Kwaga, a Paris, France-based startup that specializes in tools to make email ‘smarter’ by leveraging semantic technology, has raised $1.55 million in Series A funding. The company, which received seed funding from Seedcamp and Kima Ventures after its founding in 2008, raised the money from unnamed private investors, advised by investment consultancy firm Financière Fonds Privés.
Kwaga aims to build semantic software that will make us love email again and turn it into a productivity enhancer rather than killer. The company’s flagship service, WriteThat.Name, for instance automatically updates a user’s address book based on the information contained in the messages received. → Read More
Kwaga, a Paris, France-based startup that specializes in tools to make email ‘smarter’ by leveraging semantic technology, has raised $1.55 million in Series A funding. The company, which received seed funding from Seedcamp and Kima Ventures after its founding in 2008, raised the money from unnamed private investors, advised by investment consultancy firm Financière Fonds Privés.
Kwaga aims to build semantic software that will make us love email again and turn it into a productivity enhancer rather than killer. The company’s flagship service, WriteThat.Name, for instance automatically updates a user’s address book based on the information contained in the messages received. → Read More
Kwaga, a Paris, France-based startup that specializes in tools to make email ‘smarter’ by leveraging semantic technology, has raised $1.55 million in Series A funding. The company, which received seed funding from Seedcamp and Kima Ventures after its founding in 2008, raised the money from unnamed private investors.
Read more at TechCrunch Europe. → Read More
If you’re one of those people that thinks that horoscopes are a load of nonsense and simply vague statements that could essentially fit anyone, you’re definitely not alone. But Astrolome is seeking to change that. The Israeli startup has just closed a seed round of $300K with Kima Ventures and some additional business angels in order to develop a real-time personalized horoscope platform.
The company’s secret sauce lies in using an individual’s birth chart (date, time and place of birth) and current location to provide a more accurate reading than the majority of horoscopes – which give strictly sun sign information. Therefore, each user receives a more customized astrological reading rather than generic information designed to pertain to as many people as possible. In addition, the platform is complete with social features, enabling users to rank forecasts for accuracy and share comments on various events with their friends and other users. → Read More
If you’re one of those people that thinks that horoscopes are a load of nonsense – simply vague statements that could essentially fit anyone – you’re definitely not alone. But Astrolome is seeking to change that. The Israeli startup has just closed a seed round of $300K with Kima Ventures and some additional business angels in order to develop a real-time personalized horoscope platform.
The company’s secret sauce lies in using an individual’s birth chart (date, time and place of birth) and current location to provide a more accurate reading than the majority of horoscopes – which give strictly sun sign information. Therefore, each user receives a more customized astrological reading rather than generic information designed to pertain to as many people as possible. In addition, the platform is complete with social features, enabling users to rank forecasts for accuracy and share comments on various events with their friends and other users. → Read More
With gas at roughly $4/gallon, French carpooling site Covoiturage.fr has just announced some 1 million carpoolers on its site. Now, its competitor Tickengo has just scored a seed round with Kima Ventures. Coincidence?
The rather active seed fund of Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi did not reveal the exact amount invested in Tickengo’s platform, which was initially launched in 2006 in only 4 French cities: Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse. It wasn’t until 2008 that the platform opened up to all of France and later became available to the US, Canada, the UK and Belgium. → Read More
With gas at roughly $4/gallon, French carpooling site Covoiturage.fr has just announced some 1 million carpoolers on its site. Now, its competitor Tickengo has just scored a seed round with Kima Ventures. Coincidence?
The rather active seed fund of Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi did not reveal the exact amount invested in Tickengo’s platform, which was initially launched in 2006 in only 4 French cities: Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse. It wasn’t until 2008 that the platform opened up to all of France and later became available to the US, Canada, the UK and Belgium. → Read More
Storific, the French startup that lets customers place orders in restaurants, bars and hotels via an iPhone, has raised $200k in a seed round financed by Kima Ventures.
The company offers a paid-for subscription service via a browser-based interface where businesses can provide full menus, list their tables and receive notifications from customers ordering by an iPhone. Whilst the consumer-facing iPhone app is, of course, free. → Read More
Storific, the French startup that lets customers place orders in restaurants, bars and hotels via an iPhone, has raised $200k in a seed round financed by Kima Ventures.
The company offers a paid-for subscription service via a browser-based interface where businesses can provide full menus, list their tables and receive notifications from customers ordering by an iPhone. Whilst the consumer-facing iPhone app is, of course, free. → Read More
Back in October of last year, we wrote about Sparrow, a beautiful new mail client for the Mac. But whereas most mail clients are now web-based, Sparrow decided it was time to focus on making a great native email experience once again. And today that gamble appears to be paying off. Sparrow 1.0 has just launched in the Mac App Store and it has immediately shot to the number one paid app in many countries around the world, including the U.S.
And that feat says a lot for Sparrow, considering the app is $9.99. But it’s absolutely worth it. As we wrote in our initial review, Sparrow is a Gmail-centric client that brings a Tweetie for Mac (now Twitter for Mac) look and feel to email. At the time, it was still in beta, and we noted that there were some performance issues. But most of those have now been smoothed out and a whole range of new features have been added, including full support for Gmail labels. → Read More
Kukunu is a social travel planning service that puts you, your fellow travelers and your friends in the driver’s seat when it comes to planning your vacation(s). The company, which was one of the winners of Seedcamp Week 2009, has been operating quietly so far, having launched a private beta version at Le Web 2009.
Kukunu is now available in public beta, and the fledgling company has also announced that they’ve raised $400,000 from Seedcamp, Jaina Capital (the fund of Meetic founder and angel investor Marc Simoncini) and Kima Ventures (Xavier Niel). → Read More
Exclusive – SmallRivers, a fledging Internet startup based out of Switzerland that has developed a Web app called Paper.li that basically lets you turn Twitter streams, tags and lists into daily online newspapers, has landed more cash after inking a $1 million seed funding deal back in 2008.
Investing in this new round are a group of unnamed ‘reputed Web 2.0 business angels’ along with German investment and media group Econa and Kima Ventures, the early-stage investment firm started by French entrepreneurs Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi. → Read More
Exclusive – SmallRivers, a fledging Internet startup based out of Switzerland that has developed a Web app called Paper.li that basically lets you turn Twitter streams, tags and lists into daily online newspapers, has landed more cash after inking a $1 million seed funding deal back in 2008.
Investing in this new round are a group of unnamed ‘reputed Web 2.0 business angels’ along with German investment and media group Econa and Kima Ventures, the early-stage investment firm started by French entrepreneurs Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi. → Read More
France-based Plyce recently has just confirmed that it has scored funding from high-profile French seed funds, Jaina Capital and Kima Ventures.
The location-based social network that is along the same lines of Foursquare and Gowalla was only officially launched last month. Founded by former managers from web agency Majes as well as the current COO of Criteo who was previously at Yahoo-acquired Kelkoo, the start-up strives to be the strong-player in Europe within the next 3 years rather than conquering the already competitive markets in the US and the UK. → Read More
Miami, Florida-based Labotec has landed a round of funding from Kima Ventures, a European early-stage investment fund founded by entrepreneurs and angel investors Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio, Net2One) and Square backer Xavier Niel (Free, Iliad).
The VC firm thus joins Kipost and FS Ventures as investors of the crowd-sourced mobile app development venture. The size of the round remains undisclosed, but we hear the amount of financing totaled just south of a seven-figure sum, so we’ll peg it at in between $800,000 and $999,999. → Read More
[France] Only 3 months after its official launch and Leetchi has already scored funds from Kima Ventures and 360 Capital Partners.
The announcement is one of the first investments of Kima Ventures, the new seed fund of Jeremie Berrebi and Xavier Niel, which we covered last week. The investment will be used to develop Leetchi’s activities and reinforce the current 5-person team in France. → Read More
[France] The birth of a new seed fund has been announced in France, spearheaded by Jeremie Berrebi and Xavier Niel. The new fund, Kima Ventures, plans to invest in 100 start-ups within the next 2 years.
The duo behind the fund first met in 1999 when co-investing in a company and have become great friends and business partners since. Niel is the co-founder of Iliad and behind the creation of France’s Freebox, the IP triple-play. Berrebi is best known as a blogger and serial entrepreneur – founding companies including Zlio.com and Jewpedia.com – and has invested in 17 start-ups.
Together, they hope not just to offer funding – between €5,000 and €150,000 per start-up – but to also develop a dynamic and collaborative environment for all the companies they invest in. → Read More
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