The coffee shops of Mayfair

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

Reevoo is a trust filter for the web

Reevoo today announces a $5mn Series A fundraising* from Eden Ventures and a raft of experience angels. There have been a few questions about what is this investment  is all about.

 
Let me give a view.

 
A massive problem with the web is knowing who and what to trust. Not only because of the growth of dodgy review sites and spoof blogs / affiliates but also because “kosher” ecommerce sites themselves want to increase the levels of trust consumers place in them. They have worked out that higher online trust = higher online conversion.

Reevoo is solving this problem with a two pronged attack;

 
1) The ReevooMark product is a service to collect reviews from retailer’s customers who have already bought goods. ReevooMark aggregates these reviews around products and serves these reviews back to the retailers sites. (see Dixons , Currys , Jessops etc ).

 
2)Reevoo.com, which is still very much in Beta, also provides a destination for consumers to read these reviews to help choose what to buy. Price comparison engines were the first generation in helping consumer WHERE to buy.

Reevoo provides a trust filter to help consumers work out WHAT to buy.

I have blogged before about how much value there is in delivering what the consumer wants without them having to ask for it. For me this remains an area of white space on the web and one where VCs have been making their bets this year. Last.fm does exactly the same thing for music.

The other exciting thing is that if Reevoo can dominate the part of the purchase process that focuses on WHAT to buy rather than where to buy it will become an enormously powerful platform for shaping purchase decisions.  Ben Tompkins is the General Partner at Eden Ventures who I negotiated the
Reevoo investment with. In his previously life at Broadview Ben was the guy who sold Kelkoo to Yahoo  for €475 million. Ben understands what the value an investment in a second generation site like Reevoo could yield.

 
*First Capital advised Reevoo on this fundraising.

User Generated Content

Just a quick note to say looking forward to seeing many of you this week at my favourite media technology software business MintDigital's UGC event.

Just like the rest of the VC community, we are seeing a big up tick in UGC businesses.

Just as I predicted ;)

I have been looking at this value chain in detail ever since the BBC interview, and I am going to follow up with a couple of entries post-event.

PS. For those who've not got the invitaiton from me, forgive me, and do ping me if you'd like to be on the list.

Why is last.fm so exciting?

The VC interest in last.fm continues unabated.  I have been asked by a few VCs whether this is just a feeding frenzy created by Yahoo and Google’s current shopping spree OR if it’s a sustainable business on its own.

I think it's very sustainable and here’s why.

last.fm is valuable because it provides a compelling mechanism for consumers to find tunes that they like and therefore more likely to buy.

True, but more importantly

Last.fm is valuable because, by using its collaborative filtering mechanism, it has grabbed an early dominance as the platform for intermediating between what consumers and the music they want.  Clay Shirky tells us why this could be so valuable:

"The (music label) industry harvests the aggregate taste of music lovers and sells it back to us as popularity, without offering anyone the chance to be heard without their approval… The industry's judgment, not ours, still determines the entire domain in which any collaborative filtering will subsequently operate. A working 'publish, then filter' system that used our collective judgment to sort new music before it gets played on the radio or sold at the record store would be a revolution." 

True, but also (and potentially of most significance)

last.fm is valuable because it could be a mechanism for consumers to find the stuff that’s most valuable to them (not just music). Which means it could be the next generation of search (and I'm not going to bang on why that is valuable).

Let me take a few more paragraphs to explain this point about "next generation search" (clue: it isn't about people searching for stuff but about people finding stuff).

Because media production is cheaper and more atomised, attention from consumers is scarcer and consequently more valuable.  This means that there is greater value ascribed to not only low cost production and distribution but also search (explained in phenomenal detail by Umair Haque).

I use “search” here as a very loose term: it refers to something more than just Google.  It is about the way that consumers are fed (or discover) media most efficiently which is uber-relevant to them.  This is about a number of things: tagging (del.icio.us),  multimedia analysis (Riya. Omniperception, Blinkx), aggregation etc etc.

There is enormous value in delivering what the consumer wants without them asking for it.

With this type of smart aggregation,  predicition is the key (this is composed of user profiling, collaborative filters, community recommendations, similarity & difference filters).  last.fm has all of these.

So I believe last.fm does have stand-alone value.

It has the opportunity to win short term advantage. And in the longer term it can win big.

Web 2.0: forthcoming London event

So we have decided to follow up on our previous two events (opensource and mobile multimedia) with one event which, in my mind, draws many of the themes we've been discussing together under the moniker of web 2.0. I know there are many people who hate this term and many people who think it very useful ; I think it's a very convenient way of pulling together the themes that I see pre-occupying many of the more visionary VCs and underlying the more strategic acqusitions.

If you want to come along drop me a mail or apply via our website: http://www.firstcapital.co.uk/news/events.php

Its a great speaker panel:

John Battelle Founder of Federated media publishing http://battellemedia.com/

Judy Gibbons, Board of Directors, O2. Corporate Vice President, MSN Global Sales and Marketing. http://www.02.com/about/gibbons.asp

Simon Levene, Managing Director, Corporate Development Yahoo!

Nick Kingsbury, Global Software Head & Partner, 3i. http://www.3i.com/contacts/biographies/nickkingsbury.html

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Web 2.0: disruption creates opportunity

"Thomas J. Watson famously said that he saw no need for more than five computers in the world.

We now know that he was wrong…

...we now know that he overestimated the number by four."*

Web 2.0 is here but how do VCs and entrepreneurs make sense of the disruption and identify where the real opportunities lie?

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The speakers are:

* John Battelle, Founder and Chairman of Federated Media Publishing. Previously, Battelle was founder, chairman, and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to founding The Standard, Battelle was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures. He is the author of "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture" (Portfolio, 2005).

* Judy Gibbons, Board of Directors, O2. Corporate Vice President, MSN Global Sales and Marketing.

Judy founded the MSN business in the UK and then went on to manage MSN Europe and then MSN International. She was most recently responsible for MSN sales and marketing across the US and 39 other markets worldwide. Prior to joining Microsoft, Judy held positions in systems engineering, applications development and marketing with Hewlett Packard and Apple Computer. In 2004, she was presented with an award for 'Thought Leadership' by the IVCA for her contribution to the digital economy.

* Simon Levene, Managing Director, Corporate Development Yahoo!

The Yahoo! corporate development group reports to Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo!, and is responsible for developing corporate strategy and leading transaction activities across the company worldwide. Prior to Yahoo!, Simon was at AOL Time Warner, Excite@Home, Goldman Sachs and the LEK Partnership.

* Nick Kingsbury, Global Software Head & Partner, 3i. Nick's role involves setting the strategy for investment in software and he is a key member of the team reviewing all software investments globally. He also works closely with the major IT corporates to ensure that 3i understands their strategies, and makes introductions at very senior levels for 3i's portfolio companies.

*Credit to Clay Shirky.

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The Internet is being transformed by lightweight & compatible software services, business models that rely on efficient lead generation, a very low cost of entry, and an equally low cost of scaling with huge operating margins.

ASPs, mashing, P2P, user generated content, monetising the long tail, podcasting, blogging, media convergence, AJAX, REST, cooperating internet services, multi device software, data syndication. What is this brave new world and where is the smart money going?

If the web is truly becoming one big operating system in the sky, how should VCs differentiate between the fads and the longer term trends?

This event is bringing together key individuals from the venture capital community, the entrepreneurial community and industry to stimulate ideas and discussion, through a number of short presentations from industry leaders, followed by a panel debate.

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Registration will commence at 8.15am with coffee and pastries, with presentations commencing at 9am. After the debate there will be an opportunity for networking, and the event will finish at 11am.

This seminar is by invitation only, and is open to venture capitalists, strategic investors, business angels and entrepreneurs.