This week, we hosted Accel Partners’ Rich Wong in the studio for our Ask A VC show.

Wong, who has invested in Angry Birds (Rovio), Lookout, Atlassian, MoPub, talked about where he sees the next wave of disruption in mobile technologies. He believes mobile security is a huge opportunity mobile, especially at the enterprise level.

We also chatted about whether entrepreneurs can build a great tech company outside of Silicon Valley. Wong has some interesting perspective on this considering that Atlassian’s headquarters are in Sydney, Australia and Rovio is based in Finland.

Tune in above to hear what Wong’s favorite Rovio game is and more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This week on techCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, we have Accel Partners’ Rich Wong in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show.

Wong focused on software, mobile and internet services investments for Accel and helped lead the firm’s investments in Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, MoPub; Dealer.com, Qwilt and others. Prior to Accel, Wong was SVP/GM of Products at Openwave and was previously the Chief Marketing Officer at Covad Communications, the DSL provider.

Considering his focus on mobile, Wong should have some interesting insights on where VCs are placing their bets.

Please send us your questions for Wong here or put them in the comments below!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

Those who know in the Valley know the name Sam Pullara. Whether it was his time as a repeat entrepreneur and technical founder, or stints as an EIR at some of the Valley’s most premier venture capital firms, or his time as a lead technologist at two of the largest tech companies in the Valley (most recently at Twitter), Pullara has occupied nearly every seat at the table throughout his career. Now, after leaving Twitter and after years of being an angel investor, Pullara has moved himself and his blog, Java Rants, over to the venture capital side as a Managing Director of Sutter Hill Ventures in Palo Alto, a firm which started back in the early 1960s and has focused on investing in SaaS, infrastructure, and other fundamental technologies.

I invited Pullara into the Studio because he isn’t the type to seek out attention, and I let the cameras run longer to capture the full arc of his career. He has started two companies, both of which were acquired, has been an EIR and consultant with Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital, was the Chief Scientist at Yahoo!, and most recently was part of a small, senior team that helped rebuild Twitter’s codebase. In this discussion, Pullara details his career moves, what he learned being a technical operator, a technical founder, and now a venture capitalist (including angel investments), with the hopes of providing an example for many engineers out there today starting out in their careers. Specifically, Pullara touches on how his technical ability gave him C-level access to company leaders to pitch solutions directly to them. On a different track, he also (honestly) explains his lessons as an angel investor and shares details into the unique capital and LP structure of Sutter Hill Ventures, where he is now investing into the next wave of technology startups.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Accel Partners is making a big talent announcement today, with former Groupon COO and Yahoo exec Rob Solomon joining the firm as a venture partner.

Solomon last served as Accel-backed Groupon’s President and COO. As AllThingsD reported, Solomon left the deals company in 2011.

Prior to his time at Groupon, Solomon was a venture partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, which he joined after selling travel search engine SideStep to Kayak for $200 million. Before the Kayak sale, Solomon was the VP of Yahoo Shopping and a member of the company’s executive management team. Solomon also sits on the board of directors for HomeAway, and HighGear Media (backed by Accel Partners and Greylock). He’s also been an active angel investor, investing in Trippy and a number of other startups.

As Venture Partner, Solomon will be evaluating early stage and growth equity opportunities with Accel. He will also advise the firm’s portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic and operational issues like product management, scaling infrastructure, business operations, and mergers and acquisitions. Clearly Solomon’s experience as an entrepreneur, executive and investor should help Accel’s portfolio companies.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

GoCardless, the Y Combinator-backed payments startup based in the U.K., has raised a $1.5 million Series A round of funding, led by existing investors Accel Partners and Passion Capital. The company had previously raised $1.5 million in seed funding in early 2012, following its participation in the Y Combinator Summer 2011 class.

Founded in 2010 by Oxford graduates Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson, the service helps businesses of all sizes establish automatic bill pay, direct debits, and recurring payments. As the startup’s name implies, the system is meant for use by merchants who can’t or don’t want to take credit card payments.

“Stripe makes it really easy for developers to get card payments, and Square makes it really easy for small merchants to take card payments,” explains Robinson. “But what do you do if card payments just don’t work for you? That’s the hole we fill.”

He also notes that card payments can sometimes have double-digit failure rates, and for those companies running a SaaS (software-as-a-service) business, these failures can kill them. With GoCardless, however, failure rates are really low because, unlike credit cards, users’ bank account details don’t change that often.

The system, for those unfamiliar, takes advantage of interbank transfers. Stateside, we refer to these as “Automated Clearing House” or ACH payments. Though you might not be familiar with the terminology, if you’ve ever switched on Automatic Bill Pay with your bank to pay a utility vendor, for example, then you’ve used ACH before. While other startups like Dwolla have since come along to blow up the entire ACH network by building its own real-time alternative, ACH payments are still a standard that businesses are comfortable with today.

The problem, however, was that for smaller merchants, the process of setting up automatic and/or recurring payments has been complicated and costly in the past. GoCardless changes that by making its fee structure more affordable – there are no setup or monthly fees, and then just 1 percent (up to £2) in transaction fees.

Robinson says that there are now more than 5,000 merchants using the system – up from 2,000 in May of last year. And that’s despite the fact that the startup hasn’t yet had the resources to expand outside the U.K. to the rest of Europe, as previously promised. That’s one of the immediate goals, following the Series A funding, we’re told.

The other is to implement a better referrals system where today there is none. Most of GoCardless’ business has come in through word-of-mouth, Robinson notes, and now the company wants to help encourage even more sign-ups and thank users who send them business by offering some sort of reward – like a certain amount of free payments, for instance. (Details on this have not yet been ironed out.)

The other key focus is, of course, product. Robinson says the startup is now adding “functionality to the product to allow people to have more flexibility in the way they do payments.” But he wants to keep the specifics close to the vest for the time being on what that means.

Since its public launch, GoCardless has been steadily growing at 40 percent month-over-month. It now has a team of 23 and is basically “always hiring” good developers. Its 5,000 merchants have reached a combined customer base in the tens of thousands – more than 50,000 people have paid with GoCardless, Robinson reports.

The service is also popular in a range of industries, too, including online businesses, wholesalers, accountants, web hosts, membership-based services, and more. In more recent months, the company has been working to expand its reach through an API, which is now integrated into a number of existing accounting software programs, including KashFlow, FreeAgent, Directli, ClearBooks, QuickFile, Sage and soon, Xero. More integrations are on the way, as well.

Today, the company also launched a new tool that allows its SMB customers to accept direct debits online,

In the meantime, interested U.K. merchants can sign up here. Others can simply add themselves to the waitlist.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In a widely rumored move, serial entrepreneur and investor Max Niederhofer has left his Vice President position at Accel Partners in Europe but not – as some thought – to create another startup, but to join another VC firm. This time, however, he will be a full venture partner with Sunstone Capital working out of Copenhagen. He will focus on early stage technology investments and support existing companies in Sunstone’s portfolio.

Niederhofer was barely a year at Accel and rumors about an impending departure – either to start his own fund or to join as a partner elsewhere – started circulating some weeks ago, though nothing was confirmed. Last year Accel lost partner Adam Valkin to General Catalyst Partners in the US, though this was down to family reasons. We understand Accel is already in the process of recruiting a replacement for Niederhofer.

Sunstone Capital is an early stage venture capital investor with a latest fund of $110M. It has around €700 million in committed capital across seven funds. The technology portfolio includes companies such as Amen, Gidsy, Issuu, Layar, Neo Technology, Paymill, Podio (sold to Citrix Systems) and Prezi.

Niederhofer has spent the last 11 years working with early stage businesses in Europe and the United States as an investor and entrepreneur. Prior to joining Accel, he started and sold Qwerly, a data marketing business, and prior to that was a Principal at Atlas Venture, working with DailyMotion, Seatwave and Moo. His personal investments include OneFineStay, Skimlinks, Boticca, Fliptop, Sofar Sounds and he was an investor in Last.fm.

Jimmy Fussing Nielsen, managing partner at Sunstone Capital commented: “We are very excited to have Max join our team. As entrepreneurs ourselves, we are aggressively expanding Sunstone from our Nordic roots to all European markets. Max’s background and experience strengthen our strategy of supporting European entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of company building.”

“I am thrilled to be joining a partnership that allows me to be an investor as well as an entrepreneur,” said Niederhofer. He said Sunstone aimed to build a “West Coast-style” venture capital firm which will be “faster, more accessible.”

Originally from Hamburg, Germany, Niederhofer is a graduate of WHU and was recently named “Best Startup Advisor/Mentor 2012” at The Europas Tech Startup Awards in Berlin.

In an interview, Niederhofer told us he felt the “market opportunity is in Series A. In the next 3-5 years there will be some huge billion dollar exits, from Spotify, JustEat, Prezi, Rovio. From that ecosystem Angels will emerge. This will be Europe’s ‘PayPal Mafia’ moment.”

“The market opportunity for us is amazing as you have 2,000 comps being seed funded right now. The real problem is the Series A crunch – there are not enough of those VCs around. So we will have the pick of the litter.”

The move indicates that once again the tectonic plates of the VC world in Europe are shifting. We’ve already detailed how new funds are arising and others are re-aligning themselves towards towards a more fleet-of foot, US-style of venture investing.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

South Africa’s Naspers has agreed to merge its two Russian online classified Web site with Avito in a $570 million deal that will make Avito the world’s third biggest classified site after Craigslist and China’s 58.com.

As part of the deal, Naspers’ Web sites Slando.ru and OLX.ru will be merged into the Avito brand, reports the Financial Times. Naspers will also invest $50 million in cash into Avito, giving it an 18.6 percent stake in the newly created group. Other investors include Kinnevik Investments and Vostok Nafta, both Swedish investment funds, Northzone Ventures (an early investor in Spotify).

Avito, which launched in 2007, is now expected to hold 25 percent share of the Russian classified market in terms of traffic and 15 percent share in terms of revenue. Last year the company generated $30 million in sales. Now that it has secured a large and stable user base, the company plans to start focusing on revenue generated from users and advertisers. The Web site currently has 140,000 users listing items each day, 40,000 of whom have never used the Web site before. In order for Avito to boost its revenue, it needs to have more sales coming from professional sellers who set up “stalls” to sell used goods on the site. About 4,000 small businesses currently pay for that kind of service, while it is free for consumers to list an item (they can pay for extras such as highlighted ads or more prominent search results).

Boosting its reach is also an important part of Naspers’ growth strategy because one of the major challenges facing Russian e-commerce businesses is the lack of online transactions, since most deals are completed offline. Avito’s main opportunities for growth comes from increasing Internet penetration in regions outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Last May, Sonali de Rycker, a partner at Avito investor Accel Partners, said that 90 percent of Russia’s growth in Internet usage will come from the regions–and that users outside of major cities will be especially keen on Avito.

“Classified works well because of the urban concentration and lack of retail services in the regions,” de Rycker told the Financial Times. “We like the model because once you are number one it has a snowball effect–it’s really a winner-takes-all market.”

Russia surpassed Germany in late 2011 to become the largest Internet market in Europe. Domestic companies–including search engine Yandex, Mail.ru–dominate in Russia, creating an insular online marketplace similar to that of China’s. Investors are eager to grab a slice of the Russian pie–last May, Avito raised $75 million from local private equity firm Baring Vostok and Accel, along with existing investors Kinnevik and Northzone.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

500 Startups announced recently that it would be using AngelList exclusively for startup applications to the incubator. AngelList is a service that matches early-stage startups with investors. Now Rock Health, the accelerator for health tech startups, is making a similar move, taking applications exclusively (here) through AngelList for its fifth class.

Rock Health founder Halle Tecco explains that the accelerator was already making startups create profiles on AngelList but the network has grown into a platform for startups to manage several pieces of business, and it made sense to make the switch over. She adds that it just makes the application experience a seamless process. In Rock Health’s last class, the accelerator received 1,500 applications.

For background, Rock Health startups have raised over $43 million in funding to date, averaging $900,000 per startup, not including Rock Health’s investment from limited partners Aberdare Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Mayo Clinic, and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Other Rock Health partners include Accel Partners, Fenwick & West, GE, Genentech, Harvard Medical School, Kaiser Permanente, Montreux Equity Partners, NEA, Qualcomm Life, Quest Diagnostics, Silicon Valley Bank, UnitedHealth Group, and UCSF.

Currently, AngelList has close to 1,000 angel investors who have recorded an investment in a healthcare startup, and there are around 4,000 Health Tech startups on AngelList.

There are other accelerators like MuckerLab, TechStars, AngelPad, Lemnos Labs, Capital Factory and LaunchPad LA who take applications both through their normal processes and through AngelList. But we’re seeing more accelerators simply switch over to AngelList for applications. As Tecco explains, it doesn’t make sense for startups to do the same work twice. And AngelList has given accelerators the ability to create customized applications on the network.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last year Etsy, the marketplace for hand crafted goods, was powering ahead with 20 million members in nearly 200 countries and had passed the $700 million mark for sales in 2012 (compared to $525 million for all of 2011). By the end of the year, over 100 million items had been sold in Etsy’s history. And as she explains in this video shot at the recent DLD conference in Munich, now Europe is a big opportunity according to Caroline Drucker, Etsy’s country manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Although it faces local competitors like DaWanda, it appars there remains plenty of room for growth.

Indeed, for international expansion Etsy has raised $40 million in funding last May from Accel Partners, Index Ventures, and Union Square Ventures. It also acquired the team behind Mixel, the iOS app for creating photo collages.

Since its launch in June 2005, Etsy, which focuses on allowing makers to sell handmade and vintage items, as well as art and craft supplies. The items include art, photography, clothing, jewelry, edibles, quilts, and toys. Etsy is modeled after open craft fairs that give sellers personal storefronts where they can list their goods. The company charges users a flat listing fee (of 20 cents per items), and takes a commission of 3.5% off all items sold.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Braintree, an Accel and NEA-backed payments company that’s now processing more than $6 billion a year, is launching a new payments layer that lets users sign up to pay for goods and services without having to re-enter their credit card details.

Say you use one app in Braintree’s network — like Airbnb. If you’re a new user to Uber, you won’t have to re-enter your credit card all over again because it may be stored in Braintree’s network.

They’re calling it Venmo Touch, which keeps the brand of the startup Braintree bought in August for $26.2 million. When you sign up for an app in the Venmo network, you’ll have the option of saving your credit card details in it so they can be used in other apps on the platform.

The idea is that by removing one step of friction, more users will go through and complete transactions. The default is checked to opt in users, and Braintree is keeping the initial beta really small with apps like HotelTonight, TaskRabbit and Wrapp.

“There’s tremendous overlap in the customer bases of these apps,” said Braintree CEO Bill Ready. “Putting in your card information into an app is painful and people are doing it 10 to 15 times.”

Braintree recognizes that a credit card might belong to a particular user through device fingerprinting, which collects a number of attributes about a device to create a unique ID. Ready wouldn’t reveal what inputs the company is using to fingerprint devices, but they could include the device model, browser, network and so on. You’d use enough inputs (potentially hundreds) to create enough combinations so that it would be highly improbable to create duplicates.

They also don’t store financial details locally on the phone. “Your data is stored in the cloud,” Ready said. “If we see anything suspicious, we can prompt for the CVV again.”

Braintree has about 35 million uniques on its network and processes more than $6 billion in transactions a year. $1.5 billion of that is on mobile devices. The company’s clients include Uber, Rovio, LivingSocial, Airbnb, Fab.com, GitHub, OpenTable, LevelUp, TaskRabbit and HotelTonight. They charge 2.9 percent plus 30 cents of each transaction.

Ready says the business is profitable even after paying the payment networks and credit card companies their transaction fees. The company has raised at least $69 million in two rounds from Accel Partners, NEA, Greycroft Partners and RRE Ventures. It faces off against a number of competitors including PayPal, which said it finished the fourth quarter of last year with 123 million registered accounts. eBay added in the same earnings release that Paypal was doing $14 billion in mobile volume. Another competitor is Y Combinator-backed Stripe, which is used in many other Y Combinator startups like Hipmunk and Justin.tv.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch