TechCrunch UK is throwing a networking party for European startups called “LateCrunch”, in conjunction with Web 2 Expo Berlin (21-23 October). The event will be on Thursday 23rd October, the last night of the Expo, and it’s going to be the official “after-party” for Web 2 Expo. It will start at 10pm and go until 5am. We want this to be a cool, fun event for people to hang out with each other, meet startups and create the real beginnings of an amazing tech scene across Europe. We are releasing the first tranche of tickets today (Tuesday 30th September). We have pre-released a limited amount already, aimed at our targetted list of startups, VCs and entrepreneurs, in order to ensure the party is packed with startups. All further details about the event will appear on TechCrunch UK first. So if you want to be the first to get a ticket then subscribe to the RSS feed, the official Twitter feed @techcrunchuk, and/or Mike Butcher’s (Editor, TechCrunch UK) personal Twitter account @mbites.

When?
23rd October 2008 from 22.00 hours until 5am.

Where?
HomeBase Lounge, Köthener Str. 44, 10777 Berlin, Germany (see fantastic photo by Korbatz, above). For a map of the location, please go here . For recommendations of nearby hotels, please go here.

How do you get in?
Please get a ticket at http://www.amiando.com/latecrunch.html
Attendee identification will be checked at the door. Due to the strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are not transferable and not refundable. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. There is a small 15 Euro fee for tickets in order to allay costs and prevent no-shows.

Press / Official Bloggers:
To apply for press/blogger status at LateCrunch please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg (Rassami[AT]rassami.com of Rassami PR, Twitter: @rassami)who will be co-ordinating press attendance with the official Web2Expo organisers.

Sponsors of LateCrunch:
(If you are interested in sponsoring, please contact Petra Johansson on petra.johansson[at]btinternet.com (Twitter: @petrajohansson) of Twisted Tree Events for further information)

Aventiv
Aventiv created NomaDesk, the world’s first virtual fileserver for nomadic businesses.

Blurb
Blurb is a creative publishing platform which enables every blogger, artist, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur and poet to create and sell their own book.

Gimahhot
Gimahhot is Amazon Marketplace with bargaining. Users can either buy at the merchants’ offer prices or they can also enter a price that they would buy the certain product for.

Quidco
Quidco is an online shopping collective where members earn cashback on their purchases and connect with other like-minded consumers.

Rummble
Rummble makes it easier to find people and places nearby that you will like. It works anywhere – you can use it at home or on the move via your mobile.

Sun Microsystems
Exclusively for startups, the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program offers deep discounts on industry leading systems and storage products, massively scalable Web hosting services, plus free training and technical advice. Build your business on an infrastructure that scales right along with your success. Sun Startup Essentials Programme is now expanding across Europe, if you are a startup and want to build your business to scale now, then sign up here today.

Winston & Strawn
Winston & Strawn is an international law firm with over 950 attorneys in the across the USA as well as in London, Paris, Geneva and Moscow.

zanox
zanox is a leading company for performance-based online marketing and provides a global platform for efficiently marketing products and services on the Internet. zanox offers global solutions for efficient commercialisation of products and services in the Internet for advertiser and supports publisher in achieving sales out of their traffic.

Zendesk
Zendesk provides on-demand Web 2.0 help desk solutions. Using turnkey SaaS delivery, Zendesk deploys in minutes and provides a complete support community portal that lets customers communicate directly with the internal help desk. 500 customers from all over the world already use Zendesk. Love your help desk!

I’m a little late to this, but it is worth noting that events guru Ryan Carson – co-founder of the Carsonified conference and training company which does the rocking FOWA – recently sold his web app DropSend, some two years after putting it on the block.

The buyer is Webminds who, I understand, picked the app up for an undisclosed amount, though I gather it was in the low six figures. I hear Webminds plans to take on the much larger and well funded YouSendIt which has $34 million in backing.

Ryan says he plans to plough the money from DropSend back into Carsonified, possibly to build more web apps.

Ryan – who for the record I like and I credit with being one of the guys who kicked off Web 2.0 in the UK – and I have had philosophical differences in the past. Hell, we’re going to be on a panel at FOWA together. But I actually agree with his view that web developers can take an alternative route to venture/angel funding and build a Web app from scratch and then sell it, in the process retaining control and owning 100% of the equity. Ryan has proved this himself, clearly. That is great if, like Ryan, you built an app for friends and family money – or even in your spare time? – and then sell it for a couple of times more than it cost to build. Indeed, as Carson has often said, DropSend cost in the region of £50-60,000 to build. And he has continued to try to put his money where his mouth is – apparently building a Web app in 4 days from scratch called Matt which allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts. But I think there is also an argument to say that having a smaller share of a larger company pie works too – and that can only be achieved with backing. I also think it’s going to be tough to just ‘flip’ a web app in the current market conditions, but I suppose we are all changing our thoughts on that issue daily at the moment.

I guess it depends on your whole approach. Carsonified is famous for giving it’s workers a 4 day week, a new Mac and iPhone when they join and a harmonious work/life balance. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To work; to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream of Web apps…

Let’s hear your views in the comments.

Word reaches me that Kosso from UK video messaging startup Phreadz met up with Seesmic’s ubiquitous CEO, Loic Le Meur this week in London, as the latter passed through on his way to Picnic in Amsterdam. The two platforms have a slight cross-over audience, but Seesmic, with $12 million in funding, is an altogether different beast to Phreadz, a one-man startup that isn’t even out of private alpha yet. Still, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this encounter.

Picture if you will a room full largely of men in dark blue suits, spread across 50 or more tables in a top London hotel, watching as “urban” dancers move amateurishly to the worst kind of arthouse music imaginable on a stage recently vacated by a Newsnight presenter. Actually, you don’t need to imagine, here’s an actual picture:

Fast forward a day on, to a basement bar off Trafalgar Square where about 150 technologists, entrepreneurs, social media addicts and curious onlookers rub shoulders to network and drink the night away in the name of charity in a virtual spontaneous celebration of Twitter. Here’s a picture for you:

Yes indeed, you couldn’t get a more different view of the London tech scene this week, where I attended on Wednesday the Investor Allstars awards, an annual event organised by GP Bullhound, the research-centric investment bank, and BusinessXL / Vitesse Media at The Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. On Thursday I went to Harvest Twestival, a raucous meetup for Twitter fans and techy early adopters.

Now I don’t want to be too unkind to Investor Allstars. Afterall, even Venture Capitalists deserve to celebrate their industry (I particularly liked the “Deal Envy” award). And congratulations to Index Ventures for being VC of the year two years in a row for their MySQL exit. But a ballroom event with a three course dinner, populated buy some of the wealthiest companies and individuals in the industry could have done with a few more elements – like a bit more fun for instance (there goes my invite to next year’s). Given the budget involved I daresay they could arrange the likes of, well, Stephen Fry or maybe Jerry Seinfeld. At least the setting last year was more interesting – Madame Tussauds. Even the normally jovial Loic Le Meur, who was at my table, seemed to have more fun (ironically enough) Twittering me jokes at the event before he left early to join his Seesmic fans at a pub in Soho. Unfortunatley he missed the dancers, who moved a lot slower than these blurry pictures seem to indicate, believe me.

And the whole “model” for Investor Allstars doesn’t seem to quite work. Usually at these big London events, the model is simple. A company wants to woo another for business, so they buy a table, get the potential client as drunk as possible and have so much fun they win the contract/whatever. With a VC awards dinner the model is in reverse: the startup is the one who needs the money but since they can’t afford to buy a table, they have to rely on the largesse of their investor. In the VC doesn’t win an award, they’ve shelled out for the whole thing and not even won any business out of it. Fail.

Yes, ok, the awards themselves might be important to some, but really any award ceremony is basically to do business in a celebratory atmosphere, no?

So I think the model needs to be changed, which is why I am putting serious thought to creating an event where startups can woo investors at an enjoyable evening dinner, where the costs are not so prohibitive and some actual business might be done at the end of it. what do you think?

Meanwhile, over at Twestival, the scene was completely different. For starters, the gender balance was suddenly more equal – rare at tech events – and, it has to be admitted, everyone was just there to meet other Twitter users. It wasn’t really a business/tech event at all as such. It was just a joyous celebration of the kind of flat-world social media can create. Where anyone can join in and turn up.

But there is an interesting comparison to be made here.

Investor Allstars had a charity element – over 50 tables of 8 people each were asked to donate £10 each to the Prince’s Trust charity. They raised £4,500 compared to £6,000 last year (credit crunch hitting VCs)? I don’t know if any of the profits from the event went to charity, but I daresay each table cost something for the company to buy, and there were plenty of sponsor logos adorning the stage (including those from some media web sites about VC which don’t even have RSS feeds. Doh).

In comparison, Twestival cost quite a lot less arrange – having been put on by volunteers and funded by donations. They received £2,750 in sponsorship from UnLtd World, Huddle, Diffusion PR, Tactile CRM, Winston & Strawn LLP and Just Giving – this paid for venue hire, drinks and food (until the tab ran out). Madhouse Collective volunteers provided staff, website design, camera crew, DJs etc. On the night they collected donations from the 200 “Tweeple” – mostly bloggers / tecchies – that attended the event. Donations were collectied on the door, and they sold raffle tickets to win prizes such as Wii’s, iPods and Flip Camera’s donated by companies including Twitter, Firebox.com, Wubud, Reuters, ITV and 6 Degrees PR. We even had a huge amount of people bringing food and other valuable items to give directly to the homeless charity they were supporting. The whole thing was organised by Amanda Rose (@amandita) and Renate Nyborg (@renatenyborg, Madhouse Collective) and these guys. It event featured a live performance by the guy who sings that dead catchy song about Twitter, reproduced below (I am still singing “You’re no-one if you’re not on Twitter”):

Well, there you have it, two very different events reflecting the diverse nature of the London tech scene. Let’s not be too hard on the VC event, but then one wonders where the real entrepreneurial spirit lies amid the awkward MC of Newsnight Emily Maitlis, versus the raw energy of Twestival…

Meanwhile here are the winners of the Investor Allstars event, for the record:

Venture Capital Fund of the Year: Index Ventures
Exit of the Year: MySQL
VCT/FCPI of the Year: AGF
Service Provider of the Year: Brown Rudnick
Private Investor Network of the Year: Hotbed
VC Personality of the Year: Simon Cook, DFJ Esprit
Equity Gap Fund of the Year: Hightech Gerunderfonds
Deal Envy of the Year: Adconion
Outstanding Contribution of the Year: George Coelho, Good Energies
Jon Moulton’s Triumph Over Adversity Award: Solar Integrated Technology

One of the issues with the development of a tech startup scene in Europe is that we don’t have one single technology cluster in Europe like Silicon Valley. For us, our “Silicon Valley” is a state of mind, not a place. Each country on the continent of Europe has many city centres where startups are spread far and wide. But there is no reason why startups across Europe cannot sometimes come together, network with each other and learn from each other.

So TechCrunch UK is throwing a networking party for European startups in conjunction with Web 2 Expo Berlin (21-23 October). The event will be on Thursday 23rd October, the last night of the Expo, and it’s going to be the official “after-party” for Web 2 Expo. It will start at 10pm and go until 5am, and feature a free bar, so you’d better get into training now. The details about the exact location remain secret for now, but since several hundred people will be coming it won’t be secret for long. We want this to be a cool, fun event for people to hang out with each other, meet startups from across Europe and start to create the real beginnings of an amazing tech scene.

And what’s the name of this event? “LateCrunch“.

We will release the first tranche of tickets on Tuesday 30th September at midday/noon BST/GMT. The details will appear here on TechCrunch UK first. So if you want to be the first to get a ticket then subscribe to the RSS feed, the official Twitter feed, or my personal Twitter account.

Attention Sponsors! We already have eight sponsoring companies for this event, and their names will be revealed on Tuesday. Some very interesting names! But there is still time to have your company associated with this amazing new event. So please email our event organiser Petra Johansson for the details about sponsor packages.

It’s a good time to be in Berlin – and there are lots of other things happening as part of Berlin Web Week.

More than $580m was invested into online advertising companies in the first half of 2008, according to new research to be released today, obtained exclusively by TechCrunch UK. Europe accounted for $258m of this, or 45% of the total.

The research has been put together by venture capital house Advent Ventures and will be revealed in a speech today by partner Paul Fisher in a speech at 2pm at the Ad:Tech conference in London. It was put together using data from Venturesource, RealDeals and proprietary research.

Fisher will point out that this $580m figure is pretty remarkable, since European VC typically only accounts for around 20% of the USA on an industry-wide basis. Although the Advert research only counts for the first half of this year and there is no informatoin on what happened last year to compare it to, the research appears to show a great deal of strength in the European market for advertising models.

Advent found that the largest sub-sector of investment both by value and volume was into online advertising networks. This includes traditional networks like Adconion which raised $64m as well as next generation widget ad networks like RockYou which raised $35m. Founded in 2004, Adconion Media Group is an independently owned, performance-driven online ad network which delivers online ads using its proprietary technology that it claims provides better results for advertisers and optimal revenue for publishers. Backers of Adconian include Index Ventures and Wellington Partners.

RockYou (originally named RockMySpace) creates and distributes widgets where people can express themselves, thus creating a stealth ad network. As a result RockYou has over 10 million registered users and gets over 150 million widget views from over 200 countries per day. RockYou’s main competitor is Slide. RockYou has backers which include First Round Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Partech International.

The second largest sector Advent turned up was ad technology platforms like AdJug (ad exchange) OpenX (ad serving) Coull (video ad serving) and KeyBroker (campaign management). UK-based Coull has a video platform which enables video owners to identify and tag objects within online videos, and customise user experiences around interacting with those objects to drive consumer engagement with brands.

The largest two deals were also European: ECI Partner’s investment into i-level, and Index and Wellington’s into Adconion.

Advent’s research doesn’t include Qype as it was announced too late to qualify as a first half investment, however, it has invested in British company Fizzback to the tune of $5m in February this 2007. Fizzback offers “real-time” customer engagement tools via email, SMS or mobile email. It’s also invested in Zong, a mobile payment system for monetising Web audiences. Zong has $12.5m in total funding from Newbury Ventures and Advent.

Advent also turned up “five investments” into companies which are measuring advertising effectiveness although isn’t revealing specifically which companies it noticed, other than to say “we are very interested to see European companies tracking, measuring, analyzing, and quantifying online advertising effectiveness.”

What’s the message startups can take away from this? The simple message is that if you build an advertising platform you may well attract investment, however, other media/tech startups relying on advertising (that’s all the consumer social networks BTW) will do well to look closely at these emerging ad platforms and see how best they can work with them.

TechCrunch UK is going to run a “Techcrunch Pitch!” contest for startups at the upcoming Future of Web Apps conference in London, and you’re invited. All you need to do is submit an entry, and we will choose the best three to come up on the stage at FOWA and pitch to an “American Idol” style panel consisting of Mike Butcher (Techcrunch UK), Ryan Carson (Carsonified), Kevin Rose (Digg) and a mystery guest, yet to be announced. The winner will get written about on TechCrunch. If you don’t have a company to pitch but want to come anyway, TechCrunch readers can get 15% off the event ticket using this promo code: “F0WA-tc”

So here’s how Techcrunch Pitch! @ FOWA will work:

You’ll need to shoot a 60 second video pitch and upload it to YouTube so that it appears on Techcrunch Elevator Pitches. In the video, tell us what your company does and how you plan to make money. Imagine you’re in an elevator and have only one chance to convince a potential backer that you deserve a follow-up meeting. Be sure to focus on your company’s big picture while avoiding too much detail about particular products. Please do not include any editing or graphic overlays – just a straight pitch from beginning to end. When you upload the video to YouTube, tag it with “tcpitch”, and then enter its information into our submission form. The deadline for submission is close of play Friday 3rd October.

When you’ve done all that, come back to this particular post on TechCrunch UK and leave a comment with a link to your pitch on Techcrunch Elevator Pitches so that we know who applied. All clear? Ok, go.

[Update: So I just confirmed with with T-Mobile: One thing that seems to be a dealbreaker that it has no in-built video recording capability, which seems to be an astounding omission. Had the "gPhone" added this, it would have looked pretty good against the iPhone. It can play video through a dedicated YouTube app but, it appears, not inside the browser. Update II: I just confirmed that the browser on the handset does not support Flash or Flash Lite].

I met with T-Mobile’s head of Internet and Entertainment Richard Warmsley, who took me through the key features of the new T-Mobile G1 Google Android phone, made by HTC. I have to say it’s a pretty chunky beast compared to your average mobile, and quite a bit bigger than other smartphones like the Nokia E71 or the iPhone. The interface is quite iPhone-like although you can’t “pinch” to zoom in and out of web pages. One of the killer features demo’d in the US was the acclaimed Compass Street View of Google Maps which won’t work in the UK yet. Applications-wise, the Android App store needs a few more apps to fill it out but I daresay these will come on stream soon enough for the October US launch and the November UK launch.

And here’s video of the Compass app:

TechCrunch has been “double-live blogging” (oh yes) the T-Mobile / Google Android handset press launch, and here’s a handy summary of what was said.

If you’re pressed for time, here’s the skinny: It launches in the UK in early November and the rest of Europe 2009. The handset will be free on price plans from £40 a month (no news on pays as you go), which will make it competitve with the iPhone on pricing, which is “free” for a £45 a month tariff from O2. You can pre-register with T-Mobile here www.t-mobile.co.uk/tmobileg1.

Cole Brodman CTO and CIO for T-Mobile talked about the “New mobile Internet of the future.” Others present at the launch in New York were Andy Rubin, Senior Director of Mobile Platforms for Google and Christopher Schlaffer. Peter Chou, CEO HTC was there. HTC makes the G1.

Expect the G1 to have a “Superior user experience.” T-Mobile’s Web and Walk tarrif saw a 250% increase in internet traffic and it was a founding member of the open handset alliance, (and that was without the iPhone), they say.

Rubin: “With Android we are bringing some of those [Internet] strategies to the mobile phone. Developers will be able to develop on it and also to modify it. Because it is open, it is somewhat future proof.” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC said it was a “tremendous effort” to make this Open Handset Alliance/Android possible.

In the US the G1 Phone will be $179 – very cheap for a smart phone – and will be launched on October 22.

The G1 has a touch-screen interface and a Sidekick-like keyboard, which will really set it apart from the iPhone.

With video you can swipe, frame and crop a photo to the homescreen (just like the iPhone!). Street view and google maps look great. Compass (GPS) mode moves as you move. Comes with Google Talk, Google Maps with directions and traffic view, street view with landmarks. Facebook looks good in the Webkit browser. The Music player has advanced features. The Android Market wil be an app store for games and apps (Pac Man!). It has a dedicated search button on keyboard, which competition authorities might take a good look at.

Third party parners include Eco Rio which let’s you track your carbon footprint; Shopsavvy, a barcode scanner, with comparative pricing on goods.

Existing T-Mobile customers can order it today in the US with a $25 data plan with unlimited Web access, limited messaging or $35 unlimited, but no free email.

The Q&A posed a few questions.

Rubin said: “We will go broader with more features and functionality.”

You can’t use it as tethered modem. It can Word docs, Excel, but no Exchange, though there is the opportunity for third party developers to build for this. Email will be push.

The phone will be SIMlocked to T-Mobile.

There is no desktop syncing application. (I guess Google thinks your Gmail is already ‘in the cloud’, right?)

Email: HTML email client, which syncs with Gmail and other POP3 or IMAP mail services. It has a 3-megapixel camera.

It will come with WiFi. YouTube support is also on board.

Google is expecting a “huge effect on GTalk”. I bet.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a surprise visit on rollerblades!

Brin said: “I have been using it in my pocket for a while now. The first app I wrote was one where you throw the phone up in the air and it calculates how much time it takes to hit the ground, using the accelerometer.” Man these guys are geeks…

After just announcing new funding, Qype, the pan-European local reviews site, is not wasting any time. It has just poached LastMinutes’ Sophie MacLaren and Emily van Lierop to be UK Marketing Director and Marketing Manager respectvely. Sophie has also been at Ticketmaster, the New York City Opera, Brazen and Spin Media PR agencies. Emily joins directly from koodos, a UK fashion website. The new appointments come just a week after Qype announced it had secured an additional €8 million funding to help the company expand into new countries.

Meanwhile, I have already had one of Qype’s local reviews competitors (for there are many) ask me “what do you think we should do?”, referring to the newly supercharged Qype. WeLoveLocal chose to throw in the towel back in March (actually, that’s not quite right, they exited at probably just the right time). How long before the less well funded TrustedPlaces, Tipped and MyNeighbourhoods last? At least TouchLocal has £7m from Balderton to keep it going, but its sights seem trained on the business sector, not reviews of the lattes in the local cafe.

Now, when startups start asking journalists for advice, this is usually a bad sign. Flattering… but a bad sign. I put this to a old startup hand I know and his reply was so good I feel obliged to print it. It goes like this:

“Look into your heart. Work out if you are a gritty winner or a tourist. If you are a winner, dig in. Start selling. Focus your business down. Cut staff. Ramp revenues. Batten down the hatches. Find a niche angle. Focus. Make money. Build loyal client base. Then invest, very carefully, in the tech. Product innovate in a controlled fashion. Innovation, where innovation matters – nowhere else. Get some traction. Raise a small round. Win. If you are a tourist: Pack up early before leaving a hole in any creditor’s pockets. Find a job, whilst you still have time and a salary. Look after your staff – encourage them to do the same. Come back for Web 3.0.”

Good advice.

Flirtomatic is one of the oldest social networks in the UK you probably haven’t heard of. Why? Because it’s largely on the mobile, aimed at young people and it’s taken a less subtle approach than some sites: full on flirting. But that strategy appears to be paying off. It’s just announced a million registered users, mostly based in the UK and more than half of them are mobile portal users. If you want to talk about mobile social networking as it really happens, then it doesn’t get more real than this. Somewhere along the line the numbers have just really picked up. In February 2007 it had 225,000, so that equates to a 350% growth within an 18 month period to today. In July it expanded into Germany, and they claim revenue is really skyrocketing, although don’t put numbers on it.

The skinny on the service is that it is targeted at young adults (75% of users are 18 – 30 years old) with a free service. But members pay to do certain things, like send virtual goods – like roses – to the person they’re flirting with.

Flirtomatic, launched June 2006, has venture funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Seraphim Capital. It’s holding company, Handmade Mobile Entertainment, was formed in June 2004 by Avi Azulai, co-founder of iTouch the mobile entertainment company, and Mark Curtis, a former Managing Partner in digital agencies Fjord and Razorfish.

It’s interesting that Xing, the business social network which competes with LinkedIn has chosen now to launch a marketing campaign in the UK this week – probably something to do with the Adtech trade show on in London right now. There’ll be advertising on some 400 Xing billboards by major London Underground stations, ads in the Metro freesheet and online on at The Guardian, The Times, Sky News, Reuters and MSN Hotmail. Xing has about six million members worldwide and around half a million paying subscribers but till now it’s biggest base has been in Germany, and to a lesser extent, Asia. In the UK LinkedIn passed a million members a year ago, so Xing – which is now a floated company in Germany – has some catching up to do.

Earlier this year 20 UK startups went to Silicon Valley to network with the tech scene. The government-backed trip was called Webmission. Last week 21 UK companies were over in New York on the UK Trade & Investment’s “Digital Mission“, put together by UK online new media community/events outfit Chinwag. Here’s a guest post on the event by Benjamin Ellis.

The Digital Mission was timed to coincide with the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, so there was a long list of sessions and meet-ups both within and around the Expo. For the companies over to drum-up investor support, there were intense discussions with VCs, with more to follow. It might have been a stormy week to be over in NYC, and you know I’m not talking about the weather, but that didn’t slow things at all.

Winston & Strawn (the law firm behind BootLaw) kicked things off with a legal overview of setting up in the US. Tom Watson MP, Cabinet Office Minister and long-time blogger weighed in with a governmental perspective, and an evening reception at the British Consulate introduced the companies to 120 people from the New York tech scene.

The New York community welcomed the Brits with open arms. An invite to Digital Wednesdays was one of the many extended to the companies each evening. Everyone hurled themselves into the scene and networked away, which is harder than it sounds given that it’s a 3-parties-a-night kind of town. Sun Start Up Essentials provided a lunch and talk, and there was even a bit of a cultural exchange with the larger-than-life Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame. You think we have lots of meet ups every month in the UK? That much seemed to happen in about a New York week.

Big take aways? The Atlantic’s not the gap that it used to be. Make no mistake, there are definitely barriers to establishing in the US, but they aren’t insurmountable. The New York scene welcomes new talent, and for those that can keep up with the pace there are big opportunities. With folks like Fred Wilson looking to the UK and Europe, it is pretty likely that other smart money will follow. One way or another, the Atlantic is less and less of a barrier to tech companies. In a parallel to the experience of companies on the Webmission trip, one of the big benefits for the digital mission companies was actually getting to know each other. The mission didn’t just build links in New York, it built them back in the UK too.

The 21 Digital Mission Companies:

B View

Harvest Digital

Head London

Headshift

Huddle

idiomag

KMP Interactive Marketing and Technology

Littleloud

Market Sentinel

Mippin

QuickTV

Slicethepie

Smarkets

Sweemo

Tactile CRM

Tempero

UGAME

UnLtdWorld

Unruly Media

Veedow

WorldTV

With a little too much going on last week to keep track, I missed some of the videos coming out of the Seedcamp sessions, so here they are in full.

Day 1

Seedcamp 2008 Day 1 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Day 2

Seedcamp Day 2 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Day 3

Seedcamp Day 3 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Day 4

Seedcamp Day 4 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Day 5

Seedcamp Day 5 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

UK based, Kindo.com a family tree service, has been acquired by the Israeli based MyHeritage, which was recently funded by Accel and Index Ventures. The size of the deal was not disclosed, but it’s a fast exit for Kindo which only launched last year. Although Kindo says on their blog that the buy-out took place because “we share the same vision and values”, I think it is also a reasonable assumption that the current financial climate concentrated their minds. Getting a second round of funding for a standalone product in a competitive market was always going to be hard now.

So why would MyHeritage, with 25 million users, but Kindo? TechCrunch US speculates that it’s about extending it’s presence in Europe with an existing team and Kindo’s extensive 14 language service (including Russian, Arabic and Chinese). (ironic, isn’t it that an Israeli-backed services which scaled in the US now returns to Europe to buy a local site which scaled regionally in Europe?) It also needs to have a response to Geni.com in the US and Verwandt in Germany.

But the main difference with Kindo is that where as Ancestry.com is about ancestors and Geni.com is, in the main, genealogy, Kindo tackles the issue of mapping and communicating with your living family. Kindo covers the “next generation” family tree, with communication features, stats and a family ‘news feed’.

Kindo previously won seed funding from Estonia-based Ambient Sound Investments and the ever-present serial seeders The Accelerator Group as well as Stefan Glänzer, first investor in last.fm and executive chairman until the acquisition last year by CBS.

It is not unreasonable to surmise that TAG group, which seed invested in both Kindo and MyHeritage, helped wrap up a deal, but I wouldn’t read too much into it all. Kindo and MyHeritage were clearly in contact well before Index invested in the latter.

Update: Kindo’s own blog sets out more of the detail behind the deal.

MyHeritage and Kindo met for lunch in London’s Soho even before Kindo released the first public version:

“But there we were: A Swede, a South African and an Israeli, all with very different professional background and life stories, talking about the future of families online from very different perspectives. I didn’t expect this, but we found that we had much in common. We shared the same ideas and vision for what we wanted to achieve with our businesses, even though our approach was far from similar.”

They were impressed by MyHeritage’s tech:

“As Gareth and I travelled back on the tube, we talked about how nice it would be to be able to offer our own users the same tools as MyHeritage already had. What really got us excited was their SmartMatching Technology, which matches people in your family tree with 250 Million other names, and suggests who you might be related too. We liked that. We were also jealous of Gilad, since he got to develop features for 25 million registered users – slightly bigger than our own user base…”

Here are some pictures from TechCrunchTalk last week, the Seedcamp Party which followed and, well, the unofficial after-party which followed that! By pretty much all accounts over 300 people from the London/UK/European startup community enjoyed themselves on the banks of the Thames. Quite why some people started to throw a frisbee at the event is beyond me, but it may have had something to do with the contents of the goody bag supplied by our sponsors (who are listed below, thanks again for your support!). The Butcher’s Bunch podcast, featuring highlights from the panel discussions, will be out later this week, and here are the videos from the live webcast. TechCrunch Talk, was curated by TechCrunch UK & Ireland and organised by TwistedTree (please contact them for future sponsorship opportunities) in association with rassami PR.

TechCrunchTalk sponsors:

Gateway2Investment, the g2i programme brings together the knowledge and experience of a robust consortium with a shared enthusiasm and passion for the growth of new businesses: Grant Thornton, Library House, E-Synergy, The Innovatory, Quotec and Pembridge Partners LLP.

Zendesk, providing on-demand Web 2.0 help desk solutions, deploying in minutes, Zendesk provides a complete support community portal that lets customers communicate directly with the internal help-desk

Heller Ehrman LLP, a leader in providing innovative legal services to clients throughout the world. With 650 attorneys and professionals in the United States, Europe and Asia, Heller Ehrman offers the full range of litigation, business and intellectual property capabilities needed to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.

BuzzPal® The World Is Your Party® A seed-stage project with a positive message. Will it sprout? Join the team or add capital.

Kublax, syncs with all your bank accounts, credit cards and presents all the information in a user-friendly format so that you can track your incoming and outgoing cashflow and start to really analyse your personal finances. In today’s tough economic conditions, it is an indispensible tool to take control of your money.

Video from the live video stream of TechCrunchTalk, a series of four panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate in the UK and Europe, recorded in London on 18 September, 3pm and 6pm GMT:

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Video from the live video stream of TechCrunchTalk, a series of four panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate in the UK and Europe, recorded in London on 18 September, 3pm and 6pm GMT:

Read More

Video from the live video stream of TechCrunchTalk, a series of four panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate in the UK and Europe, recorded in London on 18 September, 3pm and 6pm GMT:

(Second half has new startups discussion)

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Video from the live video stream of TechCrunchTalk, a series of four panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate in the UK and Europe, recorded in London on 18 September, 3pm and 6pm GMT:

Read More