Venture Capital News
Martin Falkevall Joins InnovationsKapital
Martin Falkevall has joined InnovationsKapital, one of the leading start-up and early stage venture capitalists in the Nordic region, as an Investment Director in the Information and Communication Technology team based in Stockholm.
Martin, who is 36, has nine years experience in the Nordic venture capital industry. He was previously with Capman Capital Management and with Swedestart Management. He joined Swedestart in 1997 as an Analyst, became a Partner in 2000 and remained with them until they were acquired by Capman in 2002, when he became a Partner at Capman. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Economics and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Physics, both from Lund University.
He has been a venture capitalist investing in the Information and Communication Technology sector since 1997 and, as a result, has gained investment experience of the sector for high growth companies requiring seed, start up, early stage and expansion capital in the Nordic region.
InnovationsKapital was founded in 1994 and is one of the Nordic regions leading venture capital firms for innovative early stage high growth companies. The business is focused on investments within Information and Communication Technology and HealthCare & Life Science sectors that are rapidly expanding and where Nordic research plays a leading role. The capital is managed in four funds and is provided by highly reputable Swedish and international institutional investors.
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WebGen Systems, Inc. Raises $9.5 Million in Funding
Representatives of WebGen Systems Inc., provider of advanced software for energy conservation and control in commercial buildings, announced Thursday that during the second quarter of this year it had secured $9.5 million in funding. New investor Sigma Partners, a leading early-stage venture capital firm, led the round.
WebGen's IUE provides building owners and managers with a predictive, automated enterprise energy management solution that reduces energy costs and improves energy efficiency while maintaining focus on occupant comfort. IUE provides managers with tools that permit them to monitor, forecast, and optimize their energy consumption in real time. The system aggregates all buildings under one umbrella where managers can effectively manage their portfolio utilizing a series of state of the art tools that allows them to conserve scarce energy resources, reduce energy expenditures, and provide detailed accounting of reduced energy use and corresponding dollar savings.
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Encover, Inc. Raises $8M in Series C Financing
Representatives of Encover, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand software and services to help manufacturers and their channel partners maximize revenues from the sale of service contracts and maintenance agreements, announced Wednesday that the company has raised US$8 million in a Series C round of financing. Chicago-based Baird Venture Partners (BVP) led the financing round with participation from previous investors Sigma Partners and DCM -- Doll Capital Management.
Devin Mathews, a principal at BVP, will join the Encover board of directors alongside Peter Solvik, managing director, Sigma Partners; Tom Blaisdell, general partner, DCM; Sridhar Krishnan, Encover's founder and chairman; Sherry Paterra, partner at Paterra and Iguchi; and Chip Overstreet, Encover's president & CEO.
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Pageflakes Secures Funding from Benchmark Capital
Represenatives of Pageflakes, a leading player in the rapidly-growing personalized internet startpage market, announced its first round of investment by Benchmark Capital Europe, the top-tier venture capital firm behind eBay, Betfair and Setanta. The investment will be used to accelerate technology platform and product development, with the goal of establishing Pageflakes as the world's leading personalised startpage.
Pageflakes, a recent winner of the prestigious Web 2.0 award, provides a convenient one-stop access-point to a user's favourite web tools such as search, mail, blogs, news feeds, Del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos and numerous other web services and applications. By aggregating these services onto one page, Pageflakes saves its users the effort of manually checking dozens of sites for updates every day.
Pageflakes differentiates itself with its open platform which is attracting hundreds of developers worldwide. This means that any developer, anywhere in the world, can write a "flake" - a web application such as a To-Do-List Manager, an Address Book or a Weather Module - and make it available to every Pageflakes user. Thanks to its growing community of developers, Pageflakes has been adding almost one new flake every day since its launch in March and now has 75 unique services on the site.
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Patriot Capital Funding Completes a Recapitalization of Fairchild Industrial Products Co.
Representatives of Patriot Capital Funding, Inc., a specialty finance company providing flexible financing solutions to private equity sponsors focused on making investments in small- to mid-sized companies, announced May 25 that it completed a recapitalization of Fairchild Industrial Products Co., an existing portfolio company of Patriot Capital Funding and the private equity firm Hampshire Equity Partners.
As part of the recapitalization, Patriot Capital Funding provided $1.5 million of additional senior secured term debt along with $0.5 million of preferred and common equity. Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Fairchild Industrial Products Co. is a leading designer and manufacturer of industrial control products. Fairchild's products are sold to a variety of end user markets, including food processing, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, paper and pulp, textiles and automotive industries. Patriot Capital Funding previously provided $20.2 million of debt financing in support of the initial July 2005 acquisition of Fairchild by Hampshire Equity Partners.
