Archive for: startup
Here in the UK it seems quite difficult to get a technology startup off the ground if you’re not based in London. However, there is a new startup accelerator that is aiming to help the tech startups in the Midlands (Birmingham). The Oxygen Accelerator a UK-based investment programme designed to intensively mentor super-early stage startups.
Oxygen will be running a 13 week program that will provide a £20,000 loan in return for 6% equity stake in your company. It seems like a good deal on the surface, but a loan in exchange for equity isn’t really the best way to start off your company. This loan doesn’t need to be repaid until your startup raises more investment. 
It’s also unusual in that the £200,000 fund covering 10 teams is coming from one individual businessman with no previous history in the tech industry.
It will be interesting to see if this kind of accelerator will work here in the UK. It seems like this idea is a very interesting one, and even possibly something the Government should look at to accelerate technology startups.
Yandex the very popular Russian search engine has just launched their own startup investment program, Yandex.Factory. The program offers funding opportunities to Russian and international projects.
The investment program will focus on seed and early stage investments of up to hundreds of thousands US dollars.
“Yandex is growing fast. We are full of ideas, but it’s not always easy to do everything at once. If we spot a young, talented team of like-minded people doing interesting and relevant things on the market, we are eager to support them in all possible ways, including financing. We feel it is important that the industry keeps growing and we have an opportunity to make sure it does,” says Ksenia Yolkina, Project Manager of Yandex.Factory.
To join the Yandex.Factory program, startup teams in Russia or the CIS can present their projects at the company’s traditional open-doors event, Yandex.Start. International teams can send their application at ventures@yandex-team.ru. To learn more about the Yandex.Factory program, please visit the program’s web page.
There was 2003, and a young fellow by the name of Mark Zuckerberg started with a draft idea for a social network; and the name he came up with was FaceMash.com. Now, more than 7 years later, the final social network name Facebook.com has over 500 million users and FaceMash.com is for sale.
This was Zuckerberg first domain for the Harvard social network, which apparently was a college version for “Hot or Not”. The idea of a social network started to grow, and the domain name selected end up with Facebook.com in 2004. By 2007, Mark Zuckerberg did not renew the first domain name and Rahul Jain took it.
FaceMash.com is now for sale in Flippa. The auction started at U$S8000, and the current bid is at U$S19000 with 15 days to go.
If you have an idea for a social network startup, then this is the domain name for you.
Crunchyroll was born in 2006, hosting a mix of user submitted and site provided anime clips, many of which were uploaded without rights holders permission, although infringing videos were usually removed by site admin. Despite this somewhat bumpy start, Crunchyroll quickly gained a vast userbase, climbing into Alexa’s top 200 within 2 years of its conception, and got funded at the beginning of last year (March) by Venrock (a California based venture capital firm) to the tune of about $4 million USD.
A stricter approach to copyright infringement and the weight of their user base and a newly cut, seven figure cheque behind them meant that they were able to secure content licensing deals with Japanese providers, bringing exclusive and simulcast content over from Japan to their largely American audience. They now stream and broadcast only content to which they have legitimate license, and operate a membership program to get access to content earlier than it’s normally available for streaming, and to watch high-def versions of videos.
I think this is a great example of a site managing to turn popular appeal into a solid business model in the icanhascheezburger.com mould. Take a pretty unique type of content, build a user base, and exploit that user base hard and fast, while trimming away any hint of illegality. Skating the Web 2.0 copyright infringment maelstrom for a while might be dangerous, but once you’ve got the traffic, then you’ve got bargaining power, and if you can get some financial backing, or really get on top of your advertising proposition then the rewards can be huge.
Yahoo has confirmed that is has purchased a small start-up located in San Francisco in order to add better photo functionality to their Web Mail. The company which has been bought out is called Xoopit and is an emerging contender in the photo sharing world. The service allows users to share photos easily on a host of different sites such as Flickr and Facebook by taking them from their e-mail inboxes.
On the company blog, Bryan Lamkin, the senior vice-president said:
“ Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, email is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we’re making it all that much easier for you.”
Xoopit seems over the moon with the new deal. They have updated their homepage screaming Yahoo! everywhere. On their company blog they said that “the Xoopit team today sees this acquisition as an exceptional path for us in achieving our vision. Over the last few months, we have left every conversation with the Yahoo! team thinking that together we can wow the world”
The specific financial deal has not been revealed but it is estimated to be in the region of $20 million. That amount of money is no chump change for a new group of start-up creators who will hopefully go on to create even better websites and services in the future.
TechCrunch has been a well known site for everything tech and media related. With millions of readers and followers, TechCrunch has done an amazing job in helping young fledgling startups get noticed. What began as TechCrunch 20, then 40, and now 50, it looks to once again be the opportunity that every startup is waiting for.
In just under a week the San Francisco Design Center Concourse will be transformed into a showcase floor for entrepreneurs, new technology, and VC’s looking for the “next big thing.” The DemoPit, where all the magic happens. Paired with this display are panels of speakers who will share their thoughts and expertise with the attendees, expected to be over 900 this year alone.
The event gives the startups an opportunity to share, explain, and possibly have their ideas funded. Companies have a high chance of being launched at this event, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Thanks to all the sponsors who help support and foster an event where these startups can find growth and a possible future!
Keep track of this event, and check back here for some of the highlights of the event.
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