Calling all India and China entrepreneurs

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 […]

Amazon acquires AbeBooks

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 […]

German start-up scene – copycats or innovators, enough or not enough VC money?

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 / […]

Attending NextMedia 2008 in Banff

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 […]

Burda Digital Ventures turns into Acton Capital Partners

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 […]