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Top Italian Investors Talk About Their Country's Fledgling Startup Scene
Mauro Del Rio founded Buongiorno, sold it to NTT DoCoMo for $300 million cash in 2012, and is still responsible for one of the most successful Italian exits ever. Fausto Boni, a world traveler to say the least, is a partner at 360 Ventures after having founded his own venture firm in 1997. And last, but certainly not least, Massimiliano Magrini, formerly leading Google’s presence in Italy, Spain and Portugal, is now co-founder and managing partner at his own firm, United Ventures.
At TC Italy, we were lucky enough to have all three of these brilliant men on the startup competition advisory panel, so I took the opportunity to ask them some questions about Italy’s blooming startup scene.
They all agree that scale has been reached here in terms of startups looking to solve problems, and that at this rate, Italy’s scene won’t be all that different from other popular European startup hubs. “The ecosystem is getting critical mass in quantity,” said Fausto Boni. “But we still have to work on quality.”
The way these investors see it, Italy isn’t very different from Israel’s tech scene. There is excellent engineering talent and R&D in Italy, like Israel, but companies struggle with marketing and distribution.
That comes back down to education, says Mauro Del Rio. “Unlike in the U.S., Italian students aren’t taught how to speak publicly or present, but we are working toward these things now.”
Luckily for Italian startups, these investors don’t see any reason to change locations. It’s all about having a good team, says Boni, and as long as you can find a good team you can succeed.
Google Gives Android Developers Improved Analytics To Track Users' Acquisition And Engagement Data
Google has long allowed mobile developers to use Google Analytics to track their apps’ performance. Today, it’s making it a bit easier to get insights into an app’s user acquisition and engagement by letting developers link their Google Analytics and Google Play Developer Console accounts.
This, according to Google, means developers and marketers can now – for the first time – get a full view of their Play acquisition funnel in “one easy to understand report.” This report will highlight data like Google Play traffic sources, views on Google Play, installs and information about new users. This referral flow should make it a lot easier for developers and marketers to figure out which blog posts, news articles or marketing campaigns are most effective in driving users to their apps and bring the highest quality traffic.
All of this data is now available in Google Analytics after developers link the two accounts, which should only take a few second.
The Play Developer Console itself, however, is also getting a bit of an update. It’ll now show information about how often users use an app, for how long and what they are doing inside of it (assuming they have Google Analytics set up in their app).
This two-way data flow, Google argues, “gives you instant access to the in-store and in-app metrics of record in whichever Google product you use.” For most developers, the Analytics integration is probably the most interesting of these two new features, however, as it provides the most comprehensive view of how their apps are performing.
Apple Buys Cue For Over $40M, To Compete With Google Now
Personal assistant app Cue has been acquired, we’ve confirmed with a person who should know. The app has sold for between $40 million to $60 million, we’re hearing from two sources, including TechCrunch tips, which posit that Apple has picked up the company for over a $35 million price tag.
While we’re hearing that the price range was more like $50 million to $60 million, Apple Insider earlier published an anonymous tip that Apple picked up the company for at least $35 million. According to our sources, Dropbox had at some point been in the acquisition queue for Cue.
Backed by SV Angel, Sequoia Capital, Lerer Ventures and Index Ventures in addition to some notable angels, Cue was born as Greplin, a social search startup. The company will not be shut down post-acquisition, though it did recently shut down its app.
Greplin turned into Cue last year and relied heavily on user e-mails to create a personal agenda. Cue had previously raised a $10 million round in November of 2012 from Index Ventures, which the startup chose not to announce.
Personal assistants are all the rage, with everything from Apple’s Siri to Google’s Google Now hogging headlines. There is also another tier of independent companies showing similar intent with products like Nuance’s Project Wintermute, Incredible Labs’ Donna and the Sunrise calendar. If the acquirer is Apple, the new product will probably make its debut in iOS 7, with Cue’s email and social network magic used to more accurately represent what you’ve got going on and coming up.
Other recent Apple acquisitions include Swedish mobile data startup AlgoTrim, Matcha.tv and Embark.
Apple has gotten back to our own Ingrid Lunden with a statement, which is apparently “as close to an Apple confirmation as you’re going to get” from the established company:
Hi Ingrid, thank you for your interest in Apple. Here is our statement on this: Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.
Additional reporting by: Ingrid Lunden and Matthew Panzarino.
In Another Strike Against The Competition, Uber Lowers UberX Prices In San Diego, LA, And DC
In an effort to stamp out competition, Uber is getting more aggressive with the pricing of its low-cost transportation service UberX. In a series of blog posts today, Uber announced that it has lowered the cost of UberX in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Washington D.C., mimicking its decision to lower UberX prices in San Francisco.
With the announcements, Uber is proving that it can compete on more than convenience. After raising hundreds of millions of dollars, the company is removing the only barrier to use of its service that remained: cost.
Uber is famous for its legacy black car service, which comes at a premium to cabs and other transportation services, but its recent focus on making UberX more available and more affordable should reduce the friction of adopting new users and getting existing users to use the app more.
The fare reductions began in June, when Uber lowered the price of UberX in its home market by about 25 percent. Now it’s extending lower fares to three other cities where it faces increased competition. In San Diego, Uber says its fares are now about 37 percent lower than hailing a regular cab, while it claims to be about 30 percent cheaper than a taxi in L.A. and 18 percent cheaper in D.C. In each case, Uber is lowering fares about 20 percent to 25 percent.
While Uber is comparing its fare reductions to the cost of cabs in each of those markets, the company likely has another target in mind: Lyft. Since launching in San Francisco a year-and-a-half ago, the ride-sharing company has become a serious contender in the transportation space. Over the last several months, Lyft has began expanding aggressively into new markets, most, if not all of which, Uber already services.
Uber hasn’t taken that expansion lightly. In addition to fare reductions, the mobile ride-hailing company has been running aggressive, targeted UberX launches and promotions in cities that Lyft has recently launched in. See, for example, Indianapolis and St. Paul, where it launched UberX service and offered a free month of rides to users in those markets. Those launches and promotions came just a week after Lyft introduced its service to riders in those cities.
More recently, Uber announced that it would soon launch its lower-cost UberX service after Lyft launched there last week. That expansion of UberX was announced despite a fight with a certain member of the Dallas City Council who proposed a series of regulations that would severely impact its ability to operate its service in the city.
With $258 million in fresh cash from Google Capital, Uber has to continue aggressive growth. Its new UberX pricing strategy could be part of how it intends to accomplish that.
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