Cellulosic Ethanol taking off in USA

Cellulosic ethanol, the production of ethanol from a number of biomass products i.e. paper sludge, wood chips, switch grass and corn stover, is taking off in the US! Often referred to as the “holy grail” in biomass-to-ethanol, this new approach would allow to use various input sources, not just expensive corn or crops.
One of our [...]

Lilliputian Systems and MicroOptical get recognised as WEF Tech Pioneers 2007

Congratulations to two of our portfolio companies, who were nominated recently for the World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer Award 2007:
Lilliputian Systems, one of our Cleantech investments, developing micro-fuel cells for portable devices, Interview with Ken Lazarus, and
MicroOptical, providing a new “viewing” experience for digital content, Interview with Kip Kokinakis – No wonder, Paris Hilton love [...]

Datango – Expansion Financing Round to fuel international growth

As Valerie has pointed out nicely on her blog, Datango, one of our portfolio companies from the early internet days, has completed a financing round with HassoPlattnerVenture and Extorel. Datango is an interesting turn-around story, which initially started in 1999 providing “web-rides” to consumers. After the burst of the bubble the company transitioned from the [...]

OpenBC to go public on Frankfurt Stock-Exchange

OpenBC, one of the top Web 2.0 companies in Germany, has revealed plans to go Public in 2007. Below are a few facts:
- From 1.7.2005 to 30.6.2006, almost €6M revenues have been achieved.
- Per September 2006, 1.45 Mio members have registered at OpenBC
- About 13% of these members are paying members.
- The company plans to [...]

Local advertising – next generation!

Local advertising has been around for quite some time now, especially around internet and Web 2.0. The success of this model still seems to take more time than expected, as local SMEs are still hesitent to consider local internet advertising. This “delay” in internet local ad uptake has been anticipate by a few interesting start-ups, [...]

Pageflakes receives funding! Heating up AJAX-Desktop Battle!

After Netvibes received some funding from Index and well-connected business angels, Michael Arrington revealed that Pageflakes will announce a funding round from Benchmark. This obviously will heat up the still early-days of customizable, personalized home-pages.
Takeaway: The funding of these two additional competitors of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo will definitely heat up things in this space, [...]