Guvera Raises $100 Million in 'Pre-IPO' Funding, Claims 15 Million Users Worldwide Guvera, an Australia-based music streaming service with a growing presence in India, has confirmed a $100 million “pre-IPO round” of funding. Speaking with The Australian Financial Review, chief executive Darren Herft said the company attracted investors from a “number of wealthy Australian families,” as well as private-equity group AMMA, which he co-founded. Herft did not disclose a timeline for the initial public offering (IPO) and said they are still deciding whether to list on the Australian Securities Exchange or Nasdaq in the United States. Late last month, streaming service Deezer abandoned its plan for an IPO on the Paris stock exchange because of “market conditions.” Deezer Abandons IPO Plans, Thanks In Part to Pandora and Apple Music Guvera says the latest funding round will be used to keep up with expansion in India, where it claims to have 6.5 million users, up from 3 million in April. "Part of the strategy to target emerging markets was about competition," Herft said.
Venture Capital - a European Story by Julie Meyer Julie Meyer (an edited and shorter version of this article appeared in the Financial Times on the 14th of April, but this is the original article) Venture Capital as an asset class is frequently derided as a failure in Europe. Speak to any fund of funds firm in Europe (and I have spoken to a hundred of them), and they will tell you that no one makes any money on venture capital in Europe. The big names in European early-stage venture in the late 1990’s have either moved upstream to buy-outs (Apax), disappeared (3i, NetPartners), been acquired (Quester, Frontiers Capital) or the investment teams have moved on (Benchmark, Add Partners, Atlas Ventures). Even the big venture capital firms do more growth capital than early stage/seed investments today. The reality of entrepreneurship in Europe however over the past decade and a half has changed dramatically. So, new successful tech-enabled firms are growing in Europe. What’s wrong with this picture? 1. 2. 3. So what’s the answer?
The History Of Web Design Explained In 9 GIFs Froont, a San Francisco company that makes tools for web designers, has created nine GIFs that show just how far web design has come in the past 25 years. If you've ever wondered why CSS is important, or why Flash died out, these GIFs will explain everything. The Monochrome era of web design, circa 1989. Think Lynx and other Unix-based web browsers that couldn't do more than squirt a little bit of text from one terminal to another through university networks. There's no graphical user interface, just a bunch of text and a blinking cursor. The beginning of the modern era, circa 1995. Luckily, Javascript came along to simplify things for designers. Although Flash has been all but killed by HTML5 now, in 1996, it represented a new freedom for web design: the ability for designers to animate the web any way they wanted. CSS. The advent of the iPhone created a whole new problem for designers in 2007: how do you design websites for smartphones with smaller screens? As for the future?
Slack's New Directory And Venture Fund Aim To Make The Service Even More Indispensable Two key facts about Slack may seem, at first blush, to be contradictory. On one hand, large numbers of companies have rapidly found it essential to their work. On the other, it can be surprisingly difficult to explain exactly what it is. Ten months ago, I called it a "business messaging and search tool." Tonight, at an event in San Francisco, the company is revealing that it's reached 2 million users daily active users, over half a million of whom work for companies that are paying customers. One of the announcements is about something so obvious that it's a little surprising it doesn't already exist. Even without the directory, Slack users have been setting up integrations between the service and other products with abandon: Slack says that there are more than 4,000 such integrations available, and they've been installed more than 2.2 million times. "Our mission is to make work better, more productive, simpler, more pleasant," says April Underwood, Slack's head of platform.
Walt Disney to invest $200 million in Vice Media The White House Joins Medium Hello, Medium! It’s the White House. We’re really excited to be here. We’ll use this account to share ideas and stories from President Obama and his administration — from a look at what’s happening inside the White House to information about policies that will help more working Americans get ahead. And today, we’re jumping right in. Ahead of the President’s visit to a tech hub in Los Angeles, he published a post about innovation in America and what the economy looks like for Millennials. “One of the reasons I’m so confident about America’s future is that I’m confident in you.” — President Obama On Medium, you can expect to hear more from President Obama and his administration on issues from technology and innovation to education and the economy. And at a time when citizens have more options for engaging with their government than ever before, here’s the most important thing: we want to hear from you.
Building the World Whyd Soundsystem Building the World Whyd Soundsystem It’s finally a reality. The internet has realized a lot of dreams. People have met their spouses through dating sites. People have learned nearly every skill that a person can possess from languages to metallurgy. People have made friends around the world based on interests, and have caused revolution in the physical world. No, I’m not talking about the terabytes of MP3s that were downloaded in the Napster days (and that some people are still downloading illegally today). Example: an artists in Slovakia creates new music, puts it on Soundcloud and shares it with the world. Artists can find their audiences no matter where they are in the world, under melting glaciers or under tents in the scorching desert. And what used to be the step in between, the download, is no longer necessary. But music is inseparable from the place where it is consumed, and the city is the epicenter. This is the true music scene. Never stop jamming
The Three People Who Matter Most in Your Network We’ve all seen the Power Networker in action: working the room, flitting from conversation to conversation, a bulge of business cards in his jacket pocket. He’s quick with a handshake and even quicker with an elevator pitch. He’s there to meet as many people as possible. He’s also doing it wrong. I recently sat down to discuss the building blocks of a lean, effective network with my colleague, author, and behavioral economics expert Gary Belsky. Building a network you do understand means taking a strategic approach to new relationships. The Hub One of the most critical elements of a well-curated network, the Hub is a person with connections—lots of connections. Unlike the harried Power Networker above, the Hub connects with purpose—specifically, to do you a favor. The Mentor Like the Hub, the Mentor is a seasoned veteran with considerable industry experience. The Rising Star She’s young, smart, driven—and she really wants to connect with you. You won’t have to seek out the Rising Star.
9 Tips to Cold-Call VCs Like a Pro — Point Nine Land 9 Tips to Cold-Call VCs Like a Pro Fundraising sucks, but it sucks even more if you don’t have connections to the investors. Here some tips to get in touch with them. #1 Do NOT cold call. Get a warm intro instead Some stats to start with: At Point Nine, we see around 5,000 companies per year.But more than 50% of the investments we do come from intros through our network. Still, around 5% of the investments we do, cold emailed us in the first contact. There’s a reason for that, when somebody is intro’ing a company, this person already filtered the quality of the startup — which makes the life of a lazy VC easier ;-) Since not everybody has connections into the VC world — here are some recommendations to connect, the next tips are about increasing the chances of getting a reply when cold calling/emailing. #2 Be relevant. If you are cold calling a VC, nobody will pre-filter how relevant is your company for that fund. Therefore, you need to do some research to build a list of relevant VCs. b) Stage
THE TOP SITES IN 9 LATAM COUNTRIES: What You Need to Know In which four Latin American countries does LinkedIn make the top 10 list? Which countries have a particularly large number of local players among the leading sites? And what country has no less than three financial institutions among its top 10 players? As expected, Google continues to lead the lists of the 10 most-visited sites in different Latin American countries, according to comScore in September 2015. In the majority of the countries that comScore covered for the September 2015 survey (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México, Perú, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela), one thing doesn't change: Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are all in the top four positions on the lists of the 10 most-visited sites, with a few exceptions. Another constant is the presence of LinkedIn in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Latin America - The "Big Four" Lead Overall COMMENT: Google leads the ranking of the 10 most-visited sites in Latin America with a market share of 23.6%.
Sons of the Clouds (2012) Ghostly Transcends Its Record Label Roots to Sell an Ethos Photo At the Ghostly Store, an online boutique, you can buy wristwatches, leather wallets, gallery-quality art prints, coffee beans, notebooks and a special line of Warby Parker eyeglasses. And if you’re interested, you can also buy the latest downloads and vinyl from electronic artists like Gold Panda and Tycho. Ghostly International began as a record label in 1999, and it has built a solid reputation on the indie fringes of the industry. A diversified product line can be a smart survival strategy in a struggling business, which the music industry continues to be 16 years after Napster shattered the highly profitable model of selling CDs. Instead, like a tiny neighborhood shop that caters to a refined clientele, Ghostly presents itself as an arbiter of fine goods for a certain kind of taste-conscious cultural consumer. “People care about provenance, and they care about ethics,” said Mr. “Disney World is not just the rides, not just Mickey Mouse, not just the merchandising,” Mr.
Year in Pictures 2012 In January, Water.org kicked off additional programming in the Central Plateau of Haiti. Meetings with DINEPA, the Haitian government water quality regulatory authority, took us to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince near where these homes crowd the hillsides outside Penionville, Haiti. During a site visit in February, a woman in Bangalore, India collects water to take home from a public water connection. Rig operators make progress on drilling a deep borehole well near La Jeune, Haiti. Water.org co-founders Matt Damon and Gary White visited programs in Haiti to evaluate water projects and visit communities in need. Kids make up games while waiting in line. Every day, Haitians congregate at this river to wash, bathe, and collect the day's cooking and drinking water. A boy proudly displays his family's new toilet in India, decorated for a visit from Water.org's local partners. Women conduct water-quality testing in Karikili, India. Mrs. Applying for a WaterCredit Microloan.