Archive for the ‘Exits’ Category

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1 Year, 5 Continents, 30 Cities, 100 Top Startups

Posted: by carlacthompson on December 3rd, 2010 | No Comments »

Categorized: Entrepreneurship, Europe, Exits, G/Score, Guidewire Group, Innovate!Europe

A year ago, Guidewire Group embarked on an ambitious plan to seek out the Innovate!100, a global list of the 100 startups demonstrating high potential and higher velocity as they build their businesses from idea to sustainability.   Today, after more than 30 Pitch Slam events in more than 30 cities on five continents, we’re proud to announce the Innovate!100 for 2010.

It’s been an incredible year and an incredible honor to meet, assess, and in some cases work closely with so many innovative companies, founded and run by an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs.  At each  Pitch Slam, startups presented their businesses to panels of judges who used our G/SCORE assessment methodology to evaluate how far each company was along seven key vectors of business growth.  The G/SCORE measures a company along seven factors: overall concept, market opportunity, competitive risk, product development, business development, team, and business model.  In each factor, our judges compare the company to key milestones that represent achievement in business building.

Using the G/SCORE data, combined with other information about the companies, our judges ranked the startups at each event.  The top company at each Pitch Slam event automatically made the Innovate!100 List.  Then, we selected the top-scoring companies, overall, and then the top five companies in each of our growth stage tiers (prototype, beta, product complete, revenue).   Finally, this week, 16 companies honed their pitches at the Guidewire Group Studio G workshop in Zaragoza, Spain.  Yesterday, the companies competed in the final Pitch Slam at the Innovate!Summit 2010, received a G/SCORE benchmark assessment, and answered questions before our panel of judges.  By the end of the day, one company- Anboto Group – took the top spot upon the Innovate!100 List for 2010.

We wish to thank all the companies that applied and pitched at an Innovate! event this year, as well as the many judges and attendees who worked to make the event a success.  We’re also grateful for the sponsors that made this quest possible, including Microsoft BizSpark, SWIFT, Atlassian, Microsoft Bing and Microsoft Azure, Cisco, O2 Litmus, PayPal,  and Quickstart Global, along with our long-time partner, Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation.

On behalf of all those entrepreneurs, sponsors, and supporters, we’re delighted to announce this year’s Innovate!100 List.

The Innovate!100 2010

Rank Company Country
1 Anboto Group Spain
2 Artesian Solutions United Kingdom
3 RedOxygen Australia
4 NUMENUS GmbH Germany
5 ividence France / United States
6 myERP.com United States
7 Relay Foods United States
8 Intelia Consultores Spain
9 SocialSmack United States
10 NUITEQ Sweden
11 FonYou Spain
12 PetsMD United States
13 Now!Innovations Estonia
14 iAsset Australia
15 Gumiyo.com United States
16 Homing.com Spain
17 Anneysen.com Turkey
18 Sopima Oy Finland
19 iletken / SocialWire Turkey
20 FanFeedr United States
21 iFacturas Norway / Spain
22 LUMA International Netherlands
23 Spring Gully Foods Australia
24 Innovalley Spain / United States
25 me & goji United States
26 Evanscorp Australia
27 Skimlinks United Kingdom
28 Optify United States
29 Canatu Finland
30 Smart Logic United Kingdom
31 Waze Israel
32 Scense B.V. Netherlands
33 TicTacDo France
34 SentiMetrix Italy
35 Smart Grains France
36 TellMeWhere France
37 Myworksearch Ltd United Kingdom
38 Siondo United Kingdom
39 Kobojo France
40 Paycheck Manager United States
41 3ScaleNetworks Spain
42 CloudShare United States
43 EventElephant Ireland
44 Inference Communication Australia
45 Over The Top Games Spain
46 Sonru.com Ireland
47 Werkadoo United States
48 Apica Sweden
49 Ulteo France
50 Taleee United States
51 Leetchi France
52 EcoVadis France
53 TaxiPal Estonia
54 Novapost France
55 Stupeflix France
56 Cellictica Ltd. Finland
57 Hiive Systems Australia
58 Green Revolution Cooling United States
59 Austrailian Survey Research Australia
60 Conceptic Israel
61 Kinamik United States
62 Sentinel Spain
63 Valt.X United States
64 Sparkeo Israel
65 The Gifts Project Israel
66 Hypios France
67 BehavioSec Sweden
68 Wozaik France
69 Pantea Italy
70 Pervactive Italy
71 Spreaker Italy
72 Kade System Turkey
73 MyLawsuit.com United States
74 Shutl United Kingdom
75 InternMatch United States
76 DriveK Italy
77 SocialAnnex Spain
78 TaskPoint United States
79 Tracks & Fields GmbH Germany
80 Tribe of Noise Netherlands
81 Vanios Spain
82 WOT Services Ltd. Finland
83 Bookioo Spain
84 Edicy Estonia
85 Whereoscope United States
86 Aviator Controls Australia
87 Fits.me Estonia
88 Tinypay.me Netherlands
89 Jasondb Australia
90 iris2iris BV Netherlands
91 AdTaily United Kingdom
92 Threeplicate Italy
93 Tryane France
94 Sordu.com Turkey
95 IDU Biometrics Israel
96 Nutiteq Estonia
97 GrabCAD Estonia
98 Getitkeepit.com Ireland
99 OrderMapper United States
100 Groupvine United States

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Microsoft Courts Danger

Posted: by chrisshipley on February 11th, 2008 | No Comments »

Categorized: Exits, Observations

Even as Yahoo! rebuffed Microsoft’s proposal this morning, Microsoft announced this morning that it would acquire mobile software and services provider Danger Inc. (and in the process nix Danger’s plans to go public).
In the press release, Microsoft said the “acquisition will align Danger’s nearly 10 years of expertise in the mobile consumer space with Microsoft’s vision to provide innovative andcompelling mobile experiences to a growing base of customers.”
We first met Danger in early 2000 when my colleague Jim Forbes and I were putting together the DEMOmobile events. Danger introduced the Sidekick at DEMOmobile 2001. Meeting the company in their scrappy offices on University Ave., in Palo Alto, it was clear

Danger logo

to us that the future value of Danger wasn’t the Sidekick device or even the operating environment; it’s the applications and services that the device connects to that matter most. Microsoft seems to get that, too.

So concerns voiced in a c|net post about how Microsoft will reconcile the incompatible operating systems seem moot to us. Microsoft Windows Mobile has focused on the device, to the neglect of the services the device connects with. Danger provides an end-to-end infrastructure to deliver data and Internet services to consumers. Whether Microsoft adopts Danger’s OS or kills it is of little consequence. It’s the service infrastructure that matters and in acquiring Danger, Microsoft is acquiring the architecture, IP, and experienced engineers to extend Windows Mobile – or for that matter the Xbox and other device-centric operating platforms — from the device to the service layer.
We hope Microsoft also recognizes the value of Danger’s consumer-smart marketing organization. Danger has been successful in creating a hip brand that appeals to the iPod generation, a substantial market segment that Microsoft can’t seem to crack.

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Microsoft + Yahoo: Can the Deal Get Done?

Posted: by chrisshipley on February 1st, 2008 | No Comments »

Categorized: Deals, Exits, Observations

I woke this morning to the news that Microsoft has tendered a $44.6 billion ($31/share) offer to buy Yahoo in a cash and stock deal. (And here I thought I was getting up early to pack for vacation!).

The acquisition has been rumored and speculated on for a year or more, and even in the dawns early light there’s plenty of commentary on whether the deal should or should not happen, whether it makes sense, what the combined company might look like, what Microsoft ought to do with the Yahoo asset.

When rumors of a possible merger circulated last May, Om Malik called a Microsoft-Yahoo merger a “bad idea.” He wrote:

Marrying a company with Internet DNA (Yahoo) with another who can’t take a step forward without turning its neck twice (looking back at the PC) is not that easy. Will this deal become the 21st century version of AOL-Time Warner merger, and a high-water mark for the current boom?

One-time Wall Street wonder-analyst Henry Blodget called a potential merger a “smart strategic move” but advised Microsoft to create a new company Internet company in the process.

Would it be a smart strategic move for Microsoft and Yahoo to combine forces? Absolutely. Is the best way to do this to have Microsoft suck Yahoo into the massive Windows/Office empire? Absolutely not. If Microsoft buys Yahoo, Microsoft should immediately spin the Yahoo-MSN business out as a separate company. If it doesn’t, both Yahoo and MSN will die

Now that the deal has gone from rumor to announcement, there’ll be plenty of jockeying around these two, and a myriad of other, opinions. I’ll leave that speculation to folks who are far better arm-chair quarterbacks than I. But what I will say is this:

Not so fast. Read the rest of this entry »

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Shutterfly Acquires Nexo Systems; Let the M&A Wave Begin

Posted: by chrisshipley on January 24th, 2008 | No Comments »

Categorized: Deals, Exits, Observations

We first met Nexo Systems more than a year ago, and were so impressed by its Web creation and collaborative environment that we invited the company to make its debut at DEMO 07.  In a marketplace filling with competitors, Nexo Systems stood apart from the crowd, largely due to its intuitive interface and ease of use. In the DEMO program, we wrote:

Nexo Systems takes group collaboration one step closer to consumer-friendliness with an extremely intuitive, couldn’t-be-simpler, module-based site builder.  Nexo’s founders recognized the positive sin the current group leader, Yahoo!Groups, and worked to integrate similar technology into their product. But they removed any limitations, added all manner of fun widgets to drag and drop,. and most interestingly, game the pages an open architecture for those users with a bit of savvy.

Clearly, the company  not only stood apart, but it stood out and captured the eye of Shutterfly.  Earlier this month, the  online photo site acquired Nexo Sytems, in a cash and stock deal totaling less than $15 million.  Nexo Systems was privately funded by angel investors.

Nexo Systems’ founders Craig Jorach and Tom McGannon will join Shutterfly’s technology team, giving Shutterfly a talent-boost, as well as a “next-generation sharing platform,” according to a statement by Shutterfly CEO Jeffrey Housenbold.

By most measures, a $15 million acquisition is a modest outcome for a Silicon Valley startup, and certainly not the payday an institutional investor would want.   Still, it’s not a bad pay day for a small team.  Assuming typical seed investment and cap tables, the deal provides the capital and experience that will fuel future ambitions.

It’s also most certainly the prototype deal for the army of capital efficient Web 2.0 companies who have developed some decent technology framework, attracted a respectable user base, and who will likely run out of steam before they run into additional venture capital.   We’ll see more of these M&A deals through the remainder of the year as established companies jump start their next-generation offerings, capture Web 2.0-savvy engineering talent, and take some noise out of the market.  

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