StartupSoftwareConsulting Blog

Money for start-up’s

admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:10:26 +0000

Over the last few days a number of fundings have been relesed which is good for the start-up industry.

Here are just a few of the ones I picked up on. Congratulations to the start-up’s but remember it’s debt…

The Netherlands-based internet startup eFresh.com has secured €4.25 million (or roughly $5.4 million) in funding from one of the largest banks in the country, Rabobank. The company, which operates a B2B portal for the perishable industry, had previously raised an undisclosed amount of capital from private investors.

Dutch Startup eFresh.com Raises $5.4 Million From Rabobank

Evernote, which is up for a Crunchie award, rang in the New Year with an extra $4.5 million of cash from Russian investment firm Troika Dialog. A mid-December report had put the investment at $5 million, but the company did not actually close its B round until December 31. He is still trying to raise another $3.5 million tranche, but believes the current funding will hold the company through 2010. CEO Phil Libin says:

Evernote’s $4.5 Million New Year’s Eve Round

Smarter-email startup Xobni has raised $7 million in a B round of financing from Cisco Systems and existing investors Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico. Three of the four existing investors increased their ownership stakes in the company. But Cisco led the round, highlighting the importance of enterprise e-mail for Xobni (that’s where the money is). CEO Jeff Bonforte says:

Xobni Closes $7 Million B Round Led By Cisco

Enterprise 2.0

admin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:18:37 +0000

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who works over at Sun Microsystems regarding the next area of growth for software start-up’s. He feels that the explosion we’ve seen in consumer software, fondly known as web 2.0. has vastly applicability to the dormant enterprise market.

ERP has become very boring, the modules, like Finance, HR, Manufacturing are done and dusted.

What we’ll see is more social networking within companies. Allowing your employees to know and interact with their colleagues beyond the annual Holiday party. Companies like smallworldlabs have a great product in the market.

We’ll see more collobaration with products like Yammer that is a twitter clone for companies. Allowing colleagues to know what you’re working on. Wouldn’t that be nice…

Confluence a wiki allowing document collobaration.

I think he’s right enterprises need to leverage ideas and technology developed on the consumer side not just because their competitors will, nor because it’ll improve their efficiency, but because their employees will demand it. The same employees are consumers and are familar with the benefits they can accure.

Startups in a bad economy

admin — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:23:53 +0000

I’ve always believed starting a company in a down economy is a good idea. Costs come right down office, legal, resources etc. You are well positioned to take advantage when the economy, and it will, turns around.

Also entrepreneurs think creatively to achive their ends which is not always the case when things are flowing easily.

A related article from Paul Graham, who runs an incubator called Y combinator.

Why start in a bad economy