Alltopstartups » Venture capital

Vodafone Xone: Vodafone Opens Its Doors To Startups In The Valley

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:05:00 +0000

Vodafone is the latest company to launch a start-up accelerator, opening its doors to 24 early-stage ventures in Silicon Valley. The new Vodafone Xone, based in Redwood City, will provide a test lab for tech start-ups to trial their products on the Vodafone network prior to launch.

Start-ups could also receive funding, with Vodafone saying that it will “assess options for strategic investments” via its funding arm, Vodafone Ventures.

Vodafone Xone will serve as an incubator with office space for up to 25 companies at a time. Vodafone Xone is intended to identify and qualify innovative technologies from startups, R&D labs, universities and venture capital portfolios with the potential to deliver new and innovative products and services to Vodafone’s global customer base.

Siavash Alamouti, director of Vodafone Group Research and Development said: “Vodafone Xone™ offers Silicon Valley start ups access to more than a third of a billion customers in more than 30 countries around the world. We’re excited about this opportunity to share our scale and global expertise with the brightest and best the valley has to offer.”

18 Ways To Come Up With Your Next Startup Ideas

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 05:19:07 +0000

Ask yourself-How is the current product too complicated? What simple little thing could you do to just make it simpler.
Ask again-why it doesn’t work better and how to resolve the problem.
The keys to getting the good ideas is to have lots of them
When you encounter a problem think through all the possible ways of resolving it.
Know about different disciplines, and have broad knowledge. Innovation often comes from crossbreeding different disciplines.
Ask yourself why it hasn’t been improved in the way you think would work.
Stay away from TechCrunch or Mashable and look outside the box
Put yourself in a new state of mind.Get out of your demographic.
It’s hard to make a good product if it doesn’t solve a problem you are personally facing.
Maintain a sense of curiosity in the world around you, a mental flexibility to entertain odd possibilities
Being creative is a habit you get into, maintain that habit constantly
Find an active forum. Make it easier for someone (or a group) to do something they’re talking about doing there, it could be your next startup
Keep a small notepad and pen(cil) nearby, and write down your ideas the instant they come.
Take a different route home.
Think about the most normal, expected solution to a problem would be, and then try to imagine the opposite.
When you see something that annoys you, think about how to solve it.
Talk about your ideas with friends. Get feedback. Tweak and repeat.
Be in-the-know about breaking trends.

So You Want To Be A Hot Startup! Can You Take The Pressure?

Thomas Oppong — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:08:26 +0000

There are hundreds if not thousands of startups that are launched globally everyday. Some of them do not get to mainstream. They do all they can, but the market is too competitive for them to survive. A “hot” startup is a combination of creativity, innovation, hard work, great product and a strategy that produces rapid growth. Hot startups are viral. Their products sell themselves. Hot startups are run and operated by creative founders with a vision to conquer the industry.

This is what it means to be a hot startup:

If a company is hot, people are immediately intrigued and attracted
The most talented employees in the Valley are motivated to complete “tests” on the site to apply for jobs.
Recruiters calls or emails are immediately replied to.
The best and brightest are constantly asking for introductions to current employees.
VCs will do all they can to invest in the company
VCs are jumping all over their connections to introduce you to their CEO.
The product records thousands of users few weeks after launch
Famous early adopters sings out your sing
When you are hot, capital is chasing you, you hardly pitch to investors
Bloggers are eager to interview the founders
You don’t have to pitch your story several times to Techcrunch or mashable
They could be acquired before they mature
Robert Scoble features you on his blog

AngelCube Is The New Y Combinator For Melbourne-based Start-ups

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:45:39 +0000

Serial entrepreneur Andrew Birt’s AngelCube will begin to accept applications for Melbourne-based start-ups to become the first group of participants for his latest venture AngelCube from 29th July.

AngelCube is looking to back a handful of exceptional Melbourne based web entrepreneurs and help them get to the next level with funding, mentorship, marketing and pathways.

Initially, AngelCube will have about $200,000 to invest in four to five online ventures. It’s believed the group’s first project is Cub.io, which lets users win prizes among their friends.

Successful applicants will be given an average of $25,000 and free office space in StartUP Marketing’s Melbourne office. They will also undertake a three-month mentorship program.

Birt, who founded marketing agency StartUP Marketing in 2009, is also the founder of start-up job board Snowballer and co-founder of small cap investment firm Catvielle Capital.He’s now focused on the early stage investment market, as the lead investor and chief executive of AngelCube.

In addition to Birt, the AngelCube team consists of co-founder Adrian Stone and Nathan Sampimon, founder of web development firm Inspire9.

Domo Secures $33M from Benchmark Capital

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:36:55 +0000

Domo, a new SaaS company launched by Omniture co-founder and decade-long CEO Josh James, has announced it has secured $33 million from Benchmark Capital in a Series A round. This round brings total investment in Domo to $43 million. Matt Cohler, General Partner of Benchmark who was the fifth employee at Facebook and a founding team member at LinkedIn, led the deal and has joined Domo’s board.

The capital will be used to help Domo rapidly advance its SaaS-based solution designed to drive value from the tens of billions of dollars that have been spent on traditional business intelligence (BI) systems.

Domo is an executive management platform delivered as a service that helps managers and executives transform the way they run their businesses.

Earlier this year, Domo announced a $10 million angel round from other industry leaders and visionaries. These investors include individual angels, venture capital firms that often participate in early-stage rounds, as well as individuals who were on the board of directors of Omniture.

Evernote Secures $50 Million Round Led by Sequoia Capital

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:57:53 +0000

Evernote, the company that’s helping the world remember everything, has announced a new $50 million round of funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Morgenthaler Ventures. The new funds will be put towards an aggressive growth and acquisition strategy centered on expanding the company’s offerings. Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital will transition from an observer seat to becoming a full member of Evernote’s Board of Directors.

Evernote is helping the world remember everything by building innovative products and services that allow individuals to capture, find and interact with their memories. Evernote apps are available on all major computer, web, mobile, and tablet platforms.

“The fast pace of our organic growth, adding more than a million users in just the past month, shows that people really want to manage and simplify their lives,” said Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote. “And even though we’ve built a profitable and successful business in the past three years, we still have a long way to go to achieve our goal of becoming everyone’s second brain. Having this new investment, and Sequoia Capital as a full business partner, will allow us to improve and multiply our products in exciting ways.”

Startup Resources You Should Bookmark

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:04:57 +0000

Top 28 Startup Resources
Business Resources for Startups
Startup School’s videos
Top free resources for startups
Lists of Lists of Startup Resources
6 Top Resources for Women Doing Startups
Amazing lean startup resources
The Lean Startup Wiki
7 Resources for Startup Investment Opportunities
List of 25 legal websites, blogs, and articles related to startup company legal issues.
Subscribe to Sprouter Weekly
20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground

17 Questions Startup Founders SHOULD Ask Potential Investors

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:03:02 +0000

On how many boards do you sit?
Do you really have enough time to impact the outcome of this investment through your involvement and engagement?
Is there a culture of providing bridge capital to a series of objective milestones to get to a better point to raise our next round of financing?
Do you have the necessary external relationships to help us build the syndicate for our next round of financing?
What are your return expectations?
Don’t ask for a reference call with a CEO of one of the companies they had to shut down;just cold call them without telling the VC.
How do you feel about truly independent outside board members i.e. those with no affiliation with the firm?
May I talk to one of the CEOs that you had to remove or delegate from their position?
Questions on fund solvency are a must.
what is the size of the fund you would be investing from?
What is the average size of your first round investments?
Don’t ask for a reference call with a portfolio CEO: just cold call them without telling the VC.
Don’t assume that changes in founding CEOs are a bad thing. What you want to find out is how the investor behaved in managing these kinds of transitions.
What was the toughest portfolio company experience you went through? How do you work through these tough situations?
How many times have you been through CEO changes in your companies, and how did you arrive to that change?
Would you consider this as an investment if the right opportunity and team were to present it? Why or why not?
How close does a product need to be to finished before you will consider an investment?

21 Best Questions And Answers On Quora For Entrepreneurs

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:50:26 +0000

i/o Ventures Unveils 5 New Startups

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:28:50 +0000

i/o ventures has unveiled the second class of companies from its program. i/o ventures is an early stage startup program that focuses heavily on mentorship. They work closely with founders from product launch through the next stage of company development, sharing what has proven to work for product scaling, revenue growth and fund raising.

The following 5 startups made presentations on June 28 to investors, entrepreneurs and friends in the startup space.

CodeEval is a candidate evaluation and discovery platform for the recruiting industry. Specifically tailored to help employers find developers and engineers, CodeEval submits applicants to coding challenges, which are supplied either by the startup or the hiring company. Before founding CodeEval, Jimmy John served as lead developer for enterprise IT company Splunk. The company is seeking a seed round between $750,000 and $1 million.

Pieceable is a mobile development platform for the non-programmer. Without writing a lick of code, developers can piece together the desired style and content of their app all from a library of pre-built components. The company also offers Pieceable Viewer, a service that lets developers run their iOS apps in-browser. Before founding Pieceable, Fred Potter worked on mobile development at Loopt.

PrePay is a mobile marketplace that lets consumers prepay for store credit, in exchange receiving 10 to 20 percent more than what they paid. The credit, redeemable with a smartphone, never expires. The idea is that, while consumers save money, merchants increase customer retention and loyalty, with cash already in pocket. The startup was founded by brothers Brian Schwartz and Eric Schwartz, previously of AppMakr and Castle Harlan, respectively. They’re looking to raise around $750,000.

Cortex wants to be the fastest way to share articles, links, videos, images, music–anything that can be found on the Web–with friends, family and followers on social networks. The free app, currently available in the Chrome App Store, has 16,305 users and sees 2,350 installs weekly. The startup, founded by ex-Googlers and other engineers and designers, is looking for a $750,000 seed.

Mobbles is a casual smartphone game (coming soon!) where you find, collect, train and fight small creatures called “Mobbles.” Sound familiar? Yup. “Think pokemon meets tamagotchi on geolocalized smartphones,” says the company. Mobbles was founded by two CS grads with mobile and design experience.