The World Venture Summit

Filed in archive Venture Capital on September 27, 2005

We are here at the WorldVentureSummit in NYC, Madison Square Garden. The name might be a bit far fetched but shows ambition. The team at Young Startups has not blocked the whole Madison Square Garden but there are around 200 attendants with a very international flair.

The event mixes VC experience (usually as speakers) with entrepreneurial ambition (usually as exhibitors). The speaker set up is quite impressive with many major VC firms on the list i.e. Carlyle Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, Doll Capital Management, Samsung Ventures America, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Angel Strategies.

The event itself mixes panel discussions with presentations by entrepreneurs..

The first panel discussion has great panelists but no real topic - venture investing has become global - this fact is taken - there is nothing really to discuss unfortunately.




Some interesting companies in the first session of presenting companies:

RE: Formed Systems Inc.Rather weird name but interesting value proposition - the company is providing hurricane proof and floodable low-cost structures. Too bad the presentation is pretty lackluster.

No idea if this works - but if so its a great story...

Forward Information TechnologiesThe company has a platform that allows seamless connections between different heterogeneous connections (i.e. Wifi, GPRS, CDMA). The company claims that this works with beta users already. Given it really works it sounds like a great opportunity - it would make a handy tool for many business travelers.

Drive HQHere is finally an e-commerce player. Drive HQ focuses on internet backup infrastructure it sells to consumers or businesses. The company was founded in 2003 and has around 11k in yearly revenues now - not too impressive. As I learned from Streamload Internet backups can be a very hard sell (nobody knows what AOL paid for similar XDrive. Streamload probably has the better business model as it provides all these sharing facilities that make a lot of sense for consumers.