2006 Early Stage Venture Capital into European Web2.0
I have now pulled together all the numbers for European Seed and First Rounds into consumer and internet businesses in 2006. (The final list is at the bottom of the post in all its glory).
So what are the headlines?
European Web2.0 investments are BIG and have skyrocketed from last year.
More than £144mn was raised in Europe across seed and first rounds in 2006 by 54 European web2.0 companies. This total doesn’t include the “undisclosed investment” rounds, of which there were 16.
The growth is remarkable.
In the UK in 2005, just £24mn was invested into web2.0 companies. In 2006 that figure increased threefold with £79mn worth of early stage investments into 21 companies.
VC investment patterns are changing
Active VCs
Index Ventures is the most active. No surprises there. But a quick look at their syndicate partners shows the (re) arrival of the Americans. Sequoia doing a first round in Europe!? Rather surprisingly the active investors aren’t just the London based mega-funds like Benchmark and Accel: Great to see Mangrove coming out on the front foot after the success of Skype. Finally the activity of not usually headline grabbing Nordic Venture Partners.
Investment strategy
Astonishing that we don’t see any investments in the area from 3i. I would have expected to see something from them, not just because they’re the biggest and oldest player in Europe, but also because in 2006 they recruited the incredibly web-savvy Daniel Waterhouse from Yahoo! Maybe 2007 Daniel?
Also interested to see Atlas Ventures back with a vengeance. Their investment strategy seems to be following copycat models Daily Motion (YouTube), Koodos (Yoox), and I understand another business (to be announced) is also directly competitive to a UK venture backed web property. Is this accident or design Fred?
Range of web businesses
Companies that make money
Good to see that many of this new breed of web company has very explicit revenue generating capabilities; they are either stores/services (Wiggle, Stardoll, Moo.com), or they facilitate the process of buying/selling somehow.
Models that build on models
I am really interested to see two types of companies using third-party web-services as a platform.
Firstly, eBay is the platform for two VC backed businesses. Autoquake helps people sell their cars on eBay, auctioning4u helps anyone sell anything on ebay. Secondly there are web-services which serve parts of their sites onto other peoples. Examples include Reevoo serving their genuine customer reviews onto retailers sites, or Dailymotion allowing bloggers to show video on their
sites.
Ecosystem 2.0
European politicians should be delighted that we have a thriving
entrepreneurial ecosystem which they have been attempting (hoping) to
build to compete with the USA, principally the West Coast.
Interestingly, this ecosystem is not centering on the Universities or the government sponsored funds.
It is instead the Silicon Valley model of second time round entrepreneurs, experienced business angels and VCs who have already been through a few cycles. So we see the team behind Active Hotels either as Execs or Angel investors at Reevoo.com . We see Mel Morris of match.com as an angel investor into SoFlow.com. Firebox founder Michael Smith doing it again with Mindcandy. Pierre Chapaz, founder of Kelkoo.com is now at Index Ventures. We see second time round entrepreneurs are Eyeka (CEO Giles Babinet sold Musiwave), the Skype guys doing The Venice Project & Fon's Martin Vavarsky previously founded Ya.com and Jazztel.
| Company | Investors | Description | £MM | Location | Round | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregator | Amadeus , Intel Capital , 3i | WebTV | 9 | UK | 1 | Jul-06 | |
| All Peers | Index Ventures , Mangrove | Private P2P media sharing | W/H | UK | 1 | Mar-06 | |
| Auctioning4u | Foresight Venture Partners | eBay drop-off stores | 2.2 | UK | 1 | May-06 | |
| AutoQuake | Accel Partners | Sell cars over the web | 3.4 | UK | 1 | Jul-06 | |
| Bebo | Benchmark Capital | Social networking community | 8.5 | UK | 1 | May-06 | |
| Exabre | Eden Ventures | www.thefilter.com itunes plug-in. Last.fm-esque | W/H | UK | 1 | N/D | |
| Koodos | Atlas Venture | End of line retail. | W/H | UK | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Last.fm | Index Ventures, Atomico | Consumer audio filter | 2 | UK | 1 | May-06 | |
| Mform | Artemis | Online mortgage comparison | 2.5 | UK | 1 | Sep-06 | |
| Mind candy | Index Ventures , New Media Spark | Online / offline games | 3.97 | UK | 1 | Oct-06 | |
| Moo Print | Atlas Venture, Index Venture | Customized printing solutions | 2.83 | UK | 1 | Apr-06 | |
| Murcia Solstice | Enterprise Ventures | Web and text social network | 0.55 | UK | 1 | N/D | |
| Netvibes* | Index Ventures , Accel Partners | Ajax desktop / DLA /Filter | 8.17 | UK | 1 | Aug-06 | |
| Reevoo | Eden Ventures | Online publisher of genuine customer reviews | 2.5 | UK | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Seat Wave | Not disclosed | Viagogo lookalike | W/H | UK | 1 | N/D | |
| Skinkers | New Media Spark | RSS publishing | 2 | UK | 1 | Jan-06 | |
| Soflow | Kodiak , Northbridge | Social networking for professionals | 2.8 | UK | 1 | Mar-06 | |
| Viagogo | Index Ventures, Atomico | Online Ticket exchange | 9.9 | UK | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Wayn | Esprit, Angels | Social Network for travel | 5.5 | UK | 1 | Nov-06 | |
| Wiggle | Isis | ecommerce: online retail | 12.5 | UK | 1 | Jul-06 | |
| Yuuguu | Enterprise Ventures | Enterprise collaboration | 0.6 | UK | 1 | Oct-06 | |
| Jalbum | Nordic Venture Partners | Web photo album tool | W/H | Sweden | 1 | Jul-06 | |
| Polar Rose | Nordic Venture Partners | Online photo search | 2.72 | Sweden | 1 | Jul-06 | |
| Stardoll * | Index Ventures , Sequoia | Online dress-up community | 6 | Sweden | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Fon * | Sequoia , Google , Index | WiFi sharing | 12.33 | Spain | 1 | Feb-06 | |
| Properazzi | Mangrove, Angels | Property Search | W/H | Spain | 1 | Nov-06 | |
| ebuddy | Lowland Capital | Multiformat IM | 3.41 | Netherlands | 1 | Oct-06 | |
| Spotzer | Undisclosed | Ready to air video advertising | W/H | Netherlands | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Pigsback | Angels | Consumer coupon and discount site | 2 | Ireland | 1 | Oct-06 | |
| SevenLoad | New Media Ventures, Stroer | Video platform & white label service | W/H | Germany | 1 | Nov-06 | |
| CoComment | Netage Capital Partners | Blog comment tracking | 0.75 | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| DJTunes.com | High Tech Gründerfonds | Online music Download | 0.3 | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Imageloop | Angels | European Slide.com | 0.6 | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Kimeta | High Tech Gründerfonds | Vertical Search (jobs) | W/H | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Locr | High Tech Gründerfonds | Photo Tagging | 0.39 | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Nachtagenten | Burda Digital Ventures | German Clubbing Social Network | W/H | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Page Flakes | Benchmark | Ajax desktop / DLA /Filter | W/H | Germany | 1 | May-06 | |
| Qype | Partech , Advent Ventures | Local search services | W/H | Germany | 1 | Aug-06 | |
| Spreadshirt | Accel Partners | Consumers design T-shirts, | W/H | Germany | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Wazup | Innovacom & Wellington Partners | Game Search Engine | 5.20531 | Germany | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Criteo | Elaia, AGF Private Equity | Recommendation engine | 2 | France | 1 | Apr-06 | |
| Dailymotion | Atlas Venture , Partech | Euro YouTube | 4.77 | France | 1 | Aug-06 | |
| Eyeka | DN Capital , Ventech | Mobile video and image market | 2.72 | France | 1 | Feb-06 | |
| Kewego | Banexi Ventures Partners | UGC Video | 3.4 | France | 1 | Apr-06 | |
| Olfo | Members-only e-commerce | Edmond de Rothschild, OTC Asset Man. | 2.1 | France | 1 | Dec-06 | |
| Viaduc | AGF Private Equity , Ventech | Viadeo.com is social networking for professionals | 3.4 | France | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| vPod.tv | Innovacom, Angels | Online video | 2.5 | France | 1 | May-06 | |
| W2.Media | Angels | www.Vozavi.com "consumer expert" decision-making | 0.8 | France | 1 | May-06 | |
| Wikio | Loic Le Meur, Martin Varsavsky, Pierre Chappaz, Jeff Clavier | User managed news search engine | W/H | France | 1 | Jun-06 | |
| Yoono | Social Bookmarking | AGF Private Equity | 1.02 | France | 1 | Aug-06 | |
| Igglo | Benchmark , Taivas | UGC Real estate | 8.51 | Finland | 1 | Oct-06 | |
| Quintura | Mangrove , OpenView | Visual Search | W/H | Europe | 1 | Nov-06 | |
| Joost | Not disclosed | Non-linear webTV | W/H | Europe | 1 | N/D | |
| Zyb | Nordic Venture Partners | MobilePhone backup | 0.6 | Denmark | 1 | Oct-06 |
A vintage year for investing. I am honoured to be working with the entrepreneurs who are driving it. Of course, the real test for us all comes of course at exit….
Methods.
This has been a mixture of old fashioned primary research, desk research and most significantly help from readers: thanks to all those who posted or wrote with deal deals, many of which were missed by the mainstream deal databases.
*These deals have had Seed and First rounds in 2006 and total funding has been summed in the table
Reference sources used: Venture Source, CalibreOne research
Awesome post Paul. I have blogged about it on Vecosys as a must read. Good to see you the other day and look forward to catching up.
Posted by: Sam Sethi | January 22, 2007 at 01:41 AM
Paul, should you need and if there any then I can share you with you information regarding VC investments in software and Internet technology start-ups in Russia and neighboring countries. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Yakov | January 22, 2007 at 02:55 PM
Excellent work Paul - looks very comprehensive from where I'm sitting.
c.
Posted by: Chris Lake | January 24, 2007 at 11:46 AM
Paul, that's a terrific round-up! Just added it to the funding section at JigsawUK:
http://www.jigsawuk.org/index.php?title=Funding_and_advice#Funding_overview_and_guides
Posted by: Colin Donald | January 24, 2007 at 12:26 PM
Very interesting thanks. I believe there's even more that could be on there!
Posted by: Koen | January 24, 2007 at 08:18 PM
copycats huh ? I will post a full answer when I get around to it, to run through our 2006 new media and internet investments.
Posted by: Fred Destin | February 03, 2007 at 08:06 PM
Souki.com's internet is live now. Mobile version will be availeble in four weeks.
Posted by: Ernstjan Albers | April 06, 2007 at 02:32 PM
One's first step in wisdom is to kuesteon everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
Posted by: Jack Rutherford | August 21, 2007 at 04:55 PM