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•  Hey, Neelie Kroes, maybe you could return our calls about this EU cookie law? 06 Feb 2012, 16:30

  Early last year we pointed out that implementing the proposed EU cookie law would profoundly affect European technology companies and anyone running a business online out of Europe. Let’s review why.

  First of all, it could mean that a staggering 90% of a site’s visitors would run a mile rather than saying yes to accepting a simple Google Analytics cookie. This is what happened when the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) implemented the EU advise on their own web site (see above image).

  Now, while that doesn’t mean you would lose the actual people. They may still be on your site. It’s just that you wouldn’t know, because – and it stands to reason – most ordinary people get scared off by the idea that they might be being “tracked” for advertising or analytics purposes even though that data is anonymous. Since cookies almost always refer to anonymised data, this is a long-held practise online and has helped online businesses to thrive.

  Prior to the new EU cookie law, site owners just had to provide users with information about how the cookies were used and explain how to opt-out if they objected, usually in Terms and Conditions. Under the new rules, cookies can only be stored on devices where the user has given their consent.

  Now, this is a big enough issue for large content publishers and technology companies. Imagine being a startup in Europe where you have to implement this law? Suddenly all those other startups, in other jurisdictions, like the US or China, are looking prety good, because when a user visits them they are not confronted by a huge “DO YOU WANT TO ACCEPT OUR COOKIES? PLEASE READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS” warning sign first. Personally if I was your average Joe and saw that I would just revert to the US competitor site. Simple.

  This could have been so different. The EU Commission could have simply brought four people round a table and asked the main browser company owners (Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) to implement a simple tick box in a browser distributed in the EU. Do it in a friendly way even: “We have detected you are in the EU – would you like to be served a more personalised browsing experience via anonymised cookies or not?”. Or similar. You get the drift.

  We pointed out in March last year what a bad idea this would be for European technology companies. Entrepreneurs have held up their hands in protest at the idea.

  Yes, there are privacy issues, we recognise that. But European companies are going out onto the field with their bats snapped and their legs broken.

  The crazy thing is that consumers actually don’t mind being tracked anonymously if it improves their experience. One USA Today/Gallup poll showed that although 67% of consumers surveyed said that advertisers shouldn’t track them, that figure collapsed when 47% came back saying they would actually accept tracking as long as they could choose the advertisers.

  In an era where economic growth in Europe has never been more crucial, do we really want to shackle our online businesses in this manner?

  A few weeks ago I realised that Neelie Kroes, who is responsible at the European Commission for its Digital Agenda, was following me on Twitter.

  I Direct Messaged her asking for an interview. She put me onto her press people. I contacted them. I’ve yet to hear a reply.

  Perhaps its high time someone returned TechCrunch’s overtures, before there’s no European tech industry left to write about.

  

•  Lean-but-mean StylistPick guns for the competition with new war chest 03 Feb 2012, 14:29

  Bringing US business models to Europe might seem an obvious move for some – but it’s frequently far harder than it might appear. US incumbents can indeed try to expand, but some fall at the first hurdle. Exactly this happened on January 20 when Shoedazzle announced its closure in the UK. UK head Nigel Whiteoak has since admitted to me that the company was looking to make more of the continued opportunity in the US, versus trying to expand in the UK. Shades of the Romans over-reaching their borders? Maybe. Whatever the case, the news has been a boon to Stylistpick, the local UK player which is making hay in the UK and now heading to other markets with a war chest.

  StylistPick has now raised an $11million B round led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe. The subscription-based fast fashion brand, kept existing investors Accel Partners and Index Ventures on board, who invested $8 million in a Series A in April 2011. The board of directors is now Davor Hebel (Fidelity), Sonali de Rycker (Accel), Robin Klein (Index) and Eileen Burbidge (Passion Capital).

  The startup is moving quickly. It has 600,000 members after a year of operating and is claiming a tripling of quarter on quarter revenue to the final quarter of 2011.

  Users establish their fashion profiles and for £39.95 a month get a monthly online showroom tailored to their taste packed with shoes, bags and jewellery. These are created by celebrity stylists like Cheryl Cole and MTV’s Louise Roe. Cole’s own range comes in at an eye-watering £79.90 to £119.85 a month! But members can skip a month’s subscription or cancel at any time, so it’s flexible but highly retentive. CEO Felix Leuschner says he wants to build “the next generation online fashion.”

  On the face of it it is underfunded again the field.

  Stylistpick’s total fund raising to date is approximately $20 million (it also has less than $1 million from angels (including Stefan Glaenzer, Robert Dighero, Mark Zaleski (former CEO/Chairman of Dailymotion, and also of QXL before that).

  It’s competitors include Shoedazzle, Shoes4You, JustFabulous and BeachMint.

  Of those, Shoedazzle raised $60 million total (from big name VCs including Andreessen Horowitz and others) and has Kim Kardashian as a lead celeb. But Shoedazzle shut down after only 4 months of running in the UK.

  Justfabulousraised a total of $62 million so far (from Matrix and Technology Crossover Ventures, two tier1 big-time US VC firms) all in September 2011.

  BeachMint raised $75 million total (from big name VCs including Accel in this last round and others), and last round was announced of $35 million was only recently announced. It has the Olsen twins, Jessica Simpson and Rachel Bilsson.

  Shoes4you (Brazil only) has raised money from top VC firms like Accel.

  So, what can we take from this?

  Accel is nicely exposed and hedged in this market.

  The sector is super hot.

  The UK is hot but harder than some think.

  Meanwhile, you can see via LinkedIn that there is a member of the Stylistpick team whose title is “France Country Manager at Stylistpick”, noting she joined in December 2011.

  Conclusion? StylistPick might just be in a good place right now.

  Update: Some existing EU players include ChicChickClub.de, StylistClick.com (France, by Spartoo) and the Samwers’ clones. The Samwer brothers’ German clone Glossy Box Style just closed.

  CrunchBase Information

  Stylistpick

  Information provided by CrunchBase

  

•  Zendesk rolls out new round of partner programs: Ambassador, Authorised and Incubator 03 Feb 2012, 12:23

  
  Help-desk software provider Zendesk today launched a series of partner programs in Europe, called Zendesk Ambassadors. Clients joining the program have the chance to earn money from referring new businesses to Zendesk.

  The program is open to businesses of any size and includes access to private forums and meet-ups with the Zendesk team. Members would usually hope to go on to become Authorised Partners, a step up on the partner ladder. Being invited (and there’s no way in except by invitation) to join the Authorised Partners program means providing consulting, integration and migration services to Zendesk customers.

  The announcement fits quite well into the cloud platform’s existing number of partner programs, which have been around for a few months but never seen a lot of media coverage. That’s a pity – they’re too interesting to ignore.

  The Zendesk Incubator program has since its implementation three months ago invested about 250,000 Euro in young start-ups by offering each 3,000 Euro worth of Zendesk software for free. Incubator Partners include hackFWD, Seedcamp and TechHub. Any member of these communities is entitled to free Zendesk software for a year.

  “We try to be very generous because we were a start-up not that long ago and many of our customers are start-ups who turned into very successful companies,” Zendesk COO Zack Urlocker told TechCrunch. One of the companies he talks about would be Dropbox or also Groupon, who joined the service when their team was only as big as ten people.

  A second program worth noting is the “Better than Free” charity offer, which encourages companies to donate $20 to the UCSO Benioff Children’s Hospital to get the Zendesk Starter software.

  “We were inspired by the work of Mark Benioff and pledged to work with our customers and partners to donate one million dollars [to the hospital],” said Zack.

  Since Zendesk partnered with Twilio last year, their expansion plans are synched up and beginning to cover most of Europe.

  CrunchBase Information

  Zendesk

  Information provided by CrunchBase

  

•  The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO and the Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV] 03 Feb 2012, 11:11

  We covered the launch of Summly an application that summarises text last year, but I recently caught up with Nick D’Aloisio, the16 year year-old programmer who came up with the application for a video interview.

  Its sounds almost boringly simple but the sheer amount of online content means the eco-system for these apps is rising. Formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), Summly was developed by D’Aloisio from his bedroom in South London over a Summer break from school.

  Nick then managed to attract the attention of billionaire Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing and his investment vehicle, Horizons Ventures and secured a $300,000 seed round. The boy Om Malik calls “the Internet’s new boy genius” has now built a startup team to exploit Summly’s potential.

  Summly can condense content into 1,000, 500, or 140-character summaries, offering a world of simpler browsing and search experiences. Indeed, researchers at MIT, D’Aloisio says, found Summly outperformed the “highest academically published results” by a factor of 30 percent.

  Check out Summly on the App Store here.

  

•  Media Behemoth Axel Springer Invests In AirBnB 02 Feb 2012, 15:10

  German Media Conglomerate Axel Springer, which is next to Bertelsmann, one of Germany’s most important and diversified media companies, has invested an undisclosed amount into AirBnB. It’s an unusual deal, whereby the amount invested is based on the value of advertising space taken in Axel Springer media outlets, according to various German media reports.

  Furthermore, AirBnB offers will be included in Springer’s real estate portals, such as Immonet. This seems to be a really intresting move, because psychologically AirBnB listings are now treated as professional real estate listings.

  There has been no word on the amount invested, however according to reports it’s only a “very minor” stake that has been purchased. With a $1 billion valuation in May 2011, the price for that stake must have been high. Several months ago German country manager Gunnar Froh claimed that a potential investment of Axel Springer did not happen since their funding round had been closed already. That just changed. Also since a potential consolidation in the german market had been discussed after AirBnb closed their Austria office.

  Interestingly, Axel Springer decided not to invest in of the “Europen Versions” of AirBnb, such as Rocket Internet’s Wimdu or Stefan Uhrenbacher’s 9flats.

  CrunchBase Information

  Airbnb

  Information provided by CrunchBase

  

•  Wunderkit launches beta for its wunderbar-designed productivity platform 01 Feb 2012, 12:00

  Berlin-based startup 6Wunderkinder has just launched the beta for their productivity suite Wunderkit. This is an extension to their simple, yet well designed task list manager Wunderlist, which was acclaimed both by early adopters and users.

  With Wunderkit the startup is now taking a next step. They’ve stuck to the user experience that, while beautifully crafted on the one hand is surely tricky to get used to, and have taken their core task manager several steps further by wrapping a fully fledged social network around it. Whereas RememberTheMilk had been their primary competitor until now, the company is now directly competing with full virtual workspace apps such as Podio or Asana, all of them trying to re-invent peoples’ work and organize their private and professional lives.

  

  At this stage, Podio seems to be ahead of its competitors with its ability to customize work space and and a proprietary app store within the web application. Wunderkit now offers three basic apps to begin with (Notes, dashboard and tasks) for Pro users. In contrast to their early product, Wunderlist, the team headed by founder and CEO Christian Reber, decided to step away from a desktop application and has moved the entire suite into the web. When the app launched in closed beta a couple of weeks ago more than 5.000 users and 2 million users have signed up since the startups begin 14 months ago.

  A couple of months ago the startup received $4,2M from Atomico Ventures and it is now clear where that money went to. With the announcement 6wunderkinder also announced, that they are introducing a “Pro” version, that allows people to work and interact in between different workspaces, whereas free accounts are limited to the respective workspace.

  
   

   

   

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  6Wunderkinder

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  Podio

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  Asana

  Information provided by CrunchBase