Actionality
LocationMunich, Germany
URLwww.actionality.com
Founded 2005
CEO Scott Cullinane
Employees 15
Funding Amount undisclosed, 1 round
Key Investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
The world of mobile marketing is eagerly awaiting the World Cup this summer. National pride and football mania aside, the series of matches that will be beamed live to the smallest of handset screens will provide more evidence that content is going mobile. Where content goes, ads follow. According to Ovum, the current mobile advertising market is estimated to be $1.26 billion. Enter companies like Munich-based Actionality, which makes technology designed to simplify the pumping of ads and marketing pitches to mobile devices. Actionality has some nifty technology. Now it needs customers.
Bayt.com
LocationDubai, United Arab Emirates
URLwww.bayt.com
Founded 2000
CEO Rabea Ataya
Employees 150
Funding $3 million,1 round
Key Investors InterArab Management
Rabea Ataya has successfully created an Internet property in a region where wealthy investors traditionally have preferred to put their money in real estate, natural resources, and construction—not technology. The entrepreneur has built up the profitable job search site and set up offices in other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait. The site bridges information gaps for professionals and gives companies opportunities to recruit top talents from a broad region. More than 1 million job seekers and 20,000 companies have signed up. But as Internet penetration grows, Bayt can expect more competition.
CacheLogic
LocationCambridge, U.K.
URLwww.cachelogic.com
Founded 2002
CEO Adam Twiss
Employees 35
Funding $11 million,3 rounds
Key Investors The CambridgeGateway Fund, Pentech Ventures, 3i
“For media companies,” says CacheLogic CTO Andrew Parker, “using P2P [peer-to-peer] can reduce distribution costs by order of magnitude.” That’s because users share files and pieces of files among themselves rather than tapping one single source. But there’s a downside. “In reality, you’re transferring cost onto ISPs instead,” he says. With illicit file-sharing going strong, and content owners following AOL, Sky, and the BBC’s lead in offering P2P-aided programming, worldwide Internet service providers are lining up to buy CacheLogic’s hardware—which caches files to avoid redundant traffic. But the company’s quick growth could be threatened if a giant like Cisco jumps into the market.
CiscoFON
LocationMadrid, Spain
URLwww.fon.com
Founded 2005
CEO Martin Varsavsky
Employees 40
Funding $21.7 million,1 round
Key Investors Skype, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital
While grassroots Wi-Fi has failed before, FON appears to have the timing and the business model right. In exchange for letting other people use their Internet connections, FON users get free access to Wi-Fi networks of other members. Users can charge other members if they want to, and those who don’t provide broadband access pay $2 a day to use the service. Its success depends in part on the cooperation of Internet service providers. Large ISPs are bound to block access, but smaller ones are expected to view FON as an additional source of revenue.
Intamac Systems
LocationNorthampton, U.K.
URLwww.intamac.com
Founded 2000
CEO Kevin Meagher
Employees 13
Funding $3.8 million, 3 rounds
Key Investors Catapult Venture Managers, Katalyst Ventures, London Seed Capital, Pace Micro Technology, Boon Investors, Ariadne Capital Investors
The term “digital home” may soon move beyond entertainment, thanks to Intamac Systems. The company helps partners such as British Telecom and BellCanada offer new services like Internet-monitored home alarms and the networking of different devices, from cooking appliances to medical equipment, within the household. Intamac’s end-to-end services enable the companies to provide “true Web 2” features to their own customers. While early adopters may find all this nifty, Intamac’s proclamations may sound too futuristic for average consumers to swallow in the short term—perhaps making some communications companies hesitant to purchase Intamac’s technology just yet.
Interoute
LocationLondon, U.K.
URLwww.interoute.com
Founded 1995
Chairman James Kinsella
Employees 450+
Funding N/A
Key Investors Sandoz Family Foundation
What began as a traditional European telecom play in 1999 has emerged as a major player in network and Internet services. Interoute’s network connects 61 cities in 16 countries, and delivers a range of products and services including network infrastructure, managed bandwidth, ethernet, Internet, virtual private networks, VoIP services, and media streaming to wholesale and enterprise customers. Despite taking on Skype in the VoIP sector, Interoute faces other competitive challenges in the wholesale and enterprise spaces as well. The upside for the company is that it owns a massive and growing network.
Open Plug
Location Sophia Antipolis, France
URL www.open-plug.com
Founded 2002
CEO Eric Baissus
Employees 35
Funding $5.57 million, 1 round
Key Investors Eophia-EuroLab, I-Source, Auriga Partners, Siparex
Developing mobile phones is a big business, and increased demand for complex models built on components from droves of suppliers presents an increasing challenge to the industry. Open Plug’s FlexibleWare technology is a software development platform designed to streamline the design process for new phones by simplifying the way separate pieces of software communicate with one another and phone hardware. This means new handsets can be configured more quickly and upgrades distributed more easily.
Rawflow
Location London, U.K.
URL www.rawflow.com
Founded 2003
CEO Mikkel Dissing
Employees 13
Funding $4 million, 1 round
Key Investors Benchmark Capital
The market for high-quality video distribution over the Internet is heating up, and London’s Rawflow has something special to add: peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming. The company, which says it is just starting to negotiate large deals, licenses its servers and clients to content providers such as the Danish Broadcast Corporation. It’s looking to expand its customer list to aggregators like YouTube, as well as Internet carriers like Level 3. Broadcasting content over the Internet could make cable and IPTV walled gardens irrelevant. But the market lost a bit of steam in March when fellow Benchmark-funded P2P distributor Kontiki sold itself for a low bid to VeriSign.
Skinkers
LocationLondon, U.K.
URLwww.skinkers.com
Founded 2000
CEO Matteo Berlucchi
Employees 35
Funding $4 million, 2 rounds
Key Investors Directors, private individuals, New Media Spark
Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 song “57 Channels And Nothin’ On” decried content overload on cable TV. Today his lament sounds quaint with the infinite amount of information—TV included—on the Internet. Skinkers’ desktop alerts can be set so that the user first sees those bits she or he deems most important. These include desktop news, marketing alerts, and corporate notifications for employees. Sounds nifty enough, but this is a crowded market where similar products abound: examples include widgets that lie dormant until, say, a tsunami alert pops up, not to mention MSN Alerts and offerings from small companies such as Admonkey and AtHoc.
Spreadshirt
LocationLeipzig, Germany
URLwww.spreadshirt.net
Founded 2002
CEO Lukasz Gadowski
Employees 200
Funding N/A
Key Investors N/A
Online sales can be the lifeline of independent authors and underground musicians who sell books and records no other way. Those unfamiliar with Internet commerce, though, may balk at the technology or the sense that it takes too much work. Spreadshirt promises to help anyone wanting a solid sales presence on the web—its shop site integrates with a seller’s own, making for a seamless buyer experience. It doesn’t help just indie artists; Coca-Cola is also a customer. But even by its own admission, Spreadshirt’s idea and technology aren’t particularly earth-shattering, and though competition isn’t fierce, there’s plenty of it.
Tao Group
LocationReading, U.K.
URLwww.tao-group.com
Founded 1992
CEO Ray Burgess
Employees 80
Funding $50 million, 5 rounds
Key InvestorsMotorola, Sony, Bowman Capital, NEC, Kyocera
Tao Group’s recently launched intent Games Player aims to solve one of mobile game developers’ biggest headaches: hundreds of handsets that require developers to rewrite content for each one. intent allows games to be written in native code once and used on multiple platforms. Tao’s revenues more than doubled last year; top customers include HTC, Panasonic, and NEC. The company expects to be profitable this year, according to Tao Chairman Francis Charig. CEO Ray Burgess plans to focus the company on the mobile device market, but handset manufacturers may prefer to adapt content themselves instead of purchasing a solution. Nokia, for example, announced its own games development platform in December.
Targetize Innovative Solutions
LocationHertzelia Pituach, Israel
URLwww.targetize.com
Founded 2004
CEO Avichai Levy
Employees 15
Funding $1 million, 1 round
Key Investors Exalink
Mobile services, particularly in the United States, are lacking due to poor usability and little relevant content. Targetize Innovative Solutions’ mobile search tools improve the end-user experience with free text search, simple interfaces, and source integration. Happy users means more profit for the service provider; a built-in relevance mechanism also means advertisements stand a better chance of getting read. Universal Music and the Jerusalem Post are already Targetize customers, and the company plans to open offices in England, Russia, and the United States this year. But this is becoming a lucrative market that is already crowded with competitors like Medio Systems, MotionBridge, and JumpTap.
The Cloud
LocationLondon, U.K.
URLwww.thecloud.net
Founded 2003
CEO George Polk
Employees 100
Funding $31.5 million, 2 rounds
Key Investors 3i, Accel Partners, Provider
With the April signing of a roaming agreement with iPass, which offers over 50,000 wireless hot spots in 160 countries, the Cloud is now well positioned to provide Wi-Fi access to consumer and business markets across Europe, says CEO George Polk. The Cloud’s wireless network covers key venues in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, and Norway, including airports, hotels, coffee shops, and urban zones. It offers its Wi-Fi infrastructure to Internet service providers, mobile operators, and cable companies that want to sell their own branded service. However, The Cloud competes with many of the large telcos that it also counts as customers.
The Light Agency
LocationLondon, U.K.
URLwww.thelightagency.com
Founded 2002
CEO Marc Lewis
Employees 18
Funding $4 million, 4 rounds
Key Investors Living Capital
Next time you see a text message, it could be a discount coupon from a grocery chain, courtesy of The Light Agency. The company holds out the promise of text messaging as a cheap and easy marketing tool for retailers and brands. For opt-in customers of large stores, it runs text message marketing campaigns that can offer users everything from discount coupons to loyalty rewards. The Light Agency has signed some big customers in the United Kingdom, including the Sainsbury’s grocery chain, as well as multinationals Procter & Gamble and Unilever, but it will have to run campaigns carefully to avoid annoying users already fed up with an increasing amount of mobile spam.
Touch Clarity
LocationLondon, U.K.
URLwww.touchclarity.com
Founded 2000
CEO Tim Brown
Employees 42
Funding $16.2 million, 2 rounds
Key Investors Alta Berkeley, JVP, The Capital Fund
Web marketing’s biggest danger is user annoyance. Touch Clarity’s “self-learning” technology targets onsite promotional content at individual users. Its mathematical algorithm develops a real-time profile of the user to determine to what he or she will best respond. The company’s adaptation of artificial intelligence makes it a true tech company, not just another marketing service provider. The numbers say it all: visitor response increases by up to 200 percent; sales, by up to 70 percent. But it’s crucial that Touch Clarity build on key sectors in the
United States, an endeavor the company itself admits has proved difficult for European businesses.