Beintoo, transforming apps passion into real benefits

Beintoo is a fast-growing community of apps lovers who want to share their apps experience with other users and friends as well as look for and find peers with same interests and close to them. By joining Beintoo, users can show other users how good they are at discovering new apps and at playing with them. As a reward for it,  users can increase their Bescore level from "Novice" up to "Master" and receive "Bedollars", the Beintoo virtual currency. The Bescore is the user level within the Beintoo community, which users can increase by:

1. playing with mobile games and apps which are partners of the Beinto apps network,
2.  sharing their interests on Beintoo.com,
3.  by engaging with apps and goods in Beintoo.com, and
4. by inviting friends to join the Beintoo community.

Users have a weekly salary depending on their Bescore level, which constitutes their reward for their apps passion. Therefore, the earned Bedollars can be used to get exceptional virtual goods as great prizes within their apps and convert them into coupons for real goods by visiting some sponsors stores in their town or on the Web. Everytime users convert a virtual good they won into a real coupon, their "bedollars richness" will be decreased according to the value of the real product. However, users get their weekly Bedollar salary, so they never run out of money. Indeed, the idea behind all this is, to create a "real economy where users are rewarded for their mobile passion".

The intuition of the Beintoo team is as genial as straightforward at the same time.

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MyoPlay: the first video social gaming platform made in Italy

MyoPlay is the first video social gaming platform in the world launched, at the end of November 2010, by Fabrizio Parzanese founder and CEO of MyoTV. As now-a-days, online video is seen as a mere repetition of a product made for other platforms (cinema/TV), MyoTV goes beyond this by creating and producing formats which are designed to take full advantage of the return of the new media channel. The clear aim is to stop treating people like “simple viewers” and ask them to become active participants. Indeed, if until yesterday the Tv host was asking a question and only a really lucky guy answered in a TV studio while all other participants where excluded from the very limits of the medium, now MyoPlay is the first social platform for video gaming in the world (now on Facebook and coming soon on iPhone and Android devices) offering many users different thematic formats, simple and funny to play and replay and with which one can directly challenge friends and colleagues.

The proposed thematic format is an attempt to intercept the passions of individuals, starting with Trolley Story (travel) Camera Car (cars and engines) Movie Rewind (cinema), Uhm Song (music), Gadget Quiz (technology) and GossVip (glam and gossip), and many more coming soon formats in the near future. MyoPlay is the first product launched by the Turin-based startup which is currently available only in Italian and for Facebook. However, imminent is the launch of the product on iPhone and Android devices as well as on the international market, Europe and US, by the end of 2011. 

On MyoTV:

MyoTV is an Italian startup which focuses on creating, producing and distributing Web, Mobile and IPTV formats, with the clear aim to "revolutionarize" the fruition of video contents. The company developed its business concept and model since the end of 2008 thanks to the meeting with Dpixel first and Working Capital after, till it became truly operative and productive in 2010. A long path, influenced by the economic crisis, the fast changing environment of the online video context as well as the mobile market which required and requires, constant updates and small changes of strategy. In this path, MyoTV, has been able to reach an agreement with Telecom Italia within the Working Capital project, whose main target is scouting and hunting the best and most interesting projects related to the web 2.0. 

 

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The Italian Venture Capital Market: Past Evolution and Recent Developments

As the Italian venture capital has changed over the last decades and information on its evolution is rather fragmented in this post I try to put together the relevant information starting since the beginning of the Italian venture capital market till its more recent developments.


The Italian venture capital market has overcome different waves of growth and specialization trends in the past 25 years. The market has notably been affected by the economic cycles and by some major facts that have influenced the whole economy as well. The evolution of the Italian venture capital market can be focused in specific periods. In particular, from 1900 till 1986 (almost a century) venture capital has been present in the country, only in a form that we might call "Informal VC". Important entrepreneurs contributed, by way of private investments, to the foundation of new companies. In the 70s though the capital needed to finance the growth of new and consolidated businesses was primarily coming from the bank system; both the capital market and the Venture Capital were not broadly used by Italian entrepreneurs. 1986 represented an historical change of pattern. Indeed, A.I.F.I. (the Italian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association) was formed and 15 operators took off, starting to implement some pure venture capital investments. This first wave of Institutional venture capital players,decided to enter the Italian market also due to the great success that VC was having in the United States. 

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