Archive for the ‘investors’ Category

Brands4Friends raises 10 Mio Euro

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Great news from Brands4Friends: The leading Online-Shopping-Club in Germany just raised another 10 Mio. Euro in Venture Capital. Partech International joined the investors round, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners participated again in the Series B. The company was founded in 2007 by Lukasz, Oliver Jung, Kolja, Ehssan, the management around Constantin Bisanz and Christian Heitmeyer as well as a lot of other supporters -  mainly from Lukasz` network. Thanks to his invite I was also able to participate in the seed funding round. I did not regret it ;-)

Only 15 month after launch the revenue already exceeds 30 Mio Euro a year and still growths fast. I am curious whether brands4friends and other shopping clubs will be able to profit from the economic downturn. Consumers should spend less money for expensive brands. This could lead to increasing overstock for manufacturers and full-price resellers (good for sourcing) and consumers looking for bargains…

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Posted in Berlin, Europe, Germany, investors | 1 Comment »

5 days at Seedcamp in London

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Since Tuesday I am in London where Oliver invited me as mentor to Seedcamp. Seedcamp is an event where 20+ start-up companies from all across europe compete to get seed-funding (50k € each). It was great fun for both the start-up teams and mentors and also a good opportunity to connect with entrepreneurs and investors from Europe and the U.S.. Between the mentoring sessions I took some time for sightseeing…

Yesterday we have been at the Techcrunch Party in the aqua river brasserie near the Thames. Marc Lewis, a creative entrepreneur from the UK, joined the party on his Segway. It was totally fun to drive, especially since it was already a little bit later that evening…

Now it is already a little bit later on friday evening and London nightlife is calling me intensely…

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Posted in Entrepreneurship, Europe, investors, Life, London | No Comments »

Team Europe Ventures takes off

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

After several months of planning today Lukasz  announced the official launch of Team Europe Ventures:

 ”The internet conglomerate ‘Team Europe Ventures‘ holds interests (usually minority stakes) in more than 50 internet companies.

The investment focus thereby lies in the field of consumer-orientated internet companies and the following stages:

  • co-foundation of companies
  • seed stage investments as co-investor or lead investor
  • so called Series A or Series B investment rounds (mainly co-investments)

Geographically, the activities of Team Europe Ventures include Europe as well as North America. Core markets are Germany, Poland, France, United States and United Kingdom.

Depending on the form of an investment (lead or co-investment), Team Europe Ventures supports its portfolio companies actively or passively. Active support thereby can be far reaching, mainly including the fields of strategy, distribution, human resources as well as finance. US-companies can be actively supported in entering the European market.

The goal of Team Europe Ventures is to become one of the leading internet companies in Europe. Furthermore, the company wants to contribute to a stronger entrepreneurship culture in Europe.

Team Europe Ventures has been founded by Lukasz Gadowski who is the founder Spreadshirt, co-founder of StudiVZ and an active business angel.”

I strongly believe in the team and vision of Team Europe Ventures and will support Lukasz as “Entrepreneur in Residence”.

  

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Europe, investors | No Comments »

Andrea Zurek – Google´s first sales employee, (Business) Angel and Gumball Driver…

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Today I had the luck to attend a interesting presentation of Andrea Zurek. She was the first sales employee and a leading executive at Google until she recently left the company.  She started angel investing in start-ups like BluBet.com and joined Sand Hill Angels, a Palo Alto-based network of individual Investors. Beyond the work with her investments she`s a licensed formula one driver and attended the gumball rally last year…

In her presentation she focused on the cultural and structural mechanisms that provide the DNA which enable Googles huge growth and efficiency. That reminded me to a great article about Google`s marketing. I have huge respect for the long-term vision, which the founders and early stage employees of Google had, when they build the (social and structural) architecture of Google at a time when nobody could really predict that amount of growth.
That`s really visionary entrepreneurship and goes even far beyond that (large) amount of vision what it needs to built, grow and sale “only” a medium-sized player for a more or less specific market.

Despite the attraction of the challenge to find (and pursue) an opportunity that could be the basis for the next Google I will concentrate my energy (at least for the next time ;-) ) on medium-sized companies…

I look forward to meet Andrea again and would like to provide you with an interview on Gruenderszene.de.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, investors, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

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