ONE of the regular complaints I hear as a financial journalist is that South Africa doesn't have a culture of investing in start-ups or promising entrepreneurs.
And yet venture capitalists argue there simply aren't enough businesses in which to invest; that they are crying out for investment opportunities.
Read the rest of this column on Fin24.com
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Online Chess Business ChessCube Receives VC Funding
ChessCube has concluded a US$1.25m funding agreement with Venture Capital fund, InVenFin (Pty) Ltd. InVenFin, the VC-focused subsidiary of VenFin Limited, invests in intellectual property-based start-ups with global potential. This transaction brings ChessCube’s total funding to date to US$1.8m.
ChessCube is an online chess site, which allows players of all skill levels to compete and learn chess, while socializing with others. With a potential market of over fifty million active chess players in the world, ChessCube.com has already attracted over 650,000 registered users across 207 countries – making it one of the leaders in the growing online chess market.
Mark Levitt, CEO and founder of ChessCube says, “We are delighted to have InVenFin on board as our partner. Over and above the valuable capital injection, InVenFin gives us access to an international business network, and their team of experts in branding, product strategy, intellectual property management and corporate structuring. This investment allows ChessCube to focus on establishing itself as the world leader in online chess.”
InVenFin’s Stuart Gast says, “ChessCube’s innovative product offering has impressed us, along with the strong team led by Mark. The social gaming space is growing rapidly worldwide, and we believe ChessCube represents an excellent entrance for us into this world. We look forward to assisting ChessCube achieve its aspirations.”
Vinny Lingham, CEO of San Francisco-based Yola.com, was an early investor in ChessCube. “As a keen chess player myself, it is particularly exciting to be part of an innovative chess venture,” said Lingham. “This investment by InVenFin further highlights the potential of Cape Town as the technology hub of Africa – which I like to dub Silicon Cape. ChessCube has enormous potential to dominate the massive global chess players’ market.”
The partnership between ChessCube.com and InVenfin will allow ChessCube.com to become the most recognized and loved online brand for chess enthusiasts.
ChessCube enables all levels of chess players to play live chess against other like-minded players, in various forms of the game. The focus at ChessCube.com is enjoying the game of chess in a positive and fun environment.
ChessCube.com also offers interactive chess videos written by international grandmasters. Unlike DVDs, these videos interact with each user, offering them personalised instruction – an outstanding innovation that earned ChessCube a Semi-final placing in the 2008 Adobe Max Awards in San Francisco.
World history was recently made by ChessCube when, during its recent sponsorship of the 2009 South African Open, along with the 400 participants at a Cape Town venue, for the first time in history three grandmasters and masters participated from a second venue in Melbourne, Australia. FIDE, the world chess federation, worked with ChessCube to ensure that the games, which were played across the Internet, were officially rated, setting a new precedent that could see tournaments using this technology in the future.
ChessCube continues to innovate and build on its award-winning chess playing platform from its Cape Town headquarters.
Useful links
ChessCube website: www.chesscube.com
ChessCube blog: www.blog.chesscube.com
ChessCube is an online chess site, which allows players of all skill levels to compete and learn chess, while socializing with others. With a potential market of over fifty million active chess players in the world, ChessCube.com has already attracted over 650,000 registered users across 207 countries – making it one of the leaders in the growing online chess market.
Mark Levitt, CEO and founder of ChessCube says, “We are delighted to have InVenFin on board as our partner. Over and above the valuable capital injection, InVenFin gives us access to an international business network, and their team of experts in branding, product strategy, intellectual property management and corporate structuring. This investment allows ChessCube to focus on establishing itself as the world leader in online chess.”
InVenFin’s Stuart Gast says, “ChessCube’s innovative product offering has impressed us, along with the strong team led by Mark. The social gaming space is growing rapidly worldwide, and we believe ChessCube represents an excellent entrance for us into this world. We look forward to assisting ChessCube achieve its aspirations.”
Vinny Lingham, CEO of San Francisco-based Yola.com, was an early investor in ChessCube. “As a keen chess player myself, it is particularly exciting to be part of an innovative chess venture,” said Lingham. “This investment by InVenFin further highlights the potential of Cape Town as the technology hub of Africa – which I like to dub Silicon Cape. ChessCube has enormous potential to dominate the massive global chess players’ market.”
The partnership between ChessCube.com and InVenfin will allow ChessCube.com to become the most recognized and loved online brand for chess enthusiasts.
ChessCube enables all levels of chess players to play live chess against other like-minded players, in various forms of the game. The focus at ChessCube.com is enjoying the game of chess in a positive and fun environment.
ChessCube.com also offers interactive chess videos written by international grandmasters. Unlike DVDs, these videos interact with each user, offering them personalised instruction – an outstanding innovation that earned ChessCube a Semi-final placing in the 2008 Adobe Max Awards in San Francisco.
World history was recently made by ChessCube when, during its recent sponsorship of the 2009 South African Open, along with the 400 participants at a Cape Town venue, for the first time in history three grandmasters and masters participated from a second venue in Melbourne, Australia. FIDE, the world chess federation, worked with ChessCube to ensure that the games, which were played across the Internet, were officially rated, setting a new precedent that could see tournaments using this technology in the future.
ChessCube continues to innovate and build on its award-winning chess playing platform from its Cape Town headquarters.
Useful links
ChessCube website: www.chesscube.com
ChessCube blog: www.blog.chesscube.com
Saturday, July 11, 2009
PPC and Venture Capitalists
Pay Per Click (PPC) seems to be the flavour of the moment with South African venture capital firms and I am a little surprised - I thought that the model was pretty mature and wouldn't have presented that many potential opportunities.
InVenfin recently invested in Ad Dynamo and a few months back HBD made a similar investment in another local player. Just find it quite interesting that this is where venture capitalists with quite a good "top-down" view of the industry decide to spend their money... Thoughts?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Pay Per Click Tech Company Receives VC Funding from InVenfin
Introduction
Ad Dynamo International has concluded a funding agreement with InVenFin (Pty) Ltd., which sees InVenFin providing venture capital funding to Ad Dynamo in return for equity.
About Ad Dynamo
Ad Dynamo was founded by Entelligence Limited.
Sean Riley takes on the role of Chief Executive Officer of Ad Dynamo, whose head office is in Cape Town. Ad Dynamo operates a pay per click advertising solution, which offers advertisers a cost effective means to market themselves online.
Ad Dynamo has already achieved a notable presence in South Africa, with some key advertisers and website publishers already partnering with the company. Future plans include rollout into International markets and the introduction of innovative advertising solutions that give both advertisers and website owners flexibility and choice.
The Ad Dynamo product offering
Ad Dynamo provides website operators with the ability to earn revenue from advertising on their websites. Any website can place a small snippet of code on their web page which delivers advertising onto the web page and the website owner starts earning revenue immediately. Revenues are shared transparently with website operators.
Ad Dynamo sources advertisers, allowing them to bid on keywords relevant to their products. These advertisements are then contextually delivered to the most relevant web pages, ensuring a non-intrusive advertising experience for users visiting a website, and increasing the likelihood of users interacting with the advertisement since it has contextual relevance to them.
Advertisers enjoy the popular Pay Per Click pricing model, and by setting a daily maximum budget, which manages expenditure, Ad Dynamo welcomes both small and large advertisers alike.
Over and above traditional contextual advertising, Ad Dynamo supports other advertising channels and has recently launched support for MXit advertising.
The Future
Ad Dynamo currently serves ads on over 155,000 unique web pages in South Africa, delivering over 40 Million ads per month. Ad Dynamo has secured a number of key website publishers and continues to expand its presence in the contextual ad delivery market place.
Ad Dynamo is poised to expand its offering on an International scale.
Sean Riley says: “We are pleased to have attracted venture capital funding from a VC fund as highly regarded as InVenFin. Not only do they bring capital, but access to an International business network and huge experience in commercialization. The investment allows Ad Dynamo to introduce its advertising technology into new global markets and to continue innovating its product offering.”
Ad Dynamo International has concluded a funding agreement with InVenFin (Pty) Ltd., which sees InVenFin providing venture capital funding to Ad Dynamo in return for equity.
About Ad Dynamo
Ad Dynamo was founded by Entelligence Limited.
Sean Riley takes on the role of Chief Executive Officer of Ad Dynamo, whose head office is in Cape Town. Ad Dynamo operates a pay per click advertising solution, which offers advertisers a cost effective means to market themselves online.
Ad Dynamo has already achieved a notable presence in South Africa, with some key advertisers and website publishers already partnering with the company. Future plans include rollout into International markets and the introduction of innovative advertising solutions that give both advertisers and website owners flexibility and choice.
The Ad Dynamo product offering
Ad Dynamo provides website operators with the ability to earn revenue from advertising on their websites. Any website can place a small snippet of code on their web page which delivers advertising onto the web page and the website owner starts earning revenue immediately. Revenues are shared transparently with website operators.
Ad Dynamo sources advertisers, allowing them to bid on keywords relevant to their products. These advertisements are then contextually delivered to the most relevant web pages, ensuring a non-intrusive advertising experience for users visiting a website, and increasing the likelihood of users interacting with the advertisement since it has contextual relevance to them.
Advertisers enjoy the popular Pay Per Click pricing model, and by setting a daily maximum budget, which manages expenditure, Ad Dynamo welcomes both small and large advertisers alike.
Over and above traditional contextual advertising, Ad Dynamo supports other advertising channels and has recently launched support for MXit advertising.
The Future
Ad Dynamo currently serves ads on over 155,000 unique web pages in South Africa, delivering over 40 Million ads per month. Ad Dynamo has secured a number of key website publishers and continues to expand its presence in the contextual ad delivery market place.
Ad Dynamo is poised to expand its offering on an International scale.
Sean Riley says: “We are pleased to have attracted venture capital funding from a VC fund as highly regarded as InVenFin. Not only do they bring capital, but access to an International business network and huge experience in commercialization. The investment allows Ad Dynamo to introduce its advertising technology into new global markets and to continue innovating its product offering.”
Thursday, April 30, 2009
fring gets 3rd round funding
fring™ (www.fring.com), the leading mobile Internet community and communication service, today announced the successful completion of its third round of funding to accelerate fring’s growth, openness and business activities. All previous fring investors participated in this round including U.S. based North Bridge Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners and VenFin Limited.
Avi Shechter, fring co-founder and CEO said: “With this new funding round we will accelerate the realization of our ongoing commitment to make fring even more accessible, relevant and easy to use, therefore reducing practical barriers for mainstream users as well as 3rd party developers and partners who have expressed continued interest in fring and the fring platform.” He continued, “Combining community, experience and communication fring is already turning the mobile into the ultimate social device by mashing up people’s favourite forms and modes of communication even beyond what the fixed PC environment can offer. With this new investment all our investors recognize our leadership in this emerging paradigm shift, and demonstrate their long-term commitment to our vision. We plan to add to the fring experience and make it an ever more central part of fringsters’ social lives”.
This additional funding will be used to continue making fring more easily accessible and relevant to users and partners. With more supported platforms, devices, add-on services contributed by developers worldwide, continuously improved usability and rich features, fring is turning the mainstream mobile device into the social nexus for users to share, interact and communicate with all their cross-community mobile and online friends. For example, fring users share experiences with friends on facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and more, while communicating via Skype®, MSN® Messenger, GoogleTalk TM, Yahoo!TM, AIM® and ICQ® among others, and further enhanced with functional and location based services like WeFi, all through a single social experience from their simple fring interface on their mobile device.
Shechter concluded, “Our millions of users actively sharing, interacting and communicating over fring today will benefit greatly as fring becomes even more accessible to the rest of the mobile world, ready to shift their online social nexus to their mobile phones.”
Avi Shechter, fring co-founder and CEO said: “With this new funding round we will accelerate the realization of our ongoing commitment to make fring even more accessible, relevant and easy to use, therefore reducing practical barriers for mainstream users as well as 3rd party developers and partners who have expressed continued interest in fring and the fring platform.” He continued, “Combining community, experience and communication fring is already turning the mobile into the ultimate social device by mashing up people’s favourite forms and modes of communication even beyond what the fixed PC environment can offer. With this new investment all our investors recognize our leadership in this emerging paradigm shift, and demonstrate their long-term commitment to our vision. We plan to add to the fring experience and make it an ever more central part of fringsters’ social lives”.
This additional funding will be used to continue making fring more easily accessible and relevant to users and partners. With more supported platforms, devices, add-on services contributed by developers worldwide, continuously improved usability and rich features, fring is turning the mainstream mobile device into the social nexus for users to share, interact and communicate with all their cross-community mobile and online friends. For example, fring users share experiences with friends on facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and more, while communicating via Skype®, MSN® Messenger, GoogleTalk TM, Yahoo!TM, AIM® and ICQ® among others, and further enhanced with functional and location based services like WeFi, all through a single social experience from their simple fring interface on their mobile device.
Shechter concluded, “Our millions of users actively sharing, interacting and communicating over fring today will benefit greatly as fring becomes even more accessible to the rest of the mobile world, ready to shift their online social nexus to their mobile phones.”
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Google launches venture cap offering...
Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We're studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care. We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.
More info here.
More info here.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Rival Industrial buys Bundublog
Niche market industrial publishing company Rival Industrial has purchased local blogging platform Bundublog effective 1 April 2009.
Bundublog is a South African focused free blogging community with around 130 active blogs with bloggers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently the site enjoys about 8000 unique visitors each month.
Rival Industrial owns stakes in niche market industrial titles including ManufacturingHub.co.za and Ferronews.com as well as remedial and special education website RemSpecED.
Marc Ashton speaking on behalf of Rival Industrial said: "The transaction serves two purposes for us - firstly it allows us to aggregate some of our niche content to a wider audience which helps us generate advertising revenue and secondly it ties in with our longer term strategy of developing an audience for syndicated internet radio content."
According to Ashton, more and more South Africans are taking to blogging.
He said: "Every day new blogs are being added to the aggregators, small businesses who can't afford a web presence are suddenly being given a free tool through which to market themselves and ordinary citizens on the ground in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are able to connect with the world and give us real-time feedback of events on the ground - it's seriously powerful if we can find ways to harness it correctly."
While the site will continue to focus on Africa, some changes are also planned to build the Bundublog experience including:
- Development of podcasts from bloggers
- Music platform for upstart South African bands to promote their talent
- A science and technology platform, in conjunction with ManufacturingHub.co.za aimed at skills development in this sector
Ashton concludes: "We're excited about the opportunity we've been presented by taking over Bundublog and we look forward to welcoming a whole host of new bloggers to the platform."
About the company
Rival Industrial is a Gauteng based corporate wellness, industrial research and publishing investment company.
The company holds stakes in ManufacturingHub.co.za - an online publication aimed at the South African food, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic manufacturing industries - as well as Ferronews.com which provides information on the ferrous metal industries in Africa.
Other investments include RemSpecED, a remedial and special education portal aimed at parents, teachers and therapists.
For further information
Tel: 082-561-1585
E-mail: webmaster@rival.co.za
www.rival.co.za
http://bundublog.com/
Bundublog is a South African focused free blogging community with around 130 active blogs with bloggers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently the site enjoys about 8000 unique visitors each month.
Rival Industrial owns stakes in niche market industrial titles including ManufacturingHub.co.za and Ferronews.com as well as remedial and special education website RemSpecED.
Marc Ashton speaking on behalf of Rival Industrial said: "The transaction serves two purposes for us - firstly it allows us to aggregate some of our niche content to a wider audience which helps us generate advertising revenue and secondly it ties in with our longer term strategy of developing an audience for syndicated internet radio content."
According to Ashton, more and more South Africans are taking to blogging.
He said: "Every day new blogs are being added to the aggregators, small businesses who can't afford a web presence are suddenly being given a free tool through which to market themselves and ordinary citizens on the ground in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are able to connect with the world and give us real-time feedback of events on the ground - it's seriously powerful if we can find ways to harness it correctly."
While the site will continue to focus on Africa, some changes are also planned to build the Bundublog experience including:
- Development of podcasts from bloggers
- Music platform for upstart South African bands to promote their talent
- A science and technology platform, in conjunction with ManufacturingHub.co.za aimed at skills development in this sector
Ashton concludes: "We're excited about the opportunity we've been presented by taking over Bundublog and we look forward to welcoming a whole host of new bloggers to the platform."
About the company
Rival Industrial is a Gauteng based corporate wellness, industrial research and publishing investment company.
The company holds stakes in ManufacturingHub.co.za - an online publication aimed at the South African food, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic manufacturing industries - as well as Ferronews.com which provides information on the ferrous metal industries in Africa.
Other investments include RemSpecED, a remedial and special education portal aimed at parents, teachers and therapists.
For further information
Tel: 082-561-1585
E-mail: webmaster@rival.co.za
www.rival.co.za
http://bundublog.com/
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Chemistry and innovation
For those with a little interest in commercial science / biotechnology investments, you might be interesting in this workshop here.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Maxum Incubator
The Maxum Incubator, together with University of Pretoria and IdeaBank are organising the first pre-incubation offering for young online entrepreneurs.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Artificial Intelligence
This is not strictly a Venture Capital related post but I think it is something that ties into the VC sector.
Artifiical Intelligence is one of the areas where Venture Capitalists might be investing in the next few years.
This blog post asked the question of whether a computer brain could ever have an "imagination" or be "creative".
Its a tough debate - maybe throw in your 10 cents worth?
Artifiical Intelligence is one of the areas where Venture Capitalists might be investing in the next few years.
This blog post asked the question of whether a computer brain could ever have an "imagination" or be "creative".
Its a tough debate - maybe throw in your 10 cents worth?
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