Reuters News

(Reuters) – The founder of the popular — and doomed — Flip video camera is turning to another consumer passion for his new business: food. Jonathan Kaplan, who created the easy-to-use video-camera business that Cisco Systems bought and is shutting down, said he was launching a restaurant chain called “The Melt,” serving grilled cheese sandwiches […]

Comcast Ventures will focus on digital media, ecommerce and entertainment

Startups that make games and other applications for Apple devices are increasingly being wooed by companies looking to buy an instant foothold in the rapidly growing mobile market, said the manager of a fund that invests in smartphone app makers. The mergers and acquisitions market in the mobile space will be active over the next […]

(Reuters) - Finnish online startup Supercell, which merges social games with elements from traditional console titles, has raised $12 million from venture capital firm Accel Partners and others. The 11-month old company -- which released its first offering, Gunshine.net, to the public this week -- builds free games which can be played directly from an internet browser without additional downloads. "The investment will help Supercell accelerate its growth, expand its team and also release new games and target new platforms," it said on Wednesday. Founders include Ilkka Paananen, a longtime director at mobile gaming firm Digital Chocolate, and former staff from established gaming companies like Remedy and Sulake. "This is a phenomenal team. We agree with their vision of

(Reuters) – Moda Operandi, a fashion e-commerce site, is raising its second round of venture capital funding as investor interest in online luxury retailers grows. The company, founded in February during New York Fashion Week, operates designer “trunk shows” online. It lets members pre-order designer clothes straight off the runway rather than have to wait […]

(Reuters) - Take a helping of Russian genius, add a portion of risk appetite and stir in a lot of patience, and you have the recipe for the resounding success of search engine Yandex's (Nasdaq: YNDX) U.S. stock market float. The Nasdaq listing values Russia's leading internet search engine at $8 billion, an eye-popping 500 times its worth when private equity investors bought into the company in 2000. (See details of IPO here.) That year the business, founded in 1997 by mathematician Arkady Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich, had revenues of just $72,000 and lost $2 million. Eyeing a long-term prospect, Yelena Ivashentseva of private equity fund Baring Vostok Capital Partners put together an investor group that bought a 36 percent stake in Yandex for just over

(Reuters) - Chinese online clothing retailer Vancl could raise $1 billion in the largest Internet initial public offering from the Asian country in the United States this year, IFR reported on Tuesday. The Beijing-based company could soon mandate banks on the deal, which is planned for the fourth-quarter of 2011, said IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication. Vancl, founded in 2007, has received backing from private equity and venture capital firms including IDG Capital Partners, SAIF Partners, Ceyuan Ventures Management, Tiger Global Management and Qiming Venture Partners. The company is among the four most profitable consumer retail Web sites, IFR said. Vancl has raised a total of $142 million in venture funding over three rounds since 2007, including a $100 million round in December from Ceyuan, IDG, SAIF and

(Reuters) - Mobile, biotech and e-commerce all have one thing in common: they are among the next wave of startups that have caught the eye of venture capital. In the past year, social media companies such as Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn have stolen the limelight as the fastest growing space for venture funds. Still, they make up just one area, and even a minority percentage, of investment for a number of venture capital funds. "Social media companies are leading the charge, capturing people's fantasy," Axel Bichara, a partner at Atlas Venture, told a panel at the Reuters Global Technology Summit Venture Capital in New York on Wednesday. "If you look at venture capital companies as a whole, it's a really broad and deep

PARIS (Reuters) - Mikael Hed is unrepentant about the 200 million minutes per day that people around the world fritter away playing Angry Birds, the iPhone game created by the company he heads. "It's great. Think of all the other stuff they could be doing that's so much more boring," said the CEO of Rovio Mobile, a Finnish startup almost unheard of before it unleashed the addictive game on an unsuspecting world in 2009. Hed spoke at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris this week. Angry Birds, the most popular paid-for game in the Apple App Store's four-year history, has just passed 200 million downloads. The deceptively simple puzzle game in which players use a slingshot to fire birds at green pigs hiding in buildings has hooked a whole new audience, many of whom were never interested in video games before. "These new touchscreen portable devices have changed the way that people behave," said Hed (pictured). "Nowadays, people have to be

(Reuters) - Venture capitalists are wary of the secondary markets that have soared in popularity with investors looking for a piece of action in private companies like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon. The secondary markets, which enable the exchange of shares in privately held companies, are a black hole because private companies are not required to disclose financial information. "It is scary and I would be very careful before doing any such deals," Axel Bichara, a partner with Atlas Ventures, said during the venture capital panel at Reuters Global Technology Summit on Wednesday in New York. Bill Maris, a managing partner at Google Ventures, said secondary market trading creates all types of market forces