Kiver closes funding to boost its expansion plans

Kiver, an agency specializing in digital marketing services for businesses, announced a new strategic orientation and a capital increase. Strategic acquisitions and new financial resources for a growing market will be the main focus.

Founded in 2004 as an aggregator of independent digital music and reference agency for projects of music branding for companies, today Kiver is a group that has undertaken a thorough reorganization of its corporate structure. Functional to its growth objective were the choices of separating the business of music distribution, conferred today to the newly created Kiver Digital, as well as that of browser games (with oFootball), of renovating the set of services of digital marketing and realize significant investments to grow the business in terms of products and technology. An important step of this growth was the acquisition in 2010 of Boomer (an Italian Social Media and Performance Marketing Agency), whose entry has increased and strengthened the action range of Kiver, thus giving rise to a strategic combination of experience and expertise in different areas of branded entertainment, social media and performance marketing.

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GoWar goes mobile with its iOS app

GoWar, the location-based social strategy game winner of the May 2010 Venice Startup Weekend, has been recently launched in the Apple Store and last 23rd June it already hit the more than 3,000 players . With GoWar users can choose a strategy to conquer real places, manage troops and declare war on their favorite spots to build their personal empire.

 

Thanks to GoWar's proprietary algorithm, gamers are able to play socially with and against real people while roaming around their cities and interacting with other players. To get started, gamers have just to select a target, choose their armies and attack! Gamers can take their friends on Facebook by inviting them to join the battle by sharing their victories. In GoWar, players are able to use tanks and different special weapons to attack real places. The prestige of the places conquered is proportional to their popularity in the real life thanks to the integration with Facebook's "likes" and "check-ins"!

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Iubenda receives seed financing

Iubenda the startup founded and led by Andrea Giannangelo (21 years old) has announced its first seed investment of €100,000. The investment that comes some of the most active investor in the italian web startup scene: Digital Investment SCA SICAR whose advisor is dpixel of Gianluca Dettori, and business angels Andrea di Camillo - who now works in Quantica (ex Vitaminic, Banzai) - and Marco Magnocavallo who has created several companies, the last one being Blogo.it which has been recently acquired by Populis. Among the inverstors debuts also Stefano Bernardi.

What is Iubenda?

Iubenda allows you to generate a Privacy Policy for your website. The aims is to be the Creative Commons of Privacy Policies. The Privacy Policy can be embedded on any website (after a bit customization) and the goal is to reach the footer of every website in the world.

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H-Farm Launches Seed Program Q3/2011

Last June 1, H-Farmventures - the first italian private incubator, halfway between an incubator and VC - launched its 90-day time window for would-be webpreneurs in search for their first round of investments in 2011. Participate is really easy: all what would-be webpreneurs have to do, in order to become the next Andrew Mason, is to send their breakthrough "internet-based" ideas between June and August using the online form.

Indeed H-Farmventures will evaluate only "internet-based" projects with particular interest in proposals in the medical field, environmental sustainability, social games and online payments. The team of H-Farmventures will pick up only 5 projects providing them with the initial financing for the first 3 months devoted to product development and business planning.

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7 Italian Clean-Tech Startups to Watch in 2011

Italy is one of the sunniest countries in Europe when it comes to energy generation from renewable energies, such as photovoltaic. However, due to is strong dependence on energy imports - indeed, 80% of consumed energy in Italy is imported from abroad -, and the initial political uncertainty, raised at the beginning of 2011, on the country's environmental policy  after the fierce debate started by the Italian government on its intention to introduce new atomic power plants as solution to the problem of energy dependence from abroad, it seems that the government has changed position, maybe cooled down by the terrific disaster which hit Japan, by giving a long-waited answer, to a sector which was risking to be kneeled down, with the signature of the so-called IV Conto Energia, i.e. the regulatory framework that sets out the new feed-in tariffs' system for the PV sector, and which does not change the tariffs previously announced. This last event surely represents the first clear sign  of the government in supporting a sector which in my opinion will be a key driver in the economic growth of the country in the few years to come.

However, despite the recently raised political uncertainty and the current economic crisis, the country enjoys the presence far-sighted entrepreneurs who have since long time understood that renewable energies are one of the strategic areas in which one should invest in order to contribute to the economic growth of the country.

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Apps-Builder receives financing from Annapurna Ventures

The do-it-yourself application for iPhone, iPad and Android devices is finally arrived. The idea is the brainchild of two developers (and students of the Polytechnic of Turin) - Daniele Pelleri and Luigi Giglio - supported by the graphic expert Martina Pelleri. The three young guys presented to the Italian public a novelty at European level. AppsBuilder is an amazing and innovative online platform that allows to create, in just three easy steps, customized applications for iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones, tablets and web apps. The service is innovative, simple and immediate allowing to turn any website into a mobile application to people who have little or no computer skills.  

AppsBuilder is a service designed for internet users who want to create a mobile application. An innovative technology that can be used by anyone to transform any website into apps. The platform allows to publish and distribute apps on the main app stores (Apple, Android, and soon also Windows) and to optimize the visualization of the website content in the navigation on mobile devices.

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Italian the Best European Business Angel 2011

The European Business Angels Association (EBAN) which on May 13, 2011 met in Warsaw for its Annual Meeting, awarded Francesco Marini Clarelli - president of Italian Angels for Growth (IAG) - as best European Business Angel of the Year, 2011. 

EBAN is the trade association that brings together at European level, supports and represents business angels, groups of angel investors, seed funds and other actors operating in the world of early-stage investments. Overall, with its presence in 26 countries where it operates, through direct and indirect membership, EBAN involves more than 300 groups, 20,000 business angels and 40,000 entrepreneurs. For the next few years the organization has set itself the ambitious goal of bringing the early-stage investment level from the current estimated value of € 4 billion to € 10 billion.

Is therefore understandable the satisfaction with which Marini Clarelli (53 years, angel investor since for more than 20 years) has welcomed the award:

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Mopapp: from Bologna the winner of Seedcamp Berlin 2011

Mopapp, which stands for Measures Of Performances (for apps) is the app born from an idea of the management team of AnguriaLab LLC, whose founders are Alessandro Rizzoli, Marco Bellinaso and Federico Sita. It is an amazing web-based service oriented to developers for mobile platforms to track, analyze and display the downloads, sales, revenues and profits of their applications by generating easy-to-understand reports. Mopapp is not only an amazing web-service but also the winner, along with Efficient Cloud, of Seedcamp Berlin 2011.  Mopapp automatically integrates with major stores such as iTunes App Store, Android Market, RIM App World, MobilHand and BlackBerry. It can then be used by those who publish applications (both free and fee-based) for iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.  The version launched last August 2010, was still the private Beta version, available only to the first 50 who had requested. Today, Mopapp finally  is availabl public beta.

While the version released last 6 August, 2010, was the "private" beta, available only to the first 50 persons that had requested it, today, Mopapp finally entered the public beta, allowing anyone to register for free and start using the service without any limit. But let's look what it does in more detail,

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Blomming, it's time for shopping: the italian social commerce platform

Blomming is the "social commerce" platform founded by Alberto D'Ottavi and Nicola Jr. Vitto which deserves to be known and used.

YES "social commerce" something that maybe you have been waiting for long time, is now available thanks to this new method of online shopping, the F-Commerce, i.e. purchases done directly on the Facebook social network. The application that allows all this is Blomming: it will create a shopping section within the facebook page of your blog/site which you can manage by inserting items for sale. Users will have the possibility to comment your products with the well-know "I like" and buy the exposed items. All fans of your page will display the items, and if they decide to buy only one item they will be redirected to the Blomming site to confirm the purchase.

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Cisco first venture capital round

Did you know that Cisco was financed by Sequoia after being refused 76 times by VCs and investors? Here you can find the evidence. Source

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