Passion Capital Cracks Open Data On Investments, Deal-Flow, Founder Salaries, And More

It’s not every VC that publishes annual stats on things like deal-flow, average size of investment, average founder salary, number of exits and startups dead-pooled. But openness — within no doubt carefully crafted limits — is part of London-based Passion Capital‘s brand after it set the bar with its inaugural report last year. And while “openness” is probably the headline takeaway again with this year’s report, it does provide some interesting insight into the workings of an early-stage VC in Europe and what, if anything, has changed for the firm over the last 12 months.

To set some context and give you an idea of its size and how active Passion Capital is, let’s begin by drilling into the first two year’s numbers. Spanning April 2011 to June 2013, the venture capital firm founded by Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero, and backed by a mixture of UK government funding and private investment, has invested in 34 portfolio companies, two of which have exited and three wound down.

The second-screen football betting app Picklive was sold to Sports Millions for an undisclosed amount, and academic research platform Mendeley was acquired by publisher Elsevier for an amount that TechCrunch pegged between $69-100 million.

The three startups shuttered were Twitter real-time chat service Bonfire, travel site Tripbirds, and wine portfolio app Vinetrade.

Digging deeper, noteworthy is that Passion has only added 13 new startups to its investment portfolio this year — OpenSignal, Memoto, Birdback, ShowMyHomework, CarThrottle, Thread, Future Ad Labs, Hasty, Toothpick, Duego, laZook, and Tray.io — though this doesn’t mean it has been any less active in terms of number of investments, but instead reflects that the fund is maturing when you factor in follow-on and bridge funding as well as Passion’s participation in 3 Series A rounds. In fact, in terms of total transactions (investments, follow-ons, exits, bridges, etc), 30 were made in year two compared to 31 in year one, so not much change there.

Passion has made a total of £5,695,000 in Seed investments, which in turn has gone on to attract a further £35,896,000 from more than 25 different VC funds, though this includes Passion’s own follow-on funding. Looking at the first year’s cohort only, 11 out of a possible 21 have gone on to raise follow-on financing at increased valuations, it says, while 6 are still operating from their seed round financing, and 2 of those are said to be profitable.

That’s perhaps telling, suggesting that Passion got its runway trajectory on the money, but I suspect the real story for many of the startups in its portfolio won’t come until year three. It is still early days after all — can we say Series A crunch?

Furthermore, in year two, its average seed round investment size was £183,717. That’s slightly down from £189,936 in year one. Meanwhile, the average equity stake its taken at the Seed stage is 15%.
In addition, Passion has bundled some interesting operational data mainly related to the way the VC firm attracts deal-flow, but also the average salary of the founders of its portfolio companies (£36,149 per annum), some of which I’ve included below.

Deal flow:
Year 2: 1,932 (up 26% from Year 1 number of 1,532)
533 from referrals (up 22% from Year 1)
779 from the website (up 19% from Year 1)
620 from events (up 40% from Year 1)

Sources of the investments made:
9 from referrals from our existing Passion founders
7 from within our network (founders were already known to us)
6 from other referrals (not from our founders directly)
3 we proactively sought out (after tracking for some time)
2 from our open office hours
1 from a team which was renting desks at White Bear Yard

Passion says that the average number of days between a prospective investment first meeting one of its 3 partners to a term sheet/investment offer is 6.41 business days — early-stage VCs are won’t to boast the speed at which they make any offer. It doesn’t say, however, how long it takes to get that first meeting.

It’s also — rightfully — highlighting the fact that it hasn’t charged any of its portfolio companies for legal expenses, closing fees, directors fees, or monitoring fees etc., noting in particular that it’s always paid for its own legal counsel, with little or no fuss (unlike others).

Of note, Passion says it doesn’t employ a PR firm to act on its behalf, which says something about the PR industry considering they do alright on the publicity front. Actually, Passion does more than alright and other European VCs could probably learn a thing or two from their openness, in every sense of the word.

And in a final boast, the VC firm says that the number of founder CEOs it’s replaced with “someone we’ve brought in” has been zero. That’s likely great news for the starry-eyed entrepreneurs it’s backed. However, like the difficult third album, Passion is now into the difficult year three for some of its portfolio companies, so let’s hope it’s not a case of famous last words.
All in all, though, good stuff.

Keep the openness comin’ — we look forward to next year’s update.

(For more data, see Passion Capital’s own blog post, which includes a rather nice infographic if you’re into those sort of things.)

Source : Techcrunch

Un laboratoire énergétique pour la ville de demain

Fortement impliquée dans le programme européen Cash(1), la ville des Mureaux (78) vient de lancer une plate-forme de formation, de recherche et d’information sur l’efficacité énergétique et l’électromobilité dans la ville du futur. L’objectif est de devenir une référence en matière d’optimisation énergétique.

Le programme Cash est l’un des 56 projets développés dans le cadre d’Urbact(2) lui-même dédié à promouvoir le développement durable en milieu urbain par l’échange et la capitalisation d’expériences. Rassemblant un réseau de dix villes et une région(3), Cash, qui en est aujourd’hui à sa phase d’application, vise à proposer des solutions et promouvoir de nouvelles politiques de rénovation énergétique pour un habitat social durable et abordable dans l’Union européenne.
Outre un plan d’actions local défini par chacun des partenaires, le réseau a élaboré neuf recommandations politiques regroupées en quatre points :

• Améliorer la connaissance des besoins et des sources locales d’énergie
• Développer la participation citoyenne
• Offrir des options de financement claires et stables
• Renforcer les compétences des autorités locales.

L’idée, globalement, est d’être prêt pour la politique de cohésion 2014-2020 avec, en ligne de mire, l’objectif réaffirmé de réduire de 20% la consommation énergétique de l’Ue d’ici 2020.

Deux axes majeurs de la ville durable : efficacité énergétique et déplacements intelligents 

Véritable volet phare des Mureaux dans le cadre du programme Cash, le pôle de recherche, de formation et d’information sur l’efficacité énergétique et les déplacements dans la ville du futur rassemble des acteurs institutionnels (ville des Mureaux, Epamsa : établissement de développement économique du territoire Seine Aval…), des industriels (Gdf Suez, Legrand, Schneider Electric, Veolia Environnement), des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche (universités : Versailles St Quentin en Yvelines, Cergy-Pontoise, Paris Grand Ouest ; écoles d’ingénieurs : Ensiate, Epmi ; lycée Vaucanson), des architectes et des Pme innovantes parmi lesquelles Voltalis, le pionnier de l’effacement diffus et Embix, la co-entreprise Alstom/Bouygues spécialisée dans la gestion de l’énergie pour les écoquartiers.

La Plate-forme Efficacité Energétique Seine Aval disposera d’un bâtiment expérimental, à la fois support pédagogique et support de recherche, qui sera relié à un système d’information inédit devant permettre d’étudier le fonctionnement énergétique de la ville.

Le hall servira de vitrine pour exposer les innovations les plus récentes tandis que l’appartement expérimental permettra de tester et d’expérimenter les différentes solutions thermiques dans des conditions très proches du réel. Dès la rentrée 2014, la plate-forme devrait accueillir quelque 700 élèves du Cap au Bac +8 dans une démarche innovante de brassage des niveaux.

HBD

A noter : Un appel à projets sur les innovations locales dans la rénovation énergétique 

Dans le cadre du plan de rénovation énergétique des logements présenté en mars 2013 (objectif : 500 000 logements rénovés par an d’ici 2017), les ministères chargés du Logement et de l’Energie ont lancé le 30 mai un appel à projets sur les innovations locales dans la rénovation énergétique. Il s’agit de repérer, valoriser et diffuser les initiatives et démarches mises en œuvre par les collectivités locales tant sur le plan qualitatif que quantitatif. Les dossiers de candidature peuvent être déposés jusqu’au 30.09.2013.

(1) Cash : Cities’ Action for Sustainable Housing / Action des villes pour un habitat social durable. 
(2) Urbact II : Connecting Cities – Building Successes. Dans ce cadre, une série de 7 rapports thématiques vient d’être publiée, parmi lesquels : « Cities of Tomorrow – Action Today », « Building Energy Efficiency in European Cities » et « From Crisis to Choice : Re-imagining the Future in Shrinking Cities » 
 (3) Bridgend (Royaume-Uni), Brindisi (Italie), Echirolles (France), Eorda (Grèce), Francfort (Allemagne), Les Mureaux (France), Sonderborg (Danemark), Tatabanya (Hongrie), Utrecht (Pays-Bas), Yambol (Bulgarie) et la région Rhône-Alpes. La ville des Mureaux avait été retenue pour ses démarches innovantes dans les domaines de l’efficacité énergétique et de la mobilité durable 

Source : Blog Pollutec

In South Korea, ‘smart hospital’ offers services through smartphones

The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital now offers a number of core services through patients’ smartphones.

We recently wrote about LA’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which has implemented its iPad-based BabyTime scheme to connect newborns in intensive care with their mothers. Taking the idea of a tech-enabled hospital that little bit further, the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital now offers a number of core services through patients’ smartphones.

Working with mobile operator SK Telecom, visitors to the hospital can begin digitally interacting with the hospital as soon as they walk through the door, through the Patient Guide app. GPS detects when they’re on the premises and uses the relevant electronic medical records and patient data to bring up information about scheduled appointments, expected waiting times and healthcare costs. Users can check in to let their doctor know they’re there and can also pay bills through the app. If no appointment has been scheduled, users can navigate to the right department through the 3D map.
The hospital has also placed 15-inch tablets next to each bed, which users can log into with the contactless RFID tag on their patient wristband. The device can be used to view hospital information, personalized medical data, treatment schedules and entertainment facilities. The following video from Arirang News offers a detailed look at the new service:

The new offerings at the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital are examples of how increasingly common consumer technology can be applied to improve key services, while saving time and money for healthcare providers. Could these schemes work in your part of the world?

Website: www.snubh.org
Contact: master@snubh.org

Source: Springwise

London’s tech startup scene is hot — just don’t compare it to Silicon Valley

London’s tech scene has been growing for years — is it finally on the cusp of breaking out and delivering billion-dollar startups?

 

Down a flight of stairs, past a photo of British mod icon Paul Weller, and into the basement of Google’s campus in the ultra hip area of East London, sit Britain’s home-grown budding Kevin Systroms and David Karps (well, at least wannabes). On a weekday afternoon, almost every seat, desk, couch and stool in the free co-working café in Google’s basement is filled with young web and mobile entrepreneurs, hunched over their laptops, building decks, and chatting excitedly about their next big idea.

Google London Campus, image courtesy of Google.

Every major city it seems these days has its techie hubs, but London’s tech scene has been steadily growing over the past several years. That growth is being driven by a combination of increased government support, attention from international internet giants, a handful of early startup successes, a growing venture capital ecosystem, an adjacent London financial sector that’s starting to take notice of tech, and an early adopter city that’s not unlike the one in San Francisco, which enables the Valley’s startups to access some of the world’s most engaged beta testers.
It’s way too easy to make the comparison between Silicon Valley of a few years back and the East London of today. Many of the London entrepreneurs I’ve met with since I moved to the Shoreditch area of London for the summer to grow GigaOM’s coverage of the London tech scene warn me away from that simplistic “the Valley of Europe” discussion. Please don’t write one of those X is the new Silicon Valley stories, one founder practically pleaded with me. Needless to say, X could be anywhere these days, from New York, to Sao Paulo to Berlin, to New Delhi.

The growth of London tech

But something’s clearly been brewing for a couple years now. To Simon Thethi, the founder of the news site that launched in January of this year to cover London tech, Tech City News, it was clear even back in 2010 that London was starting to develop into a buzzing tech hub. But now it’s really got an energy that makes it stand out, says Thethi, while we sit and drink coffee on the rooftop terrace of one of London’s many membership clubs that the tech community seem to often use as meeting space.

The Shoreditch Grind espresso bar in East London

“Tech City” is a name for London’s tech scene that’s emerged – like most city trends do — both organically and through a little inorganic help. The U.K. government is investing 50 million pounds ($70 million) into building out Tech City and attracting tech companies to the region from Microsoft to Amazon to Qualcomm. According to London Partners, a group that promotes Tech City, there’s 3,000 tech companies in the condensed area of East London, which they say makes it Europe’s fastest-growing tech cluster. London and Berlin have a healthy rivalry going on over which city’s tech sector is bigger and growing more rapidly.

Internet giants, too, are investing in London. In addition to Google’s London campus, which opened a year ago, the giant search engine has its British headquarters in the Victoria and Holborn districts, and is building out a billion-pound campus in Kings Cross. Facebook has one of its largest offices in London, boasting 29 open positions. Jobs are one of the key reasons that the British government is aggressively promoting the tech sector, in the wake of Europe’s recession.
But London’s got its own unique slant to the startup wave. Given that London boasts a huge financial industry, a thriving media sector and some of the world’s largest advertising and design firms, it’s natural that London startups would gravitate to these areas. It’s more New York than Silicon Valley (oops, I did it again). At an event thrown earlier this week by the BBC’s commercial division, BBC World, the media company announced its next class of six digital media startups that would join its accelerator program, BBC Labs.

An emerging sector

Still, London’s tech scene is decidedly still emerging. The biggest homegrown startups, like game company Mind Candy, on-demand ride startup Hailo, social chat platform Badoo, and music recognition company Shazam, aren’t blockbuster global brands yet and more importantly haven’t created a wave of millionaire VPs like Valley internet firms Facebook, Google and PayPal. The creation of wealth through these Valley web exits delivered (and are delivering) the next wave of founders (see the PayPal mafia).
London has yet to kick off that wave. And it is still waiting for its first billion-dollar tech company. Mind Candy has been eyeing an IPO, which could be “Tech City’s” first flotation. But the worst thing that could happen for the East London tech crowd is if a homegrown company like Mind Candy went public in New York and even moved operations there. The message would be: Once a startup gets big enough it outgrows London.

The official Silicon Roundabout, a name that was originally coined as a joke.

There are also a couple of cultural disconnects that seem to be holding back some of the growth of London’s startup scene. One of those is what entrepreneurs describe as a lack of aggressiveness in scaling companies for the big exit – selling at the first offer instead of building startups into billion-dollar businesses. Several entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with this week say this is a key hurdle that is holding back London web startups from reaching that billion-dollar threshold.
Another is the omnipresent — and very natural — fear of failure, which is prevalent in most early startup scenes, but has somehow been shaken out of the pivot-loving, failure-embracing crazy founders of the Valley. Fear of failure can harm a startup ecosystem because entrepreneurs and investors are less willing to take big risks, which leads to less disruptive ideas.
As more successes emerge from London’s tech hub, many of these hurdles will likely be cleared. But for now, Tech City has a whole lot of potential that’s still waiting for some big payoffs.
We think the city has enough tech potential that we’re holding our second annual Structure:Europe conference in London in September, and we’re looking for cloud-enabled and cloud-focused startups to join our Startup Zone.

Source : GigaOm

Le développement des drones inspire la création de startups

Alors que l’Administration Fédérale de l’Aviation américaine planche sur une législation pour réguler les drones, un petit écosystème de startups dédié à ces engins volants émerge discrètement, et attire des gros sous.

Encore à l’état de fantasme il y a quelques années, les drones sont en train de devenir réalité. A l’origine privilégiés pour un usage militaire, ils sont maintenant de plus en plus développés pour un usage commercial. Voir des drones voler de manière anodine dans le ciel américain n’est cependant pas encore une réalité, notamment car beaucoup d’organisations n’ont pas reçu les autorisations nécessaires pour pouvoir développer leur armée volante. Pour le moment, seules quelques organisations gouvernementales et équipes de recherche ont le droit de faire voler des drones. Le Congrès a néanmoins récemment demandé à la Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) de commencer à mettre en place une législation sur les drones, qui devrait être établie d’ici à 2015. Plusieurs startups américaines se lancent d’ores et déjà dans le secteur des drones commerciaux, en vue de cette législation, et établissent doucement les bases d’un véritable écosystème: hardware, software, et applications pour drones. Les projections quant au marché des drones, elles, sont très optimistes.

Hardware, software et applications pour drones
Les coûts de construction de certains drones, au niveau logiciel comme hardware, sont en train de diminuer de manière importante. “Nous pouvons offrir des technologies militaires à des prix de jouets” avait évoqué Chris Anderson, ancien rédacteur en chef de Wired. 3D Robotics, l’entreprise qu’il a créée, conçoit et fabrique des drones “Do It Yourself” dont l’utilisation est très simple et qui sont personnalisables. A l’inverse, d’autres entreprises soutiennent des technologies beaucoup plus rigides et fermées, aux prix encore très importants. Le développement du hardware s’accompagne d’avancées dans le domaine du software et des applications. Une startup comme Airware ambitionne ainsi de construire un système standard afin d’accélérer leur adoption. Drone Deploy, quant à elle, a commencé à développer un logiciel pour permettre aux organisations de contrôler et coordonner le vol de flottes de drones. Drone Deploy serait capable d’identifier les drones défaillants, de repérer les zones aériennes interdites au vol, et aurait également des fonctions pour relier les drones aux réseaux sociaux.

Des usages commerciaux à fort potentiel économique
Une récente étude de l’Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International étudie l’impact économique que pourrait avoir le développement de drones à usage commercial. Selon ce rapport, les domaines les plus privilégiés seraient l’agriculture de précision et la sécurité publique, qui représenteraient environ 90% du marché. Outre ces deux domaines, le rapport évoque le transport de frêt, la météorologie, la cartographie aérienne, l’exploration pétrolière ou encore la couverture médiatique. Cette étude évalue que les trois premières années d’intégration de drones dans l’espace aérien américain auront un impact de 13,6 milliards de dollars sur l’économie américaine et pourra atteindre plus de 82,1 milliards entre 2015 et 2025. Une croissance importante qui pourrait être créatrice de nombreux nouveaux emplois ; près de 70 000 lors des trois premières années. Des chiffres bien connus des investisseurs de la Silicon Valley, qui commencent à investir des gros sous dans les startups de drones. Andreessen Horowitz et Google Ventures ont ainsi récemment investi 10,7 millions de dollars dans la startup Airware.

Source : L'Atelier

Telecom Industry Could See Biggest Merger Spree Since ’06

Global telecommunications companies are chasing deals from Kansas to Munich in a quest for revenue growth that could lead to the biggest year for mergers in the industry since at least 2006.
More than $80 billion in telecommunications and cable transactions have been announced or completed this year as companies from Dish Network Corp. (DISH) to Japan’s SoftBank Corp. (9984) to the U.K.’s Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) prowl for acquisitions. If Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) forges ahead with a bid for Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless, deal volume would more than double, approaching the level of seven years ago, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

 

More than $80 billion in telecommunications and cable transactions have been announced or completed this year as companies from Dish Network Corp. to Japan’s SoftBank Corp. to the U.K.’s Vodafone Group Plc prowl for acquisitions.

 

Companies are looking to grow through acquisition as demand slows for wireless and Internet services, and they’re seeking scale so they can afford to build the high-speed networks necessary for the latest mobile and video offerings. Bidders are clashing with each other around the globe as they compete for a shrinking pool of potential partners.

“Growth prospects are scarce and money is cheap,” said Todd Lowenstein, portfolio manager with Highmark Capital Management in Los Angeles. Acquirers are going after “valuable assets that are likely to be put to better use in a combined company.”

Europe Squeeze

Being squeezed are some European telecommunications companies, which postponed investments during the debt crisis and have seen revenue plateau even as small competitors have stoked price wars. AT&T Inc. (T) is scouting for possible acquisitions in Europe, deemed to have the highest mobile penetration in the world by industry group GSMA.
“We have some giant Internet companies in the U.S., we only have a few equipment makers left -- in order to counter that, there will have to be large mergers in Europe,” Deutsche Telekom Chief Financial Officer Timotheus Hoettges, who is set to take over as chief executive officer next year, was reported as saying in an interview by the Rheinische Post newspaper today. “Since our market capitalization is developing much better than that of our peers, we are well positioned.”
The biggest bidding war so far this year, meanwhile, is in the U.S., where Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint Nextel Corp. (S), the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, is up for grabs. Sprint shareholders are scheduled to vote June 25 on a $21.6 billion offer from SoftBank. Dish, the second-biggest U.S. satellite-TV carrier, is weighing its options after Sprint’s board said its $25.5 billion takeover proposal lacked specifics. If the Sprint plan falls through, SoftBank has said it will go after the next-largest U.S. mobile company, T-Mobile US Inc.

Smaller Rivals

With Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest wireless carrier, and AT&T, the second-largest, holding a combined two-thirds of the lucrative U.S. contract-customer market, smaller rivals face a number of challenges. Sprint and T-Mobile don’t have the revenue of their rivals to spend on network technology to create faster connections for customers to watch video and stream music.
To address the issues of scale, small companies have started to consolidate. Deutsche Telekom AG acquired MetroPCS Communications Inc. in April to merge with T-Mobile, its U.S. unit.
“Regulators want a four-player market, but what make sense is three strong competitors in the U.S.,” said Roger Entner, with Recon Analytics LLC in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Premium Prices

Telecommunications companies have commanded an average takeover premium of 27 percent in the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on 27 acquisitions valued at more than $1 billion.
Deals announced this year come to more than $80 billion, according to the data. That compares with about $157 billion in all of 2012 and $124 billion the year before.
“Phone companies’ margins have come under increasing pressure,” said Friedrich Diel, a fund manager at Frankfurt-Trust Investment who oversees more than 2 billion euros ($2.68 billion) in investments. “Most markets are very mature and don’t offer a lot of potential growth, which means growth has to come from buying others.”
An offer by Verizon to buy Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless, if completed at $120 billion or more, would push the year’s total to the biggest since 2006, when $281.8 billion in telecommunications deals were announced.
The potential offer by Verizon is the biggest under discussion and would give Verizon Communications (VZ) full control of a business with strong cash flow. The parent company would have more flexibility and find it easier to pay dividends to investors.

Holding Out

Verizon has told analysts that it would be willing to offer $100 billion for the 45 percent holding, people familiar with the discussions have said. Citigroup Inc. said this month that Vodafone would hold out for $120 billion to $135 billion. Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts said Verizon may need to pay as much as $140 billion to entice Vodafone to sell in a note after meeting with Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao.
Vodafone holds one of the earlier deal records. Its previous incarnation, Vodafone Airtouch Plc, spent more than 150 billion euros in 2000 to acquire German company Mannesmann AG. Time Warner Inc.’s combination with AOL brought in $124 billion in cash and stock when the two combined near the end of the tech bubble in 2001.

Liberty Offer

Vodafone and John Malone’s Liberty Global Plc both want Kabel Deutschland Holding AG (KD8) to expand their empires in Europe. Phone companies across the continent are bulking up their networks and adding services as they work to increase customer bills and loyalty. Bundles of TV, Internet and phone service are becoming increasingly popular, stoking deals and partnerships between carriers.
Liberty offered about 85 euros a share in cash and stock for Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator, a person familiar with the talks said, valuing the company at 7.5 billion euros. Vodafone responded, raising its own offer to 85 euros a share, people familiar with the bid said this week.
Liberty invaded Vodafone’s home turf in February, spending $16 billion in cash and stock to take over British cable-television provider Virgin Media Inc. in the largest media deal since 2007.
Malone, the billionaire chairman of Liberty Media Corp. and Liberty Global, said earlier this month that higher programming costs, a declining video customer base and surging demand for high-speed Internet have sparked excitement about acquisitions.

Broadband Solution

Liberty Media’s purchase of a 27 percent stake in Charter Communications Inc., based in Stamford, Connecticut, is intended to turn the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator into a “horizontal acquisition machine,” Malone said. Liberty and Charter management have met with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt to discuss a future merger, although Britt isn’t interested, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
“A lot of what you’re seeing are companies that don’t have a broadband solution trying to find one, or companies that do have a broadband solution trying to get more of it to increase their competitive advantage,” said Garrett Baker, president of Waller Capital Partners LLC, a boutique investment bank and advisory firm focused on the telecommunications, media and technology industries.
Regulators have blocked a number of deals recently, leading phone companies to lobby the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, for a more lenient regulatory environment.
Kabel Deutschland was blocked by the German antitrust regulator from buying Berlin-based cable operator Tele Columbus Group in February.

Regulatory Concessions

Liberty Global, which entered the German market with the acquisition of Unitymedia in 2010, was forced to take steps like removing encryptions and opening up contracts with housing associations to rivals when it added operator KabelBW the next year to form the country’s second-largest cable operator.
Lowenstein of Highmark Capital said he expects to see a more accommodating stance over time. “Regulators are likely more open to deals as new technologies are redefining the competitive landscape and concerns over past market concentrations issues,” he said.
Neelie Kroes, the EU commissioner in charge of the digital agenda, has promised to move toward a single telecommunications market in Europe. To be sure, that’s meant promises to get rid of roaming charges rather than breaking down barriers for deals so far.
“European telecommunications companies can’t wait; they need to boost investment in the coming years in order to offer faster services, while they are faced with declining profitability,” Andres Bolumburu, a Madrid-based analyst at Banco de Sabadell SA, said in an interview. “Regulators need to understand that the current situation and whopping number of operators is just unsustainable.”

Source: Bloomberg

Velodroom Does What Every Bike Light Should – Responds To Your Ride And Turns On And Off Automatically

Tartu, Estonia-based startup Velodroom leverages tech to solve a problem any bike commuter can sympathize with – how to add lights to your ride that are convenient to use and require absolutely nothing from the rider besides a simple installation. The Velodroom light borrows some tricks from tech available in any smartphone to give the Velodroom a mind of its own, with some very useful consequences.

The Velodroom’s tricks are mostly about automating repetitive actions that are normally done manually on most bike lights, including powering on and off, activating brake lights and adapting brightness to current lighting conditions. It does all that while conserving battery via an auto shut-off mechanism that activates the light only when motion is detected, and it has an internal battery with 4x the energy capacity of two AAA batteries, which is rechargeable via USB.

Essentially this makes Velodroom a more-or-less fix and forget solution to bike lighting woes, with the added benefit that it actually flares when you start braking, the same way a car’s rear lights do, which is bound to increase safety and visibility at night, especially for riders negotiating traffic in busy urban locations. Plus the variable light levels based on sensors should ensure the battery lasts as long as possible: Velodroom is targeting three months usage on average, or over 100 hours of continuous power when turned on at full brightness.

Velodroom is the product of a team that includes Sven Sellik, Andri Laidre, Indrek Rebane, Tavvi Hein and Mihkel Heidelberg, who between them combine extensive experience in product design, electronics, programming and the science of sensors. The startup team wants to eventually reinvent more types of bike accessories, and move the market in general to more hassle-free products and designs, but is starting with the bike light since it’s a near-perfect demonstration of how readily available tech can improve a biker’s life right now.

The Kickstarter project has two weeks left in its funding cycle, and is looking for £34,600 (around $54,000 U.S.). Pre-orders for backers start at £35 ($55 U.S.), and shipments should start as early as September 2013 if the startup sticks to its initial targets. Should everything work out according to plan, it’ll be great to see where Velodroom goes next with its high-tech approach to cycling accessories.

Source : Techcrunch

Salesforce, Others in Race to Create One-Stop Shop for Marketing Data

By acquiring ExactTarget, Salesforce just entered an escalating battle for control of the marketing-services field.  Data fragmentation poses a great problem for marketers as new technologies and data sources arise.

Over the next five years, dozens of tech titans, startups, and traditional data managers will seek to become the dominant platform to integrate data across all marketing channels.  From this battle, marketers will emerge with a unified view of their customers and strategy from a social, mobile, email, display, search and direct-mail standpoint.
While data-driven marketers will benefit massively from the competition, the spoils will go most heavily to the company that wins control of the cross-channel stack -- gaining a near-monopoly on marketing budgets.

The Prize
Three trends have been redefining the marketing landscape, creating an opportunity for major disruption in the industry and a lucrative prize for the winner.

First, there is a shift of budget from offline channels to digital.  This trend is not new, nor is it surprising -- but it is accelerating and it means a significant amount of money is in play.

The second trend is the growing significance of data in marketing.  Smart targeting, measurement and modeling techniques are redefining the capability of marketers to reach the optimal audience and invest in the highest-ROI campaigns.

The final trend is fragmentation. New marketing channels are emerging much more quickly than the industry is catching up, spawning companies focused on success within a particular channel.  Within the last five years alone, mobile and Facebook have grown from negligible channels to key parts of a marketer's strategy.  This means the typical CMO is now inundated with dozens of different tools to manage their different channels.

Herein lies the opportunity: The industry’s fragmentation is keeping data siloed and preventing companies from using their data intelligently across channels. If a company can successfully reverse this trend by creating a single unified platform for all marketing, it can take advantage of huge amounts of this untapped data that was previously siloed.

The Players
This is where Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget fits. Salesforce is already managing CRM data for many companies. Between the Buddy Media and ExactTarget acquisitions, it is now entering the marketing execution space -- rather than just hosting data. The integration of CRM data and email marketing can be much tighter than the integration of CRM and social marketing, allowing Salesforce to more strategically integrate data across channels.

In moving into cross-channel marketing execution, Salesforce’s vision now directly competes with dozens of other companies.  Let’s look at the other major players:

Traditional data managers:  Companies like Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian and Merkle have traditionally managed CRM data for the largest marketers and also made much of their money executing their campaigns in various offline channels.  Most of these companies have in-house email service providers, direct-mail services and are increasingly moving into display and digital channels with innovative cross-channel products. Salesforce is now squarely competing with these companies for the future of data management.

Online data management platforms:  Online “DMPs” like BlueKai, Turn and Adobe have the same vision as the traditional data managers, but start by aggregating online data (such as display-ad performance, online behavioral data, etc.) and executing in online channels.  Over the next few years, they will be moving across the stack to aggregate data from offline channels, too.

Single-channel marketing solutions:  As marketing changes, the companies that dominate a particular channel are moving to integrate into others. The most dramatic change will be among email service providers.  Even before the ExactTarget acquisition, leading ESPs like Responsys and SilverPop have tried to pivot into cross-channel solutions.

Giant tech companies:  Like Salesforce, other tech titans such as IBM, Adobe, Google and Oracle are eager to take advantage of their relationships with marketers, their possession of customer data, and their big data expertise to enter the battle.

The Battle
While these four categories compete very little today, their five-year visions converge almost identically: Each company wants to own the cross-channel marketing stack.
While the battle has been brewing for years, Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget has accelerated it significantly. Marketers will now be torn between several platforms, each one competing to create an exceptional cross-channel experience and to build the dominant platform. Expect this acquisition to be the first of many as the battle unfolds.

Source : Adage.com

Un vélo électrique qui vole…

Bienvenue dans le futur : bientôt on se baladera peut-être tous en vélo électrique volant, comme ce gamin sur son vélo avec E.T. l’extraterrestre dans son panier. L’invention nous vient de République Tchèque, elle est le fruit de la collaboration de 3 sociétés.

Pour le moment, le prototype de 95 kg ne permet que d’être télécommandé et la personne que vous voyez dessus est … un mannequin de 73 kg. Mais le principal c’est qu’il vole! Et plutôt bien en plus. Seule limitation comme dans tout véhicule électrique : ses batteries… pour l’instant l’autonomie est de max 5 minutes.
Mis à part ses presque 100 kg et le fait que son envergure est un peu grande, le vélo volant est bien là.
[source]

Source : Vincent Abry

A San Francisco, MotionLoft évalue le trafic urbain pour la ville et ses commerçants

MotionLoft récolte et agrège des données sur le trafic des piétons et des voitures en ville en temps réel pour aider différents acteurs de la ville, des pouvoirs publics aux petits commerces, en passant par les agents immobiliers ou même les particuliers. 

 

Mesurer le trafic urbain d’une ville permet de récolter une mine d’informations inestimable pour ses commerçants, les pouvoirs publics et le secteur de l’immobilier. A San Francisco, MotionLoft s’impose petit à petit comme une solution incontournable pour nombre d’acteurs. De multiples start-ups ont mis au point des technologies de mesure du trafic en magasin, avec pour objectif de réduire le coût pour le commerçant, tout en augmentant la précision des données récoltées. Pour réduire l’infrastructure, certaines solutions tirent parti des téléphones mobiles des passants. C’est par exemple le cas d’Euclide Analytics, qui se présente comme le “Google Analytics” pour les espaces physiques,et mesure le trafic en magasin grâce au WiFi. Seul hic, l’outil ne repère que les clients équipés de téléphones portables, et ne mesure que le trafic piéton. MontionLoft a développé une technologie qui permet de mesurer le trafic des piétons comme celui des véhicules (voitures, vélos) grâce à de simples capteurs disposés à l’extérieur des bâtiments. Les applications sont extrêmement nombreuses, allant de l’urbanisme à l’immobilier.

Recueillir et agréger des informations sur le trafic urbain en temps réel

La particularité de MotionLoft est ainsi de mesure l’ensemble du trafic attaché à un lieu, public ou privé. Cela permet, entre autres choses, de déterminer la valeur des biens immobiliers de la ville. MotionLoft installe des capteurs à faible consommation à l’extérieur des bâtiments et qui fonctionnent en permanence, 24h/24h. Chaque capteur faire environ 12 cm sur 12 cm, et peut par exemple être attaché à une fenêtre qui aurait une vue non obstructive sur la rue, ses piétons et ses véhicules. Toutes les informations collectées vont dans les nuages et sont ensuite organisées dans le tableau que fournit MotionLoft à ses clients. Les données sont bien entendu collectées de manière anonyme, sans aucun système vidéo. Le prix proposé commence à 279 dollars par mois et évolue en fonction de la personnalisation demandée. MotionLoft, qui a déjà installé des capteurs à San Francisco, sur Times Square et Broadyway à New York, ainsi qu’ailleurs aux Etats-Unis, est également entrain d’affiner ses données: la start-up sera bientôt capable de déterminer le type de véhicule qui passe, la vitesse des passants, ou encore de comparer les données sur le trafic avec la météo.

Pour le fournir à différents acteurs dans la ville

Il existe un nombre infini d’utilisations pour MotionLoft, cependant les premières ont été commerciales. La start-up fournit la plupart de ses solutions à des agents immobiliers et des commerçants. Ainsi, une boutique peut par exemple utiliser ces données afin de savoir les heures les plus opportunes pour choisir son emplacement dans une ville, détermine les meilleurs horaires d’ouverture, ou encore voir l’évolution du trafic devant sa boutique en fonction de l’organisation de sa devanture. D’autres utilisations ont été expérimentées. Ainsi, MotionLoft a mis ses données à disposition de San Francisco, sur la plateforme d’open data de la ville. La mise à disposition par la ville de San Francisco, de données récoltées par des entreprises privées, est une première du genre dans la Baie. L’objectif est évidemment de stimuler “l’entrepreneuriat civique” et d’encourager les entrepreneurs à résoudre des problèmes d’urbanisme. MotionLoft peut enfin être utilisé à titre plus personnel ; quelqu’un désirant s’installer dans une nouvelle ville pourrait ainsi vouloir obtenir des informations sur son quartier.

Source : L'Atelier

Google Bought Waze For $1.1B, Giving A Social Data Boost To Its Mapping Business

After months of speculation, the fate of Waze, the social-mapping-location-data startup, is finally decided: Google is buying the company, giving the search giant a social boost to its already-strong mapping and mobile businesses. Speculation has had the sale at $1 billion to $1.3 billion, and so far there is no price on the deal, but a source tells TechCrunch that it was done for $1.1 billion.



Update: Waze has also published a blog post on the acquisition. In it, CEO Noam Bardin writes that CEO Larry Page, Google GEO VP Brian McClendon and the Google Maps teams “We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world.” He also notes that “nothing practical will change,” with the company, now pushing 50 million users, “will maintain our community, brand, service and organization.”

He also raises the subject of why Waze decided to sell. Bardin says that it was motivated by the fact that an IPO appeared the route that would take the company more into being focused on returns and less on growing as a product for users. “Choosing the path of an IPO often shifts attention to bankers, lawyers and the happiness of Wall Street, and we decided we’d rather spend our time with you, the Waze community.” Of course, the burden of getting a return on the investment now become’s Google’s, but as you can see below there are a number of reasons why it would buy Waze, anyway. [original post continues below]

Update 2: Israeli tech blog GeekTime also confirms our $1.1 billion figure, “of which $1.03B will be transferred in cash directly to the company and its stockholders. An additional $100M will be awarded to employees based on performance.”
This is a doubly strategic move for Google. The purchase comes in the wake of what appeared to be failed negotiations between the Israel-based startup two big rivals of the search giant: Facebook, which was eyeing up the company but apparently faltered at the due dilligence phase; and Apple (neither company ever publicly confirmed interest in acquiring Waze).
The news comes after a particularly heated few days in which reports of Google’s interest in Waze reached new heights, after first surfacing two weeks ago. In the wildfire that is internet publishing, many even went so far as to report it as a done deal, making things even more confusing.
Waze had raised some $67 million in funding from Blue Run Ventures, Magma, Vertex, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Horizon Ventures. And it looks like the majority of the payout in the sale will go to these VCs. Globes, the Israeli business newspaper that first reported the latest interest from Google, estimated that payouts to co-founders — Ehud Shabtai, Amir and Gili Shinar, Uri Levine, Arie Gillon — and its CEO Noam Bardin, will be under $200 million in total.
There are at least a couple of places where you can see Google making use of Waze data.

Social. Under CEO Larry Page, Google has been especially bullish on where it positions itself on social, which it has been hinging on Google+ as a kind of web across all of its other properties to show you, the user, what those you know are doing, and also to let your connections see what you are looking at online. Taking a page from Facebook’s book, the thinking goes that this helps with discovery and engagement.
Waze, as a crowdsourced location platform, would give Google an additional, very mobile-based angle on this concept, letting users not just share places (i.e. sites) visited on the web, but actual places visited physically. As Bardim noted at the AllThingsD conference in April, “What search is for the web, maps are for mobile.” By this, he means that most of the searches you do on mobile have to do with location, and Waze is one of the few companies out there that is bringing that kind of search together with actual map data and a social layer. (The NYT ran an interesting piece yesterday with one mapping company describing how maps on mobile specifically become a “canvas” for all other apps.)

Competition. Waze could be a two-pronged fork for Google: On one hand, it gives the search giant nice, healthy wedge into the mass of consumers who are already using the app on iOS devices. But it also, if reports are to be believed, also gives Google a way of roadblocking how companies like Facebook could use Waze’s assets. As the startup likes to point out, it’s not a mapping company, but a big data player. Facebook, making its own big push on mobile, would have been a natural home for a socially-focused company like Waze, which also happens to be one of the few home-grown mapping databases around. This will mean that Facebook will need to have to continue to use third-party data for its own location-based searches and information, or less look to acquire elsewhere.
(Now could be a good time to wonder whether Nokia might consider offloading Navteq, its loss-making but strategic mapping asset, to shore up its financial position…)

It’s interesting, in any case, that Google and Waze have now kissed and made up. It was only in April that Bardin jabbed at Google when talking about who the big players in mapping were and how Waze stacks up against them: Waze used to benchmark itself with Google, he noted at the AllThingsD conference, but after the search giant cut off access to its API, Waze started to benchmark to Navteq.
When the Facebook acquisition reports surfaced, we’d heard that one of the sticking points was that Waze wanted to keep its R&D in Israel, while Facebook was leaning to a Menlo Park relocation. Since then, others have told us that this was just smoke a mirrors and that there were other reasons the deal fell through (Mountain View’s most famous resident being one possible factor). Google, unlike Facebook, has a decent presence in the country, including a new hub for startups started in December 2012, Campus Tel Aviv.

Google today made it clear that it would keep Waze’s operations going in Israel — for now, at least. “The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now,” Brian McClendon, Google’s VP of Geo, noted in the blog post announcing the deal. “We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities.”
In any case, it makes sense that Waze might want to keep its Israel-based operations intact. Just about all of the company’s 110-or-so employees are there, with only around 10 in a very modest office in Palo Alto, just down the street from another big-data startup, Palantir. That small proportion, however, is mighty: regular workers there include CEO Noam Bardin and Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze’s VP of platform and partnerships.

The U.S. is currently Waze’s largest single market — in April, Bardin noted that 12 million of its (at the time) 44 million users are based there — and this is where the company is putting its growth efforts for now, too. In February of this year, Waze expanded its U.S. operations, and its monetization ambitions, by opening an office on Madison Avenue, the heart of the advertising world in New York City, and we’ve seen that members of the team have been visiting New York recently. There is still a lot of development to be done on the advertising front — and given Google’s pole position in online and mobile advertising, that would give Waze another obvious fit with its new owner.
Ironically, the news comes as Google continues to fight other kinds of fires on the mapping front. In the U.S. it is trying to get a ruling overturned that it violated federal wiretap laws with its StreetView services.

In Europe, Google recently offered up a settlement in a search antitrust suit, originally brought by travel and mapping companies, that claimed Google, the biggest search engine in Europe by a longshot, was giving its own mapping and travel results more preference in search results over those of its competitors, making business untenable for smaller players. In that ongoing case, the EU competition regulator Joachin Almunia said at the end of May that Google still needed to make more concessions.

Source : Techcrunch

Domino’s Pizza fait la livraison avec des drones

mino’s Pizza a voulu jouer la carte du buzz en réalisant une livraison de pizza avec caméra embarquée… depuis un drone. Voici le Domicopter. Pour l’instant c’est plus du fun destiné à un coup marketing, mais d’ici quelques années pourquoi pas ? Ce serait sympa si des Octocoptères comme celui-ci venait à livrer les citoyens qui habitent dans des lieux reculés comme en Montagne. Attention cependant à ne pas se faire voler ce robot volant, dont le prix est encore beaucoup trop élevé pour le commun des mortels.

Reste à voir si Dominos Pizza va vendre plus avec ce coup de buzz…

Source : Vincent Abry

La ville de Boston entretient ses bouches d’incendie grâce au crowdsourcing

 

Grâce à l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” les habitants de la ville de Boston ont la possibilité de prendre soin de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendies de la ville. Des initiatives similaires dans d'autres pays font appel à la foule pour résoudre des problèmes de service public. 

Créé en Septembre 2009, Code for America est une organisation non gouvernementale dont le but est de fédérer le monde du web autour des problématiques de la ville, et donc par extension à travailler en collaboration avec leurs responsables politiques. Pour ce faire, l’organisation a développé trois programmes principaux. Le premier, “the Fellowship” tente de mettre en relation les designers et les développeurs avec les gouvernements locaux. Le deuxième, “the Accelerator” fournit des fonds, un espace et du mentoring pour les start-ups qui touchent à des engagements de politiques publiques locales. Enfin, “the Brigade Code” mobilise les communautés locales à s’engager sur des projets dans leur ville. C’est dans le cadre de Code for America et par l’intiative de l’un de ses anciens “fellow”, que l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” a ainsi été développée pour mobiliser les citoyens de la ville de Boston. Celle-ci leur permet de prendre soin individuellement de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendie de leur ville.

Une problématique simple mais déterminante au niveau sécuritaire
Les intempéries sont monnaie courante à Boston. Cette ville connait un hiver très rude, ponctué de tempêtes de neige, et dont les températures sont particulièrement basses. Ainsi, des objets d’utilité publique comme les bouches d’incendie, sont facilement victimes de dommages importants, provoquant souvent l’incapacité des pompiers à intervenir lors d’urgences. L’entretien régulier de ces bouches représenterait une entreprise non seulement longue et fastidieuse, mais également très couteuse. Un budget que la ville de Boston pourrait allouer de façon plus utile à d’autres projets. C’est pourquoi l’application web “Adopt-a-Hydrant” propose aux citoyens de Boston de s’occuper personnellement de l’une des 13 000 bouches d’incendies que compte la ville. “Adopt-a-Hydrant” est une application intégrée à une carte de la ville de Boston pour laquelle chaque citoyen, mais aussi petit commerce ou organisation a la possibilité de se porter volontaire pour prendre soin d’une bouche d’incendies qui lui est donc assignée. Pour cela, il est nécessaire de s’inscrire sur le site et de s’assigner l’une de celles encore disponibles dans sa proximité.

Mobiliser une communauté citoyenne à l’échelle individuelle
Ce type de projets, qui sont souvent développés par la branche “the Brigade Code” de Code for America, permet ainsi non seulement aux citoyens mais également à toute communauté, de s’impliquer dans des projets ou problématiques locales de façon simple et souvent plus efficace. Ce projet est d’ailleurs réutilisé dans d’autres villes pour mobiliser les citoyens face à ce types de problématiques liées aux intempéries, et par extension à des phénomènes naturels imprévisibles de manière structurelle par les pouvoirs politiques locaux. A Chicago, “Adopt-a-Sidewalk”encourage à nettoyer son trottoir en cas de tempète de neige. A Honolulu, “Adopt-a-Siren”vise l’entretien régulier des sirènes anti-tsunami. Ces projets sont intitulés Gov-to-Gov re-use car une fois lancés en open-source, ils peuvent ensuite être réutilisés de gouvernement en gouvernement pour des initiatives similaires. Dans un esprit différent, le projet Open311permet aux citoyens de signaler et de suivre des problématiques locales.

Source : L'Atelier