Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Om Malik is saying SixApart is landing a $12m series C.

Aha! I had been expecting this one for some time now. Om is reporting (unverified, and I just checked with him on ichat, still unverified) that SixApart is probably raising $12m on a $100m pre-money valuation. Investors could include Intel this time. Is August Capital following as well ?

So, 12 on 100, that’s a 12/112=10.7% for the new guys. If there’s 3 of them, that’s not much right? Let’s say each puts in $4m.

Om is asking VERY rightly so: “The big question is what is the exit for Six Apart. An IPO? That would make sense given their subscription model layered on top of hot-new trend of blogging (at least from Wall Street perspective) and possibility of another “eyeball” revenue stream. But what if no IPO happens? Who buys them? My bet is that it won’t be someone like Yahoo, because the deal is already too rich for Sunnyvale gang. The best fit would of course be someone like News Corp.”

Now, let’s say the exit is at $350m. (just made it up. MySpace went for about 50% more). 1/3 of 10.7% is an 3.5% equity stake. so the new investors are getting a value of $12.5m. Not bad but not great for a $4m investment. only 3x.

I would love to have some answers to these random thoughts:

• what’s the current turnover of SixApart ? I hear through the grapewine they might have c. 150K paying subs (for Typepad, as LiveJournal is free) around the world. If I assume  a $7.15 ARPU per month (I’m betting 60% on price plan A, 30% on B, and 10% on C), that’s about $85.8/year, so about $12,9m in revenues for Typepad. Add maybe 10K paying users for MT, at maybe at an average of $250 a copy. That’s $2.5m extra. So basically in the $15m range. Their current valuation would then be in the 6.6x revenues. A bit high if SixApart can’t sustain growth. Anyone care for a deeper analysis ?
• I haven’t seen much innovation on the interface, mobile integration nor web services to enable bloggers to monetize their content.There was an initiative called project COMET announced at some point for early 2006. Enhancing the service is key to keep recruiting customers and keeping marketshare.
• $12m extra doesn’t seem to be a lot, at times when Slingmedia raises a $47m series B, or FON raises a $21.7 series A. What’s the money raised for ? To pay for additional infrastructure (as demonstrated by the recent outages), or to spend in marketing? or to expand to new countries (I understand SixApart is strong today in the USA, France and Japan) ?

To finish, we remember that SixApart raised $10m in october 04, so 16 months ago. A $10m ticket might have meant a $20–30m pre-money valuation (ie. a 25% to 33% dilution round). If it’s now up to $100m, that’s a nice value creation (or should I say valuation creation) in just 16 months. Let’s hope there’s an EBIT comparable somewhere…

update: information confirmed on SixApart's Europen VP, on 16 March 2006 morning. Focus Ventures is joined by Intel Capital & August Capital in this round.

3GSM: cocktail at the Streamezzo booth

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Thanks to Streamezzo, and to its CEO, Stéphane Roder who makes a cameo appearance, we had a nice taste of Spain during the 3GSM, with 2 flamenco dancers, a singer and a guitarist…

That was Wednesday, just the first of all the parties we attended that day.

alpha-testing edgeio

edgeio, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

got my alpha test invitation to edgeio a couple of days ago. It's supposed to launch on February 27th.

At first glance, it has a very slick interface, very web 2.0. No wonder, one of the co-founders, is the world-famous Mike Arrington of techcrunch !

What is it ? from their about page:

“What is edgeio?

    edgeio dynamically organizes listings published from RSS enabled websites making them discoverable via the edgeio website and through an open set of web services. Our goal is to give publishers of all sizes the means to control how their content is published, discovered, and consumed. By doing so, edgeio provides everyone easy, up to date, access to content from the Internet's edge.

    Anyone with an RSS enabled website can publish content through edgeio. Using tags, publishers direct edgeio to index and organize their content. No more listing fees, complicated forms to fill in, and struggling to keep content synchronized across multiple websites. Just post it, use appropriate tags, and edgeio takes care of the rest.

    A blogger can publish an item for sale and have it listed on edgeio within a matter of seconds. An auto dealer with an RSS enabled website can publish their inventory in real-time to edgeio's network. Using tags indicating location, realtors can reach buyers in specific communities around the world. Podcasters and video bloggers, can use tags to describe their work making it easily discoverable in the edgeio network of websites.”

I'm not sure whether I really understand what it really is or what it's meant to be. A Craig's list of anything RSS ? A search engine in the spirit of Technorati, but using only TAGS to find content ? There's a BusinessWeek article describing it a bit more. It has a lot of bells & whistles, such as geographic search, but the baseline I think is that it extends the tag system pioneered by Flickr to make any tag in the world searchable in a central repository in an easy way. Businessweek talks about a number of B-models, but I guess that like anything web 2.0 these days (think digg.com here), a critical mass is what the founding team is after.

Anyone else testing the service out there ? Jeff ?

(by the way, I used the program I talked about in the previous post to capture a screenshot and post directly to flickr…)

Google buys MeausureMap

Had anyone spotted this latest acquisition by Google : MeasureMap ?

Again from the Download Squad:

“Yesterday Veen announced on the official Google Blog that he and Measure Map have been acquired by Google. Measure Map is an interesting take on web stats, so I'm curious what Google has in mind for it, and in particular how it fits in with Google Analytics (nee Urchin). If I had one guess, it would be that Google intends to integrate Measure Map with their own blogging service, Blogger.”

Easy screenshot-to-Flickr uploading

The nerd in me had to spot the coolness of this little freeware. Indeed so many of us bloggers spend time blogging screeshots…

From the Download squad:

“Here's a cool tool with possibly the most awkward name ever: Flickr & WEBIMAGER. Yes, that's its name. It's a Windows app whose sole purpose is to take screen captures and upload them directly to Flickr. Simply use the built-in tools to capture the whole screen or a particular area, then click on the Upload button to give it a title and send it off to Flickr. It has a few other features like resizing, saving to disk, and some effects, and it'll also manage multiple Flickr accounts.”

 

Index Ventures invests in a $4m series A round in an online paperdoll venture: stardoll

 This one had to raise one of my eyebrows of course: Index is a serious investor, and until now, I had never looked at this phenomenon of tamagochis online. I know basically nothing about stardoll or barbie.com… but a couple of random thoughts:

• tapping into very young internet users early on is probably a good idea if you want to create a long lasting relationship. The first to offer them an email address, an IM ID, a place to store their digital life, or even hang out is probably a winner. Stardoll is maybe trying to capture this. As they say with cigarette brands: you randomly choose your first brand, then stick to it.
• playing with an online avatar creates lots of stickiness, and hence page views and loyalty. WoW is an example, Taatu might become another. If you create an emotional bond with a character (such as what tamagochis did), then you are bound to hand around the site: this creates opportunities for e-commerce and advertising.
• I wonder what the social network implications (you know, the dreaded web 2.0) are for pre-teens: consumer research in a number of industries (toys, food, TV, music, clothing) ? group recommendation? Indeed pre-teens tend to gave a very strong community effect.

There was a trend recently catering towards the elderly (including Honda’s ASIMO) because it is a growing segment of population with a large wallet. I guess targeting the other end is astute, and they influential power is not negligible.

Thanks to Valerie for spotting this, and reporting it on the a:c euro. The press release is here.

3GSM: a chat with Patrick Parodi, chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum

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And surprise, in this video, Patrick tells us he is no longer with PacketVideo Network Solutions, an Alcatel company, but that he has joined a new startup, backed by Accel & Sequioa Capital, aiming to bring to the mobile medium what has been mising so far: advertising.

And you will even get a preview demo here… Isn’t this camera always in the right place ?

And of course, since you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that Patrick is the chairman of the industry association, the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

3GSM: the Real Networks party

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At Palau Muxio, an amazing 17th century palace in the Barri Gotic, where Real NetworksReal Networks was hosting its party. Some of us decided it was time by midnight to have some real fun after 3 hard days of work…

RSS (I think I'll stop the numbers): meet John-Paul Lepers, journalist with a grain of salt

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John-Paul is a very well known French journalist, covering both international & domestic affairs, with a political twist onto everything. I first introduced him here.

His book was released only 2 weeks ago, and with virtually no TV apperance, his book has had 4 reprints (over 44,000 copies), and is already in the top 20 of book charts here in France… His blog is at johnpaullepers.blogs.com and makes use of video as well !

Emery was kind enough to create a teaser for this interview, as he joined us for a coffee on Place des Vosges, where we used Martin’s FON connection to the Internet…

 

adsl Tv : a great freeware to watch & record live TV on your computer

I’ve been testing this little program for a few weeks now, and I’d wanted to tell you about it for some time now, because it’s just so great.

ADSL TV is a little freeware that enables you to watch TV on your computer. It uses the Freebox as a video server, and interfaces nicely with the VLC player. Free.fr actually started offering this service about a month ago but using it with VLC was not straightforward (you need to load a playlist for instance).

ADSL TV has wrapped a nice UI on top of the service and allows you to easily watch one TV channel, record another at the same time (with a timer), enable you to launch a video compression program after a program is recorded, gives you access to an online TV guide, etc.

I had stopped watching TV more or less in 2004, but with little app on my desktop, I can launch TV anytime on my computer. I really feel that convergence between computers and TV sets is happening. Tivo had initiated this trend a few years ago, quickly followed by DirectTV, then Akimbo, and more recently by Orb systems and Slingmedia (by the way, they have just raised almost $50M – watch my interview of Blake, the CEO, here).