Sunstone Capital Leads $1.2 M Round In Berlin-Based Gidsy
Following the news of last month's €85 million closing of "Sunstone Technology Ventures Fund III," Sunstone Capital announced it has led a $1.2 million round in Gidsy, a Berlin-based startup offering an online service where people can discover, offer and book unique experiences. The round is led by Sunstone Capital and is joined by Index Ventures, Werner Vogels, Peter Read and Ashton Kutcher.
Interview with Ben Holmes of Index Ventures
Ben Holmes has been a partner at Index Ventures since 2002, and has been heavily involved with Index's investments in Europe. In the Nordic region he currently sits on the boards of Gray Area Labs, Just-Eat, Rebtel, and Stardoll, as well as Mind Candy, Netlog, Notonthehighstreet, Shapeways in the UK.
He spoke with us to promote their newly announced €500 million growth fund, which will invest in emerging leaders with international ambitions. Below are the notes from the interview:
iZettle, Competitor To Square, Closes 8.2M Euro Investment
iZettle, a Sweden based company looking to crack the social payment problem, has closed an 8.2M euro investment from Index Ventures, Creandum and Charles Dunstone, CEO and Co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse. The round was lead by Index Ventures. iZettle's solution is very similar to that of the US leader's in this space, Square. They have an iOS app that users are able to download for free and then use that app, together with a small chip-card reader, to accept and pay for goods and services with your credit card.
Felix Peterson Of Amen Coming To Arctic15
We're extremely thrilled to announce that Felix Petersen is coming to Arctic15! Felix founded a successful location based startup, one of the first that got global traction in 2006 and grew it until 2008 when it got sold to Nokia. After that, he spent a few years at Nokia Nokia working at various positions until heading back into the wild to work on his next startup - Amen.
Amen is a startup in stealth mode and not a lot of it is known. However, it is reported that Ashton Kutcher together with Madonna's manager (and Index Ventures) have invested around $2 million into this Berlin based venture.
Four Reasons Index Ventures Invested In Grey Area
Earlier this week Grey Area announced a whopping 1.9 million euro series A round from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital. This is one of the largest single rounds into the Finnish gaming companies in the recent years for sure. What makes this all the better for the whole country and Northern Europe for that matter, is that the financing came from overseas from globally respected investors. Ben Holmes from Index Ventures outlined four reasons why they invested in Grey Area. I think this is a good read for all entrepreneurs to keep in mind if they are looking for venture capital.
Erply Raises $2 Million In Funding
Erply, an Estonian startup specialising in providing a wide range of core business services to companies, has received a whopping $2 million in funding from Redpoint, Index Ventures, Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, Kenny van Zant, Aydin Senkut, David McClure and the Accelerator Group. The one year old company (founded 2009) has more than 2000 business customers and 8000 users. It is currently profitable with approximately 20% growth each month, according to TechCrunch.
Are The European VC Fund Sizes Going Down For Good? Perhaps, But Who Cares
Just recently Mårten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, joined Index Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence. He also serves in a similar position with Benchmark Capital in US. We of course welcome this as a positive news for the European entrepreneurship. But just a little earlier in January Fred Destin and the whole Atlas Ventures packed up and moved to Boston, leaving just enough staff to support to current European investments.
What is going on in Europe? Are we going to see the existing VC model literally disappear? Just last week I came back from DLD conference in Munich, Germany where I talked numerous people influential in the industry from Israel, London, New York and Zurich about the situation on the ground and most concurred that what we used to know as A-round-sized-VC-firms are becoming fewer and fewer. The smart ones are either going towards smaller deals and much more hands-on model or gravitating towards private equity sized funds (not least because of the hefty management fees) ...well, or moving to Boston.
Imbera Ramping Up Production - NorthZone Led $15 Million Round
Chip-packaging company Imbera Electronics announced that it raised $15 million from NorthZone Ventures, Index Ventures and Conor Venture Partners. NorthZone led the round. Imbera is the developer of patented Integrated Module Board technology for 3-D semiconductor packaging
Previously Imbera had raised $2 million in a first institutional round and just under $1 million in seed money before that.
The newly raised money will go to kick start a new high-volume manufacturing operation in Sangsong-ri, South Korea, and to continue Imbera’s embedded technology evolution through its R&D activities located in Espoo, Finland.
According to VentureBeat Risto Touminen, Imbera’s chief technology officer, had worked on the technology as a student at the Helsinki University of Technology since 1999.
You can read more about Imbera’s chip packaging technology at VentureBeat here.
It’s good to see a Nordic VC’s Nordic VCs active, when the Venture Capital industry in Silicon Valley is coughing.
Index Ventures Buys When Everyone Else Is Selling
Index Ventures, a leading venture capital firm active in venture investing since 1996, has closed a €350 million early stage fund (press release here). Why is this relevant to the Nordics and Baltics? For two reasons.
1) They directly contacted us and told about the new fund, which means that they are very actively looking at the arctic region, among other regions, for investments and wanted to get the message across. So if the product and the team is right, you have same changes of getting into their portfolio as the next guy. This leads to the second reason, which is perhaps the more important one given the times we live in.
2. Here we repeat what we've been saying all along and what got confirmed in the ArcticEvening last week: Now is a great time to invest, which is partly a direct consequence of the fact that in a down-cycle copy cats and weak teams disappear and great ones stand out. There is more talent in the market experimenting with new ideas since they either get layed off or decide to leave in consequence of their steep career advancement stalling. We also reiterate what Creandum said in that those who manage to establish themselves and grow in this climate will prosper further in the better times which eventually come. It might not be easy, but then again for a startup it never is, so really the playing field is just levelled when everybody else is neck deep too. Now you can use the feedback as a real yard stick to measure whether your idea is right or whether it needs more work, or whether you're just working on a completely wrong idea. In good times even the bad ideas get funded as long as you are riding the right wave.
Now, since the feedback is brutally honest (sometimes even too much so), it saves you a lot of time and investors a lot of money. One reason for the lack of new investments is because the venture capital funds are also strugling to raise money from their limited partners (LPs). And yes, why Index Ventures is investing when most of everybody else are pulling back is partly because they can. The truth is that they could raise money in any economy. But this is just because venture capital is the most merit based sport in the world, for both, for startups and for the VC funds themselves. Index can raise money because they have shown that their investors get their money back with generous interest. So just as it might be hard for the startups, it's also hard for the VC funds. And this is exactly why the better venture capital funds just as the better startups see this economy as a great opportunity, when at the same time there are less competent startups and VC funds dying at an increasing rate. In this scenario the latter seem take most of the headlines, but a smart entrepreneur understands this and only increases his focus to navigate his startup in the chaos that was once well functioning economy. The very best entrepreneurs even see the chaos opening massive opportunities and jumps at them.
All things considered, Index Ventures' message from last week's Tuesday is loud and clear.
Index Ventures...with investments in a number of Scandinavian tech companies including Stardoll, MySQL (Sun), Imbera and Trolltech (Nokia), today announced we’ve closed a new seed / early stage fund. Our geographical focus remains the same – Europe, Israel and the US, and we continue to seek deals in the tech space, including enterprise, consumer, mobile and advertising.
I don't think there could be any stronger proof of the fact that it's now or never, than the €350 million early stage fund that Index just raised. The message just can't get more concrete than that. Just as Warren Buffet says "When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy". Index seems to have taken heed.
Time to get cracking people! I know we will.
Saul Klein On Business Models And Downturn
Saul Klein, the founder of Seedcamp and a partner in Index Ventures, had a little chat with Ville in Le Web about the current economic downturn and what that means for startups. There's a lot that we agree with, for example the focus on the business model - if investors aren't paying you, the customers have to be. Cash is king in times of despair and you need it from someone.
Like always, comments are more than welcome.
