2006 Venture Capital Investment into European Web companies

2006 Internet and media investments

It’s a little premature to be releasing any numbers, but I have been taking some time to look over the deals done so far this year at Seed and Series A Level.

As I noted when First Capital ran the web2.0 event last year, I was convinced that we would see not only more deals into European web companies but also a significant up-tick in the amount invested. Just from the list of companies noted below, you can see we’re already far ahead of last year’s numbers.

 
The list is interesting as it shows new investors to Europe (who’d have thought we’d see Sequoia active here?), some other investors appear to have woken up. The type of companies are fascinating too: Far more online-offline models such as Moo and Spreadshirt, some of the filter technologies that excite me so much like Netvibes, PageFlakes and Last.fm, and also a new breed of online media properties like the wonderfully named DailyMotion.

Worryingly I also see a few directly competitive investments from competing VC firms… feels like 2000 again.

Dear reader, this is not yet a complete list, and I need your help. Which have I missed or got wrong? I know are few are missing but they not closed yet ;) but there's others I will have just overlooked.

Send me mails if I’ve missed stuff off (remember only seed and first rounds, only European companies) and I will publish the complete list with investment amounts at the end of the year.
 

2006 Consumer internet and media investments

Seed and Series A Level

The story so far...

Comments

[Rosenar]

I have read with interest but it just seems to me there are a few omissions here.

For instance what about Garlik and what about European IPO candidate Open BC?

[Tim Towle]

If I remember correctly, www.souki.com a local listings mobile service, started out as a dutch venture and as now gone to the US to relaunch.

[Fred Destin]

Paul:
Accel reinvested into MindCandy - WAYN you can talk about from ESPRIT since it got onto Brad's blog - Atlas did Koodos and GIGA as well - We have another one in stealth :-) launching in two weeks.

[Ian]

Paul
What about WeeMee?

[Ed French]

Paul, At Enterprise Ventures we've also done
Murcia Solstice mobile dating/flirting.
Ed

[Chris Lake]

Hi Paul,

There's also Polar Rose (Nordic Venture Partners), which bagged $5.1m. Image search sector is officially in overdrive...

...and Artemis went into mform.co.uk, a mortgage comparison site, at a rumoured £5m.

Cheers,

c.

[Paul Fisher]

Wow. Thanks for all the comments.

Ian. Nice blog . Weemee did get investment from Accel 2006 but was not a first round.

Ed French. Spotted Murcia Solctice. Nice one.

Fred. Mind Candy, not a first round. Wayn now announced. I wonder which VCs are smarting from this one because they either saw it and weren’t invited in or didn’t even see it the first place…?

Tim Towle. Can’t find any record of Souki having raised money. Anyone out there know anything more?

Rosenar. Garlik and OpenBC would both qualify but they were funded last year.

Chris. Thanks for the heads up! Polar rose and Mform both on the list(great spot on the latter)

Thanks to one and all and keep ‘em coming!

[Paul LaFontaine]

Atlas invested into Seatwave, a ticket exchange like viagogo and US secondary market ticketer Stubhub

[koen Lenssen]

Martin Varsavsky (FON) angel invested in a company called "Moneytrackin" (see: http://mo.neytrack.in/).

[koen Lenssen]

Locr received Angel funding and is about to receive financing from the German High-Tech founders fund.

From their website:
"locr aims to change the way we display and organize photographs by adding automatically generated geographical descriptions."

See: http://www.locr.com

[koen Lenssen]

Locr received Angel funding and is about to receive financing from the German High-Tech founders fund.

From their website:
"locr aims to change the way we display and organize photographs by adding automatically generated geographical descriptions."

See: http://www.locr.com

[koen Lenssen]

Locr received Angel funding and is about to receive financing from the German High-Tech founders fund.

From their website:
"locr aims to change the way we display and organize photographs by adding automatically generated geographical descriptions."

See: http://www.locr.com

[Ernstjan Albers]

Hi Paul & Tim,

Souki.com is still privately funded, though we are having talks. The relaunch in the US is scheduled @ 14th of feb. If you are interested drop me a line and I'll get you an preview account.

[Rolf Richter]

locr received funding from german High-Tech Gründerfonds and will start it's website in January 2007. Two business angels from the BANSON network, which have impressive contacts themselves, invested as well. Stay tuned: we will see an interesting company to take off. locr is very well linked to the GPS/Galileo development activities in Braunschweig, one of the high-tech research centers in Germany.

[Eileen]

Paul, How about Spotzer (Amsterdam)-?

[andy klein]

We (spotzer) raised angel and strategic capital from a post-production company called Dutchview in 2006 and then recently (2007) raised a series a round from Cyrte Investments, a billion dollar plus media, technology and telecommunications fund.

[Tom]

hi, koen Lenssen - I uses www.trekinu.com they also do Geotagging with more features.

[MBT Sport]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

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