Congratulations to the team at Crashpadder our Seedcamp portfolio company who were just acquired by Airbnb. This is the second exit from Seedcamp after Mobclix were acquired in 2010 by Velti.
Well done to Stephen and Dan!
Read the full story here
An evening with the Forsyth Group at London Business School
Our Managing Partner Brett presented to 45 LBS [www.london.edu] students on the state of the hi-growth technology sector on the 15th February. The audience members were interested in finding out more about this sector as they had demonstrated a strong interest in the entrepreneurial space and potentially working with growing companies, especially in the technology sector. Brett was asked to talk about the current landscape in the high-growth technology space in the UK and Europe and give advice for those looking to develop their careers in the sector.
Link to the presentation: http://slidesha.re/z3MDXX
Link to video: http://bit.ly/wBQ5sW
Not to be outdone Imperial College Business School Entrepreneurs Interactive Club have asked Brett to present on the 19th of March on how to build the right start-up team!
Seedcamp
Rosemary and Brett spent January the 31st with mentors and entrepreneurs at the 2012 London Seedcamp event in Soho. The competition was intense with excellent pitches from 22 teams; the winners came from Spain, Belgium, Estonia and London. Congratulations to 24Symbols , Bluefields, Checkthis and Pult – Pult should be commended for an awesome live demo that blew all the mentors and judges away. The teams are off to the US for Roadtrip Seedcamp USA, which will involve meeting all the good and the great (and the VCs) from the high tech world in the US.
After Roadtrip USA the next Seedcamp event will be Tel Aviv – apply here
Congratulations to our Seedcamp winner Brainient who have just raised their A round of funding!
Brainient raises $1.8M to make video advertising more effective
Our mission at Brainient is to help advertisers make their video ads more effective. In order to get closer to that mission, we’re announcing that we’ve closed a $1.8M funding round from a collective of strategic investors. The round was led by Prague-based Credo Ventures. Other backers include Atlas Venture (investors in DataXu, AdSafe Media, OwnerIQ) and Estag Capital (investors in RevenueMax, Germany’s leading yield optimisation platform). Existing investors Sherry Coutu and 500Startups also participated in the round.
We’ll be using the financing to expand our client services and technology teams, by expanding our London and Bucharest offices and opening a new office in New York.
We’ve enjoyed exceptionally strong growth through 2011, with nearly 100 campaigns served over the year for customers like Samsung, Volvo, Canon with our BrainRolls product – generating, on average, three to five times higher CTRs than non-interactive pre-rolls. We also launched BrainAds, the first personalised video retargeting platform in the world helping customers like GetTheLabel and GlassesDirect get click-to-sale conversion rates of up to 10%.
The new funding will help us accelerate our growth in 2012 and continue innovating in the video advertising space. We’re thrilled to have such a fantastic list of new investors on board and we look forward to making our customers incredibly happy in 2012 as well.
You can find the press release here.
Rosemary awards Craig Le Grice of CoSkill the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award at the Start up Awards 2011.
CoSkill is the next generation strategic consultancy. They deliver the best of three broken sectors: the tangibility and commerciality of management consulting and business strategy, with the power to change business; the consumer connection of marketing and advertising, with the ability to engage stakeholders; and the sheer power of digital technology, embracing web, social, mobile and data.
Steph Welstead, editor of Startups.co.uk, said: “We were blown away by the standard of entries to this year’s Startups Awards. All of the businesses who made it to the 2011 final have shown innovation, guts and determination and the success they have achieved against the backdrop of the economic downturn is a true testament to the strength of UK entrepreneurship’’.
Competition was fierce but the judges felt it takes a high level of intellect to intersect a market at a particular time and Craig Le Grice is one who stood out from the crowd. Since starting in February the company already have an enviable roster of FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 clients, who have turned to the consultancy for very specialised digital and social media marketing knowledge.
We would like to congratulate all of this year’s winners and wish them continued growth and success in the years to come.