Plakatt users are able to post events they are interested in, browse existing ones and have an overview of the happenings in their or any other city for that matter. Also, the guys from Plakatt are hoping to provide a new way of communication between users on one side, and venue owners, PR managers, and event organizers on the other side.

This event service also has a social component which is reflected through the ability to add and “follow” your contacts’ activities (similar to “following” on Twitter), inviting friends to events, writing comments, reviews, adding photos and videos. All the information on Plakatt is open and searchable by Google and other search engines, which is an advantage for event and venue promoters.

Founders Marko and Darko (yes really) from Plakatt plan to first cover Serbia then launch an English version. The plans for monetizing are mainly related to charging PR people, owners of venues (cafes, restaurants etc.) and organizers of events.

The concept is similar to a real stock exchange, letting corporate creative minds present their ideas, while colleagues can buy shares in the ideas trusted to benefit the company. Many employees have probably experienced the frustration of sharing an idea without experiencing further action. With a tool like Idea Exchange ideas can be brought to life with a fair chance of qualification. Nosco believes that when we invest, we are honest, we get hooked by competition and are driven by earning “money” – a pleasure not even the recession can take away from us.

Idea Exchange is sold as Software as a Service and is currently out as a closed beta. Nosco is expecting to launch at the end of 2009. The team of 9 based in Copenhagen has already achieved a wide range of customers including Hempel, McQuarie and Alfa Laval. Nosco has received €275.000 ($400.000) in venture funding from Capital+.

Not only do you get employees to post ideas and colleagues to buy in on them, you also get qualified screening with the prediction market mechanism and a structured idea management process, taking the idea to action.

But will a service like Idea Exchange make companies focus more on user driven innovation, or is it for those who already see this as a competitive force? Well, most companies have talked about innovation for a decade, but very few have walked the walk. Perhaps Idea Exchange can affect the wave transforming the good old tank ship into a racing yacht adaptive to change in wind?

Twitter users sending a tweet with the name of a band or artist to MuZoid receive a reply in less than 2.5 seconds with a link to a bespoke webpage containing gig listings, a discography, a recommendation of similar artists that the user might like. If MuZoid doesn’t know an artist, she makes a note of it and gets busy learning. Once enough information’s available, she’ll tweet back to the original querant with an update.

The app speaks to peoples’ love of instant gratification; it works with the fact that Twitter is a platform built around real-time messaging, and serves up a slew of aggregated relevant content a sight more zippily than the disparate results a simple Googling would return.

MuZoid’s proud parents, MusicMetric, can be found in London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout‘. The angel-backed startup is in the trends analysis business, using machine learning methods combined with text mining to track trends in the music industry and perform in-depth analysis of music fans’ online preferences. The company is currently working toward rolling out subscription-based analytics and trend forecasting software for the music industry.

In the meantime, they launched MuZoid, who co-founder Greg Mead says was born as a by-product of this process, i.e. large amounts of data such as gigs, genres and releases indexed into the MusicMetric data warehouse. The data is also used to infer similarities between artists, but what sets it apart from Amazon or Last.fm, which use consumer preferences and crowdsourcing respectively, MusicMetric’s inferences are all down to machine learning classification — which means that the information becomes more accurate as more sources of data are found.

It’s a fiendishly clever idea, so it’s probably no surprise that the folks behind it are all, well, wickedly bright. Greg’s background is in physics and computational physics. The other founders are Matthew Jeffery, Marie-Alicia Chang, Jameel Syed and Andrew Walker. Jameel has a PhD and 10 years experience in analytics and text mining for the life sciences industry. Matthew is a computer scientist, Marie-Alicia’s background is in financial software marketing and Andrew is co-owner of creative agency Thin Martian and co-founder of Tweetminster.

MusicMetric plans to release a suite of widgets, social network apps and free public APIs making the data available for people to build their own apps. They’ll also be adding more music stores in the near future, which will allow for price comparisons on albums across the board. There aren’t any standards for music or ecommerce APIs, Greg says, so the more problematic ones (like HMV) will take longer than others.

Developing this technology is a creative journey, and it helps to give the AI more personality if it has a gender.  There’s so much male-dominated language associated with technology that we thought it would make a nice change to anthropomorphise this software bot as female.  If we called it a “cute little guy” that would be way too predictable. The Cylons are cool, I saw one walking the earth down Great Eastern Street the other day, Shoreditch is full of them.

SellaBand

The deal relies on CreateSpace’s Disc on Demand service, an inventory-free solution in which discs are manufactured only after a customer places an order. It’s an elegant and affordable solution to a common problem – you go to a gig, see an up-and-coming band, fall in love with their music – and then have to live with bootleg recordings or crappy quality MySpace streams or YouTube vids because the band’s so up-and-coming they can’t afford a CD run.

SellaBand’s model turns the recording industry model on its head; leaving it to the audience rather than the label to invest in talent in an IPO-stylee share sale. Any artist can sign up to the site and showcase their music to the general public. As part of signing up, the artist issues 5,000 ‘parts’, which sell for US$10 each. When someone buys a part, they become a ‘believer’. With enough believers behind them, a band can raise the $50,000 it takes to get into the studio and produce an album.

To date, SellaBand believers have helped 30 artists from 13 different countries raise the full $50k, and invested over $3m in unsigned artists. Investors receive a limited edition copy of the resulting album. On top of that, the artists and their fans share in album sales revenue.

SellaBand has collaborations with Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de, and recently appointed Public Enemy frontman Chuck D as ambassador for the company, supporting its US expansion.

Yahoo Mobile, available at http://new.m.yahoo.com or from the App Store, combines what you’d expect from Yahoo’s services — search, news, social networks and email — with other web content which users can select to personalise their experience. The ordering of that list of services, taken from the official press release, is a clear indication of Yahoo’s priorities.

The service and app launched in the UK, Germany, France, the US, Canada, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, with additional localised versions expected to launch over the next several months.

Yahoo says the launch, which comes a scant eight months after Google launched its iPhone app in the UK, is all about continuing the company’s mobile leadership and capitalising on its market potential, which it plans to do through rich media display advertising that will encourage user engagement, so for example, allowing users to send ads to a friend or click to call the advertiser directly.

So far the app’s received a lukewarm response on the App Store, garnering a mere 1.5 star rating (though of course, only six people have rated so far) and complaints about the speed of the app over GPRS and loads of ‘page not available’ error messages.

Picli.com, a photo sharing community site launched in private beta in March 2007, has relaunched with a slew of new features and a more clearly defined business model.

Two years seems like a long time for a site to be in beta, and Picli’s developer/designer founder duo of Sam Street and Sean Miller acknowledge this in the FAQ, referring to 2008 as ‘the dark age’ in which, well, nothing much happened. Still, Picli managed to gather a passionate core user community of about 2,000 in this time, whose feedback has contributed to the recent refinements.

Picli’s a bit like Flickr meets Digg – users submit their photography under Creative Commons licensing, which then gets rated up or down by the community. The central focus of the site is the Showcase, a gallery of the most popular photos.

With the relaunch comes tiered membership packages, which the founders are currently soliciting user feedback on before any final decisions are made. There are plans to build upon the online advertising options, currently revolving aorund Google AdSense, and to implement a photo buying service where Picli users could sell usage rights on their images to picture buyers, using a commission-based system which Miller and Street call ‘targeted tagging’. The guys also plan to release an API that will encourage developers to extend the site’s functionality to mobile devices and web apps.

While on the face of it Picli may seem like yet another Flickr, the founders are adamant this isn’t the case – it’s less about acting as a giant harddrive for users to upload all their photos to, and more about community-driven quality control, where photographers share only their best work and take inspiration from others — not dissimilar to what FFFFound does for visual artists.

Miller and Street are bootstrapping Picli for the moment, and say they would love the site to drive traffic to members’ personal portfolio sites as a result of the interest generated on Picli. The site’s gone a ways in proving the concept around a free-to-use model. Whether or not it can compete with the likes of fotoLibra and Demotix will depend on how readily the user community coughs up for annual subscriptions, and whether or not picture buyers find on Picli what they can’t find elsewhere. Watch this space.

The Bango Top 20 handset list, based on Bango’s February statistics, puts the Nokia 3110c on top, followed by the Samsung M800 in 2nd and the Nokia 6300 in 3rd place. On the whole, smartphones account for 30% of handsets in the top 20. Bango detected a total of 1,811 different types of handsets accessing the mobile web in just one month.

The iPhone appears as 24th on the list, leading Bango to conclude that brands trying to reach the mass market on the mobile web need to look beyond that rarefied group of iPhone users whose buying is restricted to the Apple App Store.

The company’s stats are based on its own metrics from Bango Analytics, monitoring the activities of major brands and businesses as their consumers browse to mobile websites, and the number of sales of mobile content and services handled by Bango Payment.

While it’s not a comprehensive or comparative study, the stats and Bango CEO Raymond Anderson’s blog analysis will still make interesting reading for businesses that monetize their mobile content and services across a wide demographic.

Anderson’s point that companies that haven’t optimised their sites for mobile browsing or transactions are missing out is on the money, but this situation is not likely to remain constant. Come June, when new iPhones are launched, it’s likely to be at different pricepoints more suitable for the mass market.

Astia’s US programme has run since 2003 with fundraising success upwards of 60%, raising more than $495m for presenting companies and had 11 exits, including two IPOs. The not-for-profit organisation has high expectations to match this success in Europe, and is putting the call out for women-led startups to tap in to its community of over 450 experts, serial entrepreneurs and CEOs in the Valley and Europe.

The London programme will kick off with the three-day Doing It Right event from 11-14 May; the deadline to apply for a place at the event is 22 April.

Astia’s advisory board includes a number of very strong and well-connected entrepreneurs, investors and advisors, including Microsoft’s Bindi Karia and Jane Houghton of the British Venture Capital Association.

Knocking about the AudioBoo.fm site, you can learn about White Day in Japan, listen to a German practising his guitar chords or any number of ‘boos’ that are the AudioBoo equivalent of “Testing, 1, 2, 3…” – and even those are surprisingly addictive.

Mark Rock, founder and CEO of Best Before, says the company will soon roll out plugins to allow Wordpress users and other bloggers to embed their boos on their own sites, and will be publishing the API to encourage development of AudioBoo for other phones and mobile operating systems. Ultimately, the vision is for AudioBoo to be available for any internet-connected device that can record audio.

Dan Heaf at 4iP has blogged his hopes that AudioBoo will empower users to better create audio journalism or first person narratives, as well as making it easier to find this type of content on the web. Rock says Best Before is already in talks with a number of regional news organisations who see the potential for the tool in ultra-local news reporting.

The company’s still number crunching to determine the ideal mix of revenue streams; one proposal is a freemium approach where people using the free version would be capped at three minutes’ recording time, while those paying a monthly subscription would be able to record for up to an hour and attach multiple images to each file.

The next release of AudioBoo will allow users to store boos on their phones and cue recordings for later upload.

UPDATE: This event is now sold out.

I recently heard that Scott Rafer would be in town next week. Scott is a Silicon Valley Internet entrepreneur, CEO of Lookery (CrunchBase info), and former CEO of MyBlogLog, which was acquired by Yahoo! last year for $10 million.

So I thought I’d throw a quick dinner to get some startups together and chat. Scott will be talking informally about the scene in the US for startups, and his impressions about the European scene which he knows well. The event will be of particular interest to social networking startups.

You can get a ticket to the dinner here on EventBrite.

Unfortunately, due to the nightmare of booking a venue last minute there are only 12 places, so hurry and get yours. We’ll be throwing bigger, more open TechCrunch events in due course – this dinner is a sort of experiment. If it’s successful and people like the idea, we’ll do more.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is an all-inclusive “Ticket Only” Event, which means you’ll need to have purchased a ticket prior to the event. You can’t turn up and buy one, sorry about that! )

BIO:
Scott Rafer has been helping Internet publishers and users jump on What’s Right Now! since 1995. Today, that means delivering services for social publishing and discovery. Scott is CEO of Lookery, as well as co-founder of Mashery and chairman of Winksite. Lookery is an ad network and user-targeting service that is supporting the growth of social applications starting with Facebook. Mashery manages API and developer programs on behalf of web services providers including Facebook app providers. Winksite helps publishers large and small assemble active mobile communities around their brands based on the content they already syndicate. Just before all that, he was CEO of MyBlogLog until Yahoo! acquired the company in January 2007. Before MyBlogLog, Scott tried to build blog/RSS search companies in both 1998 & 2003. Before the first dotcom boom, Rafer led Internet products group Kodak Hollywood, worked in investment banking at Needham & Company, and graduated from the M&T Program at UPenn.

More info:
Lookery.com
BIO
LinkedIn

Big London launch in a Mayfair hotel? Check. “Global internet portal”? Check. “The first functioning Web 3.0 site on the internet”? Check. Poised to “change the way that business is currently done on the internet”? Check.

So I just got off the phone to the PR guy who wouldn’t tell me anything about who is behind the site, like the CEO’s name for instance. However, I gather it’s about 20 web apps wrapped into one big site (video, blogging, directories, email, VOIP, chat, text, photos etc) and mashes up consumer and business target markets. Its been “some years in the making”, built across the UK, South Africa and Germany, and is a “home page where you can do everything in one site.” Double check!

I’m in two minds about whether to go to the launch because it already sounds like they have ignored the now distributed nature of the Net and the emergence of APIs and platform applications. Should I go?

UPDATE: I did in fact go along to the presentation.

The site is positioning itself against large business-focused directories like Alibaba, Wand and Yell.com. However, they rather laboured the single point that they had come up with the “alpha and omega” of taxonomies to cover all possible categories. They have also wrapped up a tonne of tools (VOIP, IM, SMS, video, you name it) and are giving it all away free (not that original) as an incentive to register, create a profile and start hocking your business. CEO Stuart Sterzel, who is ex South African Special Forces but also former head of a number of mining and oil/gas businesses, very politely told me that they were extremely confident their plan would succeeed. Indeed, he said they have been researching it for 8 years and had put in well over 6-figures of funding into it via private investors.

My Opinion? I think the site does indeed look like it is 8 years old. The interface is very old fashioned. Plus they will need a lot (and I mean a lot) of marketing to give it any traction. I admire their enthusiasm, but I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope for it’s success, to be blunt.

This is how it works: You click on an image, say a dress, and new associated images (matching handbags, shoes etc) appeal in a cloud around it. Clicking on any of the displayed items re-submits that item as the search term. Pixsta argues that a click on its AdImage network is worth more than an AdWord click because for the advertiser, customer acquisition costs are lowered, with lead-to-customer success rates higher. Media brand owners get a new, visual way of monetising their site which is perceived as content rather than advertising. Consumers get to see all the products from various retailers presented in a homogeneous way, like in a shopping mall, with no need to visit numerous individual sites. Clicks go direct to the product landing page.

Pixsta’s patent-pending image search technology is based on research by Pixsta co-founder Dr Daniel Heesch, who came up with algorithms that enable any image to be compared with any other, to determine their similarity in terms of shape, colour, texture and more. Pixsta CEO is Alexander Straub, CEO and co-founder of Pixsta and of early dot-com Mondus back in 1999.

I don’t know where they plan to head with this technology but it occurs to me that if they allowed users to improve the image search by adding their own tags, the search may be improved. However, I dare say they thought of that already and are confident their algorithms can do the heavy lifting.

“Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical…”

Virgle, the name of the joint project, took applications for the first Mars mission on its site, under Google.com/virgle. And there was even a YouTube competition and official video channel. However, the entire stunt was the day before April Fool’s day, and sure enough that’s what it turned out to be.

But it now looks like the joke was on Google and Virgin.

One enterprising individual went and registered Virgle.com, but way back in January. Who registered it, and why?

Back then a story surfaced related to news that Google and Virgin were working on “a secret project”, code-named Virgle, which was not to do with Mars at all. It supposedly had an environmental bent and may have been related to news that Virgin was looking to develop new kinds of environmentally friendly fuels (Virgin Fuels), possibly in conjunction with Google.org. Google’s non-profit arm is rumored to be working on a flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrid that could be powered by electricity, gasoline or biofuels.

So well before before April 1st, one Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Amsterdam-baseed entrepreneur and co-organiser of European startups conference The Next Web, already had the Virgle domain. Van Zanten is best known as “Boris” the guy in the white suit who invaded Mike Arrington’s house with his partner in crime Patrick Laive.

Whatever his reasons, it would be fair to say that registering Virgle will be useful publicity for The Next Web as Virgle.com now-redirects to a January 4 post on The Next Web’s blog where van Zanten commented:

“Guess what, the domainname Virgle.com was for sale and cheap too. I bought it and will make it redirect here. If this project becomes cool enough we could start another blog on that domain.”

That might have been the end of the story, until Virgin recently contacted him about the domain:

> Congratulations on registering virgle.com – swift work on your part!
> I have now been asked to retrieve the domain by both Virgin and
> Google. On that basis, we should be grateful if you would transfer
> the domain over into our control. We shall, of course, reimburse you the
> official registration and hosting costs you have incurred to date.

Van Zanten tells me “I haven’t decided what I am going to do with the [virgle.com]domain. Giving it back is an option. Starting a blog too. Selling it is always possible. For now, I’m just going to wait and see what Virgin/Google comes up with.”

So could there be more to this than meets the eye? Could Google and Virgin be working on something together after all? Id that why they want the domain back?

Stay tuned for more as this story as it develops…

The idea is to unite broadcast quality media with community tools. So the Hobnox Audio Teaser audio engine is a pretty complex Flash tool for sound, mimicking some real-life products, like effects pedals. Users get access to a digital media library and can collaborate with like minded creators and consumers. The lucky few get filtered into some editorial-led Web TV channels, which are quite high quality. Hobnox plans for the Audiotool to be scaled into a full browser-based audio production studio and the Livetool will become a fully functional broadcasting studio for live shows.

The site is still in a closed-beta phase, though some parts of the site are still accessable through invitation only.Althoug Hobnox is based in Germany (Cologne, Berlin, Munich) it also has an office in the USA (Boston, MA).

For a taster of what you can do Paul Proulx from Hobnox put together the below mashup of Tarantino films (via):

The fact that Myspace.co.uk was originally used to offer email services and websites to subscribers meant TWS had insulated itself from an action for some time. But MySpace’s main argument to Nominet centred on the most recent use of the domain as a Pay Per Click website which sent MySpace.co.uk visitors to a parked page with advertisements for social networking websites including MySpace. MySpace Inc says the practice started in July 2005 when News Corp took it over, boosting its fame, but TWS claims it was “at least” before June 2005.

Secondly, at issue was whether parking the .co.uk domain had become “abusive” when the PPC ads changed because MySpace.com became well known. In the case of MySpace.co.uk, the ads on the parked domain did change to “reflect the fame of MySpace.com”, admitted TWS, “but that had happened automatically as a result of the algorithms used by parking company Sedo.” In other words, TWS fingered the firm servicing the ads. While MySpace Inc. argued that TWS should have exercised control over the content of the adverts, TWS said this did not constitute a “change of use”.

The three-person appeal panel said they were “reluctant to place any duty on a registrant, who has merely had the good fortune (or maybe ill fortune) to register a name in good faith…” so long as they don’t exploit the situation.

There appears to be no more steps that MySpace can take within the Nominet DRS arbitration process to challenge TWS’s right to hold onto the name. So it’s the end of the line – unless there is further action MySpace can take through the civil courts.

Total Web Solutions also claims that Nominet tried to “unfairly help” MySpace by at first denying the existence of emails sent between solicitors and MySpace which may have aided TWS’s case. The solicitor who represented Total Web Solution in the case, Jim Davies, is now standing for election to the Nominet board, as he believes it’s unwise to “operate the DRS (Domain Resolution Service) from within the company.” Davies has been involved in a number of the more high profile domain name disputes in the UK recently.

Total Web Solutions’ Managing director Paul Fallon issued a statement [PDF] saying “We refused to be bullied by one of the largest media organisations in the world. This has been a very stressful case for a legitimate medium sized ISP to have to take on – but we had to defend our reputation and to stand up for what was right.”

Of course, the MySpace.co.uk domain is now effectively worthless since TWS would be ill-advised to do anything with it at all now. It is currently displaying a blank page. MySpace continues to use uk.myspace.com/. A MySpace spokesperson declined to comment.

So the ideal play would be to roll-it up with Excite Europe, itself living on the smell of an oily wrag following an acquisition last year by GOADV, an Italian media company which specialises in generating qualified traffic and which at least has a few interesting ideas like its Mix start page. Either that or a long painful death, owned by some terrible advertising company.

Rememble is a bootstrapped startup but Miomi is a larger venture backed by Brightstation Ventures and created by three German developers and headed up by CEO Jonny Crowe. Both were launched last year.

Both sites feature timelines where you drop in life events, as well as share content like photos – exactly the same feature at Friends Reunited has added (see video, after the jump, which I have manually encoded so it will auto-play, apologies – FR don’t have a properly embedable version the video is annoying!).

Friends Reunited was sold to TV broadcaster ITV in 2005 for £120m.

The Wubud mobile social network will most likely hook into location-based services, and details are sketchy at this point – but anyone watching Walsh’s stream of Twitters can’t have failed to notice the idea has been brewing for a while.

The model is an interesting one, according to what I understand Walsh has been saying to colleagues. The MVNO will have some kind of deal to distribute the SIMs (I’m guessing a large retailer or online player?) and will also take care of billing customers. But as an application on the SIM, Wubud will also have access to the billing system and will be able to charge for services without the customer having to input credit card details. That removes a lot of friction and allows Wubud to introduce paid-for services on top of its social network. The only other players able to do this would be another MVNO or mobile carrier, as a normal mobile social network would need to integrate with a separate payments system like Paypal or SMS billing, which incurs extra charges.

The team for Wubud will include (Update: apparently these are just ‘advisors’): Paul Birch (Co-founder, Bebo), Carl Taylor (Director of Applications & Services, Hutchison Whampoa Europe and a member of the Executive Committee at the GSMA); and Ewan Spence, long-time mobile commentator, writer and blogger.

Along with Walsh’s backing I understand that Birch, who recently hit paydirt when his stake in Bebo was realised with its sale to AOL for $850m, is providing seed investment.

Meanwhile, Walsh’s other business, Segala, which specialises in the arcane world of Internet standards compliance certification for web and mobile services, is developing a browser extension. This will classify the content of web sites in a Semantic Web fashion to enable “trust” based on standards and codes of conduct. Angus Banks (Co-founder of Moreover, bought by Verisign) recently became an advisor to Segala, which is looking to raise a $4 million round.

1. Pages (”dumb” pages with no intelligence or data)
2. People (social networks producing richer data and eventually platforms for applications)
3. Power (all that data producing powerful intelligence about the things we really want to know, like ‘what’ or ‘who’ am I looking for etc).

Luckily, there were several, far more intelligent answers from others such as Dan Farber (CNET News.com), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Dean Takahashi (VentureBeat), Scott Beale (Laughing Squid) and Josh Lowensohn (Webware).

Q1 2007

Month – Company – Total ($US) – Investors

3-Jan Plastic Logic 100,000,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, Bank of America, BASF Venture Capital,
Intel Capital, Merifin Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Quest for Growth, Tudor Ventures

5-Jan G-T-P Group 2,010,000 Seraphim Capital

5-Jan PrecisionPoint Software 1,950,000 Herald Ventures

9-Jan OpenCloud 10,250,000 Advent Venture Partners, Motorola Ventures, No 8 Ventures

9-Jan Truphone 24,500,000 Wellington Partners Venture Capital (Lead), Eden Ventures, Individuals

10-Jan Mobango 2,605,220 Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures (Lead)

17-Jan Frontier Silicon 32,428,000 Mitsui, Cheyne, Plutus, Apax, GLG, ACT, Alta Berkeley, BlueRun

17-Jan Intellistream 685,000 Angel Investors, Guides Venture Partners

19-Jan Calon 1,206,000 Finance Wales

19-Jan Datanomic 6,566,000 3i, DN Capital, Non-disclosed investors

19-Jan Player X 5,000,000 Arts Alliance, Nordic Venture Partners

19-Jan Presence Networks 502,500 The Capitel Fund

19-Jan Silistix 6,298,000 Intel Capital, British Smaller Technology Companies, The Northwest Business Investment Scheme, Seven Spires Investment, and The Manchester Technology Fund.

22-Jan Cambridge Broadband 22,500,000 Accel Partners, Adara, Amadeus Capital Partners, TVM Capital

24-Jan ApplianSys 1,259,600 London Technology Fund, The Capital Fund, Business angels

25-Jan Utarget 5,092,000 Foresight Venture Partners

26-Jan Dynmark 984,000 Individuals, YFM Group (Yorkshire Fund Managers)

27-Jan Cellcrypt 3,216,000 Synergis Seed Fund

27-Jan MarketClusters 3,082,000 NewMedia SPARK, private investors

29-Jan Shiny Media 4,500,000 Bright Station Ventures (Lead)

29-Jan Skinkers 3,919,840 NewMedia SPARK (Lead)

30-Jan Nujira 9,800,000 3i Group, Amadeus Capital Partners, Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Capital Group, Cambridge Gateway Fund (NW Brown Capital Partners)

1-Feb The Fizzback Group 5,092,000 Advent Venture Partners

2-Feb Intense Undisclosed 3i, Esprit Capital Partners, FNI, and Alice. Scottish Enterprise

5-Feb iXpert 154,100 MSIF, RBS, Business Liverpool

7-Feb AePONA 10,000,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Trinity Venture Capital

7-Feb Zoomf.com Undisclosed HOWZAT media

9-Feb Complinet Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK

9-Feb iSporty Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK

9-Feb Zubka Undisclosed Benchmark Capital

12-Feb AuPix 1,045,200 YFM Group, Management, existing investors, private investor

12-Feb Notonthehighstreet.com Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK

12-Feb OchreSoft 1,206,000 Existing investors, YFM Group

12-Feb Picsel Technologies 46,500,000 DCM-Doll Capital Management, NIF Ventures, SBI Group, SMBC Capital

13-Feb CMM Technology 296,810 Andy Jones

13-Feb ip.access 10,000,000 Amadeus Capital Partners (Lead), Intel Capital, Rothschild Gestion,
Scottish Equity Partners

16-Feb Rocela 2,010,000 Bank of Scotland Corporate

19-Feb DataLase 9,782,000 MTI Partners, BASF Venture Capital, Hotbed

19-Feb Iconium Undisclosed The Capital Fund

19-Feb Revolymer 4,020,000 Swarraton Partners, Top Technology Ventures, IP Group, Management

20-Feb Ateeda Undisclosed Peter Denyer, Scottish Seed Fund, Synergy Fund, University of
Strathclyde

20-Feb ScanSafe 15,000,000 Scale Venture Partners (Lead), Benchmark Capital

22-Feb ZBD Displays 20,100,000 Lansdowne Partners, Esprit Capital, Prelude, QinetiQ, Dow Chemical, TTP

23-Feb OOL Undisclosed MDA

27-Feb Streetcar 12,596,000 Smedvig Capital

1-Mar Fizzback 5,000,000 Advent Venture Partners (Lead)

2-Mar TrustedPlaces 1,000,000 HOWZAT Media Fund

7-Mar Rostima 3,851,260 Close Ventures, Individuals, Oxford Capital Partners

12-Mar AlertMe.com 9,664,000 Tudor Ventures (Lead)

13-Mar Short Fuze 2,000,000 Create Partners, GEIF Ventures

15-Mar Trampoline Systems 5,786,490 Tudor Ventures

19-Mar Zopa 12,900,000 Bessemer Venture Partners (Lead), Benchmark Capital, Wellington Partners Venture Capital

23-Mar Fortress Technologies 4,170,000 Liberty Venture Partners (Lead)

23-Mar Tribold 15,000,000 Esprit Capital Partners (Lead), Eden Ventures

27-Mar Eykona Technologies Undisclosed H2O Venture Partners

Total capital invested: 445,528,020

Total number of investments for the quarter: 55
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 9,900,623

Total number of undisclosed investments: 10

Q2 2007

Month – Company – Total ($US) – Investors

5-Apr PointOV 1,580,000 Angel Investors, NorthStar Equity Investors

10-Apr World-Check Undisclosed Spectrum Equity Investors and HarbourVest Partners

18-Apr Cash4All 4,352,000 Hotbed

19-Apr Osoyou.com 2,000,000 Bright Station Ventures

20-Apr iSporty Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK

20-Apr Complinet Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK (Lead)

20-Apr Gambling Compliance Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK

20-Apr Notonthehighstreet.com Undisclosed NewMedia SPARK (Lead)

23-Apr Moveme.com 2,000,000 Accelerator, Advent Venture Partners, Individuals

24-Apr XConnect Global Networks 12,000,000 Accel Partners, Grazia Equity, Venrock

25-Apr Gordon Murray Design 10,000,000 Mohr Davidow Ventures

26-Apr Garlik 6,000,000 3i Group, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures

26-Apr Unanimis Consulting 3,944,000 NewMedia Spark

1-May Everyclick.com 2,992,000 Lochside, Fleming Family

4-May Edinburgh Robotics 496,400 Braveheart

4-May Properazzi Undisclosed Mangrove Capital Partners

8-May VideoJug 20,264,000 Sloane Robinson, private investors

9-May DEM Solutions 3,944,000 Sigma Capital, Scottish Enterprise, NewMedia Spark

10-May Infoflow 258,400 Viking Fund, Private Investors

14-May Cometa Wireless 2,040,000 Mfusion, Business Angels

14-May mySupermarket 6,000,000 Greylock Partners, Pitango Venture Capital

15-May Geonix Tracking 496,400 South West Ventures Fund

18-May IXICO 4,896,000 Imperial Innovations, The Capital Group

24-May VQ Communications 503,200 South West Ventures Fund, Private Investor, Mangement

25-May Telepartner 7,000,000 New Venture Partners (Lead)

29-May Two Way TV 10,600,000 Ingenious Ventures (Lead)

1-Jun Travel Intelligence Undisclosed Saints (Lead)

4-Jun Seatwave 8,000,000 Mangrove Capital Partners (Lead), Atlas Venture, Individuals

6-Jun Point 35 Microstructures 4,216,000 Close Ventures

6-Jun Nanotech Semiconductor 2,500,000 Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Nanotech Semiconductor, Pond Venture Partners

11-Jun In2Games 15,504,000 Ingenious Media Active Capital

12-Jun Openads 5,000,000 First Round Capital, Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners,
O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures

13-Jun Clash-Media 4,080,000 MMC Ventures

14-Jun Spiral Gateway 646,000 Braveheart

14-Jun Nevis Engine Undisclosed Undisclosed

18-Jun H2O Networks Undisclosed Coalfields Enterprise Fund

19-Jun PSI Electronics 503,200 Braveheart

19-Jun StyleShake Undisclosed Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab (LGiLab)

21-Jun Sanoodi 714,000 Private Investors

21-Jun Handmade Mobile 3,981,220 Seraphim Partners (Lead), Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures Entertainment

21-Jun picoChip Designs 27,000,000 Highland Capital Partners (Lead), Undisclosed

27-Jun Wonga 6,000,000 Balderton Capital

Total capital invested: 179,510,820

Total number of investments for the quarter: 42
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 5,609,713

Total number of undisclosed investments: 10

Q3 2007

Month – Company – Total ($US) – Investors

2-Jul Mirifice 500,000 YFM Group (Yorkshire Fund Managers)

3-Jul Mirics Semiconductor 10,000,000 Intel Capital (Lead), Pond Venture Partners

3-Jul AdJug 2,000,000 Balderton Capital (Lead), Individuals

4-Jul Innovantage Undisclosed Finance Wales

5-Jul KashFlow Undisclosed Lord Young of Graffham

6-Jul Spikes Cavell 1,362,240 IQ Capital, Andrew Rickman

6-Jul HR4UK.com Undisclosed East Midlands Early Growth Stage

6-Jul TrackaPhone 418,605 North East Equity Matching Fund, private investor

9-Jul BitLogistics Undisclosed Individuals, Lunatech Ventures

10-Jul Celona Technologies 14,100,000 Caledonia Financial (Lead)

11-Jul Polymertronics 425,700 Business Angels

11-Jul CInergy 1,419,000 The Capital Fund, Business Angels

12-Jul Harmony Media Group 4,465,050 Beringea (Lead)

12-Jul Mtivity 7,111,340 Albany Venture Managers, Hotbed, YFM Group (Yorkshire Fund Managers)

13-Jul Process Systems Enterprise 3,047,000 Close Ventures

17-Jul OnRelay Undisclosed NW Brown

19-Jul Warwick Audio Technologies 1,064,250 Porton Capital, Synergis, Mercia

19-Jul OrderWork Undisclosed Wellington Partners

20-Jul Ubiquisys 25,000,000 Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Google

23-Jul Glasses Direct 6,101,700 Index Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Accelerator

24-Jul Point 35 Microstructures 4,300,000 Close Ventures

24-Jul PINoptic Undisclosed Business Angels

30-Jul Teletoddler 943,635 South Yorkshire Investment Fund (SYIF), Coalfields Enterprise Fund

7-Aug IT247.com 2,554,200 Rising Stars Growth Fund, North West Equity Fund, Liverpool Seed Fund, management, private investors

7-Aug Viagogo 30,000,000 Index Ventures, Individuals

13-Aug Enigmatec 12,500,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, Herald Ventures, Individuals, Pentech Ventures

14-Aug weComm 6,100,000 Elderstreet Investments, Frontiers Capital

14-Aug Inxstor 1,210,000 Braveheart Ventures, Individuals, Scottish Co-investment Fund

17-Aug Vision RT 500,000 YFM Group (Yorkshire Fund Managers)

20-Aug Small World 4,800,000 MMC Ventures (Lead)

21-Aug Exabre 5,000,000 Eden Ventures (Lead), Individuals

31-Aug BytePlay Undisclosed Arts Alliance, Others

6-Sep Ideaworks3D Undisclosed Japan Asia Investment Company (JAIC) (Lead)

6-Sep XMOS 16,000,000 Foundation Capital (Lead), Amadeus Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)

1-Aug Nexeon 8,939,700 Imperial Innovations Group, Tudor Group, PUK Ventures, Paul Atherton

4-Sep Solarcentury 27,239,490 Foursome Investments, Good Energies, Scottish & Southern Energy,
VantagePoint Venture Partners, Zouk Ventures

19-Sep Emote Games 8,060,000 Cognetas (Lead)

21-Sep imagini Undisclosed Northzone Ventures, Others

25-Sep Trutap 6,500,000 Tudor Ventures (Lead)

7-Aug MindWeavers 1,163,580 Undisclosed

7-Aug PNMSoft 3,405,600 Goldrock

19-Aug Texperts 2,696,100 Odey Asset Management, undisclosed investors

21-Aug Intempo Digital 3,831,300 Hotbed

20-Aug Traak Systems 212,850 Braveheart Ventures

14-Aug Durham Scientific Crystals 7,378,800 Undisclosed

14-Aug EditLite 624,360 Merseyside Special Investment Fund

4-Sep Sharpcards 3,121,800 Seraphim Capital

31-Aug SFX Technologies 2,412,300 Sigma Technology Venture Fund, Charlotte Capital Limited, Scottish Enterprise’s Scottish Co-Investment Fund, private individuals and management

18-Sep picoChip Designs Undisclosed Samsung

5-Sep Steak Media Undisclosed Beringea

17-Sep True Knowledge 1,227,435 Octopus Ventures

28-Sep MirriAd 4,000,000 Seraphim Capital (Lead), London Seed Capital

28-Sep GenSight 3,000,000 Susquehanna International Group (SIG)

Total capital invested: 244,736,035
Total number of investments for the quarter: 53
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 5,969,172

Total number of undisclosed investments: 12

Q4 2007

Month – Company – Total ($US) – Investors

1-Oct Light Blue Optics 26,000,000 3i Group, Capital-E, Earlybird, NESTA

2-Oct Top Up TV Undisclosed Balderton Capital

9-Oct Perpetuum 10,692,000 Environmental Technologies Fund, Quester, Top Technology

14-Oct KidStart 2,970,000 Delta Partners

17-Oct Dynmark International Undisclosed South West Ventures Fund

19-Oct Imagestate 4,306,500 Beringea

23-Oct Gaming Alerts 423,225 Theo Paphitis

25-Oct Cambridge Semiconductor 26,000,000 3i Group (Lead), Carbon Trust, Scottish Equity Partners, TTP Ventures

30-Oct Skinkers 16,000,000 Acacia Venture Partners (Lead), Individuals, NewMedia SPARK

2-Nov Tag Games Undisclosed Individuals, Scottish Enterprise

6-Nov TickEx 1,485,000 Brinderson Holdings

6-Nov Applied Superconductor Ltd 2,753,520 North Star Equity Investors (NSEI), NEL Fund Managers and New Energy

7-Nov Celltick Technologies 8,500,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners

13-Nov Huddle.net 4,000,000 Eden Ventures (Lead)

13-Nov So Protect Me 393,360 Merseyside Special Investment Fund

19-Nov Skyscanner 5,138,200 Scottish Equity Partners (Lead)

21-Nov RawFlow 3,100,000 Balderton Capital

23-Nov Golden Gekko Undisclosed Active Capital Partners (ACP)

23-Nov Mobiletrails 4,306,500 Hotbed

27-Nov Mi-Pay 3,718,980 Close Ventures (Lead)

28-Nov On the Beach Undisclosed ISIS Equity Partners (Lead)

3-Dec CopperEye 7,000,000 LMS Capital (Lead), In-Q-Tel

4-Dec BeCheeky.com Undisclosed YFM Group, Quentin Griffiths, Colin Black, Mark Blanford

7-Dec TBiConnect 683,100 YFM Group

12-Dec ensembli Undisclosed Enterprise Ventures, South Yorkshie Venture Fund, Viking Fund

12-Dec Karma Insurance 712,800 Enterprise Ventures, E-Synergy, Business Angels

17-Dec Teepix 1,633,500 Oxford Capital Partners

19-Dec Keisense 500,000 Connecticut Innovations

Total capital invested: 130,316,685

Total number of investments for the quarter: 28
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 6,205,556

Total number of undisclosed investments: 7

Senior Systems Administrator – Linux – VC Backed Internet Startup

Technology Associate – University of the Arts

User Interface Engineer – Jiglu.com

Developer – School of Everything

Nic Brisbourne DFJ Espirit pulled out some good points: More venture capital appeared in Europe in Q1 than ever before – the $1.3bn total was a lot higher than the previous peak in the first quarter of 2007. The UK lead the pack with $592m of deals, more than the previous three quarters combined. The average deal size for Europe broke $10m for the first time, boosted by big deals in the UK including $100m in Spinvox. The average deal size in the UK was $11.9m which is higher than the US figure of $11.6m.

In Ireland the numbers also look encouraging. Total capital invested for the last quarter was $12.6m across two investments which contrasts with $8.4m invested in the first quarter last year across three.

However, the numbers probably mask the seed/early stage market. I counted only four deals in the $1-$2m range, and anything below that was rarely announced or just too small to be picked up by CallibreOne. An anecdotally, we know that investment in early stage startups is probably going down right now.

I have pulled out the relevant parts from the PDF (apologies for the messy list I will tidy it up shortly) and bolded the Web companies relevant to TechCrunch readers.

United Kingdom

Q1 2007

Month – Company – Total – ($US) – Investors

7-Feb Vizimo 1,422,000 Northstar Equity Investors, Private Investors

10-Feb Quick TV 1,738,000 NorthStar Equity Investors

10-Feb Seatwave 25,000,000 Fidelity Ventures, Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners, Adinvest

11-Feb Axis Network Technology 5,985,300 Bessemer Venture Partners

11-Feb Coull Undisclosed Finance Sout West, Creative Ventures

11-Feb Elonics 4,266,000 Braveheart, Scottish Venture Fund, Tom Farmer, Brian Souter

11-Feb FREEDOM4 Undisclosed Intel Capital, Pipex Communications

12-Feb Quartix 25,438,000 Bank of Scotland Corporate

12-Feb Velocix 27,334,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, 3i Group, Pentech Venutres

13-Feb Bragster 3,500,000 Intel Capital

14-Feb Camrivox 2,394,120 NESTA Investment, Phil O’Donovan, Create Partners, Bank of Scotland Growth Equity, Oxford Investment Opportunity Network

14-Feb Lexara Undisclosed South East Growth Fund

15-Feb Player X Undisclosed Kreos

15-Feb Quantum Filament Technologies Undisclosed Kreos

20-Feb SalesTrak Undisclosed Aspiration Capital

20-Feb Whizz Kid 4,266,000 Ingenious Media Active Capital

21-Feb Opta Sportsdata 1,896,000 Close Ventures

22-Feb Arieso 10,586,000 Oxford Capital Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Add Partners, Top Technology

25-Feb GroupSpaces Undisclosed Avonmore Developments, Oxford Early Investments

26-Feb Helveta 3,002,000 Close Ventures, Oxford Capital Partners

26-Feb ORECon 24,964,000 Advent Venture Partners, Venrock, Wellington Partners, Northzone Ventures

29-Feb Opscape Undisclosed Mercia Technology Seed Fund

3-Mar Ubiquisys Undisclosed T-Mobile Venture Fund, Google, Accel Partners, Atlas Venture, Advent Venture Partners

3-Mar VoiceSage 4,740,000 Private investors

4-Mar Rapid Mobile Media Ltd 3,990,200 New Enterprise Associates, Alliance Trust Equity Partners, Pen Tech Ventures, Scottish Venture Fund

4-Mar Sayu 498,775 UK Steel Enterprise

5-Mar Livebookings 12,968,150 Balderton Capital

6-Mar Zinwave 10,270,000 SEB Ventures, Scottish Equity Partners, Atlas Ventures

7-Mar Pikum 5,372,000 Virgin USA

11-Mar Playfish 3,000,000 Angel investors

14-Mar isango 8,058,000 SPARK Ventures, Beringea

14-Mar i-Snapshot Undisclosed NorthStar Equity Investors

17-Mar CloudMade 3,792,000 Sunstone Capital

17-Mar Mfuse 5,087,505 Bestport Ventures LLP

18-Mar REM Probe 2,054,000 Partnership Investment Finance, Yorkshire and Humber Equity Fund

19-Mar Reevoo Undisclosed Banexi, Eden Ventures

20-Mar SpinVox 100,000,000 Goldman Sachs, GLG Partners, Blue Mountain Capital Management, Toscafund Asset Management

22-Mar Zemanta 1,496,325 T.A.G., Eden Ventures

23-Mar Moneyexpert 49,877,500 TVC

25-Mar Mobango 5,700,000 Innogest Capital

25-Mar Songkick Undisclosed The Accelerator Group, Softech VC, Betaworks

28-Mar Handy Group Undisclosed Advantage Early Growth Fund

28-Mar Realtime 50,000,000 Maverick Capital, Creative Industries Management, New Enterprise Associates

31-Mar Mantic Point Solutions Undisclosed YFM Group

31-Mar Onzo 3,990,200 Sigma Capital

Total capital invested: 592,383,175

Total number of investments for the quarter: 73
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 11,847,664

Total number of undisclosed investments: 23

Q1 2007:

Total capital invested: 445,528,020

Total number of investments for the quarter: 55
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 9,900,623

Total number of undisclosed investments: 10

IRELAND

Month – Company – Total – ($US) – Investors

Q1 2008

17-Feb Celtrak 2,370,000 Egis, Enterprise Equity, Bank of Scotland

4-Mar NewBay Software 10,270,000 Fidelity Ventures, Balderton Capital

Total capital invested: 12,640,000

Total number of investments for the quarter: 2
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 6,320,000

Total number of undisclosed investments: 0

Q1 2007

Total capital invested: 8,450,000

Total number of investments for the quarter: 3
(including undisclosed investments)

Average investment: 2,816,667

Total number of undisclosed investments: 0