Web 2 Ireland

Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf is a venture capitalist with YL Ventures, “a mid-market venture capital fund that invests in European Internet, telecommunications and media software companies, accelerates their development via active business development, and arranges their medium-size (not home run) acquisitions within 6-24 months, mainly to US-based corporations.”

TechCrunch UK & Ireland went into more detail on the YL strategy and Tom Raftery reported that he met with Yoav in Berlin last year.

Yoav has been Founder and CEO of multiple start-ups for which he arranged successful medium-size exits. And now he wants to make contact with Irish startups and get better visibility for his fund among local companies that may be suitable for their investment criteria. This is part of a wider initiative at YL Ventures to expand the geographical footprint of their deal flow.

As Yoav can’t travel to Ireland at the moment I’m organizing a meet & greet with him over video conference. So hands up (via comment) who wants to be included – it’s first come first served.

Just saw over on Pat Phelan’s blog that MAXroam has saved their customers over a million dollars in roaming charges since they launched. That’s one hell of an achievement in nine months.

I still remember them blowing everyone away at TC40. They so should have won the grand prize there even if the billionaire Marc Andreessen didn’t understand why anyone would want to save money on roaming mobile charges

Now if only Pat could do something about roaming data, I’d be forced to marry him.

Taking a leaf out our good friend, Marc Canter’s style of blogging

Some bits from @ the globe

Social media on the up – lots of stats from the Universal McCann's report on third wave of global research into social media. It shows the majority of users are producing content and there is an ongoing shift towards participation – with lots of stats for folks.

Bubble 2.0 from Silicon Republic – with pearls of wisdom from the IVCA – The local venture capital (VC) community in Ireland is still cautious, though it has raised €750m to invest in the next wave of technology firms, having invested €1bn over the past decade. Most of our investments would be in software firms that can grow to scale, not in dot.com companies or because someone has a nice widget, says Regina Breheny, director general of the Irish Venture Capital Association. Funding in Irish companies is at its highest now since 2001, but much of these are follow-on investments in existing companies. There is still a lot of work to be done in raising money to seed new start-ups. Venture capitalists are currently raising money but it's debatable how much of these funds will go into new plays in the next five years.

Morgan Stanley report on Internet – with coverage on Techcrunch – contains a nice reference to Lenny at Polldaddy

D Conference – sponsored by the IDA – contains some great videos from this executive level conf in US

Health 2.0 startup Revahealth – is looking for staff – check careers page.

Robin Blandford has left the comforts of corporate world to do his own startup – no doubt it will be a big winner..

From Silicon Republic – 10 million bookings on Hostelworld

We wrote previously about Hostelworld/WRI – and with these kinds of figures no doubt we’ll see WRI IPO in the near future [and possibly at the 1 billion euro valuation.

IGOPeople – which is led by Campbell Scott, the former Eircom director of consumer solutions – is ramping up for launch.

The online service will connect consumers and brands – through the use of social technology – helping brands communicate better with consumers – and facilitating consumers helping consumers.

The SBPost has some coverage on funding plans

From website
IGOpeople provides individuals, groups and organisations with a new way to find, connect, share, communicate and to conduct business. Whether you need to work with one person or with many, IGOpeople is the place for you to get things done.

The Big Word Project set up by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two University of Ulster students from Belfast, get some coverage in Wired.

They have all of the 291,500 Oxford English Dictionary entries in their inventory so plenty of opportunity to make some money with this venture.

The project allows you to purchase a word from our list to represent your site. Your site will then represent this word in our list and when people click on it, they will be taken to your site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.

For example, you may buy the word ‘Donkey’ for $6 and it will link to your site dedicated to donkeys. The word ‘Donkey’ will then be the gateway to your site and the definition will be changed. No longer will the word Donkey mean ‘a woodworking apparatus consisting of a clamping frame and saw, used for cutting marquetry veneers’, instead it will now be represented visually by ‘Chris’s Donkey Site’.

The logos are in and we like them all! Now it’s down to the Irish Web2 community to pick their favourite. To keep it fair, we’re not telling you who did what until the winner is selected. Remember, the winner gets the following:

• One year of PollDaddy Pro sponsored by PollDaddy
• A copy of Microsoft Expression Studio sponsored by Microsoft Ireland
• A year of Blacknight VPS hosting sponsored by Blacknight Solutions

The entries are:

Entry 1:

Entry 2:

Entry 3:

Entry 4:

Entry 5:

Entry 6:

Entry 7:

Entry 8:

Entry 9:

Entry 10:

Entry 11:

Make your choice now:

We’ll announce the winner in a week’s time.

Very interesting post from Sean McGrath on his blog. If you don’t know who Sean is, go right to the back of the class and read this XTech Press Release.

He has five web 2.0 ideas at the moment looking for a home. If you are a business or tech-oriented person looking for a Web 2.0 idea to pursue, he’d like to talk. Or if you have your own Web 2.0 idea but need early stage funding, he’d also like to talk.

Hook up with him at XTech or contact him over on the blog.

PutPlace has been selected for the Under The Radar event in June over in Mountain View.

Check the Under the Radar Blog and PutPlace blog for more details

Pixenate presented in 2006 – and it helped Walter gain lots of valuable attention

We had the pleasure of meeting the Debbie Landa, founder of DealMaker Media, who organize the Under the Radar event series, last week at the Web2Ireland Drinks reception in San Francisco.

Hopefully we will see more Web2Ireland companies present at Under the Radar events.

The Sir Tony O’Reilly controlled Independent News & Media PLC [INM] recently invested in Truphone.

This investment is a very positive sign for the Web2Ireland community – as INM – are very active in the online sector [they have over 100 online services/sites already].

INM could perhaps look at what the Burda Media group do in Germany – stimulating the German internet startup sector with investments, and hosting the world renowned DLD Conference.

Will be interesting to watch out in 2008 for future investments from INM