About Company:
They bring experienced senior executive leadership and bridge funding to emerging companies to achieve early business results and develop credibility in order to secure institutional funding and transform ideas, technologies and products into sustainable, successful businesses.
"Tal Golan knew he invented potentially game-changing technology in the fight against spam. Proving that to investors was a different story.
While venture capitalists in 2003 were intrigued by Mr. Golan's product, a hardware box that checks for spam before the message reaches corporate email servers, they kept telling him the same thing: He lacked the right pedigree for an investment.
"I didn't have the right degree. I didn't work for five years at Cisco and Oracle, then start up three companies," said Mr. Golan, who previously founded a small software development and consulting firm. "The reality is that VCs invest in people first, second and third, then the technology."
This story originally appeared in VentureWire, a daily newsletter published by Dow Jones & Co. that covers news about venture capital and start-up companies.
Undeterred, Mr. Golan operated out of his garage in Costa Mesa, Calif., for three years and invested roughly $750,000 in his company, Sendio Inc., by maxing out credit cards and refinancing his mortgage, betting the financial security of his wife and young children. By late 2005, the device was selling, but it was clear he needed to take his business to the next level. That is when he linked up with Momentum Venture Management LLC, an unconventional firm that promised to give him the credibility needed to court VCs.
Matt Ridenour and Andy Wilson, veteran start-up executives, incorporated Momentum in late 2004 to work full time with company founders to shape their business plan, find credible management, finish a product and gain customers -- a process that typically takes them about nine months to complete. At that point, they shop the company to VCs with hopes of securing a Series A round of between $4 million and $5 million.
Momentum is one of several firms that have cropped up in recent years to fill a funding void left by VC firms shifting their investments downstream and bypassing the traditional guy in a garage. That shift left many unseasoned entrepreneurs such as Mr. Golan to fend for themselves in bringing intelligent ideas to fruition. But it is also opening up an opportunity for smaller firms willing to take on higher risk and lend more credibility than do traditional angels.
"If you're an entrepreneur, seed and Series A deals are really tough to get right now," said Beau Laskey, a managing director at Burbank, Calif., early-stage firm Steamboat Ventures. "Venture firms are looking for customers and traction."
Los Angeles-based Momentum has a distinctive model that dedicates far more time than a typical angel or seed-stage investor would, while also assuming considerable risk. Momentum first spends about six weeks -- usually for a fee of less than $20,000 -- validating a business plan, confirming the chemistry with the founding team and completing due diligence before committing to the start-up.
Upon approval, one of three Momentum partners then installs himself as the chief executive officer, moving the founder to the role of chief technology officer and eventually bringing on a new CEO a few months later. At some point during the process, Momentum provides a bridge loan -- typically $250,000 to $500,000 taken from a small bridge fund pooled from wealthy individuals -- to keep the company going, all for a "nominal" monthly stipend.
"We're solving an intractable problem in the early-stage business ecosystem," Mr. Wilson, Momentum's managing director, said. "Entrepreneurs are often stuck in that vicious business cycle of needing money to recruit business talent, build a product and attract customers, yet they can't raise the money unless they have those pieces in place."
Typically a Momentum partner works with two companies at a time, spending half of his time on each, with an operating associate subbing as a project manager and director of operations. Momentum's ultimate goal is to deliver the company to venture capitalists and secure that first round of capital, when the firm's bridge investment converts, often at a discount, into Series A preferred stock. It is at this point the firm gets paid for its work after having deferred the majority of its management fees during the previous nine months.
Longtime venture capitalist Lou Volpe, a managing general partner at Waltham, Mass.-based Kodiak Venture Partners, believes Momentum's model is unique and would consider investing in a start-up seeded this way, but questions the firm's scalability. "Whipping a company into shape, enforcing operating discipline and building an executive team takes a lot of energy and time," Mr. Volpe said. "These guys are going to be limited with their scale."
Thus far, the firm has taken all seven of its start-ups to the Series A level, focusing on Los Angeles-area technology companies that require less than $10 million in funding to break even on a cash-flow basis. The seven have raised a total of $30 million in Series A funding from venture capitalists. The firm had its first exit in 2006 when Discovery Communications Inc. acquired Academy123 Inc., which had raised a $5 million Series A round the year after Momentum brought the company to venture firms Arcturus Capital and Hanseatic Group.
For Mr. Golan, it took about 10 months to get Sendio through the Momentum-coached process and into the hands of VC investor Kline Hawkes & Co., which provided $4 million in Series A capital in October 2006. Sendio now has about 275 customers. Earlier this year, it estimated it would have 1,500 customers and sell $7.8 million of product by the end of 2007."
More at:http://www.mvmpartners.com/
Via-Startupjournal
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Mochila's website is essentially an online marketplace for content
What Company is Offering:
Mochila is a way to offer articles, photos, audio and videos a la carte while dispensing with subscription fees and protecting authors' rights.
Mochila's website is essentially an online marketplace for content.
How It works:
Sellers offer up their wares along with price and any restrictions; buyers search for what they need and choose the best match. Content can be instantly downloaded into any publishing system, and purchases can be made in two ways: either by paying the price set by the original content owner, or by agreeing to post advertising along with the item, in which case the content is free. In the ad-supported arrangement, advertising revenue is shared among the buyer, the seller and Mochila.
For sellers, the benefits include new revenue opportunities and increased exposure; for buyers, decreased operational costs, more ad pages and revenue opportunities, and the rub-off effect of big-name content are among them. More than 1,000 media organizations have joined Mochila so far, including Reuters, the Associated Press and Hearst Magazines—you can't get much bigger than that.
World media spent just under USD 2 billion on syndicated news content last year, and that figure is expected to grow to USD 3 billion by 2008, Mochila says. The time is ripe for a new content model, and it looks like this one is taking hold. How about putting a niche or curator’s spin on the concept? (Related: Agency connects bloggers and press.)
More at: www.mochila.com
via-springwise
Mochila is a way to offer articles, photos, audio and videos a la carte while dispensing with subscription fees and protecting authors' rights.
Mochila's website is essentially an online marketplace for content.
How It works:
Sellers offer up their wares along with price and any restrictions; buyers search for what they need and choose the best match. Content can be instantly downloaded into any publishing system, and purchases can be made in two ways: either by paying the price set by the original content owner, or by agreeing to post advertising along with the item, in which case the content is free. In the ad-supported arrangement, advertising revenue is shared among the buyer, the seller and Mochila.
For sellers, the benefits include new revenue opportunities and increased exposure; for buyers, decreased operational costs, more ad pages and revenue opportunities, and the rub-off effect of big-name content are among them. More than 1,000 media organizations have joined Mochila so far, including Reuters, the Associated Press and Hearst Magazines—you can't get much bigger than that.
World media spent just under USD 2 billion on syndicated news content last year, and that figure is expected to grow to USD 3 billion by 2008, Mochila says. The time is ripe for a new content model, and it looks like this one is taking hold. How about putting a niche or curator’s spin on the concept? (Related: Agency connects bloggers and press.)
More at: www.mochila.com
via-springwise
Interwoven has acquired interactive marketing services firm Optimost for $52 million in cash
What Is Optimost: Optimost's solution optimizes virtually every online marketing element including landing pages, registration pages, shopping carts, credit card pages, banner ads, email creatives, and Web applications as well as every content type within them, including headlines, copy, forms, images, and rich media. By exposing different combinations of content to different visitors and then measuring visitors' actions, Optimost's solution can identify the most compelling combination of content and layout. The marketer can then offer the most effective presentation to visitors.
Why Interwoven Going To Acquire Optimost:
Interwoven has acquired interactive marketing services firm Optimost for $52 million in cash.
Interwoven has announced its intention to acquire Optimost, a pioneer of software and services for Website optimization. With Optimost, we will be able to offer the most advanced solution for accelerating conversion rates and online sales as well as enhanced capabilities for providing targeted content to Website visitors. Optimost's solution produces tangible business results and often double digit increases in online business performance.
More at:http://www.interwoven.com/
http://www.optimost.com/
Why Interwoven Going To Acquire Optimost:
Interwoven has acquired interactive marketing services firm Optimost for $52 million in cash.
Interwoven has announced its intention to acquire Optimost, a pioneer of software and services for Website optimization. With Optimost, we will be able to offer the most advanced solution for accelerating conversion rates and online sales as well as enhanced capabilities for providing targeted content to Website visitors. Optimost's solution produces tangible business results and often double digit increases in online business performance.
More at:http://www.interwoven.com/
http://www.optimost.com/
MerchantAdvantage with no transaction fees, no revenue share, and no set up costs, levels the playing field for small to mid-sized retailers
What Company is Offering:
MerchantAdvantage exists to address ecommerce marketing issues experienced by small to mid-sized online merchants, and to provide long-term, cost effective solutions. MerchantAdvantage with no transaction fees, no revenue share, and no set up costs, levels the playing field for small to mid-sized retailers by providing cost-effective solutions to test, manage, optimize, and analyze marketing campaigns and product catalog feeds
How It Works;
Channel Management with Chanalytics Professional and Lite empowers online merchants to market, test, manage, optimize, and analyze individual products, or entire product catalogs, to over 100 shopping destination sites to see which marketing channels perform best -- while keeping control of decisions, data, and business strategies with the retailer and eliminating the need for expensive third party services. Product specials apply for eBay Stores and ProStores Web Stores.
More at:http://www.merchantadvantage.com/
MerchantAdvantage exists to address ecommerce marketing issues experienced by small to mid-sized online merchants, and to provide long-term, cost effective solutions. MerchantAdvantage with no transaction fees, no revenue share, and no set up costs, levels the playing field for small to mid-sized retailers by providing cost-effective solutions to test, manage, optimize, and analyze marketing campaigns and product catalog feeds
How It Works;
Channel Management with Chanalytics Professional and Lite empowers online merchants to market, test, manage, optimize, and analyze individual products, or entire product catalogs, to over 100 shopping destination sites to see which marketing channels perform best -- while keeping control of decisions, data, and business strategies with the retailer and eliminating the need for expensive third party services. Product specials apply for eBay Stores and ProStores Web Stores.
More at:http://www.merchantadvantage.com/
Mint, the fresh,easy and intelligent way for people to manage their money onlineannounced that the company closed $4.7 million in Series A financing
What Company is Offering:
"Mint.com's mission is to provide people with an effective way to manage
their money that's so easy, they'll actually use it. And it's free,"
said Aaron Patzer, founder and chief executive officer, Mint. "Our
strong consumer acceptance, TechCrunch and Finovate awards and the
caliber of investors and management team the company has been able to
attract are encouraging signals that the market is ready for the Mint
alternative."(I have reviewd site earlier).
How Much They Got From VCs:
Mint, the fresh,easy and intelligent way for people to manage their money online,
today announced that the company closed $4.7 million in Series A financing in
a round led by Shasta Ventures, and including First Round Capital and a
group of prominent individuals, including Ram Shriram, early investor
and founding board member of Google, Inc. Since announcing its public
beta on September 18, 2007, Mint has signed 50,000 users, organized over $1 billion in user transactions and identified nearly $40 million in savings opportunities.
Who Joined Them:
Mint also announced that it has added two senior executives to the
company's management team. Donna Wells joined as chief marketing
officer. Ms. Wells was previously vice president of corporate marketing
and acting CMO at Intuit and senior vice president of marketing at
Expedia. Ms. Wells has also held senior marketing positions at Charles
Schwab & Co. and American Express during a twenty year career in
personal financial services and ecommerce. Aaron Forth was named vice
president of product. He was previously director of advertising,
product and infrastructure at eBay. Mr. Forth brings ten years' of
success in software product development and implementation to the Mint
leadership team.
Ms. Wells and Mr. Forth join Anton Commissaris, vice president of
business development and David K. Michaels, vice president of
engineering, who joined the company earlier this year. Mr. Commissaris
has over fifteen years' experience in the software and Internet sectors
and as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Mr. Michaels
has over ten years' experience building secure, distributed,
fault-tolerant systems, most recently leading the development of server
products for PGP.
How Is Market For Mint?...
The market potential for Mint is strong. Over 65 million people in the
U.S. use online banking to keep track of their finances today. But since
the average American has more than four bank relationships, it's
virtually impossible for them to get to a complete view of account
balances and spending. Others purchase and try desktop software
packages, but struggle with the lengthy setup process and hours of
tedious data entry that they require. Mint's refreshing value
proposition provides a clear, comprehensive and always-current picture
of all of a user's spending, effortlessly. And it offers intelligent,
personalized suggestions to save and earn more money, as well.
More at:http://www.mint.com/
"Mint.com's mission is to provide people with an effective way to manage
their money that's so easy, they'll actually use it. And it's free,"
said Aaron Patzer, founder and chief executive officer, Mint. "Our
strong consumer acceptance, TechCrunch and Finovate awards and the
caliber of investors and management team the company has been able to
attract are encouraging signals that the market is ready for the Mint
alternative."(I have reviewd site earlier).
How Much They Got From VCs:
Mint, the fresh,easy and intelligent way for people to manage their money online,
today announced that the company closed $4.7 million in Series A financing in
a round led by Shasta Ventures, and including First Round Capital and a
group of prominent individuals, including Ram Shriram, early investor
and founding board member of Google, Inc. Since announcing its public
beta on September 18, 2007, Mint has signed 50,000 users, organized over $1 billion in user transactions and identified nearly $40 million in savings opportunities.
Who Joined Them:
Mint also announced that it has added two senior executives to the
company's management team. Donna Wells joined as chief marketing
officer. Ms. Wells was previously vice president of corporate marketing
and acting CMO at Intuit and senior vice president of marketing at
Expedia. Ms. Wells has also held senior marketing positions at Charles
Schwab & Co. and American Express during a twenty year career in
personal financial services and ecommerce. Aaron Forth was named vice
president of product. He was previously director of advertising,
product and infrastructure at eBay. Mr. Forth brings ten years' of
success in software product development and implementation to the Mint
leadership team.
Ms. Wells and Mr. Forth join Anton Commissaris, vice president of
business development and David K. Michaels, vice president of
engineering, who joined the company earlier this year. Mr. Commissaris
has over fifteen years' experience in the software and Internet sectors
and as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Mr. Michaels
has over ten years' experience building secure, distributed,
fault-tolerant systems, most recently leading the development of server
products for PGP.
How Is Market For Mint?...
The market potential for Mint is strong. Over 65 million people in the
U.S. use online banking to keep track of their finances today. But since
the average American has more than four bank relationships, it's
virtually impossible for them to get to a complete view of account
balances and spending. Others purchase and try desktop software
packages, but struggle with the lengthy setup process and hours of
tedious data entry that they require. Mint's refreshing value
proposition provides a clear, comprehensive and always-current picture
of all of a user's spending, effortlessly. And it offers intelligent,
personalized suggestions to save and earn more money, as well.
More at:http://www.mint.com/
Jiibe is a new job-match service that is based on user-generated content
What company is offering:
Jiibe is a new job-match service that is based on user-generated content. That means reviews and feedback are aggregated and incorporated into a single profile for a particular company.
How It Works:
At Jiibe’s website, you’ll be invited to take a personality quiz. This is for getting to know your company, but it gets to know you as well. There are two sliders on the quiz, which lets you indicate the actual situation for each quiz question, as well as your ideal. Once you’ve completed the quiz, you can create a profile. Indicate the name of the company at which you work, and this data is added into the system for the creation of a company profile.
If you’re looking for a job, Jiibe will show you other companies that are a good match for you, based on these company profiles as well as your ideals. Filter results by the name of the company, industry, size, and the compatibility scale. If you read a company profile, you’ll see the description that Jiibe has laid out based on the quizzes of people that work there.
What's Different Features:
It looks like outside reviews of the company are pulled into the buzz section as well. This is a good addition, as it incorporates some third party premium and/or editorial content to a site that is completely based on UGC. It helps balance things out a bit.
For each company profile, employees (that are Jiibe users) are listed, and there’s also a bulletin board where Jiibe users can ask and answer questions regarding the company. Jiibe’s recommendation system will show you similar companies in relation to the one you’re currently viewing. Yo can check out user profiles as well, which will show a tag cloud of their ideals, their company, their friends, and the buzz going on around their company.
More at:http://jiibe.com/
Jiibe is a new job-match service that is based on user-generated content. That means reviews and feedback are aggregated and incorporated into a single profile for a particular company.
How It Works:
At Jiibe’s website, you’ll be invited to take a personality quiz. This is for getting to know your company, but it gets to know you as well. There are two sliders on the quiz, which lets you indicate the actual situation for each quiz question, as well as your ideal. Once you’ve completed the quiz, you can create a profile. Indicate the name of the company at which you work, and this data is added into the system for the creation of a company profile.
If you’re looking for a job, Jiibe will show you other companies that are a good match for you, based on these company profiles as well as your ideals. Filter results by the name of the company, industry, size, and the compatibility scale. If you read a company profile, you’ll see the description that Jiibe has laid out based on the quizzes of people that work there.
What's Different Features:
It looks like outside reviews of the company are pulled into the buzz section as well. This is a good addition, as it incorporates some third party premium and/or editorial content to a site that is completely based on UGC. It helps balance things out a bit.
For each company profile, employees (that are Jiibe users) are listed, and there’s also a bulletin board where Jiibe users can ask and answer questions regarding the company. Jiibe’s recommendation system will show you similar companies in relation to the one you’re currently viewing. Yo can check out user profiles as well, which will show a tag cloud of their ideals, their company, their friends, and the buzz going on around their company.
More at:http://jiibe.com/
GeniusRocket Is Launching Pad For Talents
What Company is Offering:
GeniusRocket is a new advertising platform, that’s looking to the creatives out there in order to create a marketplace where companies seeking a new ad campaign and artists can meet, collaborate.
How It works:
if you’re an artist and would like to get paid for the commercial use of your work, you can come to GeniusRocket and start posting. This is one way to create an online presence for yourself within the GeniusRocket community. Now any company looking for artists to work on a campaign can more easily find you. And GeniusRocket doesn’t let all this hard work on your part go to waste. The community can vote on user content, and every month GeniusRocket gives away a cash prize. So the community is leveraged for social networking purposes in order to give you more options for interaction, and a reason to keep coming back to the site, even if you’re not getting any gigs.
If you’d like to work with a group of people on a particular project, GeniusRocket can facilitate this as well. Say you’re a cinematographer in need of a graphic designer for part of your next video creation. Post this project on GeniusRocket and begin searching for graphic designers, while they search for you too. This is similar to how companies can also post projects in hopes of finding the right people to create its ad material. In this way, GeniusRocket works like Guru, in that it’s allowing companies to post their needs, state the price and timeline, and let the work find them.
In the same way that several other industries are aggregating talent and providing a level of outsourcing to freelancers, GeniusRocket is making talent more readily available and accessible for an affordable alternative to small and large businesses alike. If you spend less on the creation of your ad content, you have more room in your budget for its promotion.
More at:http://www.geniusrocket.com/
GeniusRocket is a new advertising platform, that’s looking to the creatives out there in order to create a marketplace where companies seeking a new ad campaign and artists can meet, collaborate.
How It works:
if you’re an artist and would like to get paid for the commercial use of your work, you can come to GeniusRocket and start posting. This is one way to create an online presence for yourself within the GeniusRocket community. Now any company looking for artists to work on a campaign can more easily find you. And GeniusRocket doesn’t let all this hard work on your part go to waste. The community can vote on user content, and every month GeniusRocket gives away a cash prize. So the community is leveraged for social networking purposes in order to give you more options for interaction, and a reason to keep coming back to the site, even if you’re not getting any gigs.
If you’d like to work with a group of people on a particular project, GeniusRocket can facilitate this as well. Say you’re a cinematographer in need of a graphic designer for part of your next video creation. Post this project on GeniusRocket and begin searching for graphic designers, while they search for you too. This is similar to how companies can also post projects in hopes of finding the right people to create its ad material. In this way, GeniusRocket works like Guru, in that it’s allowing companies to post their needs, state the price and timeline, and let the work find them.
In the same way that several other industries are aggregating talent and providing a level of outsourcing to freelancers, GeniusRocket is making talent more readily available and accessible for an affordable alternative to small and large businesses alike. If you spend less on the creation of your ad content, you have more room in your budget for its promotion.
More at:http://www.geniusrocket.com/
Mazda Design contest where users are competing to design the Mazda3 for the year 2018
Mazda Design contest where users are competing to design the Mazda3 for the year 2018. At any rate, the contest ran from September 25, to October 12, and gained nearly 300 design submissions from participants. Now that the Mazda design team has picked the top 10 entries for users to vote on, the contest is really getting good. You can vote for your favorite design on Facebook . The top 5 winners will be chosen in this manner, and these folks will get to work with Mazda for the final sketches, which will be posted for user voting at the end of the month.
The winner’s design will be revealed as a concept car at the LA auto show next month, and also get a $1,000 cash prize. Google is also holding design contests for moon rovers, for kids and adults alike.
Log at:http://www.facebook.com/login.php
The winner’s design will be revealed as a concept car at the LA auto show next month, and also get a $1,000 cash prize. Google is also holding design contests for moon rovers, for kids and adults alike.
Log at:http://www.facebook.com/login.php
Kumquat is a free tool that lets you find out what people really think about you
What company is About:
Kumquat allows anyone to quickly and easily solicit, capture, and manage feedback from their peers, superiors, clients, customers, fans, and family on projects, meetings, plans, on-going activities, communications, Web sites, blogs...
Kumquat is a free tool that lets you find out what people really think about you.
How It Works:
The idea behind Kumquat is to give you some control over the whole “feedback” process, which may or may not be good for all situations, but it does make things easier for you and those that are reviewing your work. It takes the formalized, third-party, over-the-shoulder stress out of receiving feedback from others.
The format of kumquat is much different than most other feedback tools that run in this space. When you set up a session to request feedback, you pick a set of dates, the areas in which you’d like to receive feedback, and then top it off with a message to be sent out to those you’d like feedback from. There doesn’t appear to be a way to create additional questions, however.
Alternatively, Kumquat can write this message for you. Choose if you’d like the feedback to be sent in anonymously from participants, and if you’d like other participants to see reviews of others. These requests for feedback can be saved in your file for later use.
More at:http://hellokumquat.com/
Kumquat allows anyone to quickly and easily solicit, capture, and manage feedback from their peers, superiors, clients, customers, fans, and family on projects, meetings, plans, on-going activities, communications, Web sites, blogs...
Kumquat is a free tool that lets you find out what people really think about you.
How It Works:
The idea behind Kumquat is to give you some control over the whole “feedback” process, which may or may not be good for all situations, but it does make things easier for you and those that are reviewing your work. It takes the formalized, third-party, over-the-shoulder stress out of receiving feedback from others.
The format of kumquat is much different than most other feedback tools that run in this space. When you set up a session to request feedback, you pick a set of dates, the areas in which you’d like to receive feedback, and then top it off with a message to be sent out to those you’d like feedback from. There doesn’t appear to be a way to create additional questions, however.
Alternatively, Kumquat can write this message for you. Choose if you’d like the feedback to be sent in anonymously from participants, and if you’d like other participants to see reviews of others. These requests for feedback can be saved in your file for later use.
More at:http://hellokumquat.com/
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