As of today, GMPVC will introduce Tweets for Equity in Germany.  The innovative, entrepreneur-friendly model exchanges ten Tweets for one percentage equity ownership.

Soon everyone in Berlin will talk about T4E or "Tweets for Equity"

GMPVC Management is convinced the model, also called T4E in short, will be highly sought after in the competitive German startup scene.

Aljoscha Kaplan, Co-Founder and MD of GMPVC, states: „Tweeting for equity is the next big thing. Through our incessant Tweeting, we will really accelerate the growth trajectory of consumer companies.“

Dr. Niko Waesche, also Co-Founder and MD, adds: „Our competition is always amazed by the innovative services we come up with. Now, with T4E, there is no catching up any more. GMPVC is the clear leader in venture capital innovation.“

(PS: We were surprised that numerous people asked about this service. Sorry, folks, it was an April Fool’s post. We don’t offer T4E.)

GMPVC German Media Pool is a new hybrid in the venture capital landscape. We invest in promising, young internet companies. Instead of cash financing, we provide these startups with large advertising campaigns. We have eight portfolio companies and three media partners.

The media for equity model we have pioneered in Germany has been featured in The Economist, The Financial Times, TechCrunch and other leading publications. It is a venture capital innovation made in Europe.

If you join us as an Associate, you will gain valuable knowledge and experience in two important areas: Venture capital and media. Our day-to-day business includes screening targets, negotiating contracts and media operations for campaigns involving TV, radio and billboard advertising.

GMPVC is based in Berlin, one of the main startup hubs of Europe.

We are looking for an Associate who is hungry to learn all about venture capital and media but also does not mind getting his or her hands dirty in day to day work.

Above all, we want somebody who is excited about helping shape the disruptive world of seed investments in Europe. German language would be great for communicating with partners, but perhaps not mandatory. If you have some experience at a startup, a media group, a consulting or investment firm this would be great.

We would like to begin our relationship with a one month paid trial-run to begin ASAP. Please send your application (short CV, link to LinkedIn or Xing and twitter-handle) to joinus@gmpvc.com latest by 8th of March, 2013. Oh, and one more thing: We’d love to hear which company you think should be the next GMPVC investment, and why. No need for an essay, a few short sentences or bullets would be great.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Aljoscha and Niko.

With this year’s performance, the EPS has established itself as one of the best internet networking events in Germany. This year’s event has been covered in various blogs and posts, including an article on The Kernel “Who knew Germany could be this cool?” as well as a nice crisp piece by our friend Rob Fitz “Super Different Super Fun.” Thanks, Till Ohrmann and the other Pirates, you were fantastic.

Why pirates? Mike Arrington claimed once that entrepreneurs are like pirates, risk taking and independent. The pirate-infused atmosphere including good hearty food basically made people loosen up and network even more effectively than any other congresses or events we have been to.

The young developers supported by The European Pirate Summit.

What we are especially happy about is that our support also went to a group of young programmers from Ireland and Romania. Sean, Jordan, Harry, Sergiu, and Christi were invited (all-costs-covered) to the EPS to talk about their projects (some with #1 apps in the app-store) and “life as young geeks.” It was great to see such inspiring and aspiring young entrepreneurs.

Deutsche Telekom is taking web- and mobile-based innovation and entrepreneurship very seriously. From the first moment, I was thrilled by how open and dynamic hub:raum is. Essentially, the team around Min-Kin Mak and Peter Borchers are reinventing the concept of corporate incubation. My Venture Partner colleagues, Jörg Rheinboldt, Aydogan Ali Schosswald and Hans Raffauf feel the same way.

You can expect many exciting hub:raum projects and investments in the next months.

Jointly with Aljoscha Kaplan, I will continue my work as Founder and Managing Director at GMPVC German Media Pool.

What unities both GMPVC and hub:raum, is a common objective to strengthen the entrepreneurial landscape in Berlin and Europe. This is what this is all about.

in two weeks, we will celebrate our first investment anniversary at GMPVC. We want to thank you for being part of this exciting journey. Without you, our first year would not have been the success it has!

On July 1st, 2011, we started investing media with our three media partners, out-of-home advertiser JCDecaux/ Wall, information TV channel N24 and the radio holding group REGIOCAST. Our objective was to carry out five investments, with an emphasis on the best teams backed by well-known and highly regarded investors. We knew this was going to be a challenge.

Not only was GMPVC a newcomer in the investment landscape, the idea of a cross media for equity pool was a first in Germany. Local startups appreciated the massive boost television recently provided for the e-tailer Zalando, but that deal was unique in many regards. In general, internet entrepreneurs like the direct measurability of digital performance-based marketing and are healthily cautious when it comes to offline media channels.

After an exciting twelve months, we have built up mindshare, but far more importantly, we achieved a portfolio of truly exceptional companies and met our first year’s goal. Our companies are using our partner’s media to realize highly innovative campaigns. And this involves both sides of the brain. Measurement, analytics and continual optimization is the key to success, but just as important is compelling creative and professional production.

We would like to introduce you to the five exceptional companies we have invested our media in.

• 9Flats – Online marketplace for private accommodations, which facilitates smarter and locally authentic travel.
• Pauldirekt – Leading online shopping-club in Germany, with more than 1.3 million members.
• MediKompass – Reverse auctions for patient’s medical services. The service combats rising costs of health care in Germany.
• JustBook – Innovative mobile app for last-minute hotel reservations.
• URBANARA – Online shop for urbane, high-quality home textiles and interior accessories at great value.

There is much more to come from GMPVC.

Stay tuned for more as we continue to work with the most passionate entrepreneurs creating powerful media campaigns.

Best Regards, Niko and Aljoscha.

URBANARA products

International investors

Lead Investor is San Francisco-based fund Blumberg Capital. Blumberg is known for investing in a host of consumer and software start-ups, including the social media management toolkit HootSuite.

Existing shareholders, Switzerland-based investment group b-to-v as well as the German e-commerce and software fund Grazia Equity, also joined the €3.5m round.

Investor confidence in URBANARA is high because of the following reasons.

(1) More than e-tail

URBANARA is not only an online retailer, it has its own home textiles and accessories brand. This allows it greater flexibility in pricing and provides it with the ability to control quality. Several US companies are following this trend, too, especially in apparel (such as Honestby, Bonobos or Everlane).

(2) Instantly global

The company (founded by a multinational team, Claire Davidson, Ben Esser and Martin von Wenckstern), is a global start-up from day one, with operations in Shanghai and sales and marketing in Germany and the UK.

Brand honesty

With the financing round closed, the investor perspective becomes less important. What the consumer thinks is key. To consumers all over Europe, the URBANARA brand stands for: High quality, exquisite worldwide sourcing and low, direct to consumer prices.

Framing corporate values is an awkward exercise. This is because most values should be either completely self-evident or should be proven via actions, not words. To illustrate these two cases, let’s use hypothetical corporate values for our own media fund, GMPVC.

(1) We view our portfolio companies as our most important assets and will not invest in direct competitors in the same investment period.

This statement should be so obvious and self-evident, that we would somehow feel that we would belittle its importance by publicizing it as a corporate value. Our portfolio companies are our most important assets, because we would not make a single Euro without them.

Investing in parallel in direct competitors would be a way to hedge bets, but we would be breaking the trust of our companies. We are not just providing our companies with the means to realize advertising campaigns; we strive to provide strategic advice on marketing, advertising and PR. We cannot provide this value to two competitors at the same time.

Picture frame used under the Creative Commons licence from Wikimedia.

OK, so self-evident corporate values don’t make much sense. What is wrong with stating noble ambitions? Here our second example:

(2) We will invest only in companies that have a net positive contribution to society, the economy or the environment.

For us, this is an important investment criterion. Just as in the first example, many other companies have similar corporate values. However, saying it seems wrong and self-aggrandizing. One has to do it, not boast about it. You can look at our portfolio and judge for yourself.

By the way, we don’t want to criticize any companies, which have published their own corporate values. There may be some important reasons for the exercise, linked to unique circumstances the company is in.

What to do about corporate values? We propose to replace them with corporate promises. These are far more concrete and accountable. Many smart companies make corporate promises, such as giving a share of their income to a specific charitable cause. We respect them.

We don’t have a corporate promise yet, but feel that this would definitely be the way to go. Stay tuned for more on our promise(s) in coming months.

European Business School in Castle Reichartshausen (photo used with permission by EBS NINE)

This did not deter German internet accelerators, catalysts and incubators, such as Rocket Internet, Springstar, Venture-Stars, Rheingau Ventures, FoundersLink and Hanse Ventures from flocking this Saturday to EBS NINE, a student-organized entrepreneurship event. And not just they were there, traditional VCs also came, such as Partech, Kizoo, HTGF, Venturecapital.de, BDMI and eVenture Capital Partners. Students from Stanford, MIT and Cambridge attended as part of a three-day workshop. Specialized Berlin start-up recruiter i-Potentials hosted a session as well as small-cap M&A advisors Winnacker Transactions. And, of course, GMPVC was there, too.

What this impressive display of attention by top players showed was an insatiable hunger for talent in the internet segment. Based in Berlin, Samwer-funded Rocket Internet and associated companies are responsible for large parts of Groupon’s internationalization in several important emerging markets all over the world. Springstar is the brainchild of one of the most brilliant European investors, Klaus Hommels (Skype, Facebook, Spotify, StarDoll). Klaus Hommels was personally at the conference with Manu Gupta, Partner at Springstar. From it’s hub in Berlin, Springstar runs shopping clubs, group buying companies and online shoe shops around the world with a combined total of more than $1bn revenues per year, 20m customers and 2,000 employees. Just two days ago, Gründerszene, the German startup press, reported that Springstar will manage some of the internationalization of Airbnb. Through these global initiatives, Berlin is being turned into a highly professional launch pad for the internationalization of internet business ideas. This beast needs to be fed.

EBS NINE Conference Entrance (used with permission by EBS NINE)

The EBS NINE event proved that business school students are becoming better and better at marketing themselves to entrepreneurial companies. The event was a far cry from the drab and dull recruiting jamborees of large corporates and consulting firms. EBS NINE was created and hosted entirely by student volunteers with zero budget. Normally, volunteer-based initiatives have a sort of charming, Oxfam type of feeling. Not this conference. Speakers were picked up from the airport, flyers and branding was slick, the lunch and dinner was amazing (and vegan). Everyone was full of smiles, enthusiasm and confidence. Even though the students all had not slept for days.

What these students were actually doing is proving they can launch and execute a major project faultlessly. All boxes were ticked. With 400 attendees, EBS NINE was one of the largest student conferences in Europe in 2011.

(1) Have Morten Lund hold an amazing keynote and motivate the crowd to a frenzy

Everybody knows Morten Lund, one of the early backers of Skype, first class angel and above all the guy who has been through everything, highs and lows and all else. Some lucky people may have seen him speak before. But have you ever seen a pile a Germans scream out: “Germany is fucking amazing.” Nope. Morten made us do it. I am German, and this activity was highly uncomfortable to me as it was for everyone else, but Morten made his point: You Germans have to market yourselves positively. You have to talk about your achievements. And, for heavens sake, don’t belittle your achievements by initiating another useless and stupid cloning discussion.

(2) Select an unusual location… try a church

The conference took place in a church. This was not enough for the organizers. Outdoing even that, they hired an organ musician to introduce the speaking sessions with live church music. I was a panel member (DIGITAL CHAMPIONS 2015: SILICON VALLEY VS. EUROPE VS. ASIA), and I tell you it feels great to be ushered onto the stage like a priest. Note: The organist later degenerated into ballads such as “The show must go on…” in part accompanied by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch singing… but more about that in ingredient number 3.

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The church setting for the ADVANCE '11 Conference. Source: ADVANCE Conference. Photographer: Ralph Sondermann. Used with permission.

(3) Get Mike Butcher to sing, dance and perform

I previously only knew Mike Butcher from the stories he writes for TechCrunch Europe. But here he was, live as you can get, grilling nine VCs on stage, all while singing and dancing (to the organist, see above). The guy is amazing. How does he manage to intersperse serious points into this performance such as demanding more transparency from European VCs regarding publishing their financial performance and transaction sizes?

(4) Throw 45 Scandinavians into the mix who seeking to reinvent their local economy

As if the conference organizers did not have enough to do in the weeks before the event they decide to pull a wildcard and chuck in 45 Scandinavians. Somehow the ADVANCE team heard that a Swedish town – Trollhättans Stad – was facing the huge challenge of having to reinvent their local economy – given the serious problems of the city’s main employer, SAAB. The town decided to set up the Innovatum Technology Park and send a delegation to an international Tech Conference to engage quickly and efficiently with the internet economy. ADVANCE made it happen. Wonderful. We want to see this at other conferences, too. Don’t just keep all the learnings to yourselves, share it out to the world.

(5) Exhibit perfect timing

Cologne is not known for its startups like Berlin or London is. But the city and its startup scene attracted everyone to Cologne anyway by cleverly combining not just one but three major events: The European Pirate Summit Exclusive Startup Conference (September 20th), the dmexco (a huge internet marketing trade event on the 21st and 22nd) and the ADVANCE Conference (19th and 20th). Conference addicts could potentially stay almost the whole week in Cologne.

(6) Do everything else right, too

The points above make your conference special. But you have to get the basics right, too, unless you want to waste everyone’s time and effort. This year’s ADVANCE featured a great mix of venture capitalists, startup entrepreneurs, lawyers, press and more. ADVANCE extended the conference into the web, and to everyone else out there who could not attend, by Tweeting and getting everyone else to Tweet, too. In fact, the conference’s #Advnc11 identifier was one of the most popular Tweet streams in Germany on the 19th of September. And make sure the logistics works, the hotels for the speakers are perfectly organized, the service teams are friendly. OK, the food was miserable on the second day and most of the VCs failed to show up at the open pitch sessions (many complaints from the participants). Overall, ADVANCE still gets an amazing A- on everything.

It will be hard for others to imitate this conference and get all the ingredients right. Maybe there was a secret sauce as well – the excitement of creating something new. The organizers didn’t mention it much, but this actually was the first ADVANCE Conference ever. A conference startup for startups.

This post also appeared on the Wired UK website. Thanks, team Wired UK!

Bridge over Nieuwe Keizersgracht (public use through WIKIMEDIA COMMONS License)

On the 12th of September in Amsterdam, the trend that internet companies are booking TV ads will be discussed in detail. I will be moderating “Dead, Dying or Rejuvenated?,” a panel of media decision makers and influencers, including the CEO of one of the most important internet media groups in Germany and the Ventures Head from one of the largest (if not the largest) non-public broadcasting groups in Europe. Two top consultants will be joining the debate, one focused on strategy, the other on analytics.

Here we go… this is the panel:

• Stefan Winners, CEO of TOMORROW FOCUS AG
• Sascha van Holt, Head of Ventures of ProSiebenSat.1
• Jeanette Carlsson, Managing Director of @NewMedia2.0 Ltd
• Martin Weiss, Managing Partner of Solon Consulting

The IBC is an annual event for the broadcast industry, cleverly hosted every September in Amsterdam. It is the biggest TV industry event in Europe, as far as I know, with 48,000 visitors each year. Spending a few days in Amsterdam in September is one of the best ways to enjoy the final days of Summer. I have also celebrated by birthday at the industry event for almost ten years in a row now. I don’t know if I can recommend that, however.

Today, we published a press release announcing the upcoming panel. Check it out, it contains some great quotes from the participants.