I and many others had been speculating if they did or did not need new money (founder Biz Stone says they didn’t) and amidst people scraping together money, fearing long, cold winters of recession, Twitter raised a more than respectable third round of $35m led by tier-1 VCs Benchmark and IVP. This can, according to some sources, still grow as existing investors want to protect their dilution (which would make sense, I suppose). Congrats, folks!
Twitter is this phenomenon of which some people say it is the business that never was. Not that Twitter never was but that it never was a business… which is why they apparently need fresh money, or more specifically $20m, or so it is said (see also here) The valuation? A cool $250m. A lot, you say? Well, they allegedly recently turned down a $500m acquisition offer from Facebook, so it’s a bargain!
One of the quirky stars of this year’s Mobile World Congress, Modu, is apparently scoring a large round of funding, namely to the tune of $100m. The company adds to $20m funding previously raised from its founder Dov Moran (who had sold his previous business for $1.6bn to SanDisk), two Israeli funds, namely Genesis Partners and Gemini, and indeed SanDisk. The round values modu pre-money at $150m, which is healthy for an 18-month-old company but, according to the press, still $50m less of what Mr Moran had hoped to score.
Modu is an interesting concept that shrinks the key bit of the phone (including SIM card, address book, etc to a matchbox size, which then can be slipped into a variety of so-called “jackets”, fancy phones that can be adapted to whichever occasion the user might find appropriate or indeed “mates”, which enable other consumer electronics devices with the bliss of connectivity and the like.
The challenge may well be that the jackets and mates are supposed to be developed by third parties, and to convince enough players to do that (which is arguably required to create a compelling offering) might be the biggest challenge.
In time for Barcelona, Modu had announced a number of partnerships, including operators Vimpelcom (Russia), Cellcom (Israel) and TIM (Italy). Blaupunkt, GPS specialists Magellan Navigations and – again – SanDisk have apparently pledged support, too. On the content side, the world’s largest music company Universal Music, navigation service provider TeleAtlas and a few more are in the mix.
I really do like it and I really hope that they’ll pull it off. Somewhat clearly thought out of the box here, and that deserves praise!
Update: Modu has just received recognition of a Guinness World Record for the lightest mobile phone (at 40.1 grams and dimensions of 72.1mm x 37.6mm x 7.8mm).
Twistbox has announced it has raised a healthy $19.5m from ValueAct Capital (rather secretive firm: you require a user name and password even for accessing the “overview” section of their site) and “other strategic investors”. It also announced that former Vodafone Global content supremo Graeme Ferguson has joined its board of directors.
Twistbox was the result of the acquisition of German developer Charismatix (authors of e.g. Anno 1701, Taito’s Arkanoid, etc) by (predominantly) mobile adult (which they call “late night”) content provider Waat Media from LA (who work with the likes of Private and Vivid)After a lot of buzz around them a while ago (and every year again at 3GSM when everyone gets gibberish over their licensees’ parties – no, no scantily-clad girls there worth mentioning, ever…), it had gone a bit quiet. The last we heard was a deal they signed with Fashion TV.
Presumably, the new money and director will get them out into the public eye a bit more again. According to the release, they plan to use the funds to launch web-to-mobile storefronts and play-for-prices games. They also want to push into advertising (but then, who doesn’t?).
We all suspect there’s money in this “late night” content but little has been seen to quantify the opportunity. Juniper said in 2005 it was $1bn. Forbes didn’t quantify in 2006. I have seen analysts who put the share of erotic games to 12% of the total mobile gaming sector, ranking them above racing and arcade games (7% and 5% respectively) but that’s somewhat unconfirmed. Moreover, video and pics will presumably be even hotter sellers – if and when they get through the varying publishing thresholds in the different countries (from PG13 in the US all the way to “behind-the-curtain” adult content in some European countries. An overview on various attempts to put a number to that market can be found here (courtesy of adult mobile pioneers, Cherrysauce).
As it will in general still be arguably safe to say that sex probably still sells, we might expect Twistbox to go on to further strengths. Just get your parties up a notch, guys…
Finally, a note to all you dear readers: this post contains links to adult sites. Do NOT click if you are offended by adult content.
This post is not strictly mobile (it could be used for mobile ventures though, too, and, besides, why does it have to?).
In any event, the intelligent and funny posts of Guy Kawasaki (amongst other things blogger, early-stage VC and previous big gun at Apple) are really good reading. So: here’s his take on “How to get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist” although, in this case, the treat of Guy’s colleague at Garage, Bill Reichert, might be even more relevant: it should actually helps you to also KEEP that VC’s attention, so make sure to also check out Bill’s notes on “How to Fix your Pitch“.
