After Dubai, Paris and beirut (our HQ), we plan to extend our activities in Africa.

Why Africa ? Beyond all “clichés”, Africa is becoming a very dynamic region ITC wise.

As, we made an early move  in Middle East, we also want to be an early bird in Africa.

Our short term goals are 1) appoint a regional operations manager in the coming months 2) make our first investment in Q1/Q2 2009

The location is not decided yet, if you have suggestions or contacts, we thank you in advance for your help.

We will keep you updated on this.

We are proud to announce a USD 250, 000 investment in Wikeez.com.

This investment represents a key milestone in the growth and development of Wikeez.

This step will progress Wikeez alpha version to a full functional offer and add yet more experience and expertise to Wikeez’s board.

more details about Wikeez

After months of hard work, MyId.is is finally in alpha version. It’s a great achievement. To known more about the alpha version and may be become alpha tester, you can go on the MyId’s blog or you can contact me directly: herve(at)kuvcapital.com. 

We arrived yesterday in la Baule (french west coast) to attend the California Tech showcase.

This 2nd edition is already set to be a success. 50 californian startups, instead of 40 initially planned, have made the trip from the silicon valley to meet the european tech groups.

We had meetings today with startups in the mobile business / advertising and we will debrief in a couple of weeks to seize the opportunity to organize the California Tech showcase in the middle east (read here).

I’m confident in making this happens.

We attended on may the 5th the ABAN meeting. this event was the “Fostering Entrepreneurship and Angel Investing” Forum.

It’s was great, It’s refreshing to attend events like this in Dubai where for few hours the investment focus is not on the real estate market or the stock one.

We met a great startup: Yamli and its co-founder Habib Haddad. We loved his energy and we think that his company matches a real need: Search the Arabic web using English letters.

thanks again to Mr Hanna for organizing this event.

During his keynote, Tim O’Reilly emphasis this importance of hackers’ philosophy in our business.

Hackers’philosophy:

they don’t if it’s the next big thing, they just love it

we humbly share this vision

Our business we rarely know where is the business opportunity but what matters its that entrepreneurs love what they do

Too many times, we meet people with a me-too project who just want to make money but that’s not the way it works. Most of the time, you, we find the success by accident so that’s why this hacker’s philosophy is such a big condition for success.
If you are this kind of entrepreneur, we definitively want to meet you.

a quick list of emerging technologies are available on the Dubai TechCenter’s blog 

We will spend 4 days at the Emerging Technology Conference 2008 in San Diego.

I will try to publish every day a quick summary of the conferences. Today : a 3 hours session about Data Vizualisation. It might sound geeky but it is a crucial discipline for those who intent to create new websites.

To better understand, i recommand you to go on the speaker (Tom Carden) company (Stamen) website.
I strongly believe in this and we will invest in this sector. The application range is huge : ecommerce, data analysis, real estate (trulia).

If you have any project in this area, let us know.

to be continued…..

It’s a great news for the startups and VCs sector in the middle east.

The California Tech Showcase will organise an edition of his european event in Dubai and Kuv Capital will be co-organizer of this edition.

We agree yesterday with EuroStart Capital Partners LLC a partenership to co-organize the Dubai edition.

The event will take place end of october or early november. We will disclose later the exact dates, place and partners.

About The California Technology Showcase: the CTS forges profitable links between the best and brightest California technology firms and Europe’s premier technology leaders, venture capitalists and other investment partners.

About  EuroStart Capital Partners LLC: EuroStart Capital Partners LLC is a new venture fund dedicated to helping US technology companies with global ambitions enter the European market. EuroStart organizes the conference to provide additional value to both potential portfolio companies and their European partners.

ABAN is the Arab Business Angel Network, member of Dubai International Capital.The conference (at the DFIC) had two sections, an overview of the Business Angel activity done by EBAN president (Anthony Clarke) then 6 Business presentation done by the entrepreneurs themself.Two were in our sectors : Kindisoft (provide solutions to ensure that your creative ideas aren’t hijacked) and Content Syndicate (provider of customized and exclusive content across media).We will wait next event to see if more high tech startups will be presented.It was a good round of observation, thanks to the organisationTo be continued…

Kuv Capital is  spending a week to meet some VC’c and innovative startups.We just visited Plug & Play techcenter to better understand for make them so successful. For those who don’t know Plug & Play techcenter, they have incubated Paypal, Google had one of their first offices there, etc. It’s an amazing place that we will us to improve our incubator project in Dubai : Dubai tech center. Thanks again to the management team for their advices.
This trip was very intensive and we made really good contacts. It really important for us, and  through us for the companies we invested in, to have strong connections in the valley.
I was really impressed by the atmosphere in Mountain View, starbucks is most likely a entrepreneur meeting rooms, projects are discussed on each table. Even, the taxi driver who took me back to San Francisco told me about his startup!
i’m jetlagged but really inspired