TheStartup.eu

Today was an unusually generous day for the VCs in Europe, after the Innogest’s funding of Bee.tv, we have other 3 deals to announce.

• Sweden, Finland: Nexit Ventures, €3M into Aava Mobile


Nexit Ventures, a mobile venture capital firm focused on wireless technologies and services, today announced the investment of 3 million Euros in Aava Mobile, a developer of smartphone platform designs. The funding will leverage Aava Mobile’s growth and help it become a market leader.

Aava Mobile develops smartphone platform designs based on open technologies such as Linux and Android. The open platform technology will provide more flexibility for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and mobile operators to incorporate their own brand, user interface, content, and services into the devices.

“Our open platform concept has been well received by the global mobile operators, who see this as a new revenue opportunity from new and existing subscribers. The open platform lets operators and OEMs customise their devices easily and differentiate from their competitors,” explained Markus Appel, CEO from Aava Mobile.

The new platform has been designed with operators in mind. As the platform includes both hardware and core software components, it accelerates the development of new handset models significantly. The flexibility of the open platform design also brings new business opportunities for application developers as well as mobile operators.

”The smartphone market is growing fast and steady. With their open platform, Aava Mobile is one of the leaders that will take the market to another level. Operators can have a truly white-label option to brand their handsets and offer more choice for consumers. There will also be new business opportunities for Linux developers that can expand their offerings to smartphones,” comments Pekka Salonoja, General Partner of Nexit Ventures.

Nexit Ventures invests in mobile and wireless high-growth companies, primarily in the Nordic countries and the US. Nexit’s other portfolio companies include Axel Technologies, Brightkite, Conformiq, Ecrio, Ekahau and Futuremark.

• Italy: TTVenture, €3M into Directa Plus

Directa Plus srl, early stage milan based company that operates in the nanotechnology sector, received a €3 Millions funding today in exchange for 25% of the company, by TTventure, a technology fund of Fondamenta Sgr.
The operation is focused on the industrialization process of Directa for the production of “nanoparticles”.

• Germany: High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Dr Rolf-Christian Wentz, undisclosed sum into Maxment GmbH


High-Tech Gründerfonds invests in maxment GmbH, which supports companies in increasing the return on their investments in human resource development, and in numerically proving their benefit. maxment® is a very user-friendly online software (SaaS), which via the internet is ready to use. A security server ensures a confidential treatment of the data, in line with works council requirements. Thanks to standardisation and extensive automation, the effort for training participants and personnel development managers is really low. Companies like Dürr AG and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG already use the maxment® software.

27 billion euro are spent every year just in Germany on the training of employees. Yet, studies show that on average, only 10-40% of classroom learnings are actually applied on the job afterwards. Thus, companies face the challenge to find ways to increase the transfer of learnings to the workplace. In addition, the benefit of the human resource development investments is to be proven numerically. maxment® offers an efficient solution for both challenges.

Dr. Christoph Mehl, human resource development manager at Dürr AG, appreciates what maxment® offers: “maxment® convinced us with a functionality that fits the requirements of sustainable human resource development processes in all regards. Hence, we obtain key indicators of transfer success, which for us constitute an important component of a human resource development focused on value creation. High return rates, positive feedback from participants, trainers and managers – we are very satisfied!“

Christoph Rappe, founder and managing director of maxment GmbH, considers an important milestone for the next growth phase reached: “With the investment of the High-Tech Gründerfonds, we can now substantially enhance our software. We are going to present the new version in autumn at the industry’s biggest fair in Europe, the “Zukunft Personal” in Cologne on September 22nd to 24th, 2009.“
Dr. Björn Momsen, investment manager at the High-Tech Gründerfonds, states: “The satisfaction of the existing customers with the maxment® software has convinced us. We see a big opportunity of maxment® setting a new standard in personnel development.“

Dr. Rolf-Christian Wentz, who as a business angel invests in maxment GmbH along with the High-Tech Gründerfonds, adds: ”From my industry experience, I know that maxment® solves a real problem of the personnel development practice. If maxment® had been available years ago, I definitely would have used it.“

Venture capital in Europe in not dead.
Innogest, a $120 million fund with offices in Milan, Padova and Torino, just reminded us that VC deals are possible, injecting the huge sum of $8 Million into BeeTV.

“This is the single largest investment our firm has ever made,” said Marco Pinciroli, Innogest CEO. “This fact alone shows how much we believe in beeTV, with the concept, its management, and its business strategy.”

“We already knew we had the most innovative product on the market. Now we have the means to push it to the next level,” commented Rodolfo Hecht, beeTV’s Chairman. “We are proud of being one of the few companies that is able to announce a major VC deal in today’s frozen market.”

The Milan-based startup launched in 2006, and is now working towards its 1.5 release, they already have offices in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles and claim to have partnerships with the most important TV networks worldwide.

They recently pitched their product at DEMO08, you can see the video here:

The aim of BeeTV is to help you choose what you watch more easily, they will replace your usual tv guide with personal recommendation based on your taste and mood. The algorithm team is led by the well-regarded Gavin Potter – the recommendation guru. Their commercial operations are expected to begin in 2010.

The potential is really huge and I’m pretty sure the investment will pay off. Providers will surely be interest in their offerings that can integrate PC, TV and even mobile phones in a whole new experience.

You can read more about their products here.

Italian startup Passpack is an online password manager. A web application to securely store your passwords.
With the release of Passpack 7 they introduced a lot of new cool features such as automatic saving, search, tags & filter. But the most important has surely been secure password sharing: you can now send your passwords to other passpack users without having to email or IM them.
A few days ago another great feature was released: bulk actions. You can now delete or share multiple entries with one click, awesome. But not enough..

At TechGarage I met Francesco Sullo, the founder of Passpack and he gave me a scoop: get ready for Minipacks.
As of now you can share passwords only with passpack users, so if they are not registered you actually have to call, email, IM them and get them to sign up. But what if someone is using other softwares?
With this release (due in one week approximately) you will be able to send out minipacks, completely secure and encrypted files containing your passwords, if the person you are sending the minipack to is not registered on passpack he will be able to import the file in any software after having inserted a password (you will have to call or email for this).
I think this is such a huge feature, it definitely needed a post. Can’t wait to see it live.

Here is a video if you’ve never heard of passpack

On May 22nd, the italian and european startup scene will gather in Rome for TechGarage. Hosted at LUISS university, the event is one of the most important startup happening in Italy.
The event is organized by DPixel, which operates one of the few early-stage venture capital funds present in Italy, and for this year with the help of Telecom Italia.

TechGarage features a
start
up
competition
featuring
10
hot
and new european start
ups. These 10 finalists will have the chance to pitch their ideas and business plans to VCs and business angels. 3 winners will receive an award and a package of services from DPixel: accounting, legal and advising services that will guide the company to its next stage and prepare it to get funded. Many venture capital funds will be present as well as entrepreneurs, CEOs, bloggers and the best of the italian internet and media community. Given its smaller “size” compared to major events like TheNextWeb, LeWeb or Next, there will surely be opportunities to create more relationships, making it a networking event not to miss.

TechGarage will bring visibility to european startups and many opportunities to young and promising entrepreneurs who will be able to meet some of the most importan seed and venture capital fund, business angels and other entrepreneurs. They will also have the opportunity to meet bloggers and journalists so to get media coverage for their ideas, as well as meeting programmers and all kind of geeks.

This is the program for the day:
- 8:30‐09:25am
Guest Registration
and and 
Breakfast
- 9:30am
Introduction by Pier Luigi Celli, CEO Università Luiss
- 9:30 – 9:45

Keynote
 ‐
 Luca 
Montezemolo, 
Ferrari, LUISS 
chairman
- 9:45 – 10:15am

Keynote
 – 
Franco
Bernabe’, 
CEO Telecom 
Italia
- 10:15‐11:15am

Start
 Up
 Pitches
- 11:15‐11:40am
Coffee Break
- 11:40‐12:40pm
Start 
Up
 Pitches
- 12:40‐1:10pm
Closing
 Keynote
 by 
Saeed
 Amidi, CEO And President Plug & Play Tech Center
- 1:10‐1:30pm
Awards
to
the 3 Winning
Start
Ups
- 1:30pm
Lunch
- 2:30pm
Working Capital Camp

In the afternoon Telecom Italia will host its Working Capital Camp. WorkingCapital is a nice new initiative focused on high tech and innovative companies. Telecom Italia helps entrepreneurs by funding their companies with services. It is refreshing to see such a big company take interest in early stage innovative startups.

theStartup.eu is an official media partner for the event, so expect (hopefully) live coverage, startup presentations and interviews.
If anyone is planning to attend the event, send me a quick email and we’ll meet up!