Wallen's

DailyMotion is profitable

2009-10-08T17:32:43+02:00

The new CEO of DailyMotion, #2 to YouTube, announced today (interview in french) a new round of financing of €15m ($22m). This follows two rounds totaling $44m in 2006 and 2007. More interestingly, he announced that DailyMotion was now profitable despite the downturn. They plan €15m revenues in 2009 for 60m unique visitors, i.e., €0.25 ($0.35) revenue per unique. However, having launched monetization recently, he mentions that less than 10% of videos include advertising. Hence he expects a very strong topline growth going forward with at least 50% in 2010. All in all, considering the 90% untapped videos, this means...

Friendfeed is overvalued ?

2009-08-11T11:57:18+02:00

By now everybody knows about the Friendfeed acquisition by Facebook. The news came out in TechCrunch. Since then a lot has been said and lot more will be said about this deal (for the most interesting articles on the topic, you can click on the pearl at the end of this post) I'll just focus on the valuation aspect. $50m for roughly 1m users that makes a multiple of... $50 per user. For Friendfeed service itself, that is very high considering 1) that Friendfeed has been flat in user growth for the past 6 months and 2) that Friendfeed is...

This blog is back alive

2009-08-11T11:00:08+02:00

This blog has been "dead" for roughly 2 months now. It's a shame, I know, but (as always) there are some good excuses... I was busy closing Pearltree's last fundraising. We've raised another USD 1.6m from business angels and web personalities hence suming up our fundraising at USD 3.4m in last 12 months. I've also been busy doing a consulting project... to be able to pay my hefty income taxes on my past "confortable" consultant salary...

$10bn - Is Facebook overvalued?

2009-05-26T20:20:03+02:00

RWW’s article on FB’s new financing round shows a valuation of USD 10bn for Facebook. This puts it at a multiple of USD 50 per user (assuming 200m active users, the last figure I heard off). This figure compares to recent (and not so recent) multiples: Twitter (February 2009 series C) : ~40$ per user (or ~75$ per active user with a different number crunching but not comparable to the other figures below) Xing (March 2009 market capitalization) : ~25$ per user LinkedIn (June 2008 series D): $ ~40 per user Beboo (March 2008 trade sale to AOL-TW): $ ~40...

Facebook and control

2009-05-19T12:58:01+02:00

While reading the Techcrunch article on Facebook refusing a $8 bn termsheet, I was telling myself that in Mark Zuckerberg's shoes I would probably do the same: board control is really just as important (if not more) than valuation for an entrepreneur that wants to build a lasting company ! Then I saw Mark's post (MacLeod not Zuckerberg but he's almost as talented) making a similar point... and the need for a longer post disappeared: go here to read it.

Overview and tips on due diligence

2009-05-09T17:57:54+02:00

After my posts on VC funding overall approach and termsheets, I thought I would close up with a post on due diligence. Again instead of repeating what others have said, I have built a map on the topic. Just click on the pearl below and then the play button and the arrows.

A map on advertising business model

2009-05-04T13:58:38+02:00

After my last post on freemium, here is a map on the advertising business model. There are so many angles and views on the topic that it's impossible to cover everything. I don't know if it's a "good" revenue model but here is the way I look at it (simplified): ads brings benefits to their buyers so it must be a recurring source of revenues... though only sufficiently high under certain conditions, the most important of which today being "massive scale"... The web is not very different in that sense than most other media sectors, e.g. the most successful TV...

A map on freemium business model

2009-04-24T11:35:02+02:00

There is a continuous discussion about business models in the web. I’ve put together overtime a few maps on each major business model. Here is the map on freemium that gives a comprehensive view on this business model. There are 3 sections in this map. The first branch gives a general perspective on the freemium business model. For those really motivated they are 2 academic papers on the value of a free customers at the end of this branch. The second branch goes into the key success factors such as scale, pricing, metrics, etc. The third branch focuses on benchmarking...

"Share of voice" revenue model: the solution for social networks?

2009-04-14T16:43:23+02:00

This tweet from Patrice Lamothe, this post from Scobleizer and the discussion around Exec Tweet got me thinking. What if, instead of pushing commercial companies’ ads, social networks helped commercial users to increase their share of voice on their platform? Could this “share of voice” revenue model be the way forward to monetize social networks’ audiences? What do I mean by “share of voice”? Social networks in the broad sense of the term are, in a way or another, tools to promote oneself. Users write on Facebook or Twitter so that other people hear about them. They want these people...

Google-Twitter deal: good or bad ?

2009-04-03T15:28:17+02:00

Techcrunch annouced that Google is in talks to acquire Twitter. While usually these "early stage talks" don't end up into a deal, would this be good or bad news. Obviously it depends from which perspective: Twitter as a company: very bad There is really a strong case for Twitter being able to make it very very very big: not only is Twitter the market leader in a new kind of fast growing web usage but also Twitter has the potential to perform a paradigm shift in terms of business model (more on this in another post later). Wouldn't it be...