The Next Web

Zen and the art of ‘capturing mass audiences’

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…)

I hope you like that post!

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business models, business plan, ebay.com, facebook, flickr.com, funding, hyves, hyves.nl, myspace, Spill Group, vc capital, venture capital

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Spill Group buys Games.co.uk

Written on January 21, 2008 – 4:44 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Peter Driesen (left), Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder and Co-owner of Spill Group

Spill Group, one of our sponsors, has just announced that they have acquired the domain Games.co.uk. They already owned Juegos.com, Jeux.fr, GamesGames.com, Spelletjes.nl and Gioco.it so this is a nice addition to their portfolio as they are planning to expand internationally quick and aggressively. Spill Group has been growing steady since 2005 and are currently serving 55 million unique visitors per month who play more than 1,5 billion games.

Spill Group has its headquarters in The Netherlands and operates over 30 game portals in 17 countries worldwide. We are planning to do a video interview with them soon to talk about their strategy and about how it feels to conquer the world out of the Netherlands and how much they paid for Games.co.uk.

Congratulations with the acquisition, dear sponsor, but please save some money to continue sponsoring us!

casual games, Games.co.uk, Spill Group, sponsor

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