Say what you want about the Chinese media and their ability to toe the party line. They have only gone and uncovered a bona fide scoop with this video evidence of Gordon Brown hitting cabinet colleagues and a perfectly innocent driver’s seat in a car.
This is so slick it could be Channel Five news.
Nice to see that Calibre One is expanding and strengthening their links between London and Silicon Valley.
Calibre One has just announced the strategic acquisition of Leading Edge Partners, a firm specialising in high-tech executive search across the US, EMEA and APAC, headquartered in Silicon Valley, California.
“Building on the heritage of both firms in the technology space, the acquisition is a key stage in the strategic positioning of Calibre One as the World’s leading technology specialist Executive Search firm. Furthering an already significant footprint in the US, the acquisition of Leading Edge increases the existing network, reach and expertise of the firm and also provides a springboard into Asia.
“Leading Edge Partners has long been a firm we have admired for the quality of the work they do, especially within the semiconductor and electronics field as well as the fast-emerging cleantech space. Their track record in building Executive teams for companies such as Tesla, Xilinx and Atheros Communications made them an obvious fit for the firm,” said James Brocket, Managing Partner and co-Founder of Calibre One. “The enhanced network and industry expertise they bring will be a massive benefit to our clients.” Calibre One Press Release.
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Graziano Seghezzi, Partner, Sofinnova Partners
Graziano Seghezzi brings nearly a decade of European venture capital investment experience to Sofinnova Partners, where he has been a partner focused on life sciences investment since joining the firm in 2006.
Graziano has been instrumental in targeting, investing in, and nurturing the growth of a number of Sofinnova Partners’ portfolio companies, including: Creabilis Therapeutics (Italy), a specialty dermatology company developing products in multiple clinical areas such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis; Crescendo Biologics (UK), a seed-stage company targeting the application of highly innovative antibody fragment technologies to the development of new therapeutics; GlycoVaxyn (Switzerland), a biotechnology company dedicated to the development of novel vaccines; and Omthera (USA), specialized in cardiovascular disorders with a best-in-class omega-3 drug. Graziano is a board member of each company.
Prior to joining Sofinnova Partners’ Paris-based team, Graziano was principal at Index Ventures in Geneva, Switzerland, where he invested in biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals companies. Before this, he worked for Sofinnova Partners, identifying new investment opportunities in Italian pharmaceutical and medical device companies out of Milan, Italy. Graziano began his career as a biomedical researcher at New York University’s School of Medicine, where he gained five years of hands-on experience studying the molecular mechanism of angiogenesis in oncology and cardiovascular diseases.
Graziano has a degree in genetics and microbiology from the University of Pavia (Italy) and an MBA from the RSM, Erasmus University (Netherlands).
It appears Kublax may well have found a way to make the technology live on even though this is unlikely to show its shareholders much of a return as they indicate in a note to their customers today. Good luck to them.
“Dear Kublax users and friends, We are very happy to report that we are currently in advanced discussions with a UK based consumer finance website, SimplyFinance, to find a way to keep the Kublax site up and running.
As a result, our service will not shut down today as we had initially feared, and we will be working very closely with SimplyFinance to arrive at a long term solution which will allow us to keep the Kublax site and services available to you indefinitely.
We will give you a further update on Monday.
Tom & Sridhar”
Quite amused to receive this in my LinkedIn email this morning. Seems to break about every rule of successful pitching I have ever heard of. The company is based in Canada and the site is in fact a holding page).
“Was wondering if you want to invest in my company redacted.com You can invest any ammount you can. I only ask this because i have millions of ideas and would like to get started on the updates of my site. I did all i could do with the funds i had. Now i need an angel investor.
“I also have another idea where people get free vacation where people post there house in other parts of the world and either switch another person for their home in another company or let the person stay there for free while they go somewhere else and all they have to do is water and cut the lawn.”
Is this the world’s worst elevator pitch?
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Kublax, the UK’s answer to Mint.com is to go into administration as it reportedly failed to raise further financing. Kublax was one of the most interesting outputs of Seedcamp 2007 and promised to allow you to manage all of your bank accounts and credit cards in one place. Despite a reported $1 million first round and some of the most established early stage internet investors on board, the business could not raise further finance. Sad news that highlights just how hard, and expensive, it is to create a business from scratch in the web space.
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Airbus and Ubisense announced a ten year partnership to deliver precise real-time location systems at multiple Airbus facilities. Simply put, Ubisense helps companies like Airbus keep track of valuable stuff across large facilities and locations. The take up of real-time location systems has taken a while, largely because most of the solutions have been technology, rather than solution led. Ubisense uses its own proprietary technology alongside other best of breed solutions to solve real problems for diverse industries including agriculture (precise real-time cow tracking anyone?), the military, manufacturing and aerospace.
Which search engine offers the ‘best’ results? Google or Bing? Here is one method of comparing. Consider the Google alphabet and the Bing Alphabet – the words that are suggested by the respective search engines when you type a single letter into the search box.
In the US this comparison doesn’t really provide a clear leader – both search engines offer broadly similar suggestions. If you are looking for results from other countries in the world (yes, corporate America, there are some), Google wins hands down. Here’s why.