Yoick - Hightechwire

According to Associated Press, Sweden-based MindArk is going to release five banking licenses within Entropia Universe, their 3d persistent world.

The licenses will be valid for two years and the holders will be entitled to set up bank buildings on the planet of Calypso. Once set up they will be able to charge interest on loans and advertise on in-game billboards.

Entropia Universe has its own virtual currency, the Project Entropia Dollar, which is fixed to the US dollar at 10:1.

The latest venture funding activity includes:

* Heavy.com, an online video site for 18-34 year old males, which has closed a $20m financing from Polaris Venture Partners. The funding (which comes on top of $10m provided by Polaris in early 2006) will be used to expand Heavy’s network internationally. According to Mike Hirshland, a partner at Polaris, “Heavy is building a true 21st century media company, which combines internally developed content with great consumer generated content and with a sustainable revenue model. As advertisers expand their online video budgets in 2007, they are looking to work with the few online brands that can effectively deliver audience in scale.”

* With technology developed in Israel, San Francisco based Amobee has developed a telco grade adserving solution for mobile operators, which enables them to ad-fund non-voice related apps and services. The company has raised further funding from Sequoia and Accel (they raised $5m in 2005).

On the M&A side, Colorado-based Digitalglobe, which provides high resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products has acquired GlobeXplorer, a geographic data integration and publishing company from Stewart REI. GlobeXplorer’s web-based search and delivery apps will augment Digitalglobe’s Quickbird satellite system. The company’s images power GoogleEarth and they anticipate launching two new satellites in 07/08.

Paul Graham has built up a profile as a geek investor and his latest initiative, Y Combinator, which provides startup savvy and noodle money to 20 something dropouts from ivy league colleges, has been grabbing attention in the metoo Internet space.

His most recent Y Combinator success and Digg-lookalike, Reddit, sold to Conde Nast for less than $5 million. Mere chump change to some, but it’s helped catapult four youngsters into the spotlight and hopefully set them up to become serial entrepreneurs. Y Combinator will have taken in sufficient ROI to validate and continue their program and Conde Nast has a new toy to play with — a win, win situation.

Richard MacManus has a good post on Paul and his activities if you want to find out more.

Pitching for funding is an art form. I’ve seen literally thousands and what amazes me is how so many folk get it so wrong. You need to engage your audience from the get go and keep them on the edge of their seats the whole way through.

Whether you’re pitching Charles River for 60 seconds in their Entrepreneur Idol competition, submitting a 30 second mobile clip on MyWaves and hoping to Win a Date with 4 Top Tier Venture Capitalists, Stirring things up at PitchLab or formally pitching  to a room of venture partners who are simultaneously asking questions, checking emails and coming and going…there is a winning formula.

Here’s my guide to pitching: pitch-guideline-06.doc . Keep it simple, less is more on slides, big font, no jokes and …exude passion. 

Guy Kawasaki has come up with a great Q&A test for determining a person’s aptitude for being a venture capitalist.

We took it for a test drive and …well, the results speak for themselves…

Ram Shriram, comes across as a very level headed guy and not one to fall foul of excesses. One may have thought that the initial angel investor and a founding board member at Google, may have let the company’s success and his foresight into taking a punt on its founders inflate his ego. But no, not Midas-listed Ram.

Talking at the Web 2.0 Summit, Ram points out that the threshold for starting an Internet business has never been lower. In fact, his take is that you should get something built quickly, and then figure out the business model as you move forward.

Rather than taking too much money too early, he advises entrepreneurs to be scrappy, lean and nimble and develop a laser-like focus. You must build a beachhead, then expand into contiguous areas and you have a product.

His approach is that entrepreneurs should bootstrap and get to early user validation - if they come then half your battle is won. Then you can figure out your business model.

I agree with Ram’s thesis with respect to Web 2.0 ventures, but there is one large caveat I’d apply — you must have a really good idea and an awesome team and then it’s all in the execution. Users will come if your product is useful, if it’s exceptional, they’ll evangelise it for you — then and only then, is your battle half won.

UPDATE: Matt Marshall over at VentureBeat has some further coverage of Ram’s comments.

New Yorker, Jeffrey Stewart has compiled a comprehensive list of VC blogs.

I’m delighted to see that we’ve made the cut on the updated Q4′06 list.

As Jeffrey, who is Chairman of the very interesting Monitor 110, points out…its the entrepreneur, not the scientist or capitalist, who drives innovation, but VC’s…are often best positioned to write about the start up process.

I’m off to Cairns for a few days to schmooze at the Australian Venture Capital Association Annual Conference.

There is an article in the Business Review Weekly talking about early stage VC in Australia titled: Show Me The Money.

It starts with the line “Time is running out for the early stage venture capital sector to prove itself as a credible investment class.”

Funny situation in Australia - perhaps an anachronism, as the early stage sector in the Valley is going gangbusters again …hopefully this lag will improve downunder.

I’ll feed back my take on the situation from Cairns.

FT has profiled Monitor110, an attention data aggregator and filterer focused on hedge funds as its initial vertical.

The company, which is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will trawl through more than 40 million internet sources on behalf of its clients.

As Scott Lessing, COO for investment research at Citigroup, points out, “there may be more information value in online trends in the aggregate: 5,000 more web mentions of a product than the week before could be an important signal for an analyst covering the product’s manufacturer”.

Marshall Kirkpatrick has added Monitor110 to his Xmas wishlist.

I bumped into an investment banker colleague today who has returned from a few months in Europe. Not surprisingly he commented on how much activity there is on AIM these days. As a result, Europe has become more tech investment sophisticated with deal flow and the entire ecosystem benefiting.

For more on the Alternative Investment Market take a look at Keith Benjamin’s blog. He expects more US companies to list on AIM. The same trend is prevalent in Australia. Wither NASDAQ?