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Draper Fisher Jurvetson is the pre-eminent venture capital firm with global presence through a network of affiliated funds, with offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $5.5 billion in capital commitments. DFJ's mission is to identify, serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world. Over the past twenty years, DFJ has been proud to back more than 300 companies across many sectors including such industry-changing catalysts as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), EnerNOC (ENOC), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11 (acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC), and Digidesign (acquired by AVID). For more information, visit: www.dfj.com.
| DFJ and Affiliate News |
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DFJ Chooses European Partner: DFJ Esprit
DFJ and Esprit Capital Partners, a top tier venture capital firm, have joined forces: Esprit will become the newest addition to the DFJ Network of venture partnerships that stretch around the globe. Members of DFJ’s Silicon Valley based team will join Esprit’s investment committee. DFJ Esprit currently manages $560 million in two funds focused on private technology companies in Europe; Esprit Capital I which it acquired via a management buyout from Cazenove in 2006 and the evergreen, LSE-listed, Prelude Trust PLC. The team focuses on funding extraordinary entrepreneurs with the vision to build leading global companies. John Fisher, Managing Director of DFJ notes: "We are partnering with Esprit to find and help build the most exciting new companies from Spain to Scandinavia." The DFJ Esprit portfolio consists of more than 35 high growth technology companies across Europe including Lovefilm, Packetexchange, Buy/at, Intense, Displaylink, XMOS and WAYN. DFJ Esprit have led numerous successful exits for it's investors in recent times with trade sales of Alphamosaic, KVS, Fillfactory, Blackspider, Neteconomy and DRI and in previous roles the Esprit team have invested in the first rounds of successful companies such as CSR, Xaar, Arakis, and Bookham.
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 Mohanjit Jolly Joins DFJ to Lead Expansion into India
Mohanjit Jolly recently joined DFJ as Director. His primary role will be to bring DFJ’s global reach into India and lead expansion into Southeast Asia’s new geographic and sector markets. “Mohanjit has an entrepreneur’s mindset. He understands the challenge in building world class companies including the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. His experience will be invaluable to DFJ and to our investments in India,” commends Managing Director Raj Atluru. Most recently, Mohanjit Jolly was a Managing Director at Garage Technology Ventures, a seed and early stage venture capital firm. While at Garage, Mohanjit worked with over 30 companies, including LeftHand Networks, PureSight (BCGI), Jibe Networks (CTRX), Media Publisher, Xora, Razz, Kaboodle and SimplyHired. Prior to joining Garage, Mohanjit was part of the strategic planning group at Mattel where he helped launch the Mattel/Intel joint venture, Intel Play. He also spent several years in both engineering and business development roles with Itek Optical Systems, a manufacturer of high-resolution reconnaissance systems for both military and commercial use. While earning his M.B.A from the Anderson School at UCLA, Mohanjit helped launch ViaSpace, a technology incubator in Southern California in conjunction with Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mohanjit earned a B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, with a specialization in electric propulsion systems.
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 Elizabeth "Beezer" Clarkson Joins DFJ Network Team
Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson has recently joined the DFJ Network team as a Director. She has a strong background for the position, including a combination of investment banking at Morgan Stanley, consulting at Towers Perrin, operations/marketing at Hewlett Packard, and venture capital at Omidyar Network. She has a degree in Political Economy from Wesleyan and a Harvard MBA. Managing Director Don Wood adds, “In addition to her great mix of experience, Beezer loves to travel, believes strongly in our DFJ Network model, and has a passion for spreading an entrepreneurial culture around the world.”
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DFJ Launches Brazil-based Affiliate
DFJ recently opened a Brazil-based Network Partner with FIR Capital Partners, a pioneering early stage Brazilian venture capital firm. The DFJ FIR Brazil Fund will enter the Brazilian market with an initial US$40 million fund, focused on funding extraordinary entrepreneurs with the vision to build leading global companies. "We are excited about this opportunity to create a strong presence in Brazil," said Tim Draper, Founder of DFJ. "Brazil is a leading emerging economy with favorable macroeconomics and a highly entrepreneurial culture that is creating a significant number of attractive high-tech investment opportunities. We are partnering with FIR Capital who has built the leading early stage venture capital fund in Brazil. The partnership with FIR Capital is key in our expansion into high growth, emerging markets."
As part of the agreement the two firms will launch a US$100 million fund, DFJ FIR Brazil Fund II, targeting offshore investors, which will invest in innovative Brazilian companies in high-growth industries.
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Stanford Team wins DFJ Competition
Draper Fisher Jurvetson each year hosts the DFJ Venture Challenge, the premier pan-university U.S. business plan competition (one competition is dedication to East Coast universities; the other to the West Coast).
d.light founders Sam Goldman and Ned Tozun were delighted to win the DFJ Venture Challenge on May 30, 2007. They now have $250K to pursue their dream: to make kerosene lanterns a part of history, where they belong.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson each year hosts the DFJ Venture Challenge, the premier pan-university U.S. business plan competition (one competition is dedication to East Coast universities; the other to the West Coast).
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Find out what the world is saying about DFJ: Go to www.technorati.com. Technorati, a DFJ company, is a real-time search engine that tracks over 21 million blogs. |
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Stanford University for a new educational offering –“Sustainable Energy Conversion and Storage: From Fundamental Concepts to Device.” Led by world-renowned faculty, this course will cover the theories, novel technologies, and promising design concepts that can move us toward a clean, sustainable energy economy.
The Sustainable Energy course runs from September 29-30, 2007. Please call 650.725.9200 and mention the “Preferred Customer Discount to receive $465 off the list price for a total of $1795. More information, including the agenda and the faculty bios. All participants in the Sustainable Energy course will receive complementary attendance to the annual Stanford University Global Climate Energy Project Symposium. The Symposium runs from October 1-3, 2007 and showcases current Stanford University energy research projects. More information on the Symposium and the Stanford Global Climate Energy Project.
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Bring voice to social networks and blogs. With the free jaxtr service, you can link your phone with your online network to hear from callers worldwide while keeping your existing phone number private.
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Protect your credit in less than 2 minutes. It takes time and effort to deal with the problems of identity theft on your own. Let TrustedID protect your whole family's identity with a service guaranteed to work. |
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September - December 2007
Tim Draper:
October 4: NVCA, Boston
October 9: ENTRE, Budapest
Steve Jurvetson:
September 9: The Singularity Summit 2007
Schedule: Schedule
Abstracts: Abstracts
SPECIAL PRICE: $50 Tickets
October 11: IBF Early Stage Investing conference
Jennifer Fonstad:
September 6: Red Herring Canada, Keynote Speech, Montreal
September 7: Fortune Small Business Magazine, Business Plan Competition, NYC
October 23: Dow Jones Alternative Energy Conference, Keynote Panel, RWC, CA
October 25: Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Conference, Venture Technology Panel, Stanford University
Raj Atluru:
September 11: Going Green Conference, University of California, Davis
Josh Stein:
November 28: Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovation Panel, Redwood City, CA
Emily Melton:
September 28: Astia – Defining your Market Panel – Peninsula, t.b.d.
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Q1 2007 Investments
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BrightSource Energy
BrightSource Energy, Inc. designs and builds large scale solar power plants for its industrial and utility customers worldwide. BrightSource Energy enables industrial and utility companies to lessen their dependency on fossil fuels by providing a low cost, reliable source of clean energy during periods of peak usage. The goal of BrightSource Energy is to develop and commercialize new solar thermal technology that can compete with fossil fuel plants. BrightSource Energy’s industry leading technology, Luz DPT(Distributed PowerTower), is the lowest cost and most reliable method to generate central solar power.
Category: Energy/Clean Technology |
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Flurry
Flurry is an easy-to-use mobile email and RSS solution that works on hundreds of different cell phone models and thousands of email providers and carriers worldwide. It is the first service to be introduced by flurry based on our Mobile Services Platform, a platform designed to provide high-performance, consumer friendly applications.
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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meebo.com
meebo.com is a Web site for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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LiveMedia
LiveMedia is a premier out-of-home digital display media network in India. Targeting India’s emerging middle class, LiveMedia operates an entertainment network across India’s premier retail and corporate outlets, including exclusive distribution with international retail chains like McDonald’s, three of the top four coffee houses in India, and a network of corporate / professional outlets.
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
| Q2 2007 Investments |
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myShape
myShape offers each woman her own personal shop with the clothes that fit and flatter her Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Genomatica
Genomatica is forging new ways to transform living cells into biological factories for the manufacture of valuable chemical and biological products
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Sports Composite DE
Provides fantasy sports trading platform on rotohog.com
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Redfin
Online brokerage for residential real estate
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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AltoBeam
Fabless design house providing DTV chipsets for the China Standard
Category: Hardware |
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Edvert
Provides integrated, targeted merchandise offerings into content of Internet sites
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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VideoBrain
Online trivia game and community
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Edgios
Distributed search engine
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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CTS Information Technology
Leader in online and IPTV video advertising in China
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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CallGate
Develops and provides a visual call interface for mobile phone devices
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Hoodong
Chinese wikipedia
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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QuickHealth
Retail-based consumer medical services
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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Synacast
Online broadcasting platform
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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KU6
Number one video blog provider in China
Category: Consumer Applications & Services |
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IFC Medical
Innovative materials platform for medical device applications
Category: Hardware |
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LP's: click here to access additional information on these investments.
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Portfolio Company Spotlight
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Samir Arora
Glam
Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO
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In January 2005, DFJ led the first institutional investment in Glam Media, now the #1 property for women online and the 34th largest US internet property overall. Each month, Glam reaches more than 21m unique US users, including more than 1 in 10 of the coveted women’s 18+ demographic, a greater reach than any magazine, radio, or daytime television show.
As a distributed media network, Glam is a pioneer in the next generation of media companies. Glam’s distributed platform brings together media content and advertising from Glam’s owned-and-operated sites, Glam’s Publisher Network of more than 350 lifestyle Web sites, blogs, and magazines, and syndicated content from select media companies, to offer brands a highly targeted and customized channel to reach the online women's audience. In 2006, ComScore MediaMetrics measured Glam’s growth at 2600%, making it the fastest growing top 500 property. Today, Glam manages display and video brand advertising campaigns for hundreds of premium and luxury advertisers, such as ABC, Lacoste, Reebok, Maybelline, Garnier, and Target.
Glam Media is another successful collaboration between its founders and members of the DFJ team. Glam founder and CEO Samir Arora was previously the CEO/founder of NetObjects, where he worked with DFJ partner Josh Stein and with Glam co-founder Fernando Ruarte, who was additionally Josh’s co-founder at ViaFone (NYSE:SY), another DFJ investment led by DFJ partner Raj Atluru.
Founded in 2004, the company has headquarters in Brisbane, CA and NYC.
What drove you to start Glam?
The overall women audience on the Web was well under-served from both a content and a brand advertising standpoint.
We knew there was an incredible need for brand advertisers to come to the Web in a safe and engaging environment. Glam provides brand advertisers a new integrated way to communicate with their target consumers-with narrowly targeted, highly customized campaigns-producing the same sophistication, contextual relevancy, and trust they've always enjoyed with traditional glossy magazines. More importantly Glam delivers great premium brand ads where they're desired by the user.
Describe Glam.
Similarly to TV Networks, Glam is a new type of a distributed media company dedicated to bringing brand advertising to the Web and transforming the creation, distribution, and consumption of digital media. Glam runs owned-and-operated lifestyle Web sites and an online media network of publishers that combines for more than 17 million unique visits a month in the United States (May 2007, 3500% growth year to year). More specifically, Glam Media brings together its flagship site, Glam.com, other Glam-owned sites, the Glam Publisher Network of more than 350 popular lifestyle and fashion web sites, blogs, and magazines, and select syndicated content from leading media companies into an integrated brand advertising platform providing reach, demo and consistency to leading premium advertisers.
Can you walk through how an advertiser would work with Glam Media?
Glam works closely with content providers, publishers, and brand advertisers such as H&M, Oxygen Media, Procter & Gamble, Reebok, and Warner Bros. to create the ultimate digital experience for women. We work with each advertiser to create a highly-customized campaigns that expressly meets their needs. For example, to promote Oxygen Media's new reality series Fight Girls, we created a video game to fully immerse the audience in the brand and get them excited about the show. Reebok struck an exclusive online deal with Glam Media to promote their new Scarlett Johansson line-with interactive features such as "How Well Do You Know Scarlett?" quizzes and wardrobe-matching games that ran on all our network sites. Paramount called its promotion of Dreamgirls DVD on Glam Media their most successful online campaign to date-and the list of happy advertisers goes on.
What does the competitive space look like now, and what do you think it will look like in 12-24 months?
In May 2007, Glam overtook nine-year incumbent iVillage to be the number one women's Web property with over 17 million uniques and is already #42 on MediaMetrix, ComScore list of top 100 web destinations in the US. While there are many niche sites or ad networks catering to women's content, no one is focusing on becoming an integrated platform for the brand display advertising market. This is what truly differentiates Glam.
Is there any chance of make vs. buy on a service like this?
There are four essential ingredients for a successful Distributed Media company on the Web: -- traffic, technology, content/media, and monetization. Some of the better-known companies are only good at one, maybe two, of these categories. Glam Media is bringing together the four essential ingredients for a modern media company-not an easy thing to replicate and scale.
As a Glam investor, what role is DFJ playing in your company's growth?
Tim Draper and the team were instrumental in the early days to support our vision of creating a new media company solely focused on the Women's audience market. With our others investors DFJ continues to proactively work with us in leading our phenomenal growth. Expect to hear significant corporate development news in the next few months.
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Portfolio Company News
Can you guess what this is...
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