David Rowe

SeedCamp – Europe’s answer to YCombinator

2007-08-31T11:39:00Z

In the context of Don Dodge’s recent blog on Paul Graham and YCombinator, I wanted to highlight a similar initiative here in Europe called SeedCamp. Inspired by YCombinator and the OpenCoffeeClub, Seedcamp will be a week long event in London, September 3-7, for twenty young entrepreneurs to showcase their early-stage strategies and product concepts.

The mission of Seedcamp is to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in Europe by providing the money, mentoring and media to help propel forward great ideas. At the end of the week, Seedcamp will invest €50K for a 10% stake in each of final five teams and provide ongoing mentorship and support for three months in preparation for the companies’ formal rounds of financing.

The list of companies participating in Seedcamp has been detailed on the Financial Times’ TechBlog.

There are many leading entrepreneurs, VCs and advisors contributing to Seedcamp. Microsoft’s UK team will be there too – offering mentoring and advice on how to leverage the Microsoft platform and Windows Live APIs in order to build best of breed, next generation businesses.

Lars Lindstedt from the UK Emerging Business Team will be participating as well – providing advice on the “Working with Corporates” panel. I’ll be there heckling from the crowd! ;-)

Coull.tv: click on Kate Moss to buy your lingerie!

2007-08-07T14:30:00Z

Coull.tv is a UK-based company offering online content owners a customized managed online interactive video distribution platform.

Coull enables video content owners to monetize online videos by providing technology that identifies objects within the video, linking these objects to contextual advertising and/or ecommerce opportunities. The customizable video player can be embedded within

social networks and blogs, retaining the interactivity and branding. Perfect for monetising video footage or creating targeted campaigns.

A great example of this is the work Coull did with the premium lingerie maker Agent Provocateur in a series of online films entitled “The Four Dreams of Miss X”. Featuring Kate Moss in her first acting role, the campaign combines the impact of viral marketing with the use of interactive e-commerce applications (supplied by Coull and built on the Microsoft platform) to deliver video footage that entertains and entices people while also providing customers with the opportunity to purchase desired products.

For more insight into Coull’s products or the Agent Provocateur campaign, read this Microsoft Customer Case study!

And a side note – Coull were recently voted as a seriously hot company in our 2007 StartupZone Showcase.

Brainloop: showing how to work with MSFT to halve your sales cycle!

2007-07-18T10:48:00Z

Many people think of Microsoft as a technology company. Yes, we do technology. Microsoft is also a very expansive and efficient sales and marketing company. I was recently reminded of this by an astounding comment made by Oliver Gajek, Sales and Marketing Director of Brainloop: “Working with Microsoft cuts our sales cycle by 50 per cent. The Microsoft sales teams support us in helping our customers manage confidential documents across the enterprise.”

The keys to achieving this co-marketing and sales partnership with Microsoft include (i) adding value above and beyond the Microsoft platform (Brainloop deliver best-in-class security across the life cycle of important documents that need to be protected from unauthorized access); (ii) addressing a particular customer segment or vertical (Brainloop have a sweet-spot within enterprises that require security, compliance and regulation e.g. telcos, legal firms – and Microsoft ourselves!); and (iii) pulling through the Microsoft platform with every sale (Brainloop solutions integrate seamlessly with Windows® Rights Management Services which helps drive sales of Windows Server 2003 as well as Office).

Fifty percent: that is a significant reduction in effective cost of sale and it highlights the benefits of selling with Microsoft. This partnership remains to be fundamental part of Brainloop’s strategy in attracting customers and increasing profitability. Read more in this EBT Success Story.

The success story also touches on the technology and platform acceleration Microsoft provided through direct access to our RMS product groups. But nothing grabs headlines quite like reduced sales cycles and increased profits!

Tridion: backed by Doughty Hanson and acquired by SDL International

2007-07-16T15:58:00Z

On 24 April 2007, Tridion – a leading global provider of Web Content Management (WCM) software solutions built on the .NET platform – announced agreement to be acquired by SDL International, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions for €69 million ($USD94m)! The transaction closed in mid-May and helps realise the value created by Tridion for their investors who included our friends at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.

Based in the Netherlands and established in 1999, Tridion have long been a leader in the WCM business, and as recently as 2006 Tridion were recognised in the Red Herring Venture Market Top 100 (blogged here). Its core Web content management solution—XML-based Tridion R5—plays a key role in many Fortune 500 enterprises in the United States and Europe. The Tridion R5 platform is standardised on Microsoft® solutions, which have been at the heart of the company’s success. You can read more in this EBT Success Story.

As I understand it, Tridion will continue to operate as a highly autonomous division of SDL, same strategy, same management team and organization etc. however they can now leverage a larger global footprint and accelerate plans for tackling broader solutions and markets.

In recognition of the recent acquisition activity in the market, the Microsoft EBT are considering a study that will look at the relative exit values of technology start-ups. Does “betting on Microsoft equal winning”? Well, Tridion was a USD$94m ‘yes’!

NetEconomy: the Story behind their Solution and Acquisition

2007-07-10T19:55:00Z

NetEconomy built a suite of highly valuable financial crime management and compliance solutions on the Microsoft platform and successfully exited via acquisition by Nasdaq-listed FiServ in March 2007. Impressed by the deal, I blogged on this here.

The story behind the NetEconomy’s solution – how they built it and created such value – has finally been written up in the following EBT Success Story. Click through to learn more about how ERASE (Efficient Risk Analysis System Enhancement) grew into a scalable suite of solutions that are deployed from single installations as small as 10,000 accounts to monitoring millions of transactions daily for large global installations.

Congratulations again to NetEconomy, FiServ Inc and Esprit Capital (UK).

InnerWorkings: helping .NET developers write code, solve problems and learn!

2007-06-29T13:13:00Z

InnerWorkings are an Irish company (well, R&D in Ireland and HQ in Pleasanton, CA) with a unique set of ‘practice-based learning’ solutions that present real-world coding and application design techniques that provide true visibility into developer performance. Their goal is to transform the way software developers learn and are supported in the workplace, in addition to enabling the accurate measurement of developer capabilities throughout an organization.

With the InnerWorkings Developer^TM solution, when programmers complete tasks, a built-in code-judging engine gives a comprehensive evaluation that includes corrective feedback. Their solutions address one of the main concerns of enterprise customers today: no proven ways to assess developer performance or improve productivity. It also offers developers an appealing learning environment that is synchronized with their normal work methods.

Innerworkings are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and hence they follow our technology rhythms closely and usually have courseware available around the beta2 timeframe. The USP is that all tasks are driven from Visual Studio and are set around real world scenarios. The system includes a real-time code judging engine, access to an online tutor (real-person Developer Resource – available 24/7 with an 8 hr SLA) and access to an online library of documentation through leading training media suppliers.

Learn more about Innerworkings and their solutions in this EBT Success Story.

Microsoft StartupZone Showcase: VCs vote for the Best

2007-06-15T10:24:00Z

At the recent EMEA VC Summit (recap here) we featured 20 high-potential companies seeking funding in the Microsoft StartupZone Showcase. The format was your generic pitch-camp (7 mins pitch, 3mins Q&A) with the aim of presenting a selection of our most exciting European partners to the VCs who were present as well as give partners looking for funding the opportunity to pitch. In the end, the audience voted - results below.

The 20 StartupZone Showcase companies that presented were:

Comrange (UK): accelerated SaaS implementation and deployment environment for enterprises.
Coull.tv (UK): community web site where users can search, share, comment, vote and interact with video content online.
Criteo (FR): real-time personalized recommendation solutions platform for e- tailers; Innovate!Europe award winner; blogged by EBT here.
Evidanza (DE): business intelligence solutions integrating ERP solutions including MS Dynamics.
Excentive (FR): Enterprise Incentive Management solutions align company compensation plans with strategic goals; blogged by EBT here.
Ganesh (UK): innovative and compelling, SIM-based, value-added services for the mobile industry.
High-def Technologies (DE): creative technology-based, networked home solutions for the digital home.
Intrasense (FR): innovative suite of imaging solutions to allow review and analyse medical images; .

Metaio (DE): leading provider of Augmented Reality (AR) solutions that superimpose virtual 3D-information into the real environment at real-time; blogged by EBT here.
Newsgator (US/NL): RSS aggregation products and social media tools to help improve the way individuals and businesses find information and communicate; blogged by EBT here.
Otodio (UK): enabling publications and corporate documents to be listened to with a massively improved user experience.
SafeWhere (DK): authorization and access control products for Service Oriented Infrastructures and providers of SaaS.
Seanodes (FR): solutions that extending the principles of commoditized distributed open systems to the world of data storage.
syncing.net (DE): Peer-to-peer solutions for small companies to synch Microsoft Outlook data between multiple computers.
TimeBI (PT): creators of time2me, a free traffic and location sharing network on the Web and for mobile devices.
tellmewhere.com (FR): user-friendly community to create, browse and share information about places through online collaboration.
TreeMetrics (IE): delivering solutions that drive better information and decision making systems within the “Wood Supply Chain”.
Visor (IE): online accounting solutions to help accountants move their practices online.
Volutio (UK): delivering ikordo, an intelligent free service that works to organize your meetings, web and teleconferences using ubiquitous communications channels.
ZebTab (UK): user-focused desktop channel connecting brands and content with their target consumers.

We asked the audience of the Showcase (largely VCs) to rate the quality of the companies they saw.

After collating the results, we are proud to announce that Metaio (German augmented reality company) came out as clear leader with Treemetrics (Irish forestry/biomass optimisation company) coming runner-up.

Two companies deserving notable mention for high ratings are Volutio (British start-up who launched their ikordo online meeting resolver on the day!) and Criteo (French online recommendation platform provider).

Four great companies from diverse sectors there!

Feedback from the Showcase has been great, with the emphasis on the opportunities it has created. Fingers crossed that some deals come of it. Watch this space

Microsoft EMEA VC Summit 2007: Event recap

2007-06-11T15:54:00Z

On June 4^th in Brussels, Microsoft hosted our 4^th Annual EMEA VC Summit. This year’s event drew over 200 people from the investment and innovation ecosystem in order to explore opportunities for partnership, insight and investment.

The theme this year was “Small Companies, BIG Ideas!” and as such, we think that the 55 SME Innovation Exhibition partners were an especially valuable component of the day – a sentiment echoed by the feedback we received from the event. You can download a list of partners that joined us here: VC Summit & SME Day Exhibition Guide.

Other highlights of the event included:

Executive Keynote: Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer, provided insight into the future trends of computing and the opportunities they present. You can watch Craig’s keynote via video stream here.
Industry Insight: Two great panels focused on ‘investing in innovation’ and ‘industry big bets’. Thanks again to the panellists and moderators for their valuable input.
European VC Report: Dr Roger Franklin of The Library House shared with us some insightful views on the state of the European VC industry. Download the report, which was sponsored by Microsoft, in PDF from here.
StartupZone Showcase: 20 of our most exciting high-growth partners who were investment ready had the opportunity to do rapid pitches: then the audience had a chance to vote (with results of the Showcase featured here).

Further content from the day including photos can be found at the event web site.

http://www.smeday.eu/vcsummit/content/

Thanks to everyone who participated in a great day!

Q-go: Natural Language Search here now

2007-06-09T12:49:00Z

At last year’s Microsoft Executive Partner Summit in Cannes, Q-go’s CEO Marcel Smit was inspired by a statement made by Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer. Steve was explaining the vision of enterprise search and enthused that someday a person could get an answer to simple, natural language queries like: “Who is the account executive for Michelin?”. Of course, getting the answer is not simple given the fractured nature of enterprise information stores, database, legacy systems, etc. But Marcel said: We can do that! And Q-go have since gone ahead to prove it too!

Q-go are a fast-growing software company based in the Netherlands. Their core IP is a unique Natural Language Search technology. The next step was to integrate it with Microsoft’s enterprise server offerings. So Q-go worked with the UK Microsoft Technology Centre team (based in Reading, UK) to integrate their Natural Language Search technologies into Microsoft’s premier information storage and enterprise search platform Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and a human resources management application. Outcomes of the proof of concept proved 12 commonly asked questions such as “How many days holidays do I have?” or “What is John Smith’s mobile number?”.

In the process of developing our partnership, Q-go have also switched their technology stack from Linux/Oracle to Windows/SQL (you can read more in this published MSPP Case Study). Their commitment and enthusiasm for working with Microsoft has been outstanding. In turn, we are doing as much as we can to keep them moving in terms of platform and sales. After all, our success depends on theirs too!

High Potential Empower: HIPE Top 25

2007-06-09T03:52:00Z

We have been on the hunt for our most exciting early-stage partners. As a base, we leveraged Microsoft’s Empower for ISV program and worked with The Library House as well as our European subsidiaries to highlight partners that have the highest potential in terms of growth and market impact. More detail and background here.

As a result of the search, I gives me great pleasure to highlight the European Top 25 HIPE Companies:

Agnitio (ES): innovative identity management solutions leveraging speaker biometric verification.

Avoco Secure (UK): software solutions for digital asset protection and control of intellectual property.

Comrange (UK): accelerated SaaS implementation and deployment environment for enterprise.

Criteo (FR): real-time personalized recommendation solutions platform for e-tailers; Innovate!Europe award winner.

Evidanza (DE): business intelligence solutions integrating ERP solutions including MS Dynamics.

Excentive (FR): Enterprise Incentive Management solutions align company compensation plans with strategic goals.

High-def Technologies (DE): creative technology-based, networked home solutions for the digital home.

Illuminate Labs (SE): industry leading rendering technology with sophisticated baking functionality in one integrated toolset.

Intrasense (FR): innovative suite of imaging solutions to allow review and analyse medical images; EU ICT Prize winner 2007.

Jaczone (SE): integrated yet non-intrusive tools to support the implementation of software development best practices.

MORS Software (FI): automated, intra-day, real-time, trading control for banks and corporate treasuries.

Mydeo (UK): an online service delivering a safe and simple way to store and stream the videos you value.

Otodio (UK): a solution enabling documents to be listened to with a massively improved user experience.

Profimill Oy (FI): solutions to improve production performance, quality control and production management.

Q-go (NL): natural language search for the enterprise to enable better customer relationships and internal enablement.

Quantum Health (IE): web-based product suite targeting the fast-growing global Workplace Health market.

SafeWhere (DK): authorization and access control products for Service Oriented Infrastructures and providers of SaaS.

Seanodes (FR): solutions that extending the principles of commoditized distributed open systems to the world of data storage.

tellmewhere.com (FR): user-friendly community to create, browse and share information about places through online collaboration.

TreeMetrics (IE): delivering solutions that drive better information and decision making systems within the “Wood Supply Chain”.

Visor (IE): online accounting solutions to help accountants move their practices online.

VMScope (DE): solutions in the field of virtual microscopy that facilitate scenarios that light microscopy can’t cope with; EU ICT Prize winner 2007.

Volutio (UK): an intelligent free service that works to organize your meetings, web and teleconferences using ubiquitous communications channels.

WiseKey (CH): delivering online identity security and trust models through a unique distributed trust network worldwide.

ZebTab (UK): user-focused desktop channel connecting brands and content with their focused consumers.

Note that the list is not a ranking. It is based on the information that we had at hand (focused on public information including funding, growth and media attention) and is drawn from the Empower partner base as it stood at March 2007. We took Empower as a snap-shot as many early stage companies utilise the Empower program to develop their solutions on the Microsoft platform.

Disclaimers aside, these companies represent some great innovation and outstanding potential in the market. There is great diversity both in terms of industry sectors and countries: a great representation of the exciting and dynamic Microsoft partner base!

Russian Entrepreneurs & Innovation: Start in Garage!

2007-05-28T12:34:00Z

The Emerging Business Team is active in many countries and regions world-wide. This blog to feature some highlights from our man in Moscow: Sergey Eremin...

Earlier this year, Microsoft Russia initiated a joint program with the Bortnik’s Fund (a foundation offering support for small innovative enterprises) called Microsoft Business Start 2007. The program’s aim is to uncover and support some of Russia’s most exciting start-ups with almost 40 nominations being received. By the end of February, 10 new software projects were selected for the possibility to get federal budget funding plus support from MS Russia in terms of information, technology and marketing! This echoes the efforts Microsoft are making in other markets and reinforces our commitment to young start-up companies world-wide... with these contributing to the future of the rapidly growing Russian software economy!

More recently, Microsoft Russia have thrown their weight behind an initiative called Start in Garage, with a focus on training entrepreneurs about the commercialisation, funding and go-to-market strategies related to high-tech ventures. Partnering with the likes of Intel Education and MIT, as well as other leading industry players, the Start in Garage program delivers 40 academic hours of training in 4 days. Program content drew from the best educational programs in technology entrepreneurship area including MIT Sloan School of Managment, Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard Business School. And also, of course, real business-cases of Russian and US software start-ups were used. In the initial class, 30 participants benefited from industry speakers such as Microsoft (platform strategy, Partner Program, initiatives for startups support), ABRT Venture Fund (investments), i2PF-International Intellectual Property Fund (IP strategy and protection) and Higher School of Economics (business-model and financial planning for startups). The initial course was held in Moscow with upcoming sessions planned for Nizhny Novgorod, then Kazan, Tomsk, St.Pitersburg, Ekaterinburg.

So these are just two of the great activities our Russian team have up and running. And Russia must be the place to be too... we recently saw our good friends and OpenView Venture Partners announce the formation of a "Partnership for Russia" fund (alongside ABRT Venture Fund, linked above) with a focus on investing in the best software & information technology companies in Russia and East-Central Europe.

Sounds like there is plenty of opportunity... enough to keep Sergey busy at least! Keep up the good work guys!

European Innovation & VC Summit: Small Companies, Big Ideas

2007-05-16T09:39:00Z

Microsoft are hosting an exciting event in Brussels this coming June with a focus on providing insight into our innovation investments and strategies as well as a showcase of our most innovative Microsoft partners.

Built around the theme of ‘Small Companies, Big Ideas’, we are featuring a VC Summit on June 4^th and a SME Growth and Innovation Day on June 5^th. Throughout the event we will feature some of our leading European EBT partners (including Mydeo, WiseKey, Excentive & Skinkers) and in the afternoon of June 4^th we also run a Microsoft StartupZone Showcase featuring our most innovative Microsoft partner’s as identified in partnership with The Library House through our High Potential Empower (HIPE) initiative. The aim is to provide a showcase of the most exciting companies in expansion phase who are also seeking funding in the next 6-12 months.

The event is aimed at mixing Microsoft executives with VCs, European Commission leaders and exciting start-up CEOs –our global business leaders of the future!

Click here to learn more about the event and email us if you would like an invitation.

Neocase: leveraging MSFT & partners to go worldwide!

2007-05-16T08:06:00Z

Neocase is a French customer service software maker that entered the U.S. market just over two years ago. Having only launched in 2001, the company attracted €10 million (U.S.$13 million) in funding from Iris Capital and is growing fast! After moving into North America, they have experienced extensive growth. So far, Neocase has signed on close to 30 resellers, 75 per cent of which are Microsoft partners, with the remaining 25 per cent being CRM value-added resellers (VARs) and consultants.

Neocase’s decision to align with strategic partners such as Microsoft seems to have really paid off! Being a world leader in customer service software solutions, their global partner program encompasses of many of the leading CRM and Microsoft resellers. Neocase partners benefit from a flexible delivery model enabling them to market Neocase as a stand-alone licensed application, via an on-demand service model, or as a bundled offering with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

I’m proud to highlight that Neocase are a MSPP Gold Certified Partner and another great participant in the Microsoft France IDEES programme. Read more about their relationship with Microsoft in this EBT Success Story.

Microsoft Acquire French Mobile Advertising firm ScreenTonic

2007-05-03T12:12:00Z

We are all very happy that Microsoft and Screentonic have agreed to team up via acquisition, a move that further bolsters our Windows Live mobile advertising capability.

In a press release today, Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft, commented: "The mobile Internet is an extraordinary vehicle for brands to connect with their target audiences, because devices like cell phones enable interaction to take place virtually anywhere or anytime. The acquisition of ScreenTonic will be part of our long-term strategy to deliver ad experiences that map to the environment. Together, we will be able to provide relevant ads where consumers are, when they are actively engaged and communicating."

Many months ago, the Emerging Business Team raised Screentonic as a high-potential partner/acquisition. Discussions have been ongoing since and with much work from our French EBT Lead Julien Codorniou as well as Corp PMs Sanjiv Parikh and Nicolas Kardas, a deal was agreed.

This acquisition is true to our form – small team, niche player with compelling solution and great IP – and echoes the MotionBridge acquisition of last year (Feb, 2006): another small French company in the mobile advertising space (except Motionbridge were on the carrier/platform side whereas ScreenTonic facilitates richer interaction and context on the handset).

Note that the last round of funding for Screentonic was only April last year, so this reflects a very quick exit for their VCs 3i Group and I-Source!

I am sure it was attractive for all!

Calling all European Empower partners!!

2007-04-30T09:54:00Z

Microsoft is working with The Library House to discover the most exciting Empower partners in Europe. As part of the ‘High Potential Empower’ (HIPE) initiative we are offering our European Empower partners the chance to explore your investment readiness online for FREE from now until June 4th, 2007.

Microsoft StartupZone Showcase

The Empower for ISVs program is often the start of a journey for an ISV wanting to develop solutions on the Microsoft platform. Leveraging The Library House’s company research and analysis, we are on the hunt for high-potential empower companies, selecting them based on public information including investment history, media attention and growth.

A short-list of high-potential ISVs will be offered the chance to present at our inaugural Microsoft StartupZone Showcase (to be held on June 4^th, Brussels). The event will offer a unique opportunity to mix with other high-potential CEOs, industry executives and VCs. More information on the HIPE initiative can be found here.

Empower Partners to ‘Run the Gauntlet’ – FREE!

Microsoft are offering all Empower partners the opportunity to explore their investment readiness and receive feedback on their business with free online access to Run the Gauntlet. This represents £299 in value and provides access to a unique online tool that draws on The Library House’s extensive experience with young, high-growth companies.

Enquiries or Requests for Further Information

If you would like further information or have any enquiries, please email ebt-hipe@microsoft.com.