12th week of theStartup Weekend Reading. Enjoy.
on Nesheim Online
on TechCrunch
on Nelz’s Blog
on VentureBeat
on Open Forum
on Startup Professional
on Seth Godin’s Blog
on Andrew Cheng
Bonus: A History of Venture Capital, from Stanford Ecorner
SeedRocket has finally announced the finalists for the third edition of its Entrepreneurship Campus that will take place in Barcelona, July 7th-15th.
During the campus, the entrepreneurs will attend different workshops hosted by some of the most famous and successful spanish entrepreneurs. The classes are divided per day with the following subjects: marketing and communication, business development, finance, community, internet, business administration. They’ll also have the opportunity to get tips from the mentors regarding their business plan. Eventually, on July 15th the teams will pitch their projects to an audience of mentors, SeedRocket team and, of course, investors. The winning projects will be awarded a €20,000 funding and a 6-months stay in their incubator.
TheStartup is an official media partner for the event.
You can find the program (in spanish) embedded at the end of the post.
The are still too many “social networks” in my opinion, but I think there are a few very interesting and innovative products in the list. Here they are:
The mentors for this edition will be some of the biggest names in the spanish scene:
Adara Ventures and Neotec have invested an undisclosed sum into software company AlienVault, the creator of OSSIM (Open Source Security Information Management).
AlienVault was founded by Julio Casal and Dominique Karg, the creators of OSSIM, to improve the business utility and offering of the widest adopted Opensource SIEM solution.
Mobile payment and banking company Monitise announced yesterday a huge deal with credit cards giant Visa.
The Uk -based company has created the world’s first mobile banking networks, which allow customers of multiple banks and mobile operators to perform banking and payment transactions directly from their mobile handset.
The deal is comprised of a strategic and development partnership and is valued at £5.1 Millions. Visa International will own 14.4% of the enlarged issued share capital of Monitise. Visa will also be granted a seat on the advisory board, with the power to nominate a representative on the main board.
“With the ever expanding growth in handsets coupled with increasing sophistication of mobile networks, mobile payments and services present significant opportunity for Visa as we continue to develop new ways to bring the benefits of Visa electronic payments to more people in more places.” said Tim Attinger, Head of Global Product Innovation, Visa Inc. ”In aligning with Monitise, we expect to expand the delivery of Visa mobile services to consumers around the globe, enabling them to seamlessly use their mobile phones to purchase goods and services, make payments, receive valuable information and offers, and transfer money between accounts, in a safe and secure manner.”
The £5.1m raised, together with existing cash reserves of about £10m will provide Monitise with total cash of approximately £15m immediately following completion. That’s a lot of money in this economy, I think we will hear a lot more from them as they are also looking for more strategic partnerships in every continent.
Alastair Lukies, Chief Executive Officer, Monitise commented: ”Visa is the world’s most trusted, inclusive and innovative payments network. This alliance validates our unwavering commitment to building truly accessible, inclusive and reliable services over the past seven years. It is a landmark announcement in the mobile payment space and we are excited to collaborate with the world’s foremost payments company to accelerate the convergence of payments services and mobile devices.”
“We are also proud to welcome Tim Attinger to our Advisory Board; his deep payments and mobile expertise will make him a valued member to our key contributing body.” Lukies concluded.
The guys over at Smarta have got a nice interview with Lukies.
Grow VC is trying to create venture capital 2.0. They launched a web application in private beta with the aim of bringing the first truly transparent, international, community-based approach to early stage funding.
If you are looking for a funding round in the range of $10,000 – $1M, or if you are looking to provide such funding, Grow VC will help you to find and connect with other parties.
Grow VC is answering the problem of traditional venture capital being locally-focused, difficult to obtain, uninterested in smaller investments and structured by a rigid model for many web and mobile startups.
“We call it ‘venture capital 2.0’ because it’s the first service with a live, continuous, interactive, open approach to funding,” said Loikkanen. “Anyone who is passionate about finding and growing the Internet’s next big thing can benefit from joining Grow VC. We are growing a quality, vetted, and respected community and sustainable business model to support the Web’s next rock stars by giving power to the people. Any startup who has become frustrated with the one-sided VC process, as well as any investor who needs one place to find new innovative companies, now have a community to call home.”
“Our aim is to make Grow VC the place to go for funding, in a shared ecosystem where members gain from other members’ success. Through this approach the funding industry can become a more level playing field. The most compelling reason for a startup to join now is the very real issue of early stage funding not being available as VCs move to bigger deals. For investors, Grow VC offers a place to diversify his or her risk globally as well as a place to unearth the web’s most exciting new companies,” concluded Jouko Ahvenainen, Grow VC’s co-founder and chairman.
The public launch of Grow VC will include more innovative investment methods that will be revealed later in 2009. During the private beta, Grow VC is also launching a certified partner program, where local or regional startup enablers (incubators, event organisers, law firms, etc.) can get involved to become the primary local access points for members of their community interested in Grow VC.
You can try it out for free, be sure to enter the “TS50″ invitation code.
