VC Funding
It’s been a great 12 months for Lisa Falzone. Last year she
raised $3.7 million in her series "A" funding round; then last month at the Macworld
– iWorld event, her company Revel
Systems was officially announced as the winner of the Best iPad Business App of the Year Award.
Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund invest $25m in Unruly.
One of the world’s fastest growing social video distribution companies, Unruly, has attracted $25m funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund.
Unruly has delivered a number of high profile social video campaigns for global brands, including Evian’s “Roller Babies” (the most viewed online advertisement ever) and T-Mobile’s “Life's for Sharing”.
Can you elaborate a bit on: "How did you fund it, with how much money, and what is the business model? This is for a lot of people great to read, how you did it, what route you chose, which hurdles etc. as for many this is a thing to consider when starting out. Also, on how you are dealing with the growth is interesting.
This is what I asked Charlotte Semler-West, serial entrepreneur and founder of Charlotte & Co, and prior thereto, founder of Myla. She replied:
I chose the fund the business start-up myself. I had previously founded and run a VC backed business start-up and I really didn’t want to go that way again. I can say the following….(probably more than you wanted!!!) (see further down in the interview, ed. SGB)
The
Startup Genome is looking for a critical mass of women to participate in the
Startup Genome Project in order to aid their discovery of the DNA of women- led
startups. By joining the project, you will be adding the dimension of
quantitative data to their quest.
The Startup Genome has already learned that approximately 70% of the startups in their dataset scaled prematurely. I am very interested to see if the same pattern holds for women, because through the interviews I have conducted over the last year, the consensus has been that women tend to be perfectionistic, moving slower but more surely than their male counterparts. Is it possible that the more careful nature of women may cause them to fail less?
One of our well read posts at The Next Women is Help for Startups! A Semi-Complete List of Startup Accelerators. Natasha Starkell, CEO of GoalEurope is providing some in depth analysis of the startup accelerators in Eastern Europe.
My personal view is that the accelerator programs have become MBA 2.0
for entrepreneurs. Compared to a standard MBA degree, which covers
generic topics from macroeconomics, to general management and corporate
finance, accelerator programs have a more focused approach to teach and
prepare tech entrepreneurs to do one thing very well: build and grow
their tech businesses. Of course they are as good as their mentor
network.
This week I did my first
official investment pitch in Amsterdam at The NextWomen Pitch Event, along with 9
other slightly nervous women.
Organised brilliantly by Simone Brummelhuis, we got the chance to practise our pitches in the afternoon, followed by the real thing in the evening to a room full of people with 6 potential investors.
Nine women-led startups and a number of mostly female guests gathered at Microsoft in Amsterdam on 29th November for a Pitch Event with a mixed panel of experts and angel & VC investors.
The event was organized by The NextWomen, in cooperation with Astia and supported by Microsoft BizSpark. Astia’s Simone Brummelhuis kicked off by announcing that the theme of the evening was "Gold and how to dig for it as an entrepeneur". The panel - the goldmine - were then asked to briefly introduce themselves and offer their golden tip to the pitching entrepeneurs. Their advice:
We have a huge problem folks… We simply don’t have enough women
investors in hi-tech and startups as a whole around the globe. Why not?
Let me start off by saying that ‘women’ are the larger demographic ‘purchasers’ globally. Women are constantly making purchase decisions and very involved in making global ‘buy’ decisions.
I was recently quite taken with the statistic that the largest percentage of the wealthiest (self made) women in the world are in China, in real estate.
Women are highly educated, earn significant incomes and have access to wealth.
So, the question is why do women shy away from investing in startups globally?
Lesley Eccles, founder of Fanduel, is in a good mood. The company has just raised a series A funding due to its success in the market. Time for an update and interview with Lesley:
So, what's the update on the company?
We are transforming the fantasy sports industry in the US. There are 30million people who play fantasy sports each year and there has been little in the way of innovation over recent years.
It must be great, you just started your business, and the investors are fighting for a piece of the cake. A couple of examples of young companies that raised finance recently:
ZAARLY
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