Written on May 12, 2008 – 3:38 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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Last Tuesday co-editor Boris and Johan Schaap organized a dinner for Marc van der Chijs, a Dutch entrepreneur who co-founded China’s largest video site Tudou and the Asia division of online gaming company Spill Group. In Holland and beyond, he’s well-known as a true pioneer who represents the almost endless possibilities in China.
During dinner I had an interesting conversation with him about Tudou, entrepreneurship and enormous bandwidth usage. Van der Chijs came to China because of his job with Daimler-Chrysler brought him there. Yet after a while, Van der Chijs felt the urge to do something on his own and quit his job. “I went from a car with a chauffeur to a bicycle”, he told me. “I signed up for a six-month Chinese language program and started building my first company”. Eventually he co-founded Tudou, and this is where it gets really interesting.
Tudou is one big success story as it’s world’s largest video sharing website. According to Mary Meekers latest data in Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends Report, Tudou (35 billion minutes in January) is 40 percent bigger than YouTube (25 billion minutes). An average visitor, Van der Chijs told me, stays on the site for 47 minutes: “For the young Chinese people, it is a substitute for television”. Competition is tough though, as other major video sites like Youku and 56.com also manage to attract millions of visitors every day.
As you might know, they’ve recently raised 57 million dollars. When I asked Van der Chijs what Tudou will do with this money, he replied: “Spend it on bandwidth”. No other site has a bandwidth bill which is as high as Tudou’s. He said that he could turn Tudou into a profitable business by limiting the bandwidth usage, yet then his competition would probably catch-up. So Tudou uses the recently raised money to invest in servers and its infrastructure. “We’re talking about thousands of machines here”, said Van der Chijs. Moreover, Tudou isn’t doing a bad job with selling advertisements - preloaders and banners - and preventing unnecessary money spending - “I fly economy”.
So take this from a man who knows what he’s talking about: to stay ahead of the competition, video sites like Tudou should invest in bandwidth. And one day, one day it will most definitely pay off.
Written on April 14, 2008 – 9:32 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Paris-based start-up Iminent raised a second round of funding this month from I-Source Gestoin and previous investor 360º Capital Partners. The French start-up turns instant messaging conversations into a chaotic experience with over-the-top emoticons and video options, exactly the kind of experience teenagers dig.
With this €2.4 million series B, Iminent has raised a total of €5.4 million. So I’ve mailed CEO Francis Cohen to congratulate him and ask some questions. He told me that they’ve started Iminent because they thought Instant messaging was still a poor medium. Cohen: “When we compared IM and the web as a platform, it was striking to see that the range and deepness of services were very poor on IM. So the idea was to expand IM services beyond the obvious, so IM could sustain the comparison with the web.”
When I was taking a look at the Iminent site, it immediately struck me that the service supported a large number of languages - English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian - yet not any Asian languages. This is kind of odd, since Asian teenagers seem obsessed with self-expression. Will Iminent use the new money injection for Asian expansion? “Our first priorities are Europe and North and South America, but Asia is definitely in our plans”, said Cohen.
So is Cohen prepared for the day that IM services will launch the very same features as his service offers? After all, it isn’t too hard to create psychedelic smilies. “Once you see IM as a platform, you don’t stress about IM software editors coming into services. We are working with some IM editors who like to assess companies like Iminent as good as they can. Since we’re expanding the functionality of IM.”
Written on April 8, 2008 – 8:29 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Dutch music service SellABand received 3,5 million euros to make growth possible. The round was led by Prime Technology Ventures, also a Dutch company.
Johan Vosmeijer, CEO Sellaband
On SellABand, any beginning band can upload their music to the website. People who like their tunes and foresee a successful future for them, can become a ‘believer’ by investing 10 dollars. As soon as the band counts 5000 believers - and thus gained 50.000 dollars - SellABand steps up and helps the talented folks to record an album with a studio and expert producer. They started their quest for promoting talent 1,5 year ago and already released cd’s for eighteen bands from eleven different countries.
Johan Vosmeijer, CEO Sellaband: “Music fans turn out be really interested in our concept. It’s not the record labels who decide which bands will get an album, thus the fans have the power. We’re really glad that we teamed up with Prime Technology Ventures. They have experience with helping growing Internet companies to become international market leaders. Partly thanks to this investment we can aim for world’s largest music market: the United States.
Sake Bosch from Prime Technology Ventures says that Prime Technology Ventures believes in SellABand’s concept”. “This investment makes sense, since the music industry is heavenly influenced by the Internet nowadays.”
This is a second milestone for SellABand in five months. Last December they partnered up with Amazon. Read the interview I had with Creative Director Pim Betist here.
Written on March 24, 2008 – 12:15 pm
Reinout te Brake, online gaming expert
The last few days I had some time and look around over the Internet. As you know, there is a lot of news about companies like Facebook.com and Google. Their success is the motor of a whole industry, they are the fuel for lots of new business ventures. In loads of business-plans you will see entrepreneurs compare their ideas against that of these companies. It is very difficult to create and come up with something unique, I grant you that, but what is it that these companies mentioned above have in common? The answer is; simplicity! Already I hear loads of people wonder if I lost it, but let me assure you, I didn’t.
During the last years I have come in contact with many VC-companies and they all are looking for companies that look like Bebo.com, Facebook, Google and MySpace. The “why” is simple too, these companies re-present high valuations today and therefore the investors who backed these companies made a great “return of investment”. These VC companies contact me if I know entrepreneurs with similar good ideas. In most cases I do send them info about young companies that look for funding. And then it starts; benchmarking! The business plans are going to be compared to the successful companies of today. After a while I have come to believe that VC-companies want something they can understand and compare, they want it too; simplicity! (more…)
Written on February 29, 2008 – 11:00 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Young professionals, ambitious students and recruiters who are disappointed in the effectiveness of LinkedIn or Facebook, could look for better times at iHipo.com: ‘the High Potential network dedicated to empowering international careers’. It’s the place for young people with international ambitions to connect with human resource managers who roam the social networks of the world to find talented youngsters.
Companies are looking for the best people, regardless of their nationality
The founders, three recent graduates from Germany, the Netherlands and Singapore, believe to follow a globalization trend on the world-wide job market. Arnout Wagenaar: “Companies are looking for the best people, regardless of their nationality. Also, people have a growing need to work internationally.”
On iHipo, there are two kinds of profiles: as a business you can post jobs and search for new talent. As a professional, you can search for jobs and friends in your industry. There’s also the Knowledge Base with over 2,000 international HR contacts and interview preparation material. Further features include a Google maps mashup to geographically highlight the iHipo community, a Facebook application and a number of new networking tools.
I guess it must be a struggle to be successful in this job specific area of the web. It’s a niche with hundreds of players, and they’re are all trying to lure young talents into their professional network. Yet iHipo seems to do a pretty good job. The Singaporean company launched in July 2007 and managed to attract close to 1,000 registered users and 160 job offers by international employers in the first week. They were mainly successful in the US and South-East Asia and now plan to expand to Europe.
Well, this week iHipo has received some more capital for their European conquest, since they’ve closed a seed round of funding by Thymos Capital and the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). And with the latter backing them up, they can face everybody. The MDA are those tough Senior Management rappers you might know from the YouTube video that was viewed more than 200,000 times:
Written on February 13, 2008 – 11:08 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Loic Le Meur at the Seesmic Offices
Seesmic, the video conversation start-up by Loic Le Meur has just raised a cool 6 million dollars from an impressive list of investors. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Seesmic but I am afraid to write about them because obviously I must be stupid. I mean, if Michael Arrington, Steve Case and Ron Conway all DO seem to get it, there can’t be any other explanation.
Can you imagine we will be chatting to each other in pre-recorded video messages? Do YOU use iChat video on a regular basis? Can you imagine using it in a Walkie Talkie kinda way where you talk first, then upload your message, then wait for someone to record their message which you then have to watch after which you can record a new message? Or maybe this whole video chatting this is just a cover for another business that we haven’t heard from yet?
No, it must be me. Or maybe these people just REALLY liked Loic and that is the reason why they invested 6 million. Either way, here is the press release:
Seesmic Raises $6 Million to Power the World’s Video Conversations
A-List investors are led by Niklas Zennström’s Atomico and include Steve Case, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Reid Hoffman
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 14, 2008 - Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), the highly anticipated new start-up from Loic Le Meur, today announced that it has raised $6 million from internationally renowned investors. The investment is lead by Atomico - an investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:
(more…)
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!
Written on December 11, 2007 – 12:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In an on-the-couch-interview with author Sarah Lacy, Rose gave some advices for entrepreneurs. A small selection, collected by your Le Web 3 correspondent:
- Don’t start raising funds too early. Make your concept perfect, then approach those angel funds and VC’s.
- Pick partners that understand the business.
- You don’t have to be a coder to start a project which you’re passionate about.
Marc van der Chijs, Boris, Johan Schaap & Yuri van Geest
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