The Next Web

Enough for the conference now, this blog must go on

Written on April 5, 2008 – 5:57 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

Thanks for your great feedback yesterday! I’m really glad to hear that you guys had a good time and were inspired by the speakers and other attendees. Like I said yesterday, this blog will continue to report on European Web 2.0 news. Yet before we continue, I’d like to give you an overview of the posts we’ve written the last couple of days. So you can sit back, relax and relive the conference.

Video: The eBuddy Heist

Written on February 5, 2008 – 1:07 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

After last nights news about the €6.5 million investment in eBuddy we decided to sneak our way into the eBuddy offices this morning to see if we could find the money. We did find SOME money AND Onno Bakker (co-founder together with Jan-Joost Rueb and Paulo Taylor) of eBuddy. He told us a little bit about the investment and how they celebrated and how that felt the next day.

Check the shocked faces on the employees as we rush in and shout “Where is the money!”.

I’m glad we didn’t get shot OR arrested. Maybe we should make a series of unexpected interviews like this. Check out our earlier Michael Arrington Heist.

ebuddy, heist, investment, millions, onno bakker

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eBuddy secures Series B: 6.5 million euro from Prime Technology

Written on February 5, 2008 – 1:03 am
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck

Co-founder Onno Bakker during lunch2.0

This just came in. Amsterdam web based IM service eBuddy secures a 6.5 million round of funding of Prime Technology ventures. The money will be used for further international expansion and growth for their mobile application (with already almost 2 million downloads).

While on the other side of the ocean people write and talk mainly about eBuddy’s competitor Meebo, eBuddy is still the biggest web-based IM company out there and with 6.5 million Euro in the pocket they will definitely try to get more presence and buzz in the US.

In October 2006 eBuddy got a capital injection of 5 million euro for Lowland capital. No details of both rounds are disclosed (yet).

Last week we had lunch2.0 at the eBuddy HQ and I must say that they’ve shown an impressive growth over the last years. Co-founder Onno Bakker told me that they were working on an API, but no news yet when they will release it. Congrats to the guys!

ebuddy, funding, lunch2.0, series b

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