TheStartup.eu

Finally good news for european startups, the times reports that a new development fund is being put together to invest in early stage technology companies.

European Founders Capital (EFC) will have initially £20 millions to play with, but is looking to reach at least the £50 millions mark. The plan is to make early stage funding more available to european companies, imitating the valley’s seed funding mentality.

The fund will be led by two of the most know english tech entrepreneurs, Michael Birch and Brent Hoberman. Micheal is the co-founder of  the social networking site Bebo, founded in 2005 and sold to AOL (Micheal and his wife made a combined profit of $595 million from the deal). Brent is the co-founder of Lastminute.com Ltd, an online discount vacations website that survived the dot-com bubble and was sold to Sabre Holdings for £577 millions.

They clearly know what they are doing. They will be joined by Rogan Angelini-Hurll and Peter Dubens. “We aren’t taking institutional money,” Birch said said. “All the money comes from founders – people who have done it before.” Birch plans on positioning the fund between angel investments (£50.000 to £100.000) and venture capitalists which invest several millions per company.

It is really great and refreshing to see such news, and see the stratup-focused funds grow in Europe, joining two pioneering experiments: European Founders and Team Europe Ventures in the effort of promoting and strengthening european entrepreneurship.

Berlin based SoundCloud, a professional music sharing service, raised €2.5 million in a round led by european VC Doughty Hanson Technology.

Founded in 2007 and now counting 100,000 registered users, SoundCloud is one of the most promising european startups. At the moment their business model is based on pro accounts, but we do not have any real income information.

We will update you once we know what their future plans are, having secured that amount of cash.

To learn more about the service you can read the official press release:

SoundCloud Raises €2.5m from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures

SoundCloud, the internet audio platform which enables music professionals to send, receive and distribute music, today announced that it has received an investment of €2.5 million from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, a leading European venture capital investor, in its first institutional round of equity financing.

SoundCloud provides a simple and efficient platform for music professionals to privately exchange music, allowing for easy collaboration and communication prior to a public release.  With SoundCloud, musicians can easily send and receive studio-quality tracks without cluttering up their email inbox, needing to make use of generic file sending services or having any specialist technical expertise.

SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and raised seed financing from business angels including music producer Chris Zippel, internet entrepreneurs Christophe Maire, Peter Schüpbach, Tariq Krim and Felix Petersen and the founders of music production software company Ableton AG.  The Company launched its service in October 2008 and since then has attracted more than 100,000 registered users.

Stefan Tirtey, Partner at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures who joins the Board of SoundCloud, commented: “SoundCloud has all the qualities we look for in a business: a solid product solving a real problem, a proven business model, and a capable and ambitious founder team. We believe that Soundcloud has the potential to revolutionize the production and distribution process for digital music and this funding will enable the company to build on its success to date.”
Alexander Ljung, Co-Founder and CEO of SoundCloud, added: “SoundCloud’s business proposition is based on bringing web innovation to the music industry and empowering those who create and promote music globally.  Doughty Hanson demonstrated early on a clear understanding both of our business proposition and of the music industry, and already has a strong track record in backing internet- companies.  This funding, combined with the strong operational and strategic experience they bring to the business, supports our ambitious expansion plans and positions us well for the next stage in the company’s development.”

Watch SoundCloud’s video tour: