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Recent Posts
Portfolio
Calgary-based Tynt announced today that they closed a $5 million Series A financing with iNovia Capital from Montreal and I am happy that W Media had the opportunity to participate in the financing with a small amount. The company is led by Derek Ball, one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs in Western Canada, and […]
Entrepreneurship
I just finished Dan Ariely‘s new book “Predictably Irrational” and can only recommend it to everybody who is interested in understanding human behavior a bit better. Dan’s book includes tons of research that show how irrational human beings can sometimes be and how we can take better business, policy and personal decisions if we understand […]
Portfolio
I have been watching Michael Cole and his Vancouver-based company Fitbrains for almost two years now and am very happy that I finally got the chance to make an investment in them. Fitbrains develops online brain games and exercises based on scientific research which help keep your mind sharp – you might want to call […]
Entrepreneurship
Techvibes did a great job in putting together a video from last week’s Office Hour event of First Round Capital and W Media Ventures: Techvibes TV presents First Round Capital / W Media’s “Office Hours” at the Agro Cafe from Rob Lewis on Vimeo.
Entrepreneurship
Having heard and read tons of anecdotal stories about Murdoch in the past years, I finally wanted to fully understand how Murdoch got to where he is today (most like the most powerful media mogul in the world). So I started Michael Wolff’s new Murdoch biography “The man who owns the news” during the Christmas […]
Entrepreneurship
I am very happy to announce that First Round Capital, one of the most successful VC in the consumer internet space, is coming to Vancouver and will host an Office Hours event together with W Media on Jan 15 from 4pm to 6pm. For all other details (what the heck is an Office Hour event?) […]
Version One
2008 is almost over so it is time for a review of the year – here is what I am taking away from 2008 (and what I think about 2009): In the past few months we have experienced the fastest economic meltdown since a long time – perhaps ever, perhaps since the Great Depression but […]
Version One
I think that Curt Cherewayko has done a great job in this week’s Business in Vancouver describing the market opportunities for both W Media Ventures as well as Nexopia. Only correction: I am the proud father of only one (and not two) boys but what the heck….
Entrepreneurship
These are definitely tough times for start-ups and it is amazing to see how quickly the mood has changed, from continued optimism despite the looming sub prime market meltdown to sheer panic after the stock market sell-out. Since the now-already-famous Sequoia presentation, many start-ups have already reacted by significantly cutting their burn-rate and more cutting […]
Entrepreneurship
Not a day passes that people don’t talk about the great opportunities that India and China are offering and I have been slowly getting involved with both countries: Indochino – while a Canadian company – operates it tailor-made suits business out of Shanghai and LiveCurrent is very active in India with its Cricket.com venture. But […]
Portfolio
The season of relaunches continues: last week, Techvibes launched a completely overhauled product that has received some pretty good feedback here and here. The new product should lay the foundation to build a network of hyper-local technology news blogs and communities across North-America – while Techvibes currently only covers all major Canadian cities plus Seattle […]
Version One
Today Amazon announced the acquisition of Victoria-based AbeBooks, the company I have been involved with for over 7 years (operationally as COO until October last year, since then as Director and consultant). As you can imagine, I am extremely excited about this deal which makes tremendous sense for everybody involved: Amazon (who has been heavily […]
Version One
Summer seems to be relaunch time for our portfolio companies: TeamPages has a fresh new look and an easier navigation and Tripsbytips completely relaunched its site making it much easier to add recommendations so that the best community-based travel tips should emerge very quickly for the main travel destinations of this world. In addition, LiveCurrent […]
Portfolio
While Facebook goes for world domination, signing up teens, parents and grandparents alike, Nexopia stays focused on the 13- to 20 years olds– this t-shirt says it all and it has been a huge hit with Nexopia’s users (and strangely enough, often with their parents as well).
Entrepreneurship
Fred Wilson published an interesting post today about the start-up scene in Berlin. Having founded my own start-up in Germany (JustBooks, later acquired by Victoria’s AbeBooks), being currently invested in a successfull Internet start-up based in Berlin (Tripsbytips, an online travel community) and working with one of the leading German VC’s (Munich-based Acton Capital / […]
Entrepreneurship
Techvibes.com, the network of local technology blogs, just released their first Canada Start-up Index. The methodology to determine the index is by no means scientific but the list still provides a really good overview of the Canadian start-up scene. The performance of the W Media Ventures portfolio companies (2 among the top 3, 5 among […]
Entrepreneurship
Over the weekend I attended NextMedia 2008 in Banff. It was my first NextMedia conference and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sessions and the attendants. A few thoughts that I took away from the conference: Nexopia is still one of the best kept secrets in social networking: while the site is […]
Version One
As the Internet evolves, the venture capital business starts evolving and we have been seeing more and more investors focusing on growth and late stages in the past few years. This is exactly the step that our partners over in Germany have taken in the past months: after having managed the corporate venture capital business […]
Entrepreneurship
Brian just shared this document with all participants of the Burda Digital Ventures / W Media Ventures event last Friday and I thought it would be worthwhile sharing this with a larger audience. The Painted Picture of 2008 The best way to ensure the future happens is to create it first in our minds. At […]
Entrepreneurship
Last week we brought together over 20 founders, CEO’s and senior managers from 6 portfolio (AbeBooks, Suite101.com, Nexopia.com, TeamPages, Techvibes, Carrie & Danielle) and 2 associated companies (LiveCurrent, the company behind Perfume.com and Cricket.com, Strutta) for our first Burda Digital / W Media Ventures event in Vancouver. It was a day packed with best practices […]