STRATA PLAYS KEY ROLE IN THE EUROPEAN TECH TOUR’S INAUGURAL CLOUD & ICT 2.0 SUMMIT
The European Tech Tour Association (ETT) was launched in 1998, with the goals of promoting European entrepreneurship and providing a platform for entrepreneurs and investors to meet. Regional Tech Tours (focused on one or more countries) and Vertical Summits (European-wide, focusing on a particular industry segment) are invitation-only events organised by and for venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and selected corporate. The 2010 ETT Cloud & ICT 2.0 Summit, held in Lausanne and Geneva in November 2010, was the first ETT Summit covering all aspects of Cloud Computing innovation (including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service) and related technologies.
A senior member of the Strata Partners team acted as Vice President of the Selection Committee for the Summit. This involved selecting a group of over 25 venture capitalists and other prominent participants in the European cloud computing industry, and then coordinating a structured selection process which involved the panellists carefully reviewing nearly 100 business plans of cloud computing business to select 25 of the most interesting and rapidly growing companies in the sector.
Besides Strata and Summit President Pierre Liautaud, the members of the Selection Committee included representatives from Accel Partners, August Equity, Balderton Capital Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, Big Bang Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Eden Ventures, ELAIA Partners, EndeavourVision, France Angels, Highland Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Kennet Partners, Morgan Lewis, Nauta Capital, Notion Capital, Partech International, Runa Capital, Sofinnova Partners, Target Partners, TIME Equity Partners and the Canton de Vaud.
The presenting companies consisted of A-server, Aepona, amalto, Amplidata, Brightpearl, Cloudmore, CloudSigma, Cohesive Flexible Technologies, hetras, iiko, Kinamik, Kwaga, maatG, Nubera (GetApp.com), Racktivity, RunMyProcess, Sandbourne Systems (eSellerPro), SolveDirect Service Management, SQR Technologies, ThinPrint, tradeShift, Twinfield, Visor Ltd. (accountsIQ), webdoc and Workbooks.com. Other summit participants included 4Projects, CA Technologies, Colt, Dought Hanson, EMC, Fidelity Growth Partners, HENQ Invest, IBM, IRIS Capital, Microsoft, SAP, SEP, the 451 Group, van den Ende & Deitmers, and VMware.
Strata’s participation in helping organise the Cloud & ICT 2.0 Summit was a reflection of Strata’s long standing initiative to build relationships and provide thought leadership in the European Cloud Computing and SaaS sector. It was also an opportunity to discuss investment trends and venture capital priorities with the majority of venture capital investors focusing on this sector in Europe.