Viadeo, a LinkedIn and Xing competitor, has secured $5m of funding from French investment houses AGF, Ventech and other investors (including the wealthy Mulliez family) to accelerate growth and prep for potential acquisitions. The business social network is best known in France, but it’s planning to expand its existing foothold in emerging markets like China, India and Mexico. The latest investment takes the total money it has raised since 2006 to $23m. AGF and Ventech were previous investors. Although this market is seeing a lot of “down round” investments right now (a down round is where investors purchase stock from a company at a lower valuation than previously) I am assured by Viadeo that this is not the case here.

Viadeo is also introducing a new partnership strategy with content providers to feed into the site. They’ve signed a global deal with Microsoft to appear on the Live platform enabling Viadeo members to access their Viadeo network news feed directly from the Microsoft platform. The API they had to build to make this happen will also be used to stream in content from “credible partners” – although personally I’d prefer to be able to plug in my own RSS or Twitter feeds maybe. Perhaps this is coming, since Viadeo was a launch partner with OpenSocial but it has dragged it’s feet till now. They say a full suite of apps will go live in the Autumn. The OpenSocial applications on the runway include Google apps like Google Docs, Flickr, Youtube and a number of others. The ability to Tweet from within Viadeo and an iPhone app are also, apparently, on the way. In other words, they’re clearly pretty busy.

Admittedly, the “French LinkedIn” tag may be a tad unfair – Viadeo now claims 70% of its members are outside of France. So let’s look at the numbers. Video says it has 8.5m members. The last figure reported for Xing, which is now a floated company in Germany, was 7.5 million members, with its base membership coming out of Germany. Xing has admitted losing out to LinkedIn in the USA and China. Both are dwarfed of course by LinkedIn, where half of its 42 million members are outside the US, and let’s not forget it’s $1 billion valuation (Xing’s market cap at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is in the $220 million range).

Back in Viadeo’s world, they’ve given the site a long-awaited face-lift which has left it looking more Facebook-like, with a much improved interface not dissimilar to LinkedIn or Xing, but certainly more navigable.

But it’s quite hard to say if Viadeo can really do something different enough in the business networking space to give it an edge on it’s competitors. Personally my biggest network is on Linked in, followed by Xing. I can add contacts into Viadeo from Webmail, Outlook, an Addressbook file or (gulp) manually, but I can’t pull them in from, say, Facebook or Twitter. One could of course download LinkedIn contacts as a VCF file. The question is, would anyone join you on Viadeo?

One of the few areas that remains for them to grab hold of is vanity URLs. Facebook has seen a huge boom in these. LinkedIn has had them for years. Xing sort of has them though Xing.com/profile/Name hardly counts. Furthermore in trying to replicate LinkedIn’s business model – premium members can do more than free members – they simply set themselves up for a fall against a bigger player. Surely it would be better to disrupt the larger competitor’s model somehow? Still it’s a much improved effort from Viadeo, and I’ll certainly be using it to build my network in France.

Dopplr has launched an iPhone app they are billing as a “social atlas”. Curiously, and possibly wisely, you don’t even need an account at Dopplr to use the app, meaning it will get exposed to a lot more potential users. However, a let down from the get-go is that you can’t add upcoming trips from within the app right now, which is kinda the point with Dopplr, as it’s users will attest. Hopefully that feature will be out soon. Till then if you want to add trips on mobile people can use the site, twitter, SMS or email in the usual manner, of course.

The app appears first on the iPhone, but apps for Nokia, Blackberry and Google Android platforms are planned. The app is available from the iTunes store here. But for Dopplr users it’s going to be a real boon. The app puts the combined knowledge of your Dopplr network into an app which can tell your location, while allowing users to upload reviews themselves. There is also a built-in directory of city tips and advice. Plus, as usual, see where your network is about to travel to so you can plan accordingly. Users can also contact eachother directly from inside the app. There is plenty of content inside the app pulled from Dopplr’s own content as well as your social network.

The question mark with Dopplr is how it will continue to fair against Tripit, which is tearing along at a fast pace and recently launched premium flight monitoring and alerts.

In the region of 15 startups in London got a nasty surprise yesterday when it turned out they could be made homeless.

Several tech startup companies had been paying rent to the company which managed offices in 19 Greek Street in London’s West End. But this management firm has now gone bankrupt. Meanwhile it transpired that the landlord of the building had not been receiving rent income from this, now management bankrupt firm, for some time. Many of the startups were also subletting some of their desks to other startups – but no-one knew this was effectively illegal under the terms of their contract. The startups had a visit yesterday from a ‘property security officer’.

However, Paul Walsh of Wubud said the situation was likely to be resolved amicably. He told me via email: “I’m one of 3 companies sub letting but it’s all good as we’ll have a new lease agreement with the landlord. I have 6 companies renting desks in my office so that’s a lot of startups in total – not to mention the fact I’m operating 4 companies from there.” Walsh had previously advertised a desk in the building without knowing he was not allowed to do so.

Hopefully the whole mess will get sorted out – or at least the startups will find some more office space.

ReceiptFarm, effectively a UK clone of the US-based Shoeboxed startup which scans receipts and send it back to you in a file of your choosing, has come out of beta and now taken the site live. I’ve checked it out and it pretty much does what it says on the tin. Although I think I’d prefer a service that did this with business cards…

They are offering 50 TechCrunch Europe readers a 20% discount on their new service if they plug in the word TECHCRUNCH when they register.

But that’s not the awesome bit. The awesome bit is that they are running a draw giving away a classic ZX Spectrum. Unfortunely people need to tweet using the hashtag #moonfarm. Queue howls of protest from Twitter users… That’s not a great idea is it?

I don’t post things like this very often but as it seems like it could help a few startups out there here goes. Let me know if you’d like to hear more about these kinds of schemes or not and I’ll give it some thought. There’s a fine line with this kind of post, but I’m up for anything promoting that helps the startups scene in Europe in the right way.

Qualcomm Ventures Europe is running something called The Qprize Competition: There’s $100k prize money for a European startup, plus the opportunity to compete with the winner from India, China and the US to win a further $150k, for a total of $250k funding. They’re targeting very early stage companies, although it’s “buyer beware” in terms of what kind of pound of flesh they want form the winner.

QPrize is a new global investment program with a (fairly low, it has to be said) $500,000 early-stage fnd for external companies and non-employee entrepreneurs. It is an International Business Plan Competition, with one semi-finalist for North America, Europe, China and India. Each semi-finalist will each receive $100,000 funding and will be invited to San Diego, California to compete for the Grand Prize. The Grand Prize winner will receive an additional US$150,000, for a total prize of US$250,000. Companies selected are those who haven’t raised any institutional funding.

The key sectors are: Consumer/enterprise applications and services Communication devices Semiconductor and component technologies Mobile platforms Digital media and content Healthcare technologies and services CleanTech.

The final date for application is July 31st, and all applications should be submitted via the QPrize website.

AMEE, the startup producing an all-encompassing platform for measuring energy and thus the world’s carbon footprint, is boosting its board today with the appointment of Toby Coppel, former chief strategy officer of Yahoo!, who joins both as an investor and non-executive director.

Coppel, was formerly the head of the company’s European and Canadian operations but departed when Yahoo! switched the firm’s European focus away from its traditional base in London to the company’s new-ish European headquarters in Rolle, Switzerland. Coppel joined Yahoo in 2001 but spent most of his two years in Europe slimming the organisation down between 2007-2008.

Last December AMEE secured an undisclosed Series A financing from O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, Union Square Ventures and UK-based Angel The Accelerator Group. AMEE combines measurement, calculation, profiling and transactional systems, representing emissions data from 150 countries and regions. The idea is pretty simple. Act as a neutral data aggregation platform. AMEE was also a top five finalist in The Europas last week.

Hamburg based investment house eVentures Capital Partners has acquired an interest in Mapia.ua, a Ukrainian startup which uses maps to advertise local services and directories. The deal purportedly values the startup at $2.5 million. Mapia is the first investment by eVenture in a CEE country with further deals expected later this year.

The major investor is ECP is the German-based Otto Group, the world’s second biggest Internet retailer with a turnover of about 12 billion Euro per year. Vivex Сapital Group, Ukrainian-Polish investment holding with a strong business focus on tech was an early Mapia.ua investor. Vivex and eVenture plan a long-term collaboration over investing int the Ukrainian market, which has a population of 46m.

Earlier this month Joost set down its arms in the race to beat YouTube, Hulu and others to become the predominant consumer online video giant. It fixed its sights instead on providing white label video platforms for companies. However, there is of course already plenty of competition. Brightcove is a long, well known player and Magnify is growing its white label service. Ooyala recently signed more than 40 mid to large publishers on 12-24 month agreements and they also have a growing self-serve products. Others in that space include Videobloom and Worldtv.

But it’s this self-serve end of the market which is now being targeted by a new entrant: Quick.tv

They are now launching out of a private beta with an application which allows video makers to skin their content with clickable feature like ads and polls, and also pull out metrics from the responses.

The site delivers a video publishing service including asset management, play-out and analytics combined with a tool-set to add features like advertising overlays, voting or form filling inside the player itself. Users can create custom players and channels, and the site supports HD and Standard Def and all major video formats for upload.

Once you publish a video you get an embed code, and all the viewer responses are channelled back to Quick.tv’s analytics system. What co-founder Nick Bell sees happening is that publishers will still upload videos to YouTube and similar for the viral effect, but use Quick.tv for a response mechanism on their own site.

However currently they only offer a paid for service at various levels, which may limit the uptake – although professional video content owners like newspapers won’t balk at this.

The startup is VC and Angel backed with £1.2m seed funding and based in Newcastle upon Tyne and London, UK. Bell and co-founder Tod Yeadon claim they set about creating Quick.tv after seeing the scene in Fight Club in which Edward Norton’s apartment becomes part of the Ikea catalogue. Makes sense, kinda.

[In her final post from the Travelling Geeks tour to London, Ayelet Noff talks to Scoble and Skype - Ed]

My fellow Traveling Geeks companion, Robert Scoble (aka the Scobleizer) and Peter Parks from Skype were interviewed by Renee Blodgett who is the CEO of Magic Sauce Media, Co-founder of The Traveling Geeks and Founder and Producer of We Blog the World. We set up shop on the streets of London directly in front of the hotel we stayed in, the Malmaison, which naturally picked up the sweet sounds of British school children playing in the background. The topic for Renee’s interview today: Corporate blogging through the ages. Park’s role at Skype is essentially to take care of every bit of Skype that touches the social web (blogging, twitter, etc.), so he has personally witnessed the changes of social media in the corporate world. During this chat he delves into the differences of social media’s role during Skype 2006 and Skype now.

In this second video I interview Peter, this time accompanied by Experience Manager for Skype, Neil Dodd. Dodd currently deals with everything user experience related for Skype for Windows. The two discuss specifically how Skype uses social media to receive feedback and also to help blow up their new product launches, such as Skype 4.1 for Windows, which was launched last week. Dodd tells us about the new features in Skype 4.1 for Windows and Peter reveals his Twitter identity!

Who needs web apps and crazy things like Twitter when you can invest in an online ordering system for fast food outlets? That’s what’s just happened to Just-Eat, possibly the leading European aggregator site for ordering fast food online. It’s closed its first institutional financing, with Index Ventures leading the large £10.5 million round. Venrex Investment Management and existing shareholders also participated. The capital will be used to consolidate the company’s position in the UK and to expand into Europe. It appears they are going up against local boostrapped startup HungryHouse. However they haven’t reach me yet and I’m online all the time. I’ve never used Just-Eat to order from my local pizza place, I just pick up the leaflets regularly shoved through my letterbox – but I guess maybe I will soon?

As the name suggests Just Eat provides a way to order takeaway food online from you neighborhood restaurant without them having to build a system themselves that can take credit or debit cards – or take orders over the phone. In these tiny businesses, it’s faster to print out an order than it is to release staff to take phone calls. With this system the restaurants can reach and market to a much wider audience online. An interesting differentiator is that they put a terminal in every restaurant that they work with so they can communicate with the restaurant directly, ensure that orders are received, know when they’re sent out, and identify any problems instantly.

Consumers get a confirmation that their order has been received and the estimated delivery time. And they can rate the places. Currently there are over 6,000 restaurants in the Just-Eat network, with close to 3,000 in the UK.

The home delivery market is growing at 9% per year and is growing in the recession as people go out less. Founded in Denmark in 2001 the service is currently available in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Sweden and will soon also be available in Norway.

Wouldn’t this make sense as an iPhone app maybe?

Although they are quite different businesses, Just-Eat’s cash injection has some implications for sites like Yelp and Qype in Europe because JE allows users to rate outlets as well as order – although the community aspect is pretty limited.

Episode 36: Someone has to say it – London media is dead. And I say it.

Ok, Ok. So that’s a slightly reminiscent headline, based on Guardian columnist Paul Carr‘s gentle savaging of the “London 2.0″ scene after his week with The Traveling Geeks last week. Read on, and I’ll explain…

To be honest I wanted to fisk that post line by line last week but after running The Europas I was frankly too knackered, to use a technical term. Plus the commenters on his column did a pretty good job.

But the simple retort to Paul is that, yes, the tech Scene in London which based its business model on some dog-eared idea for a social network or, yet another “advertising” business model based on being bigger than God inside 2 weeks is over. What London’s (and Europe’s for that matter) startup people are now concentrating on, are a myriad different business models, many of which speak to the straightened economic times in which we live. (I’m not going into the fact that Paul seemed to want to find “profitable” London startups, when hardly any Silicon Valley ones are, something which seemed a tad unfair, but I digress).

There are myriad examples out there. These days I try not to concentrate my fire exclusively on London because the tech startup scene is spread complicatedly across Europe. But since Pauls’ article was about London, let’s look at “London” startups.

Yes, “London 2.0″ companies based on boom era economics have had it. But here’s a few others doing well:

Badoo: A very revenue driven business model based on mashing up social networking and SMS voting. Russian investors but London based, seriously.

Seatwave: Fan-to-fan ticketing startup backed by Atlas and doing very well (and no Michael Jackson refund headaches).

Wonga: Credit-crunch oriented startup allowing user-controlled pay-day loans. Actually a lot better than a credit card for modern life’s little cash-flow problems, if anyone wants to take me up on that fight.

SpeedSell: “Recycling” the stuff you’d normally put on ebay but then have massive hassles with the buyer – you just get paid. Just in time warehousing.

Huddle: : Winner for Best Enterprise Startup at the Europas. Need I say more? Ok: Cost effective collaboration, from free to fremium, and the *only* non-US partner for LinkedIn.

Moshi Monsters: Subscription-based virtual world for youngsters where parents pay to have their kids fooled into doing maths while trying to keep their furbie-like alive. Funded, and pulling revenues.

My best case study for the death of “London 2.0″ and the re-birth of “London Something Else Oh” is Skimlinks, or Skimbit as was. Two years ago an irrepressible Alicia Novara badgered me into listening to her pitch. Printed out. On A4. In a coffee shop.

I wasn’t wholly convinced by Skimbit’s model: group decision making for friends, linked into affiliate deals with retailers. Very hard to get consumer traction and “social shopping” has been a very hard nut to crack. Arguably, no-one has done it.

What happened to Skimbit? It’s “2.0 boom” era business model didn’t get traction, but Alicia Navarro, being an extremely good entrepreneur, realised the affiliate part of her business was the *real* business she was after. She turned the company on a dine. A few months later Skimlinks was funded by NESTA and pulling revenues.

So in other words, yes “London 2.0″ circa 2004-7 is indeed over, as identified by Carr. There are numerous businesses that just didn’t make it. But should London be tarred with their brush? Most likely we are talking here about businesses that were boom-era ones which weren’t robust enough to survive a downturn. But real entrepreneurs fall, or should I say fail, forwards.

And London is more complex than that characterisation. It’s a startup base for some excellent businesses. But as a wider European hub it is attracting some of the best and brightest across Europe. Just ask Videoplaza (Stockholm-based but in London several times a month to talk to VCs or partners). Or Zemanta (developed in Slovenia, but based as a company in London). Europas winner Soundcloud recently opened an office here. I could go on.

But finally, why did I title this the death of London’s media industry?

Here’s why.

Today Paul Carr’s excellent and entertaining column, NSFW, was culled from The Guardian for budgetary reasons. It’s ironic. Just after calling ‘time of death’ for “London 2.0″, the trad media called ‘time of death’ on his column, borne out of its own dying throes.

That’s a huge shame, but it’s merely indicative of the state the traditional media industry is in: falling revenues, eyeballs migrating online, digital revenues not kicking in etc. And yet, here’s a newspaper culling a column that almost certainly punched above its weight in terms of traffic, and probably got a lot more comments and reader interaction than the average post on that site. How many traditional journos would get this kind of reaction?

That’s significant because at the same time “traditional” journalists (some of whom are my best friends btw) are doing their best to try and grapple with writing stories, blogging, posting videos and metaphorically washing up the boss’s coffee cup in the staff kitchen at the same time.

But are they given the new tools we bloggers get to play with? Probably and usually not. As Kevin Anderson of The Guardian has famously (at least in blogger/journo circles) said: “never travel with The Man’s computer” and expect a world of “outdated, coffee-encrusted computers“. In other words: media people in traditional organisations are not getting to use the same tools us crazy bloggers get to play with, and that’s why we are often beating them to the punch. And let’s not forget, the Internet is now the office, not a large building we need to commute to.

As I argued at a recent Chatham House dinner organised by The Glasshouse: the person that masters these new tools the fastest tends to win. A case in point is Twitter. Did anyone realise how important Twitter would become for traffic to a web site? No. But bloggers, using these tools all day, darn well did. Why do you think many leading blogs now have “retweet” buttons? The newspapers and other trad media sites still think their “Reddit” button is terribly cutting edge.

Finally, a case in point. Today, poor old tech reporter for Channel 4 news Ben Cohen innocently headed over to the dubious Morefollowers.net to try and get more followers on Twitter, bless him.

Never mind that this site says: “Our software will guarantee that you get the maximum number of followers possible for your buisness [sic.], website, or fan page!”

Never mind that it carries the following disclaimer:’

“Our site does not phish accounts, any content on this site may not be 100% percent accurate. By using this site you agree VIPFollowers.com is not to be mentioned or involved with any legal matters.”

Now there’s some T&Cs to inspire confidence!

No, never mind. Because the London media industry, even as it coughs and splutters on life support, doesn’t care that the people who are “creating” the content they base their businesses on are being thrown to the lions. These people are scrabbling around, trying out the tools the bloggers obsess about, but still having to virtually “cook and clean” and keep the CEO’s parking space free of litter. (Hint: the real new media doesn’t have parking spaces).
So when does London’s media industry die? Well, maybe it’s not so much dying as regenerating, Doctor Who-like (illustrated), into a brand new model, before our very eyes. But it’s definitely happening. Right now.

As you may well have heard, the big winner at The Europas Awards on Thursday night was Spotify, which won four awards (Best We app, Best New Startup, Best Founder Team and the Grand Prix). Here’s Shakil Khan (the video title is mis-spelt), Spotify’s Consigliere, sharing with writer and author Paul Carr and myself how he felt about winning four awards, including The Europas Grand Prix award:

Our video streaming partner for The Europas Awards last night was Techfluff.tv, which also produces awesome corporate videos under the Newspepper brand, featuring the irrepressible Hermione Way. Here’s their take on the event:

The first part of our panel on “Where is Europe now?” featuring Sarah Lacy, Tariq Krim, Stefan Glaenzer, Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch.

The second part of the panel:

The third part of the panel:

Here’s a little impromptu moment after the awards. Thanks everyone!

And below are the official pictures from the event so far. Please go and add a tag with your name (e.g. “mikebutcher”) on the images on Flickr so we know how to title them. Images are available for non-commercial use (for instance you are welcome to add them to your blog post or company site in your coverage of the awards). If you require any photos in print quality, you can get them directly from our photographer Dirk Lindner.

BTW, you may recall the rather odd lady who tried and failed to present an award. Introduced as Susan Thompson from Nexus Ventures, she looked like she was having an asthma attack onstage before she was whisked off. However, she was actually comedian and former T4 presenter Olivia Lee filming a segment for her new show for Comedy Central. We thought it would be funny… well…. at least it was for the first minute or so!

Here is more coverage of The Europas:

Press/Media

Computer Weekly: Highlights of TechCrunch’s Europas

Netzwertig.com (Germany) TechCrunch kürt Europas beste Startups: Spotify sahnt ab

Startwerk (Switzerland): “Poken, Amiando und Amazee waren ganz vorne dabei” [Google translation to English]

TechCrunch France: Retour sur la Cérémonie des Europas, Londres Capitale du Web Européen? [ "At a European awards ceremony, is London the Capital of the European Web?" Google English translation ]

ArcticStartup: Spotify And SoundCloud Winning At The Europas

Photos

Steph Bouchet (@rougefrog): Awesome FB photos

The Official Photos on Flickr

Great photos from The Traveling Geeks

Nice set of Facebook Photos

Zendesk photos: on FB here

More FB photos

Another Flickr set

Video

Dancing, Europas Style (Facebook video)

Blogs

@susiweaser gives us the low-down on @TCEurope’s Europa awards

Smarta.com: TechCrunch hails European tech stars

TechCrunch Europas: Awards for everybody and a kicker for the next 12 months

Simply the best – Huddle.net wins the Europas Award

The Europas: The Winners Champagne

Random Mel: Techcrunch Europas rawked!

TechCrunch Europas: Optimisim & Creative Destruction Alive and Well

Newspapers:

Kurier (Austrian newspaper):

Today we launch the TechCrunch Europe Top 100. This is a new, constantly updated Index of the most innovative and highest-potential European tech companies, as compiled by our partner YouNoodle. As you’ll see, the Index is focused on mobile and web companies, although cleantech and gadget companies will have a presence on the list, which covers the broad Europe, Middle East and Africa region (EMEA).

So I bet you’re wondering why we created this list? Well Europe, despite being a bigger market than the U.S., is spread across multiple countries, jurisdictions and languages. However, many companies themselves trade both across this complex matrix and internationally. So in order to throw some light onto the situation we wanted to do more that just cover the market in a traditional media manner (as we already do). We wanted to use a data-led approach to create a list which could start to throw up both the themes and the diversity of this rich marketplace. We hope the TechCrunch Europe Top 100 will help throw some light on the European companies that are generating strong, genuine progress.

So from here on, the list will be updated constantly and TechCrunch Europe will profile one or more of the companies in the index monthly to check up on their progress.

What is the data we use to create the score based on? YouNoodle’s scores and rankings are based on a sophisticated algorithm using information pulled in from thousands of online sources: traffic, mainstream media, funding information sources, the blogosphere, and other key factors.

A YouNoodle Score is a measurement, on a scale of 0 to 100, of a startup’s progress as an early-stage company. Typically, a 0-15 company is just getting started, a 30-60 company has experienced some very strong growth (through traffic, funding, or revenue), and a 90-plus company is a strong IPO or acquisition candidate. The score is based on a sophisticated algorithm using information from thousands of online sources: traffic, level of mainstream media coverage, funding, blogosphere activity, and other key factors.

Now I dare say you are asking yourself – how can the score be influenced? Can it be “gamed”? The simple answer is that the scores are mostly based on verified facts, so it’s pretty difficult to “game”. We have detected a few anomalies where startups were being overvalued, and each time we update the design to accommodate that.

It’s also fair to ask, if your company is on the list, what can you do to get it rated higher? Again, simply, just build value for your company. This is in the form of whatever is most valuable to your business in the short and medium term – possibly traffic, funding, revenue, partnerships, key hires, or major media coverage. Keep in mind that the algorithm for scores is specific to an industry, and in some cases location as well.

What do you need to do to get on the list? If you’re doing well we’ll probably find you. Ensuring your company is listed on CrunchBase and YouNoodle will speed up that process. If you think we’re missing something, want to recommend a company, or have any questions, feel free to get in touch with our contact at YouNoodle, Kirill via kirill[AT]younoodle.com or @kirill on Twitter.

Well it appeared to be signed and sealed when news leaked back in April that two icons of the UK’s tech startup world were joining forces to create a new fund to address the so-called ‘equity gap’ in Europe. But it gradually emerged that the actual name of the project would change and there were no real details, not even a web site to explain how it would work. But tonight at The Europas Awards in London, Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch announced the launch of the fund they’ve set up together: PROfounders Capital. It’s understood that Michael Birch, who exited from Bebo when it sold to AOL last year for $850m, is the prime investor, however, they hope to double the “founder-lead” £30m fund over the next few months.

Leading the fund will be Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo and BirthdayAlarm; Brent Hoberman, the founder of Lastminute and Mydeco; Peter Dubens, the founder of Oakley Capital and Freedom4 Group; and Jonathan Goodwin, the founder of LongAcre Partners.

The schtick of the fund is that it has been set up “by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs,” and, as Rogan Angelini-Hurll, general partner in the fund, puts it, this is “an unique collection of entrepreneurial capital and knowledge.” That’s a fair statement. There are very few enterpreneur-lead funds in Europe.

So what will they do? Well its sounds pretty much like the dream team from any startup’s perspective: they’ll be an “active participant” in early-stage ventures – in other words, they won’t just eat biscuits at board meetings, they’ll actually get their hands dirty, pulling in resources and their prodigious network.

The investments will aim to fill the gap between angel and traditional venture funding. The philosophy of PROfounders Capital also will focus on fostering and supporting entrepreneurism in Europe, and they intend to back non-profits that work in the area as well.

Sean Seton-Rogers joins as as General Partner, joining Angelini-Hurll. Seton-Rogers has ten years in VC, most recently at Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe) where he worked with companies such as Bebo, Wonga.com, MoveMe, and TouchLocal.

Sean says: “We want the spirit of the fund to reflect our approach – we aim to make decisions from the point of view of the entrepreneur throughout our investment period.”

Michael Birch, puts it in pretty bold terms: “Our aim is to be a central force in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Europe.

Hoberman told me: “We’ve had a good reception for those who’ve heard about it. We’ve already had 200 deals sent to us so far, which demonstrates the desire of entrepreneurs out there for something like this.”

He said the whole idea is to be “more partnership, less a closed club”.

He also says the fund will “Not be adversarial to existing players” more a “catalyst to European entreprenurship” and is “going to be looking far and wide across Europe.”

One thing he stressed was that the fund “won’t do things like douple dip participating preferred” – in other words do the kind of thing some VCs do when entrepreneurs are new to the game, putting in the contract that the VC has an option on taking a bigger stake when the startup neeeds a second round of funding.

All in all I can say this is great news for the startup scene across Europe – it’s the kind of thing that’s been lacking across Europe, and it certainly follows the right trend. Last year Spreadshirt founder Lukasz Gadowski set up Team Europe in concert with a number of other German entrepreneurs, aiming to fund early stage startups. He was joined by Kolja Hebenstreit (early employee at Spreadshirt, and seed investor in StudiVZ).

The Europas, the inaugural European Startup Awards 2009 for European and EMEA tech companies, were held last night, Thursday July 9, 2009 in London. Check out our live blog from the event and subsequent coverage in video, pictures and posts. For these inaugural awards, over 400 entrants were voted on by the industry and the results merged with those from 19 expert advisors from across Europe. Here are the winners, highly commended and finalists in each category. Congratulations to all!

A huge thanks to our sponsors for supporting this inaugural event: Thanks to the UKTI for sponsoring the pitches; Viadeo for sponsoring the Best Design category; Bootlaw for sponsoring Best Bootstrapped Startup; Quick.tv for sponsoring Best European Investor; Zendesk for sponsoring Best New Startup; Moonfruit for sponsoring Best Social Innovation; Latitude and Parklane Champagne for the Awards Prizes; oneDrum for sponsoring the drinks party and Mixcloud for sponsoring the DJ.

Here are the winners and finalists in each category (see the category links for more information on each company):

The Europas Shortlist: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)

Winner: Spotify

Highly Commended: Amiando

Finalists:
Babbel
Dopplr
Jimdo

The Europas Shortlist: Best Design

Winner: Songkick

Highly Commended: Babbel

Finalists:
IRL Connect
Spotify
Wonga

The Europas Shortlist: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)

Winner: Soup.io

Highly Commended: Doodle

Finalists:
BookingBug
Mixcloud
Struq

The Europas Shortlist: Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)

Winner: Mendeley

Joint Highly Commended: Amazee, School of Everything

Finalists:
Aleveo
Decisions For Heroes

The Europas Shortlist: Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Huddle

Highly Commended: Zendesk

Finalists:
BlueKiwi
FreeAgent Central
VideoPlaza

The Europas Shortlist: Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Alertme

Highly Commended: Amee

Finalists:
Dopplr
RouteRank
SpeedSell

The Europas Shortlist: Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)

Winner: Poken

Highly Commended: My Name Is E

Finalists:
Fon
INQ Mobile
Modu

The Europas Shortlist: Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)

Winner: SoundCloud

Highly Commended: eRepublik

Finalists:
Moshi Monsters
Playfish
WeeWorld

The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)

Winner: Nimbuzz

Highly Commended: Goojet

Finalists:
Aka-aki
Bambuser
GetJar

The Europas Shortlist: Best Mobile Application (EMEA)

Winner: Spinvox

Highly Commended: Tweetdeck Mobile

Finalists:
eBuddy
Fring
MobyPicture
Shozu

The Europas Shortlist: Best Startup Founder(s)

Winners: Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon, for Spotify

Highly Commended: Alastair Mitchell, Andy McLoughlin, for Huddle.net

Finalists:
Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss, jointly, Soundcloud
Felix Haas, Armin Bauer, Markus Eichinger, Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Baerhold, Marc Bernegger, for Amiando
Richard Jones, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, for Last.FM
Richard Moross, Moo

The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)

Winner: TAG – The Accelerator Group

Highly Commended: Index Ventures

Finalists:
Atlas Venture
Eden Ventures
European Founders Fund

The Europas Shortlist: Best Investor Personality (EMEA)

Winner: Yossi Vardi, Angel

Highly Commended: Fred Destin, Atlas Venture

Finalists:
Morten Lund
Robin Klein, TAG
Saul Klein, Seedcamp/Index Ventures

The Europas Shortlist: Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Winner: Spotify

Highly Commended: TweetDeck

Finalists:
SoundCloud
Stupeflix
Tweetmeme

The Europas Grand Prix

Decided by Judges vote only

Winner: Spotify

(While you’re here, subscribe to our Twitter feed and RSS feed).

6:16 PM: The hordes descend! Champagne is flowing, the live stream is streaming, anticipation is high.

6:35 PM: Our roving reporter Mike Butcher has been Twitpiccing:

6:47 PM: Starting in one minute….

6:50 PM: So, here we go! We’re starting with a pitch competition featuring six startups from across Europe. Pitch sponsored by UKTI.

First pitch: Bernhard Niesner from busuu.com – an extremely European company (they’re Austrian based in Spain!)

(Not unlike Babbel) Busuu is an online language learning community, with interactive tests and the chance to practise your new skillz with native language speakers around the world. Currently have +130k users around the world. Feb 2009 started monetising the freemium model, currently the largest language learning site in Spain.

6:57 PM: Next up: Heikke Haldre from Fits.Me – This is some crazy sh…. Robots + fashion = online clothes shopping without fear of buying things that don’t fit you. It’s a virtual fitting room which helps people see what clothes will look like on their body shape. Raised €1.3m, developed the prototype for which a patent has been filed.

7:01 PM: Philipp Mohr from Comufy. Taking communications to the next level. This looks like something we could all do with – going further than just aggregation – it lets you hook all your comms into the Comufy platform and then set levels of permission and filters to make sure you either a) receive exactly what you want in the right context. Target markets: corporates, SMEs, individuals – so, everyone then! Web app and mobile client already available, public launch in September.

7:04 PM: Mark Fletcher from Pitchero. Mike distracted me, but as far as I can tell, this is a social networking community for football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket clubs, 40k members, freemium model in a £10m market in the UK and £35m in the US. Want to find the next heros of the sports.

7:11 PM: James (who’s just 18!) from GigLocator. Focused on making live music more accessible to all by tying into the leading social networks.

7:14 PM: Ravi Sharma of emarket.com – online exchange for the FMCG industry – >€1 trillion marketplace, due to the nature of the goods. Making it quick and easy for companies to trade – i.e. manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers. (This sounds like what the eprocurement/SCM movement of the early-to-mid 90s was trying to do.) Close to reaching target of 300 of the top companies in this industry as member. 9 September public launch, started trading 4 weeks ago, done £2.5m of trade in that time.

7:18 PM: Mike has an announcement: as of today, TechCrunch Europe launches the TechCrunch Europe Top 100 – a constantly updating index of the top 100 companies in the European tech scene – mobile, web, clean tech, gadgets and hardware. Tracking provided by YouNoodle, the people that power Crunchbase.com. Scores are based on verified facts, ranking can be improved by improving your company. Positive reinforcement FTW.

And so, on to the judging! Panellists: Tariq Krim, Sarah Lacy, Brent Hoberman, Michael Birch and Stefan Glaenzer.

My bad, it’s not the judging at all. The question is, where are we (i.e. the European tech startup scene) headed?

Stefan: Will be devoting the next few years to built a European hub to act as a base for launching global startups. What’s needed is education, money to school European startups in the way of global domination.

Tariq: When you’re in Europe you don’t really believe that you’re taken as seriously as you would be in San Francisco. But there is a network of European entrepreneurs thinking big, super smart people who understand how to engineer startups to scale.

Sarah: Telling us about the book she’s authoring at the moment, looking at startup activity in the emerging markets around the world. Looking at trends that are transforming economies. Her advice to European startups – don’t look to the US as usual, look to China, India, Africa. Rwanda, in a year, is going to be better connected than the US. A lot of bridges being built between emerging economies excludes the US.

Brent: One of the main frustrations is that today, one of the big determining factors of success is how good a company is at spanning Google’s search algorithm.

Michael: Getting booed (goodnaturedly) for suggesting that SF is better than the UK/Europe. Announcement: Michael and Brent’s new investment fund – comprised of people who have themselves founded successful startups – has gone live this week. They will go earlier stage than VCs, viewing themselves as a fund central to the ecosystem, working with VCs. Though they haven’t officially launched they have seen 250+ pitches to date, a clear indication that this sort of fund is needed.

Questions/comments from the floor:
How can we work well together in Europe given how diverse the market is?
Stefan: Citing Last.fm, international rollout in 12 languages in 8 weeks – which saw a pretty significant improvement to the uptake of Last.fm at the time. Looking at Oxford, Cambridge and other great tech universities, we do have a good chance. But we need to look at Asia, not all innovation will come out of Silicon Valley.

Sarah: If London wants to be more successful as a tech scene, don’t even call it Silicon anything – play to the city’s strengths.

Tariq: Traditionally most companies try to be good in their country of origin first before expanding globally. But starting with international expansion as your goals in mind is an interesting way we’re seeing a lot of startups go.

** And now, a short intermission **

The Europas, the Europan tech startup awards from, will be streamed live from this post from 6pm tonight London time/GMT (10am SF, 1pm NYC). We’ll kick off with a startup pitch competition, followed by a panel of some of the leading lights in tech consisting of: our own Sarah Lacy, Jolicloud founder Tariq Krim, MyDeco’s Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch co-founder of Bebo. The actual announcement of The Europas winners will be from around 8.30pm GMT onwards. After that, well, a huge party. Over 300 people are attending from all over the European tech scene. Our streaming partner is TechFluff.tv. If you couldn’t get to the awards, if you’re somewhere in Europe working on your own startup, then tonight raise a glass, put the projector screen on in the bar and have your very own Europas awards with us. We salute you.

Video chat rooms at Ustream

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A huge thanks to our sponsors for supporting this inaugural event: Thanks to the UKTI for sponsoring the pitches; Viadeo for sponsoring the Best Design category; Bootlaw for sponsoring Best Bootstrapped Startup; Quick.tv for sponsoring Best European Investor; Zendesk for sponsoring Best New Startup; Moonfruit for sponsoring Best Social Innovation; Latitude and Parklane Champagne for the Awards Prizes; oneDrum for sponsoring the drinks party and Mixcloud for sponsoring the DJ.

PITCH SPONSOR

UKTI

UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.

AWARD CATEGORY SPONSORS

Sponsor: Best Design Category

Viadeo

Founded in June 2004, Viadeo quickly established itself as the place to be for professional networking in Europe and beyond. Since then, with more than 8.5 million members (as of June 2009). Follow them on Twitter @viadeo. Viadeo is essential for those who want to:

• Increase their business opportunities (to discover new clients, staff and business partners)
• Enhance their visibility and their online reputation
• Manage and develop their network of professional contacts

Viadeo’s members consist of business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of businesses both start-up and well established. Each day Viadeo attracts more than 10,000 new members; 40,000 new connections are made and over one million profiles are viewed. Based in Paris (head office), Viadeo also has offices and teams in the UK (London), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), Italy (Milan), China (Beijing), India (New Delhi) and Mexico (Mexico City). The company employs 200 staff worldwide. www.viadeo.com

Sponsor: Best Bootstrapped Startup Category

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. Its brought to you by Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu the friendly lawyers at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

Sponsor: Best Entertainment Application or Service

Skimbit

Skimbit helps website publishers monetise their content in ethical and user-friendly ways. We love the internet, and want good websites to be able to sustain themselves. Display advertising alone may not be enough, and can be intrusive to users, and affiliate marketing can be difficult to do well. We want to help publishers earn incremental revenues from their editorial and user-generated content in a way that doesn’t compromise editorial integrity or interfere with the user-experience and adds value to publishers. Our flagship product is Skimlinks which aggregates more than 7000 international merchants across 18 affiliate networks to make affiliate marketing easy, Skimbuzz is an innovative community builder aimed at forums, while Good.ly and skimthat work to monetise Twitter. Skimbit has recently been recognised by some of the major authorities in the affiliate marketing industry; with three gongs at the A4U Affiliate Marketing Awards 2009 for Innovative Publisher of the Year, Best New Entrant in Affiliate Marketing and Best Use of Technology within Affiliate Marketing, two trophies for Best New Business and Technological Innovation at the NMA Effectiveness Awards 2009, as well as runners-up awards in the Technology Genius and Best New Publisher categories at the US Linkshare Golden Link Awards 2009. Our CEO Alicia Navarro has also been shortlisted for the National Business Awards Entrepreneur of the Year 2009.

Sponsor: Best European Investor Category

Quick.tv

Quick.tv is a web-based ‘Video-as-a-Service’ platform, allowing the injection of dynamic and interactive features into online video clips. Aimed at business users, productions created through Quick.tv transform the viewer experience by prompting them to click on items within the video.

A full range of intuitive drag’n’drop tools include hotspots for e-commerce, real-time voting and graphs, RSS feeds for live data,
forms for viewers to apply for offers, hyperlinked text and image overlays, chapters for ease of navigation and more.

The end-to-end service delivers file transcoding and storage, player and play-out options and detailed analytics both on the video itself and the viewers’ use of the interactive features. It even has an editing tool to re-cut video clips online.

Templates and style sheets make the deployment of large numbers of interactive videos easy, leaving users free to monitor the increased monetisation and viewer engagement benefits the service has to offer.

Sponsor: Best New Startup, Summer 2008 – Summer 2009

Zendesk

Zendesk provides an integrated on-demand helpdesk – customer support portal solution based on the latest Web 2.0 technologies and design philosophies. The product has an elegant, minimalist design implemented in Ruby on Rails and provides seamless integration of the back-end helpdesk SaaS to a company’s online customer-facing web presence, including hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets. This is unusual, because most SaaS helpdesk solutions focus exclusively on the backend helpdesk and treat the Web as an afterthought. The system also leverages Web 2.0 ideas on the backend, such as tag based categorization throughout instead of the usual pre-defined drop down lists, RSS feeds for every customized view and a complete REST/JSON API for virtually every entity in the system.

Sponsor: Best in Social Innovation

Moonfruit

Moonfruit has been providing tools for people to build ‘Beautiful websites, simply.’ since 1999. To date 2.1m+ websites have been built by small businesses, communities, families, designers, crafters, freelancers and individuals who just want to express themselves. Moonfruit is passionate about creativity and simplifying technology for everyone. The Flash and Flex based platform provides our users with a unique drag and drop interface and ability to quickly design and customise their sites. The latest release of Moonfruit offers a free product with no ads as well as excellent premium packages for those who require extra bells and whistles e.g domains, shops and space. It also includes Moonfruit ‘People’ which supports businesses and communities who want to manage their customers or members more easily, plus social media integration with Facebook and Twitter. Moonfruit is part of Gandi Group which includes sister company Gandi.net, the ethical domain name registrar and virtual hosting provider.

Sponsor: Awards Prize

Latitude

Latitude is a leading digital marketing agency who deliver their expertise in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), social media, online display, affiliate marketing and conversion analytics to clients including Tesco Personal Finance, Bet 365 and The Independent. Our whole approach is built on performance. Our conversion analytics expertise ensures that, once visitors get to your site, they convert from prospects to customers. We are confident that we can demonstrate a significantly better ROI on marketing spend. In fact, we’re so confident that we offer many of our clients performance-based pricing, so you only spend money when you’re making money.

Sponsor: Awards Prize

Park Lane Champagne

Park Lane Champagne: bringing the ability to source single bottles of champagne, personalised as you like, through their new online site at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk . Check it out and if you like what you see, do blog about it and tell the World.

Sponsor: Drinks & Party

oneDrum

oneDrum is a free, lightweight desktop application that can turn any application into a rich, collaborative environment. The first release of oneDrum, available to the public from July 2009, is the only platform on the market that takes the compromise out of collaborating in Microsoft Office.
It enables:
* Simultaneous, multi-author document creation and editing in PowerPoint, Excel and Word
* Effective communication, coordination and control of change
* Secure, synchronised file sharing and version management.

oneDrum is headquartered in London, England and was founded by Jasper Westaway, CEO

Sponsor: DJ

Mixcloud

Mixcloud aims to be the YouTube of Radio. The company’s vision is to be the definitive platform online for on-demand radio shows – from music to talk and everything in between. Mixcloud describe themselves as re-thinking radio, building a platform that connects radio shows (or what they describe as Cloudcasts) to listeners much more effectively. The unit of value for Mixcloud is the show rather than the song or the station. Mixcloud provides radio content creators with a toolkit to host, promote and distribute their content across the web, solving the frustrations associated with file sharing services or the complications of Podcasts. For listeners, Mixcloud helps them filter the content easily to find what’s relevant to them – e.g. what’s popular or what their friends are listening to.