Some of you called us out on it, and some bought the story right up. Truth to be told it was the mother of all April Fools scams, but the point remains: The VC industry could do with some innovative new models. Even if having a smaller fund means smaller management fees.

Not only that, we also love to co-operate with the great people at The Next Web and at TechCrunch.

Back to the scam. We orchestrated the scam with Boris and the rest of The Next Web, without whom could not have done it. David from The Next Web opened up an Twitter account, whipped up graphics and the ball was rolling. Altogether we got 121 Twitter follower and numerous retweets. The full gory story is at The Next Web.

We apologize to those startups for raising false hopes, but at the same time hope that Angels and early stage funds will take note and look at Twitter not only as a bygone investment opportunity, but also a useful for tool for their trade.

Related Posts

1. MicroFundr, First Pan-European VC Fund, Will Use Twitter For Funding Process
2. Nokia adds $150M to Nokia Growth Partners fund
3. Teemu Selänne, the unknown VC

The Invest Fund raised just under €14 million (USD $18m) from a group of small banks and informal investors. A joint group of European blogs, including ArcticStartup(that’s us!), The Next Web, TechCrunch Europe and TechCrunch France are happy to announce the launch of the MicroFundr investment fund aimed at European small, mini and micro start-ups. We are honored to be part of such a high quality group of European blogs.

We are also excited about the new innovative way a startup can submit its application – via Twitter! As this was presented ot us it only made sense, since the best startups can communicate all they need to only in a few slides anyway, so why not to use something that helps the startups to be consice. We reiterate what Dick Vogels, VP for Small Change Venture Capital, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, says:

“With the current economic climate, the rise of micro blogging services and a global focus on details the time is right for a small money fund. The blogs involved will invest money, advertising space and attention in the form of blog posts for start-ups with no more than 2 employees, and modest goals.

[...]

These small startups are the key to growth in this economy, and the unique nature of this fund, along with the unique, rapid, web-enabled method of accessing funds, it has an immediacy and straight-to-the-point focus  that engenders a new breed of entrepreneur and a new type of micro-company [...]“

To be eligible, start-ups are required to have a turnover of no more than €140,000 Euros per year (USD $185,000), and should aim at an exit worth no more than €14 million (USD $18.5m). Business plans can be submitted via Twitter in no more than 14 tweets using the tag #twit14, with their first tweet to simply include a link to the startup company’s web site.

If the twitter account @microfundr starts following the startup on twitter, a further 13 tweets will be accepted from that startup, as part of the application process. The shortlist of those to follow will be judged every 14 days by a panel of the partner Blog owners, including us, and Small Change executives, and we expect to have our first funding in place for 14 startups, totaling up to €196,000 (USD $259,000), within 28 days.

Andrew Keen @ Small Fund Launch from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

We will announce more news about the initiative in due course. The first set of shortlisted startups will be confirmed by 14th April 2009.

We believe this is not only a great partnerhip model for us and all the other leading European startup blogs, but also a serious wake up call for the VC industry to start innovating where their asset class is not performing.

Related Posts

1. MicroFundr – Not Just Yet
2. Are The European VC Fund Sizes Going Down For Good? Perhaps, But Who Cares
3. United Dogs and Cats Receive 480k€ Funding, Spurs Discussion