NetVibes, a Paris/London based company, will announce a $15 million round of financing on Monday. Existing investor Index Ventures joined new investor Accel to lead the investment, which is one of the largest this year for a European company (Bebo, a UK based company raised a similar amount). The valuation was not disclosed.
NetVibes is a personal ajax home page that we’ve covered since launch. Netvibes has seen tremendous growth, even against well funded competitors like Pageflakes, which took a large investment from Benchmark. The site now has over five million users and claims to have spent next to nothing on marketing.
Their product has also been evolving nicely with the integration of their eco-system and the addition of Meebo IM injecting some community flavor.
A previous seed round closed in March, including Index Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Chappaz (founder of Kelkoo and Wikio) and Martin Varsavsky (founder of Jazztel, Ya.com and Fon).
We understand that this investment will be mostly dedicated to setting up a team of business and technical collaborators (they actually started to do so) but also to upgrading their technical infrastructure, improving their product (a bit slower lately but being upgraded too) and establishing partnerships.
NetVibes toughest challenges are starting now. They have enough traction in a young market to begin to monetize traffic - they just have to find the right way to do it without alienating users. NetVibes will also have to become mainstream which implies dedicated marketing efforts and relevant distribution deals to reach untapped, non-early-adopter audiences.
They certainly have enough resources to implement their vision and take those challenges to the next level. Will NetVibes join other European based world class internet companies like Skype (an Index investment too) Bebo and Habbo?
update 17/08: read also this post on NetVibes blog
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I’ve been using NetVibes for some time now after trying out most of the other similar startups and find NetVibes to be the best.
I’m glad they’re still going, I’d be nowhere without them.
no offense, but why do companies like this need $15,000,000? i don’t understand where all of that money would go to for a simple home page?…
I think a simple homepage like that doesn’t need that kind of money. And this scares me… because it means we are back in the hype of the bubble 1.0. What do you think Michael?
I have never used these sites.I tried to quickly grasp what exactly they do. I dont get it.
How are they diferrent from my yahoo or google persoanl pages. They manage rss feeds with ajax page (ajax’ing shouldnt be a big thing).
Why do they need $15mil. Is this concept that big? I am confused.
Tony> This is Ouriel not Michael on that post
A very good video in TechCrunch is answering your question about the bubble.
Tom> it is not just a simple homepage but a personnal ajax homepage with endless possibilities of customization. It is indeed a lot of money but obviously Netvibes has strong ambitions.
$15m is a lot of money to raise especially given the comparables (e.g. Bebo). Clearly there is something that isn’t publicly disclosed.
I do know they charge developers of widgets to promote those widgets within the Netvibes widget directory.
Still, it isn’t clear to me where the revenue is going to come from. I do think the service is quite nice. It is definately different/better than MyYahoo in a number of ways.
Alex Castro
PS - I can’t seem to trackback to this post. Has TechCrunch blocked trackbacks?
Alex, no, trackbacks are alive and well. May have hit the spam filter.
Congrats to Netvibes! The internet would no longer be the same without them.
Now, how do they plan to make money?
Alex, nothing in the spam folders…sure you got the trackback URL right?
It’s worth noting that the folks over at mad4milk have recently released a similar (though also decidedly different) project they call mooglets. It doesn’t reach the levels of customizability and features of netvibes yet, but, hey, it’s only a baby. It’s way sleeker in appearance and they’re talented programmers. If they keep working on it diligently, it may yet prove to be a superior piece of software, the business end of things notwithstanding; I have no idea if they’re planning on monetizing on mooglets.
“Still, it isn’t clear to me where the revenue is going to come from. ”
search and other referrals
Wow, those mooglets are pretty sweet! As for Netvibes, I’m very curious to see how they plan to monetize the service. Please don’t ruin my free Netvibes!
5 million users, eh? What’s the basis for that measure? Definately not signups I assume. Interesting how they throw around numbers and everyone follows like a lemming.
Is this Bubble 2.0?
Some weeks ago I made a small cartoon:
http://geekandpoke.blogspot.co.....ja-vu.html
Bye,
Oliver
Hey I’ve just started up my own technology blog, please visit it and tell me what you guys think.
Thanks
http://www.philipaustin.co.uk
I don’t get it. Google personal homepages is good already, no need to sign up again with another service.
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I have to congratulate Tariq.
He’s doing an amazing job and I’m confident he’ll stay ahead of the crowd. 15 million is a lot of money, my guess is that he’ll use some of it to expand the netvibes platform (read: BUY some other companies).
He’s a very smart guy and he definitely knows how to build this company.
Europe rocks!
Europe rocks yes !
How to Moneytize ? Netvibes will sell their lovely widgets/modules to newspapers and others broadcasters (offshoring). Medias don’t have time to sign such a large content. Netvibes is a provider of small applications and shortcuts. They will sign exclusive contracts (fifa worldcup or similar content) in order to force users to go through their social customizable channel.
Money to:
-servers
-talents
-ideas
-partnerships
-holidays
That’s all folks ?
This is funny because I read it inside of the rss reader on my netvibes page ;P
I love netvibes because it lets me have a preview of both of my gmail accounts on one page. beyond that, the tabs are very efficient at managing the 40 or so rss feeds that I have. on google I’d just have to scroll down a lot.
I’ve tried quite a few of these types of sites and NetVibes is definitely my favorite of the bunch. To me, it seems to have the best combination of features and usability. The thing that really separates it from Google Personal Homepage is the tabs, which are essential if you have a large number of rss feeds like I do. I’ve been using NetVibes as my homepage for a couple of months now, and I absolutely could not live without it!
umm, bebo is based in san francisco. see http://www.bebo.com/about/About.jsp
check out my blog
http://www.philipaustin.co.uk
I agree with the earlier posters. It does seem like more bubble money. Looking at this market, anyone else is going to have to do a lot better than Google or Yahoo for portals to make it worthwhile. So while Netvibes does have some nice features, they still are missing things which both Google and Yahoo offer such as a mobile interface to get things on your cell phone/pda, local sports scores, etc. And while Netvibes works very well with tabs for RSS news reading, why not just use the best sevices out there such as Bloglines or Newsgator for that? Lastly, there is also the issue of privacy. Sure you can have your email and calendar displayed on Netvibes, but your giving a company which you know little about your passwords for your private email and personal calendar.
Regardless though, I’m sure VC’s will continue to pour lots of money into the latest fashions on the web. I’m just not sure where the business model is…
so cool.
http://www.icebin.net
Ari> Indeed it is California based now, after it wsa relocated from UK where it was created.
Greg> Why not give Netvibes a chance to prove they can make it? They are just one year old. I don t remember Yahoo or Google or even Skype making any money their first year.
Netvibes has a good chance of being a big player. The personal start page is ridiculously valuable real estate, and given the company’s current success and growth trajectory, it’s absolutely worth a $15mm punt to see if they can break out. The risk/reward payoff is in the VC’s favor on this one…
And besides, you can’t hit a home run without swinging.
It will be interesting to see how PageFlakes+Benchmark respond - expect another announcement soon…
Wow. Lots of spam comments on this post. Guess I’ll add to the mix:
For the Mac, check out the VibeKit.app — loads only NetVibes as a standalone app. Handy when you don’t want your browser crashing to kill your web dashboard.
Great to hear, Tariq and marc are brilliant guys from what i know of them over skype, and netvibes has been the 1st tab on firefox now for quite some time, and it keeps getting better.
From what i know they’ve been pretty tight on use of funds, so I think they’re pretty ready to make $15 mil do what it should do.
they’re positioned well as independents away from google and yahoo who have too many of their own embedded services to stay impartial and be open to partner with any web app like netvibes are
For those wondering why a company like netvibes “need” 15 mil… they most likely don’t need that much to get their operations and growth path sorted out. But number that big guarantees certain amount of exposure in the investment community as well as media. Would TechCrunch have covered this news if this was a round of 1 mil angel fund? Also, a lot of these companies use the services of VC brokers who shop around the town looking for deepest pockets so the numbers tend to inflate if you’re in the right space at the right time. And it’s not hard to convince that ajax home page is the right space at the right time. Just walk into a meeting, fire up Google home page and make some off hand remarks about how this startup will probably get bought out soon. Ka-ching.
Ouriel,
Hey, I’m all for Netvibes to be a smashing success. My only point was that they need to do A LOT better than they are now to really attract main stream audiences from trusted names like Google or Yahoo. Maybe with $15Mil they can at least develop a mobile interface now:)
Looks clean but how can they sustain without original content? All these mashups can be easily duplicated.
soxiam> we covered NetVibes when they raised seed money. And we also covered NetVibes since day one as we just love their service.
Netvibes is unique - as far as I know - in one respect: there is always a (number) provided that indicates whether there are unread RSS posts and/or email, based on your preferences. And, because of the tabbed approach, there is only one browser window required to monitor all of this activity.
For us, Netvibes really fits the bill - set up a tab for a particular interest and include at least the following:
∙ RSS feeds
∙ appropriate bookmarks
∙ flickr feed based on topic/tag (which adds some nice colour to each tab)
Plus Webnotes ∙ To-do list ∙ Writely connection (not perfect)
I can’t imagine doing without it at this point. I’ve had a Yahoo account/page for years, plus a Google page (and many others over time). Netvibes provides a lot of value here, I think. Got rid of all my local (PC-based) bookmarks and now see the same thing at home - at work - anywhere! Very clean …
Good news, that’s good because the startpages will get improved. And they will start to make better webpages. At the moment I am using pageflakes , they also received lot of money from the big company Benchmark. I love startpages.
In terms of the netvibes business model, I assume that they are making money from referring traffic to other web services that are able to monetise that traffic. Looking at the items on netvibes’ default page is interesting in this respect - Search and Comparative Shopping Engines definitely fall into this category of sites that can monetise traffic and are willing to pay for traffic referral. Blingo is an example of a business that made its money purely out of referring search traffic (to Google)
Kudos to the Netvibes team.
I tried it out when it first came out and is was just okay, one of the bunch - but I’ve come to it today and it’s awesome. The tabs feature brings it to another level.
The third-party add-on community also speaks volumes on how popular it is.
I too wonder how they will monetize - hopefully it won’t affect too much on what’s currently on offer.
It’ll be interesting to hear what the team at TechCrunch here think of how they will/should monetize.
i think adding a real web based IM module would be nice, something like koolim.com
the meebo integration is retarded, its just an iframe of meebo.com
I agree Dirk, anyone an embed in an IFrame.
i like popup messengers better anyway, gives me a more desktop look and feel.
I thank everyone for thier support of koolim.
Nice app Samer.
thx Michelle.
I am feeling adventurous. I think they are becoming a prime target for Google to take them over:
http://manuelhp42.blogspot.com.....vibes.html
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