This recap turned out Czech-centered and will cover news from Avocode, Apiary, 3Dsimo, Google Campus in Warsaw, and Virool.
Avocode (CZ) refuses the offer from Adobe
Avocode, a cloud-based collaboration platform for designers and developers, has allegedly turned down bids from Adobe Systems and InVision. And apparently, they expect to raise $1M in seed capital from the Czech investment fund Credo Ventures, which they’ll use to build customer supports and strengthen marketing and sales.
Avocode
The tool developed by the Czech startup Source provides an easy way for designers and dev team to work together on designs’ colors, image assets, text fonts, sizes CSS at one place without throwing emails attachments and feedback at each other through different channels. Avocode converts graphic designs from Photoshop and Sketch into HTML and CSS saving web developers time and effort.
According to E15 magazine, the service released last fall boasts 1,500 customers, including NHL, Wal-Mart, CBS, Viacom, and Accenture, and is growing by tens of percent per month.
Apiary (CZ) gets $6.8M in Series A
In mid-August another Czech startup Apiary closed a $6.8M investment round lead by FlyBridGe Capital Partners and Baseline Ventures with participation from Credo Ventures and XG Ventures. The total raised capital reached $8.4M.
Apiary.io is a suite of tools enabling companies to build, test, monitor and document web APIs quckly and efficiently. The money will be funneled into team expansion and product innovation.
3D pen (CZ) exceeds the goal on Kickstarter by $65K
3Dsimo, founded by David Paskevic in the Czech Republic, asked Kickstarters to support its 3D pen for drawing, burning, soldering and foam cutting. Having pledged $35K, they’ve already raised almost 3 times as much from 893 backers, while the croudfunding campaign has still 36 to go. The shipping is planned for March 2016. Interestingly, according to Czechcrunch, 2 months prior to this campaign they already tried to raise money on the Kickstarter platform, but the campaign was unsuccessful.
The technology itself is impressive, so instead of describing it I’ll just leave this video here.
Google Campus to open in Warsaw (PL)
Google Campus in Tel Aviv
Polish tech dudes are happy: Warsaw is joining London and Tel Aviv to host the third Google Campus facility in the world. The inauguration of this outfit is the prove that Polish tech scene is flourishing and its startup acosystem is one of the most mature in Central and Eastern Europe. Google Campus will operate as a co-working facility for startups and will serve as a venue for conferences, trainings and mentoring events. More on Polska.pl.
Flint Capital (RU) invested in Virool (US-RU). $20M or $5M? This is the question.
Alex Debelov, Virool’s co-founder
It’s a bit of a detective story with the most recent Virool’s funding round from Flint Capital. In an interview to Firrma.ru Artem Burachenok, a partner at Flint Capital, said they had invested $5M in Virool, a US-based company with Russian roots. When I checked their profile on Crunchbase, the figure amounted to $20M (haven’t take a screenshot). But according to the comments I received from Virool the info on Crunchbase was inaccurate and they hadn’t closed their Series A yet. As for now, the wrong mention is removed, but the updated profile states that Flint Capital invested an undisclosed amount into the company.
Virool develops “native” video-advertising and analytics platform and boasts the network of more than 30,000 advertisers. In March 2015 they came up with eIQ technology enabling the brands to track the emotional response from the audience. The new technology detects face expressions and head movements in real-time using the viewer’s device camera. User engagement and emotional response that the new technology helps to assess are much more reliable metrics than impressions, and a mine of information for marketers for crafting the content.
