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Sofinnova Partners led the second round of funding for enterprise social software company blueKiwi.
The funding amounts to €4.7 millions, making it one of the largest achieved in France since the beginning of the year on the small caps market.

The Paris-based company, apart from having a cool website, provides a software solution that enables people-centric organizations to create powerful and secure professional networks where employees, partners and customers can share conversations, ideas, skills, resources and best practice with one another. The very definition of enterprise social software.

“We are thrilled to complete this second tour and to welcome such a first class industrial partner as Dassault Systèmes” says Carlos Diaz, CEO of blueKiwi Software. “This strategic alliance will allow us to accelerate our international expansion and also to out-innovate new Enterprise 2.0 usages while elevating technological entry barriers”.

Dassault Systèmes, the worldwide leader in 3D and PLM solutions, is participating with more than €3 million and joining the board of the company. This new entry at blueKiwi Software’s board is a major milestone underlying a strategic technological and sales alliance signed by both companies to drive new growth opportunities and deliver on their shared vision of the Enterprise 2.0.

Olivier Sichel, partner at Sofinnova Partners concludes: “blueKiwi Software has a considerable potential of growth, encouraged by a steady increase of customers and a talented managerial team, now strengthened by Bernard Charlès joining as executive sponsor. This alliance is a perfect match and will propel the company at the first place with the ability to leverage Dassault Systèmes’ powerful team and exceptional experience”.

At the beginning of the month, TechCrunch Europe announced The Europas, an event that “will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe.”

Today voting opens, you can choose for each category the 5 finalists that will then compete to get the award.
These are the categories:

• Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)
• Best Design
• Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
• Best Social Innovation (which benefits society, EMEA)
• Best Enterprise / B2B Startup (EMEA)
• Best Cleantech / Environmental Startup (EMEA)
• Best European / Real World Gadget (EMEA)
• Best Entertainment Application or Service (EMEA)
• Best Mobile Startup (EMEA)
• Best Mobile Application (EMEA)
• Best Startup Founder(s)
• Best Investor (VC or Angel fund, EMEA)
• Best Investor Personality (EMEA)
• Best New Startup, Summer 2008-2009

Vote for your favorite startup!
The awards ceremony will take place in London from 6pm Thursday, July 9, at Delfina and will have a calvalcade of tech stars attending from the tech scene, including, amongst others:

• Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo
• Stefan Glaenzer, co-founder of Last.FM
• Sarah Lacy, author & TechCrunch editor
• Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes.

I will be in London for the event, please contact me if you plan on attending and would like to meet.

Be sure to buy your tickets.

I got a mail today that looked like every other one, but it wasn’t. It was George Tziralis, a greek entrepreneur, researcher and teacher that decided to turn venture capitalist.
He announced The Open Fund, a new venture capital fund that will provide seed investments to greek startups.
This is wonderful news, as you may know Greece is not at all Europe’s Silicon Valley and they can boost an incredibile 0€ in VC funding in 2007. A new fund, alongside the creation of a new community is what the country really needed.
George, along with other important players in the greek tech scene, will provide €20-30k in exchange for 20% of the shares. It isn’t cheap money, but they will provide the aspiring entrepreneurs with invaluable advice and mentoring.
We will keep you updated on their activities and investments.

Open Fund presentation at Open Coffee

Some major venture capital activity today around Europe.

• Austria: Mobil Data gets €2.3 Millions

Wiener Wachstumsfonds and tecnet equity have invested more than EUR 2m into mobile working company mobil data, with part of the funding being used to acquire sector rival Tempore Zeiterfassungssysteme.


• France: Systancia gest €1.5 Millions

A Plus Finance has invested EUR 1.5m into Systancia, a server based computing company.


• UK: CMS SupaTrak raises third round of funding

YFM Group, via the South West Ventures Fund, has further invested in vehicle tracking and mobile working solutions company CMS SupaTrak in a third round of funding.

Choosing the best links is getting harder, so many nice articles out there.. Here you go!

• Do Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors Who Use Twitter Invest More in Startups?

on Chubby Brain

• How to fund your startup from customers

on Jeff Haynie’s Introspection

• Coping with being a CEO – it can be lonely at the top

on SmallBiz Pod

• Water rises at European cleantech events, VCs take note

on Venture Beat

• The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

on Wired

• Why Continuous Deployment?

on Lessons Learned

• It’s Time for Chief Web Communications Officers

on Candi on Content

• Why you should make it easy for users to quit your product
• Why metrics-driven startups overlook brand value

on Andrew Chang

• The Five Most Promising French Startups

on Tiburon Tv

• Too small to fail: How startups can grow in recessions

on A smart Bear

eRepublik is a massive online social strategy game (as they like to call it) that started popping in 2007 when it received a seed funding of €200.000. The game is set in a mirror version of the real world in which players (citizens), join in local and national politics, set economic policy, start businesses and wage wars with other countries.

Techcrunch reports of a €2 Millions Series A round from french fund of funds and venture capital AGF private Equity. While AGF wins hands down the Worst Website of the Century award it certainly is a very interesting venture capital fund, with €2.5 billions under management and investments in some of the best european startups, such as Meetic, Dailymotion, Viadeo, Yoono and others.

The spanish company will also use the funds to finish the development of the game and launch the spanish version, while also launching new games based on the eRepublik platform.

“We sometimes invest as early as the seed stage in exceptionally exciting companies and eRepublik was one of them last year. We are happy to confirm our first judgement with this new round: eRepublik creates dense and long-lasting games on a low-cost basis, while leveraging fully the strong engagement of its players – something the gaming industry would be very glad to industrialize,” comments Guillaume Lautour of AGF Private Equity.

“The existing game represents 25% of what the final product will be,” states Alexis Bonte, Co-founder and CEO of eRepublik. “With the help of AGF Private Equity and Guillaume Lautour, whom I am delighted to welcome to our board, we will have the means to make our ideas, along with those gathered from our enthusiastic community, come true,” ends Bonte.