Go4Venture Advisers LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

Published by Go4Venture Research, the Equity Research unit of Go4Venture Advisers LLP

Go4Venture Advisers LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015

Go4Venture Advisers European Venture & Growth Equity Market

Monthly Bulletin | January 2015

Technology / Media / Telecoms / Internet / Healthcare / Cleantech / Materials

About Go4Venture Advisers

Providing innovative, fast-growing companies and their investors with independent corporate finance advice to help them

evaluate, develop and execute growth strategies

www.go4venture.com

Equity Capital Markets (ECM)

Equity private placements

Growth equity financings and secondaries

Pre-IPO advisory

Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)

Sellside

Buyside / Buy and build

Valuation services

Visit www.go4venture.com/Bulletin to read past Bulletins

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 1

Contents

This Month in Brief 2

Headline Transaction Index (HTI) 5

Large Transactions Summary 6

Large Transactions Profiles 8

List of Acronyms 25

About this Bulletin

The Go4Venture Advisers’ European Venture & Growth Equity Market Monthly Bulletin provides a summary of the most prominent private investment transactions among emerging European TMT companies.

Investment activity is measured using Go4Venture’s European Tech Headline Transaction Index (HTI), which is based on the number and value of transactions reported in professional publications. The HTI captures transactions at all stages of investment, from seed to pre-IPO, and is an early indicator of the progression of the private market cycle.

The Bulletin provides analysis of Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity (PE) financings, including growth equity and financing rounds with single secondaries components (recapitalisations), of a value greater than or equal to our Large Transaction threshold (£5mn / €7.5mn / $10mn). Transactions below the threshold are captured in the HTI, but not profiled in the Bulletin.

Europe is defined as Western, Central and Eastern Europe, excluding Israel.

For more details, please refer to the Methodology Note available on our website.

Please note that no part of the Bulletin can be reproduced unless content is duly attributed to Go4Venture and the details of republishing are notified to g4vBulletin@go4venture.com.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 2

This Month in Brief

Dear Clients and Friends,

Welcome to the latest edition of the Go4Venture Monthly European Venture & Growth Equity Market

Bulletin, featuring our proprietary Headline Transaction Index (HTI) of investment activity, as well as a

quick summary of VC & PE-backed TMT M&A exits of $50 million or more.

Seemingly Not Stopping

Up and up, and forward!

Based on our HTI methodology (which excludes drug development companies and only reports on

companies publishing their transactions in major professional publications), the January 2015

Headline Transactions Index (HTI) was up at 2x the level of activity compared to last year. In fact,

it was a record month with twelve Landmark deals (≥ €20mn) – the highest number we have ever

reported.

Investments

It is worth noting that this extraordinary level of activity is still not closing the gap between

Europe and the US, which is in fact growing. As reported by online magazine Informilo, which in turn

cites VentureSource, the level of investment doubled in Europe over the last five years (in line with our

own HTI data), but in the US the value of investment trebled in the same period.

Not surprisingly in this atmosphere of optimism, a growing number of funds are re-upping. Funds

which made announcements last month included:

83North, led by the team from Greylock IL which has now gone independent (even if they

say they will keep privileged links with Greylock in the US). This new $200mn (€170mn)

fund is in fact the third raised by the same team since the mid-2000s.

HV Holtzbrink made a first and final close for its sixth fund with €285mn in commitments.

Holtzbrink has backed many successful international Internet companies covered in this

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 3

Bulletin, including Delivery Hero, HelloFresh, Lazada, Westwing, Zalando and many others.

Next World Capital, a cross-Atlantic fund with a US bias (but an ability to support European

companies expanding into the US and vice-versa) is planning to raise a second fund of

$250mn (€215mn).

Partech, the Paris-based fund with offices in Berlin and San Francisco, announced the

closing of a €200mn growth equity fund.

This increased activity on the part of financial investors is being mirrored by corporate investors. In fact,

a study by Global Corporate Venturing showed that half of the largest US companies now do

corporate venture investing, either with a dedicated fund or from their balance sheet.

As ever, all these positive developments tend to suggest we are seeing structural changes for the

better, which of course require all of us to adapt. Here are a few thoughts in this regard:

Internet (and its incredible scalability) is clearly driving much of the activity. This makes it a

real challenge for companies outside the internet space to get attention, as not many

can show comparable capital efficiency in their early stages, to the point where the notion of

Series A is being changed – with companies now expected to be scaling (rather than

assembling their product, as it used to be).

Venture funds focusing on Europe are becoming bigger and more international. After all,

they have to compete with US funds which are increasingly present in Europe. The corollary

is that these funds are raising the bar, which means companies run the risk of being left

with local investors and scant chance of benefitting from the value-enhancing escalator of

brand name funds.

Corporates have to learn to work with startups: it is a way for them to be exposed to a

broader range of innovation, and flex their own culture. Expect a growing number of

syndicates involving multiple corporate investors as a way to balance their influence as

shareholders.

The optimistic view is that the excesses of today are driving change and may be flushed out

before a serious bubble burst happens. For encouraging news, check out TechCrunch’s article

reporting Mattermark’s data showing the amount of seed money falling already (suggesting a slow

decline rather than crash).

Enjoy the reading. Please direct any questions or comments to g4vBulletin@go4venture.com. If you do

not wish to receive future HTI updates from us, please send an email with the title "unsubscribe" to

g4vBulletin@go4venture.com.

The Go4Venture Team

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 4

Where to Meet the Go4Venture Advisers Team in March 2015 – see www.go4venture.com/contact

SAVE THE DATE – MONDAY MARCH 30

Go4Venture Advisers is pleased to announce that we are co-hosting a seminar with Bank of America Merrill Lynch targeting the Venture and Growth Equity Industry.

This is an opportunity for the tech investor community to get together and discuss how investment is changing in the context of a rapidly globalising industry.

The seminar is primarily targeted at those investors we are close to, and some of you will have received a personal invite. We have, however, set aside a number of tickets for those investors we missed

and selected companies that wish to come along. So please contact events@go4venture.com if you would like to join. First come, first served basis.

March 4-5 – Barcelona, Spain – Mobile World Congress 2015

March 19 – Paris, France – Auriga Partners Cocktail Shareholders Meeting

March 19-20 – Lausanne, Switzerland – Tech Tour Growth Forum

March 30 – Paris, France – EISA Chairman’s Reception at the House of Lords

For more details about the Headline Transaction Index (HTI), please visit our website.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 5

Headline Transaction Index (HTI)

Go4Venture HTI Index by Deal Value

Source: Go4Venture Advisers HTI Database

Go4Venture HTI Index by Cumulative Deal Value

Source: Go4Venture Advisers HTI Database

January 2014 2015 Var. Year-to-Date 2014 2015 Var.

Large Transactions # 14 18 29% Large Transactions # 14 18 29%

€mn 253 503 99% €mn 253 503 99%

Other Transactions # 11 32 191% Other Transactions # 11 32 191%

€mn 30 88 194% €mn 30 88 194%

All Headline Transactions

# 25 50 100% All Headline Transactions

# 25 50 100%

€mn 283 591 109% €mn 283 591 109%

Of Which: Of Which:

Landmark Transactions # 3 12 300% Landmark Transactions # 3 12 300%

€mn 132 411 211% €mn 132 411 211%

Definitions

Large Transactions: ≥ £5mn / €7.5mn / $10mn

Other Transactions: < £5mn / €7.5mn / $10mn

Landmark Transactions: subset of Large Transactions ≥ €20mn

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1,000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Valu

e o

f T

ransactio

ns p

er

Month

(€m

n)

2012 2013 2014 2015

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Cum

ula

tive V

alu

e o

f T

ransactio

ns (

€m

n)

2012 2013 2014 2015

Includes Rocket Internet (€768mn)

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 6

Large Transactions Summary (≥ £5mn / €7.5mn / $10mn)

Ranked by Round Size (€mn, including estimates) in Descending Order, then Alphabetically

# Company Sector Round €mn Description Investors

1 Verne Global (UK / Iceland) www.verneglobal.com

Hardware Late Stage

84.0 Developer and operator of an energy efficient data centre

General Catalyst Partners, Novator Partners, Stefnir, Wellcome Trust

2 TransferWise (UK) www.transferwise.com

Internet Services

C 49.7 Money transfer platform Andreessen Horowitz, IA Ventures, Index Ventures, Richard Branson, Seedcamp, Valar Ventures

3 Windeln.de (Germany) www.windeln.de

Internet Services

Late Stage

45.0 Provider of an online retail and flash sales platform

360 Capital Partners, DB Private Equity, DN Capital, Goldman Sachs, MCI Management

4 Mister Spex (Germany) www.misterspex.com

Internet Services

Late Stage

34.3 Online retailer of glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses

DN Capital, Goldman Sachs, SEP, XAnge Private Equity

5 Saltside Technologies (Sweden) www.saltside.se

Internet Services

B 34.3 Provider of a platform for online classified sites

Brummer & Partners, Hillhouse Capital, Investment AB Kinnevik

6 Teads (France) www.teads.tv

Software C 26.0 Provider of a video advertising platform

bpifrance, Elaia Partners, Gimv, Partech Ventures

7 Shazam (UK) www.shazam.com

Internet Services

Late Stage

N 25.7 Provider of a real-time music

recognition service Undisclosed Investors

8 Navabi (Germany) www.navabi.tv

Internet Services

Late Stage

25.0 Online retailer of plus-size women's clothing

Bauer Venture Partners, DuMont Venture, Index Ventures, Seventure Partners

9 Westwing Home & Living (Germany) www.westwing.de

Internet Services

Late Stage*

25.0 Operator of an online furniture shopping club

Rocket Internet, Undisclosed Investors

10 Deliveroo (UK) www.deliveroo.co.uk

Internet Services

B 21.5 Provider of an online restaurant food ordering portal

Accel Partners, Hoxton Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, Index Ventures

11 CloudBees (Belgium) www.cloudbees.com

Internet Services

Late Stage*

20.2 Provider of plugins and services to support enterprise app development

Blue Cloud Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Matrix Partners, Verizon Ventures

12 Adcash (Estonia) www.adcash.com

Software A 20.0 Provider of a real-time advertising trading platform

Naxicap Partners

13 peerTransfer (Spain) www.peertransfer.com

Internet Services

C 18.9 Provider of a payment platform for students to pay for higher education

Accel Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Devonshire Investors, Maveron, QED Investors, Spark Capital

14 Atlas Genetics (UK) www.atlasgenetics.com

Medtech C 17.2 Developer of point-of-care diagnostic tests for infectious diseases

BB Biotech Ventures, Consort Medical, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Life Sciences Partners, Novartis Venture Funds, RusnanoMedInvest, South West Ventures Fund

15 Neo Technology (Sweden) www.neo4j.com

Software C 17.2 Provider of an open source graph database

Conor Venture Partners, Creandum, Dawn Capital, Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Sunstone Capital

Source: Go4Venture Advisers HTI Database

Key

Bold indicates lead investor(s)

* Internal round N Deal not profiled, as the investors in this round were not disclosed

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 7

Large Transactions Summary (Cont’d) (≥ £5mn / €7.5mn / $10mn)

Ranked by Round Size (€mn, including estimates) in Descending Order, then Alphabetically

# Company Sector Round €mn Description Investors

16 Digital Origin (Spain) www.digitalorigin.com

Internet Services

A 15.0 Provider of a system for assessing credit worthiness in real time

Prime Ventures

17 Bazaar (UK / US) www.mubi.com

Internet Services

Late Stage

12.9 Operator of a curated film streaming platform

Floreat Group, Individual Investors, MMC Ventures

18 asgoodasnew (Germany) www.asgoodasnew.com

Internet Services

C 11.0 Online retailer of refurbished electronic gadgets

BFB Growth Funds Brandenburg, MCI Management, Munich Venture Partners, PDV Inter-Media Venture, SevenVentures, Ventech

Source: Go4Venture Advisers HTI Database

Key

Bold indicates lead investor(s)

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 8

Verne Global UK / Iceland | www.verneglobal.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

1 Hardware Late Stage

84.0 Developer and operator of an energy efficient data centre

General Catalyst Partners, Novator Partners, Stefnir, Wellcome Trust

Verne Global (UK / Iceland), a developer and operator of an energy efficient data centre, raised $98.0mn (€84.0mn) in

a Late Stage round led by new investor Stefnir with support from existing investors General Catalyst Partners,

Novator Partners and the Wellcome Trust. The money will be used to develop its wholesale and colocation services,

and to expand its existing data centre facility located in Keflavik, Iceland.

Founded in 2007, Verne Global operates a data centre campus which is entirely powered by renewable energy sources

and naturally cooled by the Icelandic climate, without the need for chillers or compressors. This is extremely beneficial as

energy usage, both for powering the servers and cooling the facilities, is typically a significant (30% – 50%) operating

cost for any data centre provider. Iceland is one of the world’s greenest countries, capable of meeting 81% of its primary

energy requirements through renewable sources as a result of its widespread hydroelectric and geothermal power

stations. This has enabled state-owned power company Landsvirkjun to offer companies fixed-price electricity on long

term contracts of up to twelve years, in a bid to lure energy-intensive businesses to Iceland. Through taking advantage of

these contracts, Verne is able to achieve significant cost reductions over its competitors and its clients also benefit from

long term price stability, which could not be achieved by a rival dependent on fossil fuels. The efficiency of Verne’s data

centre is highlighted by its Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) of 1.21, compared to an industry average of 1.62.

The firm currently operates an 18 hectare data centre campus across two buildings, both of which comprise more than

100k square feet. The facility is situated on the site of the former Naval Air Station Keflavik, previously used by NATO

and chosen because of its extremely low risk of exposure to a natural disaster. The company offers colocation services

to its clients, although it is also capable of advising and implementing data centres bespoke to client specifications.

Verne Global’s clients include BMW, BT, CCP Games, COLT, Datapipe, RMS and RVX Studios.

In the data centre market, there are multiple co-location providers, as well as full hosting providers (such as cloud-based

providers AWS and Rackspace) located globally. Most locally, Verne Global faces competition from Advania in Iceland,

who entered the market following its acquisition of Thor Data Centre in 2011. Advania’s Reykjavik-based data centre

claims a PUE of 1.16 and more than 44 million users access its servers each day. Advania’s biggest clients are Opera

Software and Visa.

Verne Global is headquartered in London, UK and employs more than 25 staff across its offices and facilities in Iceland,

the UK and the US.

Investors

Verne Global was originally formed as a joint venture between US-based venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners

(€508mn (2013); AUM €2.6bn) and Iceland-based private equity firm Novator Partners. Both investors believed there

was a gap in the market for data centres in optimised geographical areas capable of running on 100% renewable

energy, without the price premium. After 36 months of development, the Verne Global facility became operational in

early 2012.

General Catalyst Partners currently operates seven funds across its two practices. Its Early Stage practice typically

focuses on seed funding and Series A, while its XIR (Growth Equity) practice targets companies with more than $10mn

(€8.8mn) of revenues and more than $3mn (€2.6mn) EBITDA. The firm last featured in our November 2014 issue for its

participation in UK-based developer of a mobile app for event booking LeanWorks’ (trading as YPlan) €19mn Series B

round.

Novator Partners is an alternative investment firm led by Thor Bjorgolfsson, Iceland’s first billionaire having co-founded

brewing company Bravo International in the mid-1990s, which was subsequently sold to Heineken in 2002. Novator

specialises in investments in the IT, pharmaceutical, renewable energy and telecommunications industries.

Lead investor in this transaction Stefnir (AUM €3.0bn) is an Iceland-based asset management firm. It offers a range of

equity, credit and alternative products to investors, typically under a UCITS structure.

The Wellcome Trust (AUM €24bn) is UK-based biomedical research funding foundation, established under the will of Sir

Henry Wellcome in 1936. Its investment arm, which manages the money used to fund research, considers opportunities

across all assets classes and geographies with approximately 30% of its portfolio allocated to venture capital and private

equity investments.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 9

TransferWise UK | www.transferwise.com

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

2 Internet Services

C 49.7 Money transfer platform Andreessen Horowitz, IA Ventures, Index Ventures, Richard Branson, Seedcamp, Valar Ventures

TransferWise (UK), operator of a money transfer platform, raised $58.0mn (€49.7mn) in a Series C round led by new

investor Andreessen Horowitz with support from existing investors IA Ventures, Index Ventures, Kima Ventures, and

Valar Ventures, as well as individual investor Sir Richard Branson. The money will be used for marketing to drive

international expansion, particularly to add 300 more currency routes alongside its existing 292 ones.

Readers will be familiar with the economics and dynamics of the $542bn (€391bn) global currency remittance industry

from our coverage of Azimo and WorldRemit in our March 2014 Bulletin, as well as our coverage of TransferWise’s own

€18.4mn Series B in June 2014.

Just like Azimo, CurrencyFair, peerTransfer and WorldRemit, TransferWise offers money transfer services which are

both cheaper and faster than those of the traditional banks. The company was set up in 2011 by Taavet Hinrikus, a 31-

year-old Estonian who was Skype’s first employee, and Kristo Kaarmann (current CEO), a former management

consultant.

TransferWise’s 100 staff operate 292 currency pairs between c. 20 different currencies. The firm charges between 50

and 100 basis points with a minimum fee of £1 (€1.2) and has transferred over £1bn (€1.2bn) on behalf of its customers.

Additionally, it offers a flatter and more intuitive fee structure, as well as the ability to transfer almost instantaneously.

The firm passed the £1bn (€1.4bn) transfer mark in April 2014, according to TechCrunch.

Investors

This round brings total investment up to $91mn (€77mn). With no external backing for the first year and a half, the

company’s first investment was a €1mn seed in round in April 2012, backed by investors in this round including IA

Ventures, Index and Kima. As stated above, the firm raised its €18.4mn Series B round in June last year, adding Richard

Branson.

Transaction leader Andreessen Horowitz (€1.7bn (2014); AUM €3.8bn) is a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm.

Founded in 2009, the firm has c. 30 employees, has made more than 455 investments to date and currently manages a

portfolio of c. 400 companies. The firm’s other investments into the money-transfer sector include Grupo Regalii’s (online

money transfer services provider) September 2013 undisclosed seed round and Clinkle’s (mobile payment platform

provider) March 2014 undisclosed Series A round. Andreessen has invested in many notable companies such as Airbnb,

Box, Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Pinterest and Skype.

IA Ventures (€82mn (2012); AUM €120mn), which has backed all five of TransferWise’s investment rounds, is a New

York-based seed investor specialising in big data. It typically invests up to $5mn (€3.7mn) over the lifetime of an

investment.

Also very well-known to our readers, Index Ventures (€400mn (2014); AUM €3bn) is no stranger to fintech, backing

Credit Benchmark, Funding Circle and iZettle in Europe, as well as Novus Partners and Robinhood Financial in the US.

Moreover, in June 2014 TransferWise was one of four financial technology investments by Index Ventures covered in our

Bulletin, the others being Adyen (see page 21), Osper (see page 27) and SavingGlobal (see page 26).

Set up in 2010 with an aim to make seed investments in 50-100 companies a year anywhere in the world, Kima Ventures

is one of the most prolific European seed funds. Despite its name, Kima is actually an angel group founded by French

entrepreneurs Jérémie Berrebi and Xavier Niel. Investing between $5k (€3.7k) and $200k (€147k), Kima has already

backed over 110 companies in 17 different countries. This round is highly unusual for Kima as the firm does not usually

make follow on investments in later rounds, and while it participated in Transferwise’s €22mn series B round, it missed

the company’s €4.6mn series A round in May 2013.

After selling PayPal to eBay in 2002, Peter Thiel engaged with a number of start-ups (notably Facebook), before setting

up Founders Fund in 2005. In 2010 Mr. Thiel launched Valar Ventures with the aim of investing in the increasing number

of transformative technology companies outside the US. Valar Ventures is relatively small, having two offices in New York

and San Francisco. The firm has made nine investments so far across Australia, Canada and South America and

TransferWise represents its first investment in Europe.

Also returning this round is Sir Richard Branson, dubbed a ‘strategic Angel’ thanks to his interest in Virgin Money. His

investment style of ‘giving customers a better deal’ fits well with TransferWise. Sir Richard has previously invested $5mn

(€3.7mn) in September 2013 in mobile payments firm Clinkle and an undisclosed amount in October 2013 in equity

crowdfunding platform BankToTheFuture.com.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 10

Windeln.de Germany | www.windeln.de # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

3 Internet Services

Late Stage

45.0 Provider of an online retail and flash sales platform

360 Capital Partners, DB Private Equity, DN Capital, Goldman Sachs, MCI Management

Windeln.de (Germany), a provider of an online retail and flash sales platform, raised €45mn in a Late Stage round led

by new investor Goldman Sachs and returning investor DB Private Equity, with support from existing investors 360

Capital Partners, DN capital and MCI Management. The money will be used to expand the company’s product

portfolio and geographic focus, as well as to support acquisitions.

Founded in 2010 by Alex Brand (CEO) and Konstantin Urban (Managing Director), Windeln.de is an online retailer of

baby and children products. The company, whose offer originally ranged from baby food, diapers and skin care to safety

products such as car seats, gates and monitors, has extended its product portfolio in 2013 to include clothing and toys –

the aim being to become a one-stop-shop for parents. As well as selling products via its Windeln.de website, the

company operates, since 2012, Windelbar.com through which it sells its products on a flash sales model (with limited-

time offers available for a period of 24 to 36 hours).

This is the third time Windeln.de features in our Bulletin, following a €15mn Series C round in February 2013 and a

€10mn Series A round in May 2011. However, the company also raised €15mn in a late-stage round in April 2014 from

DB Private Equity and an undisclosed internal Series B round in February 2012.

When we last saw the company in our Bulletin, it was looking to expand geographically (beyond Austria and Germany),

as well as expand its product portfolio. At that time, it employed 50 staff and reported 2012 revenues of €50mn (+300%

year-on-year) from a portfolio of 20,000 products from over 300 brands. It has since enlarged its operations to the

German-speaking regions of Switzerland (via its 2013 acquisition of kindertraum.ch for an undisclosed amount) and

increased its offer to more than 85,000 products from over 1,000 brands. Windeln.de currently employs more than 100

staff and reached revenues of €130mn in 2014 (+53% year-on-year).

As well as the aforementioned metrics, Windeln.de reached the top position in unaided brand awareness among diapers

online resellers in Germany according to an advertising tracking survey led by research institute Innofact. Additionally,

according to a survey led by OC&C Strategy Consultants on the Chinese online market for International Baby Milk

Formula (IMF) in 2014, Windeln.de was the only German retailer ranking among the top ten online shops.

Investors

This investment brings total investment in Windeln.de to more than €85mn over six rounds, since its founding in 2010.

360 Capital Partners (€75mn (2014); AUM €300mn) is a venture capital firm with offices in France, Italy and

Luxembourg. It targets early-stage companies based in Europe with a focus on France and Italy, in the cleantech, digital

and medtech sectors. It became involved in Windeln.de when it contributed to its €15mn Series C round in February

2013.

Lead investor DB Private Equity (AUM €8bn) is Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management’s (part of the Deutsche Bank

Group) global private equity asset manager business focusing on primary and secondary fund investments, as well as

direct co-investments for institutional investors and private clients. It operates from offices in Cologne, Hong Kong,

London, New York and Singapore, and became involved in Windeln.de when it contributed to its €15mn late-stage round

of April 2014.

Readers will by now be familiar with London-based DN Capital (€160mn (2014); AUM €284mn) which featured several

times in our Bulletin in 2014, the last time being in our September 2014 issue when it contributed to the €8.5mn Series B

round in Germany-based shoes manufacturer and online vendor Scarosso. DN Capital, which has supported Windeln.de

since its seed round in September 2010, is a private equity firm targeting digital media, e-commerce, mobile and

software applications companies from early to growth stages. The firm also features in the next profile. Notably, DN

Capital are an investor in real-time music recognition service provider Shazam (participating in the company’s €28mn

June 2011 late-stage round) which is included in this Bulletin for its late-stage €25.7mn round (which gives the company

a $1bn (€0.9bn) valuation) but is not profiled due to the round’s undisclosed investors.

Co-leader Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) invested via Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division, which provides credit

and equity financing across corporate, infrastructure and real estate entities. The firm also features in the next profile.

MCI Management (AUM €223mn) is a Poland-based private equity firm which typically invests in biotechnology,

consumer, digital media, e-commerce, electronics, information technology, retail and software sectors. The firm became

involved in Windeln.de when it contributed to its €15mn Series C round in February 2013.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 11

Mister Spex Germany | www.misterspex.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

4 Internet Services

Late Stage

34.3 Online retailer of glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses

DN Capital, Goldman Sachs, SEP, XAnge Private Equity

Mister Spex (Germany), an online retailer of glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses, raised $40.0mn (€34.3mn) in a

Late Stage round led by new investor Goldman Sachs with support from existing investors DN Capital, Scottish

Equity Partners (SEP) and XAnge Private Equity. The money will be used to consolidate the company’s market

leading position in Germany and expand further internationally.

Mister Spex’s business model is that of a typical e-commerce play. It offers eyewear made by third parties, such as

contact lenses, designer glasses, sports glasses and sunglasses, retailed solely through its website. The company is

able to offer more competitive prices than traditional brick and mortar stores through economies of scale and moving the

shopping experience online. Mister Spex is differentiated from other online opticians by the level of support it can offer to

customers. More than 50% of its customer service team are professional opticians who can advise customers by phone

or email on the suitability of a pair of glasses. In addition, the company has developed a partner program with local

opticians in its countries of operation, to offer its customers free services such as eye tests and adjustment of glasses.

Alongside its strong organic growth, Mister Spex has sought to accelerate its expansion across Europe through

acquisitions. In July 2013, it acquired Sweden-based rivals Lensstore and Loveyewear, both of which had established

positions of leadership in the Nordic region. The geographic strength of its rivals was an important driver in these

acquisitions, as the share of the population wearing contact lenses is four times higher in the Nordic region than in

Germany.

According to TechCrunch, the European eyewear market is estimated to be worth €24bn a year and Mister Spex faces

pressure from both traditional incumbent opticians and new upcoming competitors. In its home market, the company

competes with traditional opticians such as Germany’s leading Fielmann, which has no online retail presence, and Apollo

Optik. In the broader European market, the company faces a challenge from UK-based MyOptique Group which featured

in our June 2014 Bulletin for raising €19.9mn for acquisitions and expansion into continental Europe (from Beringea,

Cipio Partners and Korys).

Mister Spex is currently active in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK. In 2014, the company had

revenues of €65mn (+38% year-on-year growth) and served more than one and a half million customers across Europe.

Mister Spex also claims to have achieved profitability in 2014. The company is headquartered in Berlin and currently

employs more than 300 staff.

Investors

Lead investor Goldman Sachs (AUM €475bn for the Group) invested via its Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division

(MBD) and is reported to now hold a c. 20% stake in Mister Spex as part of the round, Executive Director and Head of

Technology Investments for Goldman Sachs MBD, David Reis will join Mister Spex’s advisory board.

London-based DN Capital (€176mn (2014); AUM €281mn) will be familiar to our readers having been particularly active

last year, appearing in our Bulletin for its investments in Scarosso in September 2014, Purplebricks in August 2014 and

Quandoo in July 2014. DN first became involved in Mister Spex in September 2010 when it led the company’s €7mn

Series B round. The firm focuses on the digital media, e-commerce, software and mobile application sectors and

recently announced the closure of a new $200mn (€176mn) fund in September 2014, which was ahead of its target and

oversubscribed.

SEP (Scottish Equity Partners) (€273mn (2012); AUM €1bn) is also an existing investor in Mister Spex. Headquartered

in Glasgow, UK with an additional office in London, SEP invests in companies in the energy, healthcare and technology

sectors. It last featured in our February 2014 and October 2013 Bulletins for its participation in UK-based online car

finance broker CarLoan4U’s €9.7mn late stage round and online travel search engine provider Skyscanner’s €59.2mn

Series A round, respectively.

Fellow existing investor XAnge Private Equity (€74mn (2014); AUM €384mn) is a subsidiary of the French Post Bank

whose investment activity is concentrated in France and Germany. The firm typically invests between €500k and €5mn

in companies in cleantech, Fintech, internet services, mobile and software sectors. XAnge last featured in our May 2014

Bulletin for its participation in Belgium-based provider of open source business software Odoo’s €10mn Series B round.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 12

Saltside Technologies Sweden | www.saltside.se

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

5 Internet Services

B 34.3 Provider of a platform for online classified sites

Brummer & Partners, Hillhouse Capital, Investment AB Kinnevik

Saltside Technologies (Sweden), a provider of a platform for online classified sites, raised ($40.0mn) €34.3mn in

Series B funding led by new investor Hillhouse Capital with support from fellow new investor Brummer & Partners, as

well as existing investor Investment AB Kinnevik. The money will be used to accelerate investments in product

development and brand building, as well as expansion into new frontier markets.

Saltside Technologies was founded in 2011 by Nils Hammer, who was one of the first employees at Skype. The firm has

spent three years developing classified ad portals in markets where it could obtain first-mover advantage, with a

particular focus on listings of cars and properties. At present, its markets are Bangladesh (bikroy.com), Ghana

(tonaton.com), Pakistan (dekho.com.pk) and Sri Lanka (ikman.lk), whose combined population is more than 200 million

people. Despite this, optimistic estimates of internet penetration in these four countries rarely exceed 20%, although it is

on an upward trend which Saltside is well positioned to benefit from.

In the last few months, the company has faced increasing competition in its markets of operation. For example, in

November 2014 a joint venture was established between South Africa-based media conglomerate Naspers and Norway-

based SnT Classifieds to expand their online classifieds business in Bangladesh. The company has responded by

focusing on the quality of its stock, principally by ensuring it has ‘boots-on-the-ground’ in all of the countries in which it

operates, to curate and check each advert. Saltside is concentrating on defending its position of leadership in its existing

markets from new entrants, as opposed to aggressive expansion to other underserved emerging markets.

At the time of its last financing, the company claimed that listings on its websites were growing at c. 300% per year. As of

September 2014, Saltside’s website had c. 600k new advertisements uploaded a month and it received 180 million page

views per month from c. 5 million unique visitors. The majority of these users access the company’s portals via a mobile

device, the most widespread form of internet access in emerging markets.

The company is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden (where its development team is located), although its c. 200

employees are also spread across its additional offices in Bangladesh, Ghana, Sri Lanka and the UAE.

Investors

When we last saw Saltside in our June 2014 Bulletin, it had just raised an €18.4mn Series A round from Investment AB

Kinnevik. Well-known to our readers, listed Swedish investor Investment AB Kinnevik (NASDAQ OMX: KINV) (AUM

€7.2bn) is one of the largest family-owned investors. It has portfolio companies across the TMT space and is a regular

feature in our Bulletin. It last featured in our December 2014 issue for its participation in German online furniture

shopping platform operator Home24’s €12.9mn Series A round. Kinnevik has a long lasting relationship with Rocket

Internet, which has seen frequent collaboration and co-investment between the two companies, including foodpanda,

HelloFresh as well as Home24. Kinnevik was also an early investor in Rocket Internet.

The firm first became involved in Saltside Technologies when it led the firm’s €18.4mn Series A round in June 2014,

acquiring a reported 80% stake in the company. The firm was a smaller investor in this round, only contributing $5mn

(€4.3mn) and seeing its stake diluted to 61%.

Brummer & Partners (AUM €13bn) is a Sweden-based hedge fund group. The firm provides capital and administrative

support to portfolio managers pursuing a range of strategies across multiple asset classes. Through this model, the firm

is able to exploit economies of scale in infrastructure, risk and client diversification. It has backed strategies across the

hedge fund spectrum, including global macro, convertible arbitrage, event-driven, long/short equity, market neutral and

statistical arbitrage. The firm invested in Saltside through its Frontier PE fund, a private equity fund focused on investing

in Bangladesh.

Hillhouse Capital (AUM €8.3bn) is an asset management firm specialising in Chinese equities. Founded in 2005 by Yale

University graduate Zhang Lei, Hillhouse is stage agnostic and willing to invest in technology companies at any stage of

development, with a very long-term investment horizon. The firm’s previous investments have included participation in

China-based oncology research and development firm BeiGene’s $75mn (€64mn) late-stage financing in November

2014 and investing $35mn (€30mn) in China-based hotpot restaurant chain Xiabuxiabu’s IPO on the Hong Kong Stock

Exchange in December 2014. The firm recently reported that it had raised a $2bn (€1.7bn) new fund to invest in

healthcare companies in China.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 13

Teads France | www.teads.tv

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

6 Software C 26.0 Provider of a video advertising platform

bpifrance, Elaia Partners, Gimv, Partech Ventures

Teads (France), a provider of a video advertising platform, raised $30.0mn (€26.0mn) in a Series C round from new

investor bpifrance with support from existing investors Elaia Partners, Gimv and Partech Ventures who made follow-

on equity investments, and Bank of China, bpifrance, BNP Paribas, HSBC who contributed debt financing. The round

was evenly split between equity and debt. The money will be used to accelerate growth, particularly in the US, and

expand into Brazil, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Teads provides a Supply Side Platform (SSP) for video advertising which specialises in outstream formats, on which

publishers can manage the monetisation of their video advertising inventory by programmatic or traditional means. An

outstream advertisement is one that can be displayed outside of a video stream, within any content on a webpage, such

as between two paragraphs of a text article or two images of a slideshow. The advantage of this to publishers is that they

are not required to produce their own video content in order to house video advertisements on their websites. This has

proven popular with traditional publishers, such as newspapers, who have struggled to create large volumes of video

inventory using pre and mid-roll video advertising.

Readers may recognise Teads from news of its merger with UK-based video advertising and analytics specialist

Ebuzzing in March 2014, which rebranded as Teads. Ebuzzing had previously attracted the attention and support of

leading venture capital firms including Gimv and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and French television channel TF1. At the

time, the newly formed Teads expressed its intention to pursue an IPO on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in late 2015.

Video advertising is currently a very active market and is expected to more than double to $9bn (€7.4bn) in 2017. The

sector has seen consolidation in recent years including AOL’s $405mn (€305mn) acquisition of Adap.tv in August 2013,

Facebook’s $400mn (€295mn) acquisition of LiveRail in July 2014, and Yahoo’s $640mn (€513mn) acquisition of

BrightRoll in November 2014. Alongside this, new players entered the public markets with IPOs from YuMe in August

2013 and Tremor in June 2013. All in all, Teads faces significant competition in the space and its continued success will

likely depend on its ability to maintain technological differentiation.

Teads currently counts many of the world’s leading publishers as its clients including ABC, Axel Springer, Conde Nast,

Forbes, La Stampa, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Les Echos, Nikkei, O Globo, Reuters, TF1, The Guardian, The Telegraph and

The Washington Post. Headquartered in Paris, France, the company employs more than 350 people across its 25 offices

worldwide. Furthermore, the company has stated its intention to increase headcount by more than 50% in 2015 to

support its international expansion strategy. Teads reported revenues of £63.5mn (€78.8mn; +65% year-on-year growth)

in 2014.

Investors

bpifrance (€327mn (2011); AUM €1.1bn) was created in 2013 through the merger of several state-funded investment and

financing organisations: CDC Enterprises, the FSI, FSN-PME and OSEO. Stage and sector agnostic, bpifrance invests

solely in French companies. In this case it invested through its €300mn Digital Ambition Fund (previously FSN-PME),

funded partly by Caisse des Dépôts, the French State own bank, which was launched by the French state as part of its

Future Investment Program.

Existing investor Elaia Partners (€45mn (2012); AUM €121mn) is a France-based venture capital firm seeking to invest in

fast-growing technology companies, preferably at an early stage. It focuses on investing in France-based companies,

although reserves a 20% portfolio allocation to the rest of Europe, with a particular interest in Spain.

Fellow existing investor Gimv (€25mn (2011); AUM €1.8bn) is a Euronext listed private equity and venture capital firm,

investing across the Benelux and DACH regions, as well as in France. It invests across four themes – cleantech

infrastructure, the consumer of 2020, healthcare, and technology which improves sustainability or productivity for

industry. The firm typically invests between €3mn and €30mn in companies with enterprise values of up to €125mn. It last

featured in our November 2014 Bulletin for leading French e-tailer of designer children’s apparel Melijoe’s €9.0mn Series

B round.

Partech Ventures (€210mn (2015); AUM €570mn) is a Paris-based fund which has traditionally had a presence in the US

(via its San Francisco office). Recently, the firm launched a seed fund, established its Partech Shaker – a shared nine-

story building in Paris for use by startups, and closed its first growth equity fund (Partech Growth), making it one of the

larger and more international European funds.

The debt portion of this round was provided by a syndicate of well-known international banks (Bank of China, BNP

Paribas and HSBC), as well as bpifrance.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 14

Navabi Germany | www.navabi.tv # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

8 Internet Services

Late Stage

25.0 Online retailer of plus-size women's clothing

Bauer Venture Partners, DuMont Venture, Index Ventures, Seventure Partners

Navabi (Germany), an online retailer of plus-size women's clothing, raised €25mn in a Late Stage round led by new

investor Bauer Venture Partners with support from existing investors DuMont Venture, Index Ventures and

Seventure Partners. This round is comprised of a cash investment and an advertising budget from Bauer Media.

Through the latter, Navabi will have access to Bauer’s portfolio of more than 600 magazines (including Grazia) and c.

400 digital products which, according to the company, in the UK reach more than 22mn consumers every week. Navabi

has also stated that the funds will be used for further developing Navabi’s own fashion labels (which currently account for

c. 25% of the company’s revenues) and international expansion.

Navabi was founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneurs Bahman Nedaei and Zahir Dehnadi with a goal to “become the

premier destination for plus size fashion worldwide by 2016”. The company is headquartered in Aachen, Germany and

trades in more than 35 countries, including the UK and the US. According to this round’s investor Index Ventures, since

the company’s launch it has “experienced strong growth rates per year of on average +120%” with “30% of Navabi’s

turnover coming from the UK and other international markets”. Navabi reported 2013 revenues of €30mn.

The company offers c. 130 designer brands including traditional brands such as Fendi, Kenzo and Lacoste, as well as

dedicated plus-size brands such as Elena Miro, Anna Scholz and its own eponymous clothing label. Furthermore, last

November the company exclusively launched plus-size supermodel Ashley Graham's lingerie line in Europe. Navabi also

offers supplementary services to enhance the overall customer experience, including a collection of outfit ideas, style

advice per body type and a weekly online magazine.

According to market research firm Mintel, “the UK [plus-size fashion] market alone is expected to grow to nearly £6bn

(€8.1bn) this year (2015), up from £3.8bn (€5.1bn) in 2008.” Other recent fundraisings from companies within the

European e-commerce fashion space include: Zoot’s (Czech Republic fashion apparel retailer) $6.4mn (€5.6mn)

January 2015 seed round, MenInvest’s (French provider of e-commerce and media services for men) €23.2mn series C

round (which featured in our November 2014 Bulletin) and FarFetch’s (UK provider of an online marketplace of

independent fashion boutiques) $66mn (€60mn) May 2014 series D round. Navabi last featured in our December 2013

issue for its €10mn series C round and has now raised €39.4mn to date.

Investors

Bauer Venture Partners (€117mn (2014)) was set up in 2014 as the VC arm of German media firm Bauer Media. It was

established with a remit to invest in “European digital businesses over the next ten years” and has stated it will take a

“stage-agnostic approach”. The firm’s recent notable activity includes its role as a co-lead investor in Lifesum’s (Swedish

health and fitness app provider) $6.7mn (€5.9mn) April 2014 series A round. Bauer Media is a German-based publishing

/ media group which offers c. 600 magazines across 15 countries, as well as a range of TV and radio stations.

Returning investor DuMont Venture is a Cologne-based venture capital firm. The firm last featured in our Bulletin in

December 2013 and June 2012 for Navabi’s €10mn series C round and yourdelivery’s (German food ordering platform)

€15mn series C round, respectively. Founded in 2007, DuMont is the VC arm of M. DuMont Schauberg – one of the

oldest and largest publishing and media companies in Germany. Founded in 1802, the company publishes a range of

books, newspapers and magazines, as well as operating a variety of TV and radio stations. Today, the company has c.

5,000 employees and generated 2013 revenues of €671mn. Dumont Venture primarily seeks to invest between €0.5 and

€2mn in early-stage German companies, primarily within the digital media and IT sectors.

This is Index Ventures’ (€400mn (2014); AUM €3bn) second feature in this month’s issue. The firm last featured in our

December and July 2014 issues for its participation in Adyen’s (Dutch provider of a web-based payments system)

€203mn series B round and BlaBlaCar’s (French operator of a marketplace for ride-sharing) €74mn series C round,

respectively.

Originally from Geneva, Index Ventures is the only European VC firm to have built a truly global franchise, and join the

elite few of Silicon Valley who have successfully expanded outside the US. Other fashion e-tailers Index has invested in

include ASOS, farfetch and net-a-porter.

Founded in 1997, Seventure Partners (€134mn (2014); AUM €612mn) is a French venture capital firm which focuses on

investments in communications, IT and life sciences companies. The firm last featured in our November 2014 Bulletin for

its participation in Quanta Fluid Solutions’ (UK developer of a compact haemodialysis system) €35.3mn series B round.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 15

Westwing Home & Living Germany | www.westwing.de # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

9 Internet Services

Late Stage*

25.0 Operator of an online furniture shopping club

Rocket Internet, Undisclosed Existing Investors

* internal round

Westwing Home & Living (Germany), operator of an online furniture shopping club, raised €25.0mn in a Late Stage

round from existing investor Rocket Internet, as well as several of its other existing investors which it has not named.

The funding will help Westwing to enhance its growth plans as well as to further expand its position in the home & living

market.

Now with c. €179mn raised to date, Westwing is among the best-funded European e-commerce startups and among

Rocket Internet’s (the clone factory of the Samwer brothers) most successful portfolio companies. Its previous round was

a larger €72mn round from Fidelity Worldwide Investment, Odey Asset Management, Tengelmann Ventures and others

that we covered in March 2014 (actually begun in December 2013 by a €10mn investment from Tengelmann), which

funded expansion to Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Slovakia, as well as additional logistics

centers.

Founded in 2011 as Germany’s first e-commerce shopping club for home and living, Westwing (which trades under the

Dalani brand in some countries) offers 3,500 brands in time-limited sales at up to 70% discounts to the Recommended

Retail Price (RRP). These discounts are achieved through partnerships with brands that want to sell surplus inventory.

With around 1,400 employees and 12mn members (90% of which are female), the company claims a leading position in

the15 country markets it operates in. It sells seven products per minute, with a key driver of its success being its

members’ loyalty: 75% of sales come from existing members, who each complete on average 3-4 purchases per year. In

2013, Westwing sold more than 2.8mn items and reported c. €110mn in turnover (up from €41mn in 2012 and €500k in

2011), with over a third of sales conducted on mobile devices (through its Android and iOS applications, as well as its

mobile website).

According to the company, the home and living retail sector is worth about €400bn and various players compete to get a

share of the market. Examples include UK-based Made.com, which offers consumers designer furniture online at factory

prices, with c.€10mn raised to date from backers including Brent Hoberman, the founder of lastminute.com. We last

month reported Made.com as achieving a 63% jump in 2014 sales to £42.8mn (€65.9mn) ahead of a planned IPO

rumoured to be for more than £100mn (€135mn). Another example is Achica, an online members-only club offering time-

limited sales of luxury home and lifestyle brands backed by Balderton Capital. Also noteworthy is Monoqi (Berlin-based

handpicked design / furnishings retailer) buying up the old assets of Mydeco in February 2015 to scale up its UK

operations. Monoqi is making a play to expand into the UK curated design market – the same market Fab.com originally

targeted but crashed out to a $15mn (€13mn) sale after going through $150mn (€132mn) of investment.

Investors

In this round, Westwing chose not to name any other investor aside from the now-public Rocket Internet (DE:RKET), but

did confirm that other existing investors participated. As has been common lately, Rocket Internet shared some key data

points on Westwing’s valuation.

This round increases Westwing’s €353mn post-money valuation to €449mn. In addition, Rocket’s total shareholding

(direct and indirect) in Westwing changed from 33.7% to 34.0% (there was an element of secondary in this round). We

saw Rocket last month in our December 2014 Bulletin for its participation in German Home24’s €12.9mn Series A.

Home24 is an online furniture shopping platform, and while it is not a shopping club like Westwing the two indicate that

furniture eCommerce is clearly attractive to Rocket.

We do not know exactly which of Westwing’s other investors participated in the round, but in brief they are:

Fidelity Worldwide Investment (AUM €192bn), an independent company owned by its employees (51% stake)

and the Johnson family (49% stake), that predominantly focuses on North America;

London-based hedge fund Odey Asset Management (AUM €8.7bn);

Tengelmann Ventures, venture arm of the German multi-sector retail giant Tengelmann;

Holtzbrinck Ventures (€285mn (2015)), venture arm of German publisher Holtzbrinck and early stage internet

specialist;

Point Nine Capital (€40mn (2013)), a Berlin-based angel venture capital fund;

Summit Partners (€460mn (2012), AUM €14bn), one of the largest global growth equity and VC investors;

Investment AB Kinnevik (STO:KINVA; STO:KINVB), one of Sweden’s largest holding companies; and

Access Industries, an investment company holding minority interests in TMT, natural resources and property.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 16

Deliveroo UK | www.deliveroo.co.uk # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

10 Internet Services

B 21.5 Provider of an online restaurant food ordering portal

Accel Partners, Hoxton Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, Index Ventures

Deliveroo (UK), a provider of an online restaurant food ordering portal, raised €21.5mn in a Series B round led by new

investor Accel Partners with support from existing investors Hoxton Ventures and Index Ventures and new investor

Hummingbird Ventures. Deliveroo has stated it will use this funding to “drive expansion across the UK and

internationally” citing a particular focus on hiring and marketing activities. The company is already live in London and

Brighton and launched in Manchester last month.

With c. 50 employees, Delilveroo was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in London, UK. The company provides an

end-to-end food delivery service. This is comprised of an online food-ordering platform (integrated with local independent

and chain restaurants) and a network of c. 300 delivery drivers and cyclists. As Deliveroo handles all the distribution and

technology elements of food delivery, its partner restaurants are able to utilise any excess kitchen capacity they may

have without the hassle of running their own fleet of drivers or dealing with the logistics complexities. According to this

round’s investor Index Ventures, partner restaurants have stated that Deliveroo’s service is able to increase their

revenues by up to 30%. Integrated restaurants include independents such as Andina and Barnyard (the restaurants of

celebrated chefs Martin Morales and Ollie Dabbous, respectively) and chain restaurants such as Busaba Eathai,

Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Honest Burgers, Nando’s, Princi and Rossopomodoro. Deliveroo’s average stated delivery time

is c. 30 minutes.

The company’s has raised a total of €25mn to date. Its last round was a €3.4mn series A round in June 2014 (which was

below our Bulletin threshold). According to Index, at that time “it delivered to a few thousand customers in a handful of

London neighbourhoods”. Today Deliveroo serves more than 120 neighbourhoods across Brighton, London and

Manchester and has c. 50,000 regular customers.

Deliveroo’s key competitors include HungryHouse (which was acquired by German online takeaway ordering giant

Delivery Hero in January 2013 for an undisclosed amount) and Just-Eat.co.uk which floated on the LSE in April 2014 for

£387mn (€525mn). This valued Just-Eat at £1.5bn (€2.0bn) (giving it a P/R ratio of c. 15x) which marked the largest UK

technology IPO in the last eight years according to TechCrunch.

Investors

Well-known Accel Partners (€877mn (2014); AUM €8.4bn) is a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm. The firm last featured

in our June 2014 issue for its participation in Flaregames’ (developer of mobile games) €8.8mn 2014 round. The firm

features later in this issue for its participation in peerTransfer’s (higher-education payment platform provider) €18.9mn

series C round.

Hoxton Ventures (€35mn (2014); AUM €35mn) is a London-based venture capital firm which is featuring in our Bulletin

for the first time. It primarily invests in UK companies within the internet retail and software sectors. The firm states that

“we prefer to be the first venture investor and we follow our investments, aiming to be shareholders for seven to ten

years. We invest as little as $250k to seed a company and as much as $2mn to lead a round”. It currently has a portfolio

of seven companies and has made ten investments to date.

Hummingbird Ventures (€30mn (2011); AUM €71mn) (formerly known as Big Bang Ventures) is a Belgium-based venture

capital firm. Founded in 2000, it seeks to invest between €0.5mn and €2.0mn in digital media and software companies.

The firm currently manages a portfolio of 17 companies and has made c. 30 investments to date. Deliveroo marks the

firm’s first investment in a company within the food and beverage vertical. The firm last featured in our September 2014

issue for its role as a seller in Fidelity National Information Services’ €375mn acquisition of Belgium payment processing

software provider Clear2Pay. Hummingbird’s other past notable exits include Avinity (acquired by ActiveVideo Networks);

DataCenterTechnologies (acquired by Symantec); Dedigate (acquired by Terremark) and Q-layer (acquired by Sun

Microsystems).

This is the third deal in this issue which features Geneva-based venture capital firm Index Ventures (€400mn (2014);

AUM €3bn). Deliveroo marks the firm’s fourth investment into a food and beverage related company in the past two

years. The others were its participation in Rosa Labs’ (creator of a food replacement drink) January 2015 $20mn (€17mn)

series A round, Deliveroo’s June 2014 €3.4mn series A round, and Good Eggs’ (developer of products to grow food

systems) February 2014 $21mn (€18mn) series B round.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 17

CloudBees Belgium | www.cloudbees.com

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

11 Internet Services

Late Stage*

20.2 Provider of plugins and services to support enterprise app development

Blue Cloud Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Matrix Partners, Verizon Ventures

* Internal round

CloudBees (Belgium), provider of plugins and services to support enterprise app development, raised $23.5mn

(€20.2mn) in a Late Stage internal round led by Lightspeed Ventures, with support from other existing investors Blue

Cloud Ventures, Matrix Partners and Verizon Ventures. The money will be use to aggressively develop solutions for

Jenkins CI, as well as to hire sales and professional services to help position CloudBees as a leading Jenkins provider.

As of September 2014, CloudBees no longer offers its Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) but instead focuses entirely on

offering professional services and enterprise plugins based on the Jenkins (formerly Hudson Labs) Continuous

Integration (CI) enterprise platform. Continuous Integration is an increasingly widespread enterprise development

practice where developers working on a program integrate code into a shared repository that is automatically checked

for errors several times a day. This facilitates error detection as developers no longer have to backtrack through a day’s

or more worth of work to find bugs. Jenkin’s offering is the leading open-source CI server, built in Java and offering 1,009

plugins that support the building and testing of virtually any project.

CloudBees was founded in 2010 by Swiss entrepreneur Sacha Labourey, who started his first consulting business while

at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne. The company has since grown through acquisitions and partnerships – it

acquired Jenkins consulting firm InfraDNA and Java applications firm Stax Networks in 2010, and (while it was still

offering it) partnered with HP and Verizon to make its PaaS available through their cloud services. The firm’s 58

employees serve clients such as Bullhorn, Cisco, and Northrop Grumman, as well as the US Federal Reserve.

Investors

This round brings CloudBees’ total funding to just under €40mn. Largely driven by the company’s pivot in September

2014, it comes less than one year after we last covered CloudBees’s €8mn Series C led by Verizon Ventures, in March.

The investment was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (€850mn (2014); AUM €2.2bn), a firm with offices on both the

US East and West coasts, as well as in China and India, but no physical presence in Europe. It is currently investing

from its $1bn (€850mn) tenth fund (raised in 2014), which targets early and growth stage investments in consumer,

enterprise technology and cleantech companies. It also has an active $325mn (€275mn) ‘Select’ fund focusing on later

stage opportunities. Lightspeed joined Matrix for CloudBees’ €7.5mn second round in summer 2011. We last covered

the firm in October 2014 when it led UK-based bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain’s €24.1mn Series A.

Blue Cloud Ventures is a New York based co-investment fund specialising in SaaS companies, with an investment

preference is to put in $1mn (€850k) to $3mn (€2.5mn) alongside Tier 1 VC firms. It will also consider mobile apps, e-

commerce, new media and tech-enabled services. It will often fill up rounds which are too small for growth capital

investors, and sometimes provides liquidity for minority investors through secondary elements. It prefers SaaS

companies with recurring revenues and at least $10mn (€8.5mn) in turnover. Including CloudBees, the firm’s current

fund has made eight investments so far. Blue Cloud was a new investor last round, alongside Verizon which led the

Series C.

Verizon Ventures, which often co-invests and typically provides up to $5mn (€4mn) for businesses relevant to Verizon.

Verizon was one of the earlier companies to formalise its strategic investments and has backed over two dozen

companies since 1990. Alongside its venture arm, Verizon runs complimentary initiatives such as a developer

community (for which it provides tools and APIs), an open development initiative to encourage the use of Verizon

standards and networks, as well as a number of innovation centres (physical locations providing collaborative space).

Matrix Partners (€252mn (2014); AUM €3.4bn), which was the only institutional investor in CloudBees’ €3mn first round

in 2010, has the same geographic footprint as Lightspeed but is much older (1977 vs 2000). Over its near four decades

of operation, Matrix has backed companies including Apple, Gilt Groupe, Sandisk and Veritas. Matrix appeared only last

month in our December Bulletin for its €41.4mn investment in UK content management and collaboration cloud platform

provider Huddle.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 18

Adcash Estonia | www.adcash.com

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

12 Software A 20 Provider of a ‘near’ real-time advertising trading platform

Naxicap Partners

Adcash (Estonia), a provider of a ‘near’ real-time advertising trading platform, raised €20mn in a Series A round led

by Naxicap Partners. The money will be used for organic growth through hires and boost international expansion,

mainly in China and Russia, where the company is currently opening offices.

Adcash (originally Cashtrafic) was founded by French serial entrepreneurs Christophe Avignon (Darkium Group (2014),

Flapit (2010), Webinfluence (2007)) and Thomas Padovani in 2008 as a subsidiary of Webinfluence, an Estonia-based

digital marketing company providing web development and internet marketing services they founded together. While

Christophe left Adcash in February 2013, Thomas Padovani is the CEO and was nominated among the top five

Estonian finalists for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award in 2013.

Adcash provides a ‘near’ real-time advertising trading platform (Adcash®) enabling both publishers to monetise traffic

on their apps or websites by featuring ads from various brands, and advertisers to publish ads on apps and websites

from over 249 regions. Adcash enables advertising through a range of ad types including background, banner, footer,

minibans, slide-in and site-under, in image or video format.

For publishers, no matter their size and revenue, Adcash provides a range of features for managing in ‘near’ real-time

their ad inventory based on a mix of algorithmic and manual calibration options to optimise the profitability of their ad

zone(s). Publishers can analyse their website statistics through custom reports generated by the Adcash® platform with

the aim of optimising their ad-revenues, as they can only request payments once they have reached the minim €100

threshold on their account balance. In September 2013, when the company was generating €25mn in revenues, it gave

about 70% to 90% of its revenues to publishers.

Adcash enables advertisers to target a specific audience based on criteria such as language, location (city, country),

browser, industry (e.g. entertainment, gaming, IT). It also provides customised reports for advertisers and ‘near’ real-

time performance statistics with the aim of improving ad campaigns. Adcash buys all impressions at Cost per Action

(CPA), Cost per Click (CPC), Cost per Lead (CPL) and Cost per Thousand (CPM) rates, and provides dynamic CPM

pricing.

The company has developed partnerships with payment solution providers including Bank Wire, Payoneer, PayPal,

Skrill and Webmoney, works with over 150,000 publishers generating over 10 million qualified leads per month, and

runs over 1,000 ad campaigns. Adcash which previously focused on gaming and entertainment traffic has expanded to

other verticals and invested in technology to become scalable. As a result, although it primarily targets small and mid-

sized businesses, Adcash has attracted customers such as Alibaba, easyvoyage, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Spotify and

King. Well-known e-commerce giant Alibaba is one of Adcash’s top advertisers.

The company, which employed 54 staff and ranked 59th

on Alexa in February 2014 has since grown to 100 staff and

ranked 40th

on Alexa on 23 February 2015. It now has over 300 million uniques a day on its platform (+300% year-on-

year) and reached 2014 revenues of €42mn (+68% year-on-year). Adcash has been doubling its turnover each year

from €6mn in 2011 to €12mn in 2012, to c. €25mn in 2013. It has offices in Paris (France), Querétaro (Mexico), Sofia

(Bulgaria) and Tallinn (Estonia). Adcash operates in the crowded space of advertising networks where many

competitors try to develop systems in new niches to find their space in the market. Competitors include Bidvertiser,

Google Adsense and Qadabra. It considers its advantage that it does not spend sales resources on Fortune 500

advertisers, believing that “They follow the trends and will eventually come to us”, instead focusing on providing a

world-class product to SMEs. AdCash focuses on clustering audiences and delivering highly targeted, performance

advertising traffic, which gives it an advantage over Google, despite the IT giant’s organic search data.

Investors

This investment is Adcash’s second round following an undisclosed investment from Naxicap Partners in September

2014 and was announced in a low-profile way. Naxicap Partners (AUM €2bn) is the France-based private equity

subsidiary of corporate and investment banking services provider Natixis. Sector agnostic, Naxicap Partners typically

invests between €1mn and €100mn, and operates a team of 38 staff organised in three business lines, namely

venture capital (investments up to €3mn), small cap (investment between €2mn and €15mn) and mid cap

(investments above €15mn). Additionally to its Parisian offices, it operates from offices in Lyon, Nantes, Strasbourg

and Toulouse.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 19

peerTransfer Spain | www.peertransfer.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

13 Internet Services

C 18.9 Provider of a payment platform for students to pay for higher education

Accel Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Devonshire Investors, QED Investors, Spark Capital

peerTransfer (Spain), a provider of a payment platform for students to pay for higher education, raised €18.9mn in a

Series C round led by new investor Bain Capital Ventures with support from existing investors Accel Partners,

Devonshire Investors, QED Investors and Spark Capital. The firm has stated it will use the funds to support its “three-

pronged growth strategy of international expansion, product innovation and new verticals within the international

education space.”

peerTransfer’s payment platform is targeted at international students aiming to pay their university fees. Existing issues

with paying these from traditional banks include high and hidden fees, an inability for students to track their money and

unfavourable exchange rate conversions. peerTransfer was founded to address these issues and simplify the overall

process. Students access peerTransfer’s service via a web portal and input their university and the amount of their fees.

They then make the payment to peerTransfer which accepts payments in more than 200 currencies and supports a wide

range of payment methods (such as Alipay, eWallet, Mastercard, Online Bill Pay, UnionPay and Visa). peerTransfer then

facilitates its own currency exchange – i.e. rather than relying on a bank to exchange yen for dollars, peerTransfer

deposits the yen into a bank account in Japan and then withdraws the money from one of its US accounts to pay the

relevant university. peerTransfer’s service also includes a 24/7 hotline for students which enables them to track their

payments and have any payment-related questions answered. The firm has stated its intention to expand its service to

fulfil other university-related money transfer needs such as colleges accepting donations from international alumni.

peerTransfer primarily serves overseas students paying fees to US universities (according to the firm there are currently

c. 750,000 students from more than 200 countries which attend school in the US), as well as Australian, UK and other

European universities. The company was founded in Spain in 2009. Today it is headquartered in Boston, US with

additional offices in Spain and c. 50 employees.

As of August last year, peerTransfer stated it had processed more than $1bn (€0.9bn) in international education

payments and following this round stated expectations to have processed c. $2bn (€1.8bn) by May 2015. The firm

currently serves students from c. 200 countries in paying fees to more than 600 universities. Following this round,

peerTransfer has raised $43mn (€38mn) to date. Other companies focussed on facilitating international money transfers

include UK-based World Remit, which in February 2015 closed a $100mn (€88mn) series B round which valued the

company at $400mn (€352mn).

Investors

New investor Bain Capital Ventures (€631mn (2014); AUM €2.7bn) is the venture capital arm of US asset management firm Bain Capital (AUM €61bn). Bain Capital Ventures last featured in our September 2014 issue for its participation in Hazelcast’s (provider of an open source in-memory data grid for big data applications) €8.5mn series B. Founded in 2001, Bain Capital Ventures currently has c. 40 employees and is based in Boston with subsidiaries in New York and Palo Alto. The firm has made c. 125 venture investments since its inception and has c. 65 active portfolio companies.

This is Accel Partners‘ (€877mn (2014); AUM €8.4bn) second investment featured in this month’s issue (the other is for Deliveroo’s €21.5mn series B round). Other rounds for payment service providers Accel has participated in include Go Cardless’ January 2014 $7.0mn (€6.2mn) seed round, Enstage’s $5.0mn (€4.4mn) November 2011 seed round and Yapstone’s $50mn (€44mn) June 2011 late-stage round. Founded in 1983, Accel has offices in India, the UK and on both coasts of the US and, through a partnership with IDG, also has a presence in China.

Devonshire Investors is an investment subsidiary of Fidelity Investments (AUM €1.3tn) which is in charge of managing investments outside of Fidelity’s core financial services business. Established in 1969, the firm has made 12 investments to date, with a portfolio of 10 companies, and seeks to invest within the communications and IT sectors.

QED Investors, is a Virginia, US-based venture capital firm focused on investments in the consumer products and services, financial services and IT sectors. Founded in 2007, the firm has made 68 investments to date and currently manages a portfolio of c. 50 companies.

Founded in 2005, Spark Capital (€330mn (2014); AUM €1.6bn) is Boston-based venture capital firm with additional offices in New York. The firm last featured in our January 2013 issues for its participation in GetYourGuide’s (Swiss tour booking platform provider) €10.5mn series A round and previously in March 2012 for its participation in RetailFX’s (Cypriot provider of a social currency, commodity and index trading platform also known as eToro) €11.4mn late-stage round. The firm is a past investor in well-known companies Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 20

Atlas Genetics UK | www.atlasgenetics.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

14 Medtech C 17.2 Developer of point-of-care diagnostic tests for infectious diseases

BB Biotech Ventures, Consort Medical, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Life Sciences Partners, Novartis Venture Funds, RusnanoMedInvest, South West Ventures Fund

Atlas Genetics (UK), a developer of point-of-care diagnostic tests for infectious diseases, raised $20.0mn (€17.2mn) in

a Series C round from new investor RusnanoMedInvest with support from existing investors BB Biotech Ventures,

Consort Medical, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Life Sciences Partners, Novartis Venture Funds and South

West Ventures Fund. The money will fund the launch of a commercially available test and the start of clinical trials in

the US.

Incorporated in 2005 as a spin-out from Bath University in the UK, Atlas Genetics’ io® system is a molecular diagnostic

system for the ultra-rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases. Its reader, based on patent protected electrochemical sensor

technology, is accompanied by cartridges designed to receive an unprocessed clinical specimen. When a cartridge is

inserted, the reader completes a three stage process of sample preparation, DNA amplification and electrochemical

detection to analyse the patient’s sample for the target infection. A single cartridge is capable of carrying out up to 24

different tests from a single patient sample. The advantage of Atlas’ system is that it allows tests to take place at the

point-of-care, removing the need for clinicians to wait for laboratory analysis, with results available within 30 minutes.

Adopting the razor-and-blade business model, a low cost instrument coupled with test-specific disposable cartridges, the

firm is targeting STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) and HAIs (Healthcare Associated Infections) such as MRSA.

Atlas’ first commercially available test will be for chlamydia, which is intended to launch in Europe this year, with a test

for gonorrhoea next in the pipeline. Ultra-rapid tests for STIs are highly valuable, as a large proportion of patients do not

return for test results or follow-on treatment. The European and US markets are estimated to require 50mn tests a year.

Atlas Genetics is the latest in a number of molecular diagnostics companies to appear in our Bulletin. Others have

included Biocartis, which we last saw in September 2014, and Exosome Diagnostics in March 2014. Following two

investment rounds of €23mn each in July 2011 and April 2014, this brings total investment in Atlas to €63mn. The firm

has also received grant funding from a range of bodies including the South West Regional Development Agency, the

Wellcome Trust, the US Institute of Health and the UK’s Technology Strategy Board. Atlas’ total funds raised is in line

with the relatively long investment runways seen for molecular diagnostics firms, which is partly driven by the lengthy

clinical trials involved. Although it is often possible to profit from the research use of near-to-market molecular diagnostic

technology (Atlas made just over €250k in 2013), venture-backing of molecular diagnostics businesses is often quite

capital intensive. However, if successful, market demand and growth is highly predictable and often long-lived.

Investors

This round was led by RusnanoMedInvest (€290mn (2012); AUM €290mn). Created early in 2012, RusnanoMedInvest

(RMI) is a subsidiary of RUSNANO which we last saw in our May 2014 issue with a late-stage round for Crocus

Technology. State-backed RUSNANO was set up to allow Russia to identify and invest in promising companies in the

nanotechnology industry. Its subsidiary, RMI, received initial funding of just over $330mn (€290mn) to do something

similar for the life sciences. To help source companies with potential, RMI has partnered with US life sciences VC

Domain Associates. RMI aims to back about 20 companies in total and has so far invested in 16.

Healthcare venture firm BB Biotech Ventures (€83mn (2009); AUM €192mn) is part of the Bellevue financial services

group which is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The firm invests primarily in Europe, but will consider investment

opportunities globally. Although stage agnostic, BB’s focus within healthcare is relatively tight with a preference for

product-driven clinical-stage drug development and device companies. Another venture firm in this round is Life

Sciences Partners (€95mn (2010); AUM €521mn) – one of Europe’s largest healthcare investors which has backed over

75 companies in its 25 year history. Earlier this year LSP sold the outstanding shares of its portfolio company Prosensa

to BioMarin. Prosensa had previously become one of very few Nasdaq IPOs for European biotech when it listed on the

NASDAQ for €70mn in the summer of 2013. Finally, South West Ventures Fund is one of nine regional venture capital

funds in the UK, investing up to €500k in companies across the South West of the country.

London-listed strategic investor Consort Medical (LON:CSRT), which contributed 17% of this round, is a developer and

manufacturer of drug delivery devices and services, whose products range from inhalers and injection systems through

to dose counters and point-of-care diagnostic devices. Last year the firm bought CDMO (Contract Development and

Manufacturing Organisation) Aesica for €312mn. The other strategic investors were both major pharmaceutical

companies – Johnson & Johnson Innovation (previously known as Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation –

JJDC) which was also an investor in Biocartis’ September 2014 round and Novartis Venture Funds.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 21

Neo Technology Sweden | www.neo4j.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

15 Software C 17.2 Provider of an open source graph database

Conor Venture Partners, Creandum, Dawn Capital, Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Sunstone Capital

Neo Technology (Sweden), provider of an open source graph database, raised $20.0mn (€17.2mn) in a Series C

round led by Creandum and Dawn Capital with support from existing investors Conor Venture Partners, Fidelity

Growth Equity Partners and Sunstone Capital. The money will be used to invest in further development of its product,

drive open source community growth and expand its presence in the U.S.

Graph databases are a more natural method for expressing, storing and retrieving data that does not fit well in a

relational database (such as how users are connected to each other on a social network) and have two major uses. The

first is for companies to develop applications on top of it in order to identify commercial connections between customers

or users. The second is known as Master Data Management, where companies are looking to aggregate and blend data

sets from disparate sources to build a unified record of a customer or user.

Founded in 2007, Neo Technology is the developer of the neo4j graph database. The company originally began

developing its software as part of a project for the Swedish military to improve its information about the relationship

between documentation and people in its content management systems. neo4j is a NoSQL database catering to

enterprise developers and provides an object-orientated, flexible network structure as opposed to the traditional strict

and static tables commonly seen in relational databases.

Of its competitors, Neo Technology CEO Emil Eifrem has named IBM and Oracle as the most visible that the company

has encountered when pitching to prospective clients. Notably, Neo claims it is competing against the relational

database products of these companies and a key challenge it faces is explaining to audiences how its technology works

and the advantages it offers. Nevertheless, it faces a growing challenge from rival startups such as US-based Dato

(formerly GraphLab), which also raised $18.5mn (€15.9mn) this month and Orchestrate, well-known for securing

Finland-based mobile game developer Rovio (the makers of Angry Birds) as one of its first clients. In general, database

software is proving popular with investors at the moment, as this month also saw leading US-based NoSQL database

provider MongoDB raise $80mn (€68.6mn) and announce its intention to seek an IPO at the end of the year.

Currently, the company works with a diverse range of clients including Adobe, Cisco, Crunchbase, Earthlink, eBay,

Pitney Bowes, Polyvore, Walmart and Zephyr Health. It has between 150 and 200 subscription customers and there

have been more than 500k downloads to date of the latest version of its software, Neo4j 2.0. The company featured in

Gartner’s 2014 Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems. Neo last featured in our Bulletin in

September 2011 after completing its €7.7mn Series B round. The company is headquartered in Malmo, Sweden and

employs c. 80 people with additional its offices in Germany, the UK and the US.

Investors

Lead investor Creandum (€154mn (2013); AUM €350mn) is a Sweden-based technology investor founded in 2003. It

typically seeks to invest in early to mid-stage companies, with investments ranging from seed funding of €250k to a total

of €10mn over the lifetime of a holding. It specialises in the consumer, software and hardware sectors. Fellow lead

investor Dawn Capital (€84mn (2013); AUM €84mn) is a UK-based venture capital firm, investing in the consumer

internet, Fintech, infrastructure and mobile services sectors. The firm typically seeks to invest when businesses are

beginning to scale their revenues but are not yet profitable. It currently has 17 portfolio companies and last featured in

our May 2014 Bulletin for its participation in Sweden-based mobile payments system developer iZettle’s €40mn Series C

round.€1bn

Conor Venture Partners (€50mn (2010); AUM €69mn) is a Finnish venture capital firm investing across the electronics,

embedded systems, ICT and materials & optics sectors. Its initial investments are typically between €500k and €1.5mn,

although it may invest up to €8mn over the lifetime of an investment. Its most recent fund, Conor Technology Fund II Ky,

counts the state-backed European Investment Fund and Finnish Industry investment among its investors.

Fidelity Growth Partners Europe (€142mn (2010); AUM €577mn) typically invests in European technology companies

with revenues between €1mn and €5mn, with at least 100% year-on-year growth, or companies with revenues more

than €5mn and at least 30% year-on-year growth. Fidelity is able to invest between €1mn and €10mn, but can be

unconstrained if the opportunity is right. Notably, the firm’s founder, Simon Clark, is stepping down as the chairman of

the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) (as part of the BVCA’s annual chairman rotation) to be

replaced by Tim Farazmand, (managing director at UK mid-market private equity firm LDC). Finally, Sunstone Capital

(€98mn (2012); AUM €1bn) is a Copenhagen-based technology and life sciences investor. Its technology arm targets

early-stage investments in northern and eastern Europe. Its initial investments are typically between €200k and €2mn.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 22

Digital Origin Spain | www.digitalorigin.com

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

16 Internet Services

A 15.0 Provider of a system for assessing credit worthiness in real time

Prime Ventures

Digital Origin (originally known as Newbanq) (Spain), provider of a system for assessing credit worthiness in real time,

raised €15.0mn in a Series A round from Prime Ventures. The money will be used for marketing, as well as continued

development of the firm’s products.

Given the constant talk of crisis it is sometimes forgotten how innovative the Spanish financial services market can be.

Prior to 2008 Spain was a European leader in Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) – which may have hurt

the country but has also led to a great many competitive Spanish Fintech startups.

Founded in 2011, Digital Origin has developed two businesses, both of which were launched into the Spanish market.

The first is an online payday loan company called QueBueno. It can provide personal loans of up to €300 with maximum

terms of 30 days. It rejects 80% of applications, but for those it accepts QueBueno can provide funds in quarter of an

hour. QueBueno is not dissimilar to internet-based payday loan companies elsewhere in Europe like Germany’s

Kreditech, which is also active in the Spanish market, and featured in our June 2014 issue and the UK’s Wonga, which

last featured in our February 2011 Bulletin. This business model, consumer lending based on proprietary big data credit

scoring algorithms, is rapidly becoming an established paradigm in Fintech.

Digital Origin’s second business is more innovative – a platform called pagamastarde.com which allows e-tailers to offer

consumer credit to their customers in the form of deferred payments. The benefit to e-tailers is improved conversion

rates and fewer abandoned carts, although there will be a small cost in order to off-load the credit risk to the lender.

Providing loans at the point of purchase gives Digital Origin an entirely new source of loan origination (possibly a very

large one), although it remains to be seen how the credit quality of loans originated at the point of purchase will compare

to that of loans which the borrower has had to actively seek.

Underpinning both of these businesses is a proprietary credit scoring platform. Digital Origin’s system uses big data

gathered from online application forms and numerous electronic sources and is able to assess consumer credit risk in

around 30 seconds. This gives Digital Origin the same capabilities as its competitors, of reduced risk through improved

debt underwriting, as well as a competitive advantage over traditional lenders from its speed of response. Despite

spending €4mn to develop its credit-scoring platform and maintaining an office in London as well as Barcelona, Digital

Origin’s fixed costs are very low and the firm has been profitable since at least the beginning of 2014. The firm’s

expansion plans are ambitious and are said to potentially include acquisitions.

As Fintech is a relatively new sector, it is unusual to find entrepreneurs with a track record in this sector. Most founders

of Fintech companies have backgrounds in banking or IT systems. Indeed, of Digital Origin’s three co-founders, one is a

former Goldman Sachs banker and another is a technology lawyer. The third (Pascal Pegaz-Paquet) is a serial

entrepreneur whose previous companies include getfinancing.com, an online billing and payment solutions company

based in the US.

Investors

From an investment point of view, the key point about Digital Origin is that it is a platform operating as a principal lender.

Acting as a principal lender already makes the business much more capital intensive than its P2P counterparts. This

alone would give rise to a need for significant investment, but if the firm’s platform gains traction in the marketplace then

Digital Origin’s appetite for further capital investment could become truly voracious.

While there has been some debt financing, we believe this to be the first equity round for the firm. Amsterdam-based

Prime Ventures (€130mn (2014); AUM €341mn) provides growth capital to a broad range of technology companies. The

firm typically invests between €5mn and €15mn initially and up to €20mn over the life-time of a deal, with a preference

for being the lead investor. Prime was reported to have acquired a 30% stake in Digital Origin in this round.

Prime has made investments in the Benelux countries, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK and will consider

investment anywhere in Europe. Since it was formed in 1999, Prime has built up a portfolio of some 30 active

investments. One notable exit was the sale of augmented reality mobile phone app developer Layar, which featured in

our November 2010 issue, to Blippar in June 2014. Having just raised a €130mn fund, the firm is growing and is also

looking to increase headcount in its offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Cambridge, UK.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 23

Bazaar UK / US | www.mubi.com # Sector Round €mn Description Investors

17 Internet Services

Late Stage 12.9 Operator of a curated film streaming platform

Floreat Group, Individual Investors, MMC Ventures

Bazaar, trading as MUBI (UK / US), operator of a curated film streaming platform, raised $15mn (€12.9mn) in a Late

Stage round almost entirely from 49 individual investors, with participation from Floreat Group and MMC Ventures.

MUBI was founded in 2007 by Turkish entrepreneur Efe Cakarel as The Auteurs, offering an online film streaming

proposition that differs from Netflix or Amazon in a number of ways. First, the platform only offers 30 films at a given

time. However, these films are curated by a team of critics and film experts, and pitched at those who enjoy art-house,

cult or indie films. Secondly, MUBI provides a social network centered on film, giving users an opportunity to connect and

discuss with fellow cinephiles. Thirdly, the platform is offered at a much lower price (£2.99 or $5.00 per month) than the

larger streaming players. A fourth point is that the platform supports offline viewing.

MUBI has gone to market not only online, but through partnerships with hardware vendors. Being natively available on

home media devices has helped to accelerate its growth. At the time of funding MUBI’s app had 5.5mn downloads on

the Playstation platform where it first launched in 2010 (among the first to do so), putting it on par with Hulu, for example.

Other partners include smart media streaming device providers such as Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV), as

well as smart TV vendors like Sony (Bravia). Like some European startups we cover, MUBI flipped its headquarters to

the US while maintaining locations in Istanbul, London, Mexico City and Munich. Its team of 50 works across these

locations to offer films in 43 jurisdictions, with language or content localisations where necessary.

Video streaming is evidently a large and growing market. According to Technavio, 2013’s monthly global internet video

traffic was 23 Exabytes (1 trillion Gigabytes); this is expected to more than triple to 72 Exabytes by 2018. MUBI hopes to

be a strong niche player in an otherwise heavily consolidated market dominated by the aforementioned Netflix (>50mn

subscribers) and Amazon Prime Video (>20mn subscribers). Not only does limiting the films on offer to 30 at a time keep

licensing costs down, its curated content and discussion community gives it a clearly differentiated offering.

Investors

To date, MUBI has raised $21mn (€18mn) from investors. In January 2011 it raised $1.2mn (€1mn) at a pre-money

valuation of $12mn (€10m) from Felicis Ventures (€55mn (2012); AUM €85mn), a silicon valley seed and early-stage tech

investor we last covered in June 2014 for Dutch payment provider Adyen’s €11.8mn Series B. The round however, was

led by Eduardo Costantini (an Argentine real estate mogul) and saw participation from at least six other individual

investors. The company also raised a further $5mn (€4mn) from undisclosed investors in October 2013.

What marks out this latest round (in light of its size) is that no more than 5% of the investment came from institutional

investors, the majority being provided by 49 individual investors; this is the first time we have seen anything like this

within our HTI reporting threshold. Reportedly, the round was raised on a ‘rolling’ basis, where management would send

pitches out to investors and then invite them to a virtual data room if there was interest. According to Cakarel “We went

after individual investors at different valuations over a year...the terms are the same for everyone – no lead, no side

letters, no preferences, no negotiation, no exceptions.” High profile individual investors in this round included:

Jon Winkelried: Former Co-President of Goldman Sachs

Eric Fellner: Producer, Co-Chairman of Working Title Films

Martín Varsavsky: CEO and Founder of Fon

Pascal Cagni: Former CEO of Apple EMEA; Board Member, Vivendi

Osama Al Ayoub: CEO, Kuwait Investment Office

Simon Patterson: Silver Lake Partners

Jörg Mohaupt: Access Industries; Board Member, Warner Music Group

Peter Dubens: Founder, Oakley Capital

Bertrand Demole: Partner, Pictet

Of the two institutional investors in this round, one is the well-known UK-based MMC Ventures (AUM €141mn) and the

other is the Floreat Group (in fact a private investment office). We last saw MMC back UK ingredient box e-tailer Gousto’s

€6.3mn Series B in September 2014. MMC backs consumer internet firms, financial and business services companies

and software businesses, typically pre-profit but with strong revenue growth.

Floreat Group is a first-time guest in our Bulletin. Based in Switzerland, it manages money for high net worth individuals

and invests across sectors in both VC and PE deals, as well as real estate. It also offers banking services.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 24

Asgoodasnew Germany | www.asgoodasnew.com

# Sector Round €mn Description Investors

18 Internet Services C 11 Online retailer of refurbished electronic gadgets

BFB Growth Funds Brandenburg, MCI Management, Munich Venture Partners, PDV Inter-Media Venture, SevenVentures, Ventech

asgoodasnew (Germany), an online retailer of refurbished electronic gadgets, raised €11mn in a Series C round from

new investors MCI Management and Munich Venture Partners with support from existing investors BFB Growth

Funds Brandenburg, PDV Inter-Media Venture, SevenVentures and Ventech. The money will be used to strengthen

the company’s presence in Germany and expand internationally.

asgoodasnew (formerly known as “asgoodas.nu”) was founded in 2008 by former Deutsche Telecom project manager

Christian Wolf with the aim of enabling individuals to make money by reselling devices they no longer use. In April 2014,

Christian stepped down as CEO and started working as a consultant for the company. Daniel Boldin, former CEO at

operator of stores selling electronic products ProMarkt (a subsidiary of Rewe) and founder of online electronic product

marketplace MyBy (acquired by Rewe in 2010 – undisclosed value) became CEO of asgoodasnew.

asgoodasnew sells products via two websites, namely asgoodasnew and Wirkaufens. The company offers refurbished

and quality-tested handsets and electronic devices including mobile phones, tablets, cameras, portable navigation

systems and games consoles. It sells products from a large range of well-known brands such as Acer, Apple, HP,

Lenovo, Samsung and Sony, some of which it has developed partnerships with the likes of BASE, blau.de and HP for

refurbishing devices. The company has also developed partnership with blue-chip online payments enabler PayPal and

delivery services provider DHL. asgoodasnew pays a fixed price to used electronic devices sellers based on market

value calculated from internet transactions.

The company employs 100 staff across offices in Berlin and Frankfurt.

Investors

This is the first disclosed investment of the seven rounds raised by the company since its founding in 2008.

Based in Germany, BC Brandenburg Capital is the venture capital arm of business development bank Investitionsbank

des Landes Brandenburg, and operates as a holding company for various investment funds such as KfW’s subsidiary

Technologie Beteiligungs Gesellschaft. BC Brandenburg Capital invests in small and mid-sized businesses at all stages

of development, from seed to IPO. It typically invests in Germany-based companies in the construction and engineering,

information and communication technology, life sciences, measuring and testing instruments, microelectronics and

nanotechnology sectors.

MCI Management (AUM €223mn) is a Poland-based private equity firm which typically invests in biotechnology,

consumer, digital media, e-commerce, electronics, information technology, retail and software sectors. This is the second

time MCI Management features in our Bulletin this month following an investment in provider of an online retail and flash

sales platform Windeln.de, which is profiled page 10.

Munich Venture Partners (AUM €57mn) is a Germany-based venture capital firm. Stage agnostic, it typically invests in

agriculture and food technologies, energy efficiency, green information and communications technologies, as well as

sustainable environmental and energy technologies.

Featuring for the first time in our Bulletin, PDV Inter-Media Venture is the venture arm of Germany-based newspaper

publisher Mediengruppe Pressedruck, famous for publishing German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine. Based in

Germany, PDV inter-Media Venture invests in consumer products and services, electronic commerce and mobile

sectors.

SevenVentures is the venture capital arm of Germany-based broadcasting services provider in Europe ProSiebenSat.1

Group (ETR:PSM). The firm makes strategic and venture investments in companies based in Austria, Germany,

Switzerland, UK and the US. For strategic investments it targets majority investments in companies in fashion and

lifestyle, home and living, marketplaces and travel sectors. For venture investments it targets minority investments and

cooperation models on basis of joint ventures, revenue shares or virtual shares in B2C businesses, which it typically

advertise via its TV network.

Ventech (€100mn (2012); AUM €483mn) is a private equity firm which invests in e-commerce, infrastructure, media,

online advertising and software sectors. In addition to its Paris office, Ventech operates from Beijing and Munich, and

typically invests in China, Russia and western Europe. The firm last featured in our May 2014 Bulletin when it contributed

to developer of Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM) Crocus Technology’s €44mn late-stage round.

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 25

List of Acronyms

Financial Terms

k used as abbreviation for 1,000 (for example, €1k means €1,000)

mn Million

bn Billion

AUM Asset Under Management

CEO Chief Executive Officer

EBIT Earnings before interest and tax

EBITDA Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation

ECM Equity Capital Markets

FINMA Financial Market Supervisory Authority

IPO Initial Public Offering

JV Joint Venture

LBO Leverage Buyout

LLP Limited Liability Partnership

M&A Merger and Acquisition

PLC Public Limited Company

SME Small-Medium Enterprise

VC Venture Capital

Business / Technical Terms

BVCA British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

CI Continuous Integration

CPA Cost per Action

CPC Cost per Click

CPL Cost per Lead

CPM Cost per Thousand

DACH German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)

HAIs Healthcare Associated Infections

MRAM Magnetic Random Access Memories

MBD Merchant Banking Division

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 26

PaaS Platform as a Service

PUE Power Usage Efficiency

RRP Recommended Retail Price

RMI RusnanoMedInvest

STIs Sexually Transmitted Infections

SSP Supply Side Platform

TMT Technology, Media and Telecommunications

January 2015

© Go4Venture Advisers 2015 Page 27

Go4Venture Advisers LLP

48 Charles Street

Berkeley Square

London

W1J 5EN

+44 (0)20 7529 5400

g4vbulletin@go4venture.com

This report was published on February 27, 2015

Disclaimer

This report has been prepared and issued by Go4Venture Advisers LLP who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. All information used in the publication of this report, has been compiled from publicly available sources that are believed to be reliable, however no representation, warranty, or undertaking, express or limited is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information or opinions contained in this report. Opinions contained in this report represent those of Go4Venture Advisers LLP at the time of publication. This research is non-objective. This document is provided for information purposes only and should not be construed as an offer or solicitation for investment. Furthermore, as the information contained in this document is strictly confidential it may not be reproduced or further distributed. The value of investments and any income generated may go down as well as up. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. Investors may not get back the amount invested. This publication is not intended to be relied upon in making any specific investment or other decisions. Appropriate independent advice should be obtained before making any such decision. This report has been compiled by Jean-Michel Deligny, Managing Director – for and on behalf of Go4Venture Advisers.

Copyright: 2015 Go4Venture Advisers. All rights reserved.

Registered address: 10 Wellington Street, Cambridge, CB1 1HW Incorporation number OC336611

Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority