company and since then Mr. Petrovics and two other partners have rehauled iwiw’s software to make it more scalable and easier to use and translated it into 13 other languages. Subscriber growth has taken off, with some 760,000 users signing up since the October 2005 relaunch, says Mr. Petrovics. Using advertising deals, the company already turns a profit, and about 15,000 users log on daily.
Mr. Petrovics recently sold the company to T-Online’s Hungarian subsidiary for €4 million. But he only sold the Hungarian version, and kept the rights to the iwiw software for the other 13 languages he developed. Now he has plans to launch iwiw in other European countries.
SUNSHINE, AND WINE
Seasoned entrepreneur René Lönngren’s venture is already pan-European. Mr. Lönngren, 34, who was born in Norway but carries a Swedish passport, emigrated to sunny Barcelona in 2002 for lifestyle reasons. But before he knew it, he found himself starting up Le Cool, an online publication geared to hip young trendsters who want to know where to go out in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and London.
Mr. Lönngren wanted to keep costs way down, well remembering not only the bankruptcy of Filibaba.com, his Stockholm-based online food delivery service in 2000, but a lot of closed doors for his ideas after that. “They [venture capitalists] would say, ‘we don’t do Internet,’” he recalls.
Mr. Lönngren developed a simple program based on mySQL that allowed him to simplify and speed up the online layout process. And since there isn’t a physical magazine, costs are very low.
Mr. Lönngren was astounded by how fast the magazine grew. Today Le Cool has 60,000 subscribers, representing a 150 percent growth rate since it was launched last year.
Advertisers have taken notice: he claims the magazine turns a profit, and expects to triple revenues from advertising to about €300,000 by year’s end. Like other Web 2.0 companies on the Continent, Le Cool has its own European twist. Forget fueling employees with pizza and Red Bull Americano style. Says Mr. Lönngren: “We like to take a two-hour lunch and drink red wine.”
Source link: redherring.com...
mljevar - 2. Aug, 00:01