Open source web meeting tool DimDim gets $6 million in series B

Written on 10th July 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The Open source web meeting start-up DimDim got a financial injection of $6 million dollars in a series B round of funding (pdf file), led by existing investors Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and Draper Richards (from the US, Europe, and Asia). The goals of the company are exactly the ones you expect from one who just got a second round: expanding their reach and improving the product.

So what’s this product?

DimDim is a free service that helps you organizing gatherings for a few to hundreds of people. Features like sharing desktops, showing slides, chatting, and broadcasting via web cam give a digital conference the feeling of a real one. So imagine you’d like to throw a little digital party with all of your Facebook buddies all over the world, DimDim will then supply you with a digital conference room and all the tools to get these people together. But you might as well live in Florida and teach English to Mexican immigrants who are about to cross the U.S. border.

Democratizing web meetings

The service is free up to 20 persons, when your meeting gets too popular for that, you can chose some of their other editions – starting at $99 per year. That’s a whole lot cheaper than its main competitor, WebEx, which has editions starting at $375 per month (only 5 users allowed). You can probably imagine by now why many people believe DimDim democratizes web meetings, as they make it accesible for parties who are not part of the corporate world.

Pretty successful so far

DD Ganguly, ceo and co-founder of Dimdim, had some more good news to tell the press, as the service is pretty successful so far. “Dimdim has had an incredible ten months since our private launch at DemoFall 2007. Now more than 500,000 people in more than 180 countries have attended Dimdim Web Meetings”. I’m sure that a fair percentage of this people gets hooked on the service, and will switch to the paid versions as their web meetings gain popularity. This loyal user base makes the future of DimDim look really bright, as bright as the design of their fancy website.

dimdim, funding, open source, open source web meeting, series b, web meeting

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French IM service Iminent might use the money injection for Asian expansion

Written on 14th April 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Paris-based start-up Iminent raised a second round of funding this month from I-Source Gestoin and previous investor 360º Capital Partners. The French start-up turns instant messaging conversations into a chaotic experience with over-the-top emoticons and video options, exactly the kind of experience teenagers dig.

With this €2.4 million series B, Iminent has raised a total of €5.4 million. So I’ve mailed CEO Francis Cohen to congratulate him and ask some questions. He told me that they’ve started Iminent because they thought Instant messaging was still a poor medium. Cohen: “When we compared IM and the web as a platform, it was striking to see that the range and deepness of services were very poor on IM. So the idea was to expand IM services beyond the obvious, so IM could sustain the comparison with the web.”

When I was taking a look at the Iminent site, it immediately struck me that the service supported a large number of languages – English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian – yet not any Asian languages. This is kind of odd, since Asian teenagers seem obsessed with self-expression. Will Iminent use the new money injection for Asian expansion? “Our first priorities are Europe and North and South America, but Asia is definitely in our plans”, said Cohen.

So is Cohen prepared for the day that IM services will launch the very same features as his service offers? After all, it isn’t too hard to create psychedelic smilies. “Once you see IM as a platform, you don’t stress about IM software editors coming into services. We are working with some IM editors who like to assess companies like Iminent as good as they can. Since we’re expanding the functionality of IM.”

france, funding, iminent, series b, Start-ups

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eBuddy secures Series B: 6.5 million euro from Prime Technology

Written on 5th February 2008                                                                                                              6 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick

Co-founder Onno Bakker during lunch2.0

This just came in. Amsterdam web based IM service eBuddy secures a 6.5 million round of funding of Prime Technology ventures. The money will be used for further international expansion and growth for their mobile application (with already almost 2 million downloads).

While on the other side of the ocean people write and talk mainly about eBuddy’s competitor Meebo, eBuddy is still the biggest web-based IM company out there and with 6.5 million Euro in the pocket they will definitely try to get more presence and buzz in the US.

In October 2006 eBuddy got a capital injection of 5 million euro for Lowland capital. No details of both rounds are disclosed (yet).

Last week we had lunch2.0 at the eBuddy HQ and I must say that they’ve shown an impressive growth over the last years. Co-founder Onno Bakker told me that they were working on an API, but no news yet when they will release it. Congrats to the guys!

ebuddy, funding, lunch2.0, series b

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