Klarna, one of the biggest providers in Europe of in-store credit and invoice based payment solutions for the e-commerce sector, has secured funding from Sequoia Capital, which famously also backed Google. Terms have not been disclosed but we’ve learned Klarna will do a directed new share issue of SEK 70m (approx. $9 million).
Highly unusually, Mike Moritz, Sequoia Capital Partner and former board member of PayPal, Google and Yahoo, will join the Klarna board. This is significant as this is the first time ever that Moritz has joined a European company’s board.
[UK] I can’t decide if this is a piece of crass PR – like when a politician kisses a baby – or an interesting data point. Actually I’m pretty sure it’s the former but as this is all about democracy, I’ll let you make up your own mind.
Flirtomatic, the mobile social network aimed at young adults, asked its 1 million UK users which of the main three British prime minister wannabes they’d most like to snog. (It was assumed that a kiss constituted a vote by the way.)
So far 10,000 Flirtomatic users have obliged, with the Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg seeing 34.4% of the action. The Conservative’s David Cameron is in close second (33.9%), while the Labour’s Gordon Brown lies in third (31.7%).
You’ve got to hand it to Facebook. They certainly know how to do security — not.
Today I was tipped off that there is a major security flaw in the social networking site that, with just a few mouse clicks, enables any user to view the live chats of their ‘friends’. Using what sounds like a simple trick, a user can also access their friends’ latest pending friend-requests and which friends they share in common. That’s a lot of potentially sensitive information.
Unbelievable I thought, until I just tested the exploit for myself.
And guess what? It works.
Tomorrow the UK goes to the polls in one of the most hotly contested elections in years. Labour has been in power for 13 years and the Conservatives have been champing at the bit to get back in. But the third party, in the shape of the Liberal Democrats, has accelerated into the race on the back of the charisma of its leader, Nick Clegg, or “Cleggmania” as it’s now known.
But if you are a startup with a limited company in the UK (and this counts for many non-UK-born startups that have incorporated in the UK because of the business-friendly environment), how should you vote? Which party is going to do the most for technology startups?
The Labour party has proposed an increase in National Insurance. That’s not great for any company, and adds extra costs. But in theory it’s the kind of thing that can be absorbed into the part and parcel of general running costs.
However, what most entrepreneurs are interested in – admittedly after building an awesome product which gets traction and, hopefully, has a business model in sight – is the exit.
So the question is, which political party most favours exits?
GyPSii, a real-time location based social networks, is based out of Amsterdam. But despite their European headquarters and origins, their primary market for their mobile social+location applications is China, where mobile dwarfs web use. In March, GyPSii released Tweetsii for iPhone.
But in the next few hours, Tweetsii for Android will be available for download in the Android Market. It’s based on GyPSii technology and similar in concept. Where GyPSii is it’s own platform, Tweetsii leverages Twitter’s western popularity in the European and U.S. markets. The mobile app is fused with a number of other services, to provide relevant content, based on location and user preference, mixing information from a variety of virtual streams into one.
[UK] BandCentral, a sort of ‘Basecamp for bands’, gets its official launch today, although an early version of the site was soft launched as far back as July 09.
The site provides tools for artists, managers and labels to project manage the business end of being in a band. Things like organising tours, managing fan databases, merchandising and accounting.
BandCentral was conceived by founder and CEO Wil Padley, a “digital creative” and bass player in the UK band The Domino State. Based on his experience of touring – his band has gigged across Europe and even supported Coldplay at the O2 arena – Padley saw the need for better tools to professionalise aspects of the experience and help bands stay organised. That’s rock ‘n’ roll nowadays, I guess.
Padley bootstrapped the early development of BandCentral, founded in June 08, while the London-based startup has since taken an undisclosed amount of Angel funding.
Simon Waldman, long-time Director of Digital Strategy and Development at the Guardian Media Group is leaving to become group product director with Lovefilm, the pan-European home entertainment company. We understand it’s a new position and that Waldman will not be replaced at GMG, at least until the new CEO arrives to decide what to do next.
Lovefilm sells DVDs and movie download to over 1m active subscriber households across Europe,and is in a phase of expansion. It has VC backing from Index Ventures.
[Spain] Is Telefonica buying Tuenti, the leading Spanish social network – or not? The subject comes up regularly in Spain.
And so it was that “Telefonica is rumored to be acquiring Tuenti for €80 million” ($104 million) was the latest rumour buzzing around Spanish blogs and Twitter timelines this weekend. The trouble is that Tuenti vehemently denies it.
Yesterday, vociferous Carlos Blanco wrote that Tuenti was in negotiations with Telefonica (with a very suggestive URL, reading something like “telefonica-buys-tuenti”). Thus setting off a veritable gossip bomb.
But in actuality Tuenti has said that it is making an announcement tomorrow morning that involves Telefonica… but it’s a relatively small commercial announcement that has nothing to do with a sale.
Since Lars Hinrichs, former Founder of XING, sold his stake in the floated company to Burda for €48.3 million he’s been pinging around Europe, attending high level events like Le Web and generally enjoying life. But he’s also – shock horror for a European startup guy – investing in startups, and internationally. So far we hear he’s clocked up in the UK (3), US (5), Germany (6) and Nordics (2). In other words, 40% German, 60% outside Germany.
Hinrichs now has put in “approx 300k Euro”for 12.5% of Flip4new.de, an ecommerce site where customers can exchange their used and unwanted electronic gadgets for new gadgets, vouchers or other e-commerce shops or cash.
MoSync is a Swedish company which aims to create tools for mobile developers which allow them to do that mythical ‘write once and run many’ thing with mobile applications so that they will work across any platform.
Of course, we all know what Apple thinks about Flash apps being converted to run that way, but this is not about to deter MoSync.
Or, it appears, their potential investors. For we have heard on the grapevine that MoSync is entertaining terms sheets for a 14m Euro financing round.
Swedish blog Disruptive.nu is reporting that MoSync was looking at 50 million in Swedish Krona, which is about 5 million Euro.
[Holland] WatchMouse, the website performance monitoring company, has launched its new GeoBrand service today. It’s designed to detect “brand abuse” in search-based keyword advertising and follows the recent European Court ruling on the LVMH vs Google case which places the onus on the brands themselves to monitor for trademark infringements.
The service targets pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Bing in over 30 countries and offers an automated way for brands to be alerted that a competitor is purchasing keyword advertising which potentially infringes on their trademark, listing offenses by country and specific search engine.
Paris-based HelloCotton (HelloCoton en Français), a French social platform for discovering and sharing women’s blog content, is launching in the US today.
Initially launch in France in April 2008, the platform counts roughly 3 million monthly unique visitors who use HelloCotton to discover and share lady-oriented blog content – about fashion, health, beauty, you-name-it. And oddly enough, despite being oriented towards women, this start-up was founded by two men – Hubert Michaux and Victor Cerutti - who were formerly part of the Netvibes team; the founding duo decided to launch the platform hoping to capitalize on the hyperactivity of the female blogosphere that seemed to be contrained by traditional and fragmented online distribution channel. Thus, with a bit of Netvibes sauce, the team developed a platform ressembling a mashup of women’s magazine content with web 2.0 social features: think Elle Magazine à la Twitter and Facebook.
[UK] Does the UK really need another job hunting site? Apparently so, says PathMotion.
The Paris-based startup is targeting students and young professionals in the UK with its mix of career guidance and job vacancies. And considering that ‘youth’ unemployment in Britain is worryingly high, the site’s launch looks well timed, although it’s curious that a French company has chosen to launch this side of the Channel first.
PathMotion says it differs from traditional jobs boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder, which allow users to search vacancies based on job titles and require the candidate to know what they are looking for, by matching possible career paths via existing skills, experience and competencies to actual current job vacancies.
It’s been a while since we caught up with WAYN, one of the earliest social networks (so early they once charged for access). WAYN is a niche social network which focuses on the younger, aspirational traveling classes. Amazingly, despite the recession, they are still gap-yearing around the world using WAYN to meet fellow travelers, and there are now 15.5 million registered users globally.
More interestingly, London-based WAYN has revealed exclusively to TechCrunch Europe that the site is now in profit. And next month it is going mobile with an iPhone and Android application created jointly with UK mobile social startup Rummble. WAYN users will be able to check in to places, and Rummble will get access to the WAYN user base.
Littlehint is a new startup which aims to take your Facebook friends and bring in the ones who actually want to potentially go on a date, along with the ones who might help you find one. It sucks in your network via Facebook Connect and asks you to fill out your profile. The difference however is that in the future they plan to offer the ability to submit your DNA as well. Think 23andme for dating.
The founders are Anju Rupal, CEO, who has been involved in various startups as an investor at board level, and Bill Liao, co-founder of XING, Germany’s LinkedIn.
Littlehint is similar to Thread.com which pulls your friends into your dating network (at least those who are already on Thread). LinkedIN founder Reid Hoffman has invested in Thread to the tune of $1.2m. Littlehint is similar also to friend.ly, minus the DNA matching.
Littlehint site claims to match members based on sociological characteristics, “degrees of separation”, psychoanalytic assessment and optional DNA matching. But would those chime with your Facebook friends? Hard to say.
This is a guest post by Eileen Burbidge (@eileentso) , an early-stage tech angel/investor and advisor. This is part one of a three part series she is writing on her blog. Currently establishing White Bear Yard in London for technology innovation and startups, she is also an advisor to Ambient Sound Investments. Burbidge has held senior leadership roles in business, product, and market development at Yahoo!, Skype, PalmSource, Openwave, Sun Microsystems, Apple and Verizon Wireless. She holds a BS in Engineering Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
There have been recent calls to give more women a chance within tech; there are calls [presumably to men] to take women more seriously and to work harder at recruiting and attracting women into tech in order to overcome systemic bias in the “system”. I take issue with these approaches and perspectives firstly because I find them patronizing and secondly because I think the call to action is directed at the wrong place.
Waking up in my San Francisco hotel room yesterday, I immediately knew something was wrong. It was a mess.
In fact, the whole hotel was a mess. Carpets un-vacuumed, brassware unpolished, rooms unserviced, newspapers undelivered. It was a story writ large across the whole city – leaves piled up knee-deep on the sidewalk, restaurant tables uncleared and water glasses un-refilled. It was as if every essential – but mundane – service had ground to a halt, instantly and without warning.
Only when I reached the Civic Center did I realise what was going on: all the Mexicans were gathered there, protesting Arizona’s new senate bill, SB1070.
“Stop!” I cried, “stop this nonsense! Put down your bi-lingual protest signs and your American flags and get back to work!” My hotel room was not going to clean itself, and I was hungry for enchiladas. But the Mexicans ignored me – perhaps because I don’t speak a word of Spanish or perhaps because they couldn’t hear me over the chanting; but probably because I’m white. Racists.
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