TechCrunch Europe and UK Trade and Investment are organising a series of pitch workshops to help startups hone their pitch. Free ones.
The next on is on 30th March 2010. It is free to attend for qualified UK-based startups, which means any startup in Europe that also has a UK base of course. It gives you a chance to possibly pitch at a forthcoming TechCrunch Pitch session at an event like TechCrunch London as we tend to look at those startups coming through this system.
Here are the details:
[UK] You know how it is, you wait for a bus and then three arrive at once. Although NextBuses (iTunes link), a new iPhone app by London-based developer Malcolm Barclay, doesn’t quite solve this problem, it does promise to make it easier to know when the next bus is due and even, in some instances, tell you if it’s running on time.
The app, which costs 59p, delivers departure information for 370,000 bus, coach and tram stops throughout England, Scotland and Wales to Apple’s smartphone. It gives access to a mixture of scheduled and real-time (where available) information based on the user’s location, postcode or general locality.
The data is licensed from Traveline’s NextBuses service, which already exists in SMS and WAP-based form, although the iPhone version is obviously a lot richer on the UI side and overall much more user-friendly.
Yahoo will power search and related advertising on the ‘emocion’ portal of Telefónica España, Spain’s largest operator network, the two companies announced this morning.
The agreement builds on the mobile search partnership with O2 Germany launched in November 2009, as well as the larger agreement announced in October 2007 to provide consumers with Yahoo as the primary search service on Telefónica mobile portals in 15 European and Latin-American countries.
[UK] Brownbook, the business directory, has integrated seed data for nearly 4 million businesses for several countries to fill up their pages and grow the site’s index to 34 million listings. A move that is clearly an investment on their part to reach new countries and increase activity where they already have coverage.
Brownbook’s approach is quite different from many well known local business listings sites. The startup boasts their wiki-like approach vs. stale yellow page heavy weights. Anyone can add a business, edit its information and review it. Businesses can then verify and claim their listings, getting their hands on tools to integrate additional content, such as a Facebook profile, Youtube Channel, Flicker photostream, Twitter posts, etc., to dress up and promote their profile.
[Sweden] Stockholm-based Videoplaza, the video ad server startup, has secured a €3.5 million funding round from leading Nordic VCs Creandum and Northzone Ventures.
This follows seed investments of €80,000 and €420,000, bringing the total raised to-date to €4m.
The company, which currently has a staff of 20 based in Sweden, the UK and France, will use the new capital to continue to expand operations in Europe including Germany, Spain and Italy, and attract new customers for its Monetizer ad server platform for managing, displaying and tracking video advertising.
[Russia] The Moscow-based social games company Nival Network, part of the Nival Group, has raised $7 million in new funding from DST, 1C Company and Nival Group founder & CEO Sergey Orlovskiy, according to a report (russian) in the Vedomosti newspaper.
DST have invested $4 million for a 12.5% stake, with software vendor 1C (a previous investor) providing an additional $1 million and Nival Group CEO, Sergey Orlovskiy putting in $2 million. As a result, 1C and Orlovskiy now own a 26.56% and 60.94% stake, respectively.
This gives Nival Network a post-money valuation of $32 million.
[France] Social location-based search service Tellmewhere or Dismoioù has released a new version of its iPhone app as part of its quest to conquer local markets. The Paris-based startup is also preparing for US expansion later this year.
The company’s current platform – a personalized local search engine – grew out of a former wiki map project, officially launched in 2008. Today, the site counts over 500,000 members and allows users to find and share places with their friends. Yet, not only does Tellmewhere identify the places that match a given search criteria, it goes further by ranking the results based on the user’s previous reviews and tastes. The company’s engine thus gets smarter with use – which reflects Tellmewhere’s philosophy: users are more likely to be interested in results that match their taste or are leveraged from their network.
[Germany] The Samwer brothers have done it again.
In December, Germany’s most prolific startup founders pumped millions from France and Sweden into their Internet companies. Now the three brothers have secured a €5 million second round for their Groupon clone Citydeal, which they only founded in December.
The new investment comes from an international group made up of the Swedish Investment AV Kinnevik, along with Germany’s Holtzbrinck Ventures and eVenture Capital Partners and, of course, the Samwers’ own incubator Rocket Internet.
In January, the same set of investors already provided €4 million of funding and a third round is said to be in the making.
There is a tweet being retweeted heavily within the German Twitter community right now which roughly translates as
“BEWARE Nazi-pigs on Twitter! @Heil_Hitler_88 Please block so that the account gets deleted. #nazi #block #rt Please!” (original).
Now, if Twitter had servers in Germany an account like @Heil_Hitler_88 (we’re not linking BTW) would be illegal and would be deleted right away.
[Germany/Poland] Team Europe Ventures, the Berlin-based VC firm focused on early stage Internet companies, has made a minority investment in Infakt. The Polish startup provides web-based accounting and invoicing solutions for small companies locally.
Alongside Team Ventures, angel Christoph Janz also brings new investment, with the combined funding amounting to a 30% stake in Infakt. Polish business angel Krzysztof Nowinski (formerly with the VC firm BMP) is an existing investor.
