TexDrive, Russia’s most successful private accelerator in the high-tech domain, has launched its new VC fund, called Genezis Capital. Chairing the board will be one of the nation’s premier venture capitalists, Maxim Shekhovtsov. Shekhovtsov has over 60 deals to his credit, and was formerly the Head of Venture Funds in Russia for the German Allianz [...]

Hungary-based Primus Capital has added a new twist to its investment strategy. The company is putting up a HUF 400 mln fund to launch iCatapult, a business accelerator that will promote local companies on the global market. The fund will focus on getting Hungarian tech companies business exposure in the United States. Digital Natives will provide [...]

Point Nine Capital‘s investment team has just announced a new EUR 40 mln fund to invest in early-stage companies. Dubbed Point Nine Capital II, the fund will be managed by existing partners -  Christoph Janz and Pawel Chudzinski – while advisory roles will be taken by the other partners - Kolja Hebenstreit and Lukasz Gadowski. Point Nine itself is an [...]

A new venture fund dedicated to supporting companies that use quantum technology and materials, called the Quantum Wave Fund (QWave), will be launched shortly with around USD 100 mln under management. The investors include Russians Sergei Beloussov, Sergei Kouzmine and other prominent investors and scientists. The fund will target companies working with data networks, optical transistors, [...]

You create a lot of content in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn timelines. Have you ever thought of monetizing that? This is the question that the Riga, Latvia based Rollme is attempting to answer. What the company does is, provide a platform for aggregating all your newsfeeds in a single newsroll that lets your audience to [...]

Wappwolf is a Vienna, Austria based company that enables users to do automated actions on the web by just adding files to cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. For instance, you could set an action such as “Whenever I add an image file to the folder X, upload it to Flickr” or [...]

Have you ever wanted to beam media content such as photos, video and music from your Android phone/tablet to your TV? When it comes to TV interaction, the iOS users have the advantage. The Apple devices support AirPlay, Apple’s proprietary protocol stack, to stream media content from mobile devices to Apple TV and other entertainment [...]

In our Company Review session we are to explore the most promising, Central and Eastern European start-ups and companies with unique ideas. Besides the company profiles we also include short market and competitor analyses.   This week we introduce IVANKA Concrete Factory, a fresh design firm from Budapest, Hungary.

Ambient Sound Investment (ASI), early stage VC fund backed by the engineers who founded Skype, now have company in their investment into Frenzoo, a gaming development company that is on the verge of releasing 3D fashion and lifestyle mobile games specifically targeting women. New investors in this USD 1 mln round of financing include Metaverse [...]

Innovation Nest, founded in October 2011, is continuing its investment spree with a EUR 161,000 funding of Polish developer of prototyping tools and wireframing applications for UX designers, UXPin.com. The target company was earlier the winner of the Eastern European start-up award, Aulery. Innovation Nest’s recent investments include PressPad, a publishing tool for iPad devices, [...]

If you thought the investment landscape was drab and dreary, how about a mash-up between Facebook and Farmville? Farmeron, a Croatian company developing software for keeping profiles of farm animals, has just bagged a round of investment from 500 Startups. The company’s web-based farm management application helped them be a finalist at this year’s Seedcamp [...]

After reviewing Antavo during the Seedcamp event in Tel Aviv on March 29, the early-stage mentoring and investment program has invested into the online marketing applications company that is based in Hungary.  Of the seven members of Antavo, three of them have already set up operations in London with the hope of finding partners to [...]

The Samwer brothers’ now famous Berlin incubator, Rocket Internet, has bagged a whopping USD 200 mln in funding from Russian-American billionaire Len Blavatnik. With that investment, Blavatnik’s Access Industries will now be the second largest investor in Rocket Internet, after Swedish investment house Kinnevik’s recent Eur 300 mln that was pumped in during the last [...]

Europe has already given us one great VoIP company – Skype, but it looks like European market seems to be interested in giving us more. One of the sexiest entrants to this crowded VoIP game is Vox.io. It is a Slovenia based VoIP company that makes phone calling highly social. Currently it has a web [...]

How often do you find yourselves in a foreign nation and find wanting to speak in the local tongue? As travel frequency increases in an increasingly compressed world, there is a definite market to help the travels picking up a few commonly used phrases and words in the local language. This is what the Bratilsava, [...]

Are you sick and tired of Powerpoint? It is quite possible that you are. In the decade and a half since it came out, Powerpoint has been heavily overused, beating most corporate meetings to death and made presentations and talks into dull and boring affairs. However, a few startups are fighting to save you from [...]

Krakow-based VC firm Innovation Nest has invested close to EUR 500,000 in iTraff, the mobile applications developer that gave the world SaveUp, an image recognition app. Co-investors in this second round of funding were angel investors Rafal Han, CEO and co-founder of educational games developer HanBright, and Stephane Senkowski. The current estimated value of the [...]

In a joint funding venture by German and Russian entities, Hepatera, a Russian pharmaceutical start up that makes liver treatment and disease prevention drugs, as well as its partner, German company MYR, have received funding from top German VC firm High-Tech Gründerfonds, as well as Russian Venture Capital (via its Maxwell Biotech Venture Fund). The investment will [...]

Polish early-stage VC fund hardGAMMA has grabbed the opportunity to invest in Springboard, a start-up accelerator program based in London. The investment made in the program is a part of hardGAMMA’s long-term vision to be a major player on the European start-up scenario, and will give them front-row access to invest early in London start-up [...]

Romanian entrepreneur-VC meeting platform VentureConnect has recently showcased a success story with local network training leader, BITTNET Systems. After participating in the November 2011 VentureConnect program, BITTNET successfully garnered a 24 percent equity sale to Mr. Razvan Capatina, a 10-year veteran of the marketing and advertising industry. The investment will be used to further extend [...]