Wednesday, April 2, 2008

ex-Benchmark Guys at Balderton Invest in Second Life-Like Metaversum

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This is interesting. Balderton is investing in Metaversum, the Linden Lab wanna be from Germany and publisher of Second Life copy-cat Twinity. Balderton is composed of the former European arm of Benchmark Capital. Benchmark, the VC that hit the biggest VC home run of all time with its EBAY stake in 1997 http://www.answers.com/topic/benchmark-capital?cat=biz-fin also invests in Linden Research (Linden Lab's Second Life). I guess the Balderton guys have to put that Bebo money somewhere! http://www.balderton.com/?q=node/268. From VWN; "Metaversum, the company currently developing mirror world Twinity, has received "a significant multi-million-Euro investment" from Balderton Capital, formerly known as Benchmark Capital Europe. Klaus Hommels from Balderton will take a spot on the Metaversum board, though a commenter on TechCrunch notes that "Hommels is no longer a partner at Balderton? He got out, the exact reasons unknown, but they let him keep his board seats while paying him some management fee." When we spoke to Jeremy Snyder, EVP of Community & Operations for Metaversum, in March, he noted that the company was aiming to have something more than the curent private beta available by this month. With the investment aimed at moving Twinity towards a global launch, it looks like that could be coming soon. "We are very glad to have won the support of an experienced international player in Balderton Capital," Jochen Hummel, CEO of Metaversum, said in a statement. "As we gear up to release our virtual world Twinity, the addition of our new partner puts us in a great position." http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/04/metaversum-take.html#more
The Balderton guys have to put that Bebo money somewhere! http://www.balderton.com/?q=node/268
Links; http://metaversum.com/

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