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Angel funding - High risk, high returns - Wings for new ventures

21 July 2011

By: Lise Pretorius
Source: Financial Mail

PHOTO by Hetty Zantman | Keet van Zyl

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals (worth above R5m) who invest their own money in start-ups as part of a balanced investment portfolio.

Entrepreneurship is a key ingredient in economic growth, and funding is a key ingredient in entrepreneurship, but unfortunately there’s a funding gap for early stage start-ups in SA.

Business angels could be the solution.

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Posted in AngelHub, Interviews, News, Venture Capital

Six questions that rejected Venture Capital seekers could not answer

20 June 2011

By Keet Van Zyl for memeburn

Raising funding for an early-stage venture is always difficult. There is no bottled recipe for success, but even if you have a great concept that is scalable combined with a passionate team that can execute the growth strategy, you still need to communicate this in a multifaceted investor’s pitch.

Most entrepreneurs can give a fair account of the top line business strategic growth path, dive into the complexities of the product or service offering, put together a good industry analysis, name a handful of possible clients and present enticing year three to five financial projections, but this will not necessarily get you to the due diligence phase.

Unless all of this is based on solid research, the application for venture capital (VC) funding will most likely get rejected. In my experience as funder of early-stage businesses, the following seemingly easy questions are stumbling blocks that just about never get answered satisfactorily.

1. “Describe your business in simple terms”

Yes, I know that you sent me a detailed business plan with five attachments and your PowerPoint presentation had awesome graphics, but please just tell me what you do — or intend to do — in one sentence without all the adjectives and jargon. What most entrepreneurs don’t realise is that this is not only about the VC understanding the business model, but also an assessment on whether the concept can be communicated clearly to prospective customers.

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Posted in News, Venture Capital

Visa Acquires Fundamo, Signs New Agreement With Monitise

9 June 2011

Source: http://money.msn.com
Posted: 9 June 2011
Copyright 2011 Business Wire

Visa Inc. V, a global leader in payments, today announced that it is acquiring Fundamo, a leading platform provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies. It also announced a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise plc (LSE:MONI.L), a leading provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed geographies.

The investments will accelerate the execution of Visa’s global strategy announced last month to provide the next generation of payments solutions, enabling consumers to transact wherever and whenever they choose, using a card, a computer or a mobile device with Visa’s reliability, security and global acceptance. The combination of acquiring Fundamo and expanding the relationship with Monitise will enable Visa to deliver best-in-class mobile financial services and payments capabilities to consumers across the full spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile environments from basic services on simple handsets to more advanced services for smart phone owners.

Fundamo Acquisition

While mobile financial services in developing markets are growing and have become a core service offered by many mobile operators and financial institutions, these services are often limited in scalability and reach and are not interoperable with other regional payment services or global payments networks.

Fundamo’s platform enables the delivery of mobile financial services to unbanked and under-banked consumers around the world—including person-to-person payment, airtime top-up, bill payment and branchless banking services.

Posted in News

PoweredbyVC Living Labs Global Award

19 May 2011

Posted on 19 May 2011 by The Living Labs Global Mobility Report

The cities of Barcelona, Cape Town, Eindhoven, Lagos, San Francisco, Sant Cugat, Stockholm and Taipei announce the winners of the Living Labs Global Award 2011.

The Award presented the major challenges faced by these cities in the coming years, to which 245 companies from 30 countries responded by presenting their solutions. With rapidly growing populations, budget pressures due to the financial crisis and increasing international competition for investment, talent and tourists cities are looking for innovative approaches to remain competitive. Cities represent a major, yet complex market, spending an annual EUR 3.5 trillion in public procurement alone

The cities of Barcelona, Cape Town, Eindhoven, Lagos, San Francisco, Sant Cugat, Stockholm and Taipei have announced eight winning solutions that were selected by 45 international users out of 245 submissions from 30 countries. Winning solutions will now be piloted in the participating cities, to evaluate their impact to meet the challenges.

In a unique global effort, eight cities joined forces with Living Labs Global to present their pressing challenges to the global business and technology community.

Challenges put forward by cities include the need to provide more efficient and sustainable urban services such as lighting using latest LED technologies; to rethink city services in the light of open data and apps developed by interest groups; to overcome media piracy undermining native film industries through digital distribution systems; or the need to provide financing and support to social entrepreneurs in African cities.

Posted in Awards, News

CSense Exit

6 May 2011

By Garreth Bloor: memeburn Staff reporter / 05.06.11

Graceful exits are often unreported, but one South African venture capital company has done it smoothly with seemingly positive effects for the local emerging markets environment in which it operates. PoweredbyVC, which manages the South African venture capital portfolio of HBD, has concluded the exit of its CSense Systems (Pty) Ltd to US based GE Intelligent Platforms.

CSense has been behind rapid process troubleshooting and process improvement software solutions that aim to enhance the performance of industrial processes by indentifying problems before they occur. The latest deal sees GE Intelligent Platforms having now acquired the technology assets of CSense, including the company’s analytic software products and engineering solutions.

Eben van Heerden, CEO of PoweredbyVC, says he is “very pleased with the outcome of the exit,” adding the multiples achieved were well in line with international benchmarks of transactions of this nature.”

So what ultimately gave CSense the edge for a high profile exit to GE? Van Heerden told Memeburn in an exclusive interview that the methodology of CSense was internationally focused from the start.

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