Holtzbrinck eLab - new incubator concept?

Filed in archive Venture Capital on July 5, 2006

Alexander Hüsing reports in his German blog about the activities of Holtzbrinck elab GmbH apparently a holding company for many online projects sponsored by Holtzbrinck.

- Pointoo - a Plazes-like site that connects people at their location

- Kiwoo - a rather dull Google AdSense experiment

- GuteFrage - a Lycos IQ copy

- German Blogs - a Creative Weblogging copy in Germany

It appears the publishing house is testing some new concepts and tries to understand their inner dynamics. Not a bad thing - after all the pressure on subscription numbers will also reach Germany one day (things are not as progressed as in the US in terms of a changing media landscape yet).

Holtzbrinck has been an early visionary and made money even after the bubble through Holtzbrinck Networxs. The company also invested in my ex-startup Newtron, which built a successful business around SRM applications but could never satisfy the high b2b marketplace dreams that were around in 2000.