paidContent » european founders fund

FT Deutschland skips online-only, closes entirely

Robert Andrews — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 15:04:30 +0000

Four years after it was divorced from the Financial Times, FT Deutschland will close in December, leaving 258 staff affected after its publisher failed to find a buyer.

Publisher Gruner + Jahr’s CEO Julia Jäkel says (via announcement): “Newspapers are under pressure, especially in the economic sector. With these losses … we see no way to operate FT Deutschland further.”

FTD was half-owned by Pearson’s Financial Times Group until 2008, then it was passed entirely to Gruner + Jahr.

Its closure is apparently having an impact wider than just FTD…

Germany’s BILD.de, FAZ.net and Spiegel.de all open their homepages with the closure of FTD.

— Wolfgang Blau (@wblau) November 23, 2012

Wall Street Journal has published in German online for nearly a year now. But the title which gave FTD its name does not seem ready to take up the opportunity — a spokesperson for Pearson’s Financial Times in London tells paidContent: “FT.com doesn’t publish in German and has no future plans to do so.”

Spiegel reports Gruner + Jahr had no success in integrating FTD with its business magazines. Although circulation has been steady this year, it has fallen hard in the last decade and has clocked up €250 million in losses over the period, Spiegel says.

Now the sister magazines Exchange Online and Impulse are up for sale, though counterpart Capital is being retained and repositioned.

Gruner + Jahr says it tried in vain to find a buyer for FTD and had considered its continuation online-only, but: “After extensive testing, it was seen to have no chance of success.”

CDN Highwinds Gets More Funding For Europe Expansion

Rafat Ali — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:46:21 +0000

Winter Park, FL-based Highwinds, a provider of CDN services which recently raised a big $55 million round, has raised more money, this time for a European expansion. The new funding is from European Founders Fund, though the amount was not disclosed. The previous big round was led by General Catalyst Partners and Alta Communications. Among Highwinds’ European customers include multimedia giant Technicolor by Thomson. EFF is run by Sawmer Brothers, the founder of mobile content firm Jamba, and has invested in LinkedIn and Facebook, among others. More details in release.

Dizzywood Gets $1 Million For Kids Virtual Worlds

Joseph Weisenthal — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:08:18 +0000

Kid-oriented virtual worlds continues to be a hot space… Dizzywood, a new virtual worlds startup for kids, has raised $1 million from the European Founders Fund, according to peHUB, citing a regulatory filing. The SF-based company has previously announced funding from Charles River Ventures and Shelby Bonnie. The company was founded by Scott Arpajian, longtime head of CNET’s (NSDQ: CNET) Download.com, Sean Uberoi Kelly (ex-Wallop) and Ken Marden, previously at Hasbro.

Events Registration Site Eventbrite Raises First Round Funding

Rafat Ali — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:20:00 +0000

Not much to do with content, but since we use it: Eventbrite, the event tickets registration system popular among the Web 2.0 crowd (we have been using it for two years now for all of our events), has received an undisclosed amount of funding from The European Founders Fund, reports Mashable. This is the company’s first round of external funding.

The San Francisco-based company plans to use the additional funds from The Samwer brother

Social App Incubator Buddy Media Raises $6.5 Million Second Round

Joseph Weisenthal — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:45:00 +0000

Buddy Media, a developer of social networking apps, has raised a $6.5 million second round from Softbank, European Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners, Ron Conway, as well as its previous backers.. The NYC-based company previously raised $1.5 million from Howard Lindzon, Peter Thiel, Roger Ehrenberg Mark Pincus and James Altucher, so its total $8 million raise comes from a list of very high profile firms and individual investors. Among the company’s apps is the Acebucks application on Facebook, which is basically a virtual currency or rewards points scheme. With the new funding, the company is officially launching its own ad network, as have the other big social net apps developers. Announcement.

Investor and board member Roger Ehrenberg discussed the funding on his blog: “From the time we completed the Series A round it has been a whirlwind, closing strategic deals with applications developers, commercial deals with marquee advertisers and ad agencies and recruiting top people to accelerate growth. These were heady times. Then it became clear the Buddy Media should pick one of two paths: do a strategic deal with a large media company or raise another round of capital, build out the ad network and blow things out. Over a six-week period the company received two offers and five term sheets from great firms. And after much deliberation, Mike and the Board all agreed that raising the additional capital, building the business and executing against the vision was the right way to go.”

Disclaimer: Greycroft is an investor in our company.

Media Storage Firm Nirvanix Takes Strategic Investment To Boost European Growth

Rafat Ali — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Nirvanix, a provider of hosted media storage that competes with Amazon’s (NSDQ: AMZN) S3 service, has taken an unspecified strategic investment form the European Founders Fund. The San Diego-based company has previously raised over $12 million, from Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital, Mission Ventures, Valhalla Partners and Windward Ventures. The funding will be used to build out its European infrastructure and it expects to take advantage of the funds’ connection to potential European customers. The fund is the vehicle of the well-known investor the Samwer brothers, whose investments include Facebook and LinkedIn. Release.