Call9, a nine-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based telemedicine startup that came together last spring as a Y Combinator company, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, whose cofounder, Neil Rimer, is joining the board. Other investors in the round include Ali Rowghani, who leads the Y Combinator Continuity Fund; Joe Lonsdale, […]
Index Ventures
A French VC Shows off a New Fund — and Growing Interest in Europe
Frédéric Court has been a venture capitalist for about 15 years, but it was only recently that he hit the fundraising trail for the first time. The experience went well, apparently. This morning, Court, a longtime partner with the European venture firm Advent Venture Partners, is taking the wraps off his own, London-based venture fund, […]
Troubled Payday Lender Wonga Still Has a Chance, Insist Insiders
In the span of seven years, Wonga, a London-based online payday lender, managed to become one of the best known Internet brands in the U.K, with half the buses in London plastered with its ads, along with a good number of soccer players, through Wonga’s sponsorship of the English Premier League team Newcastle United. Then, […]
StrictlyVC: June 11, 2014
Happy Wednesday, everyone! Sorry for an abundance of typos in yesterday’s issue. StrictlyVC’s beloved children have discovered her early a.m. writing spot. [Sad trombone sound effect.] —– Top News in the A.M. Microsoft is resisting a government search warrant to compel the firm to turn over customer email data held in a server located overseas. Its fear, […]
StrictlyVC: June 5, 2014
Hi, everyone, and happy Thursday morning. StrictlyVC was on parenting duty yesterday (closed summer camp), but hopefully you’ll gain a useful insight or two from today’s rushed column! —– Top News in the A.M. Mobile and Sprint are reportedly zeroing in on a $32 billion merger. —– The Pain and Pleasure of Cloud-Based Subscription Billing Earlier this week, a group […]
The Pain and Pleasure of Cloud-Based Subscription Billing
Earlier this week, a group of CEOs, SVPs, technology strategists and the like gathered around a conference table in downtown San Francisco to discuss their companies’ respective experiences in switching to a subscription-based businesses. The move hasn’t always gone well with their customers or their sales staff, they openly admitted. But they argued that not […]
With $150 Million in Fresh Funding, Can the Amazon of Russia Deliver?
Dipping into a flourless cake at a French bistro in San Francisco, Maelle Gavet has reason to be in a celebratory mood. The French-born CEO of Ozon, considered the Amazon of Russia, has in the last few weeks sealed up $150 million in fresh backing from investors — money that helped Ozon secure a minority stake last week in LitRes, […]
Mike Volpi: If You Don’t Own Bitcoin Yet, Buy It
Last Thursday, I sat down with Mike Volpi, a general partner at Index Ventures in San Francisco, and later mentioned to you that I’d feature his thoughts on Bitcoin. Here, now, is that part of our conversation, lightly edited for length. If you were to start your own company in 2014, what would it be? If […]
Why It’s “Eyes on the Enterprise” at Index Ventures
In a sit-down with general partner Mike Volpi of Index Ventures late last week, Volpi shared how 18-year-old Index approaches venture marketing — and why it worries about competing with its founders for attention. Volpi – long a top Cisco executive before joining Index – also explained why he’s confident that investors, who largely shifted their focus […]
Index Ventures’ Mike Volpi on the Pitfalls of VC Marketing
Index Ventures is widely perceived by other VCs to be a top-tier firm. Among its active investments are Sonos, the wireless music system company; Dropbox, the popular online storage service; and Hortonworks, a commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop. The goal for Index now is to raise its profile with U.S. entrepreneurs, many of whom still […]