e-Localize.com

[Philip Johnson <johnson@hawaii.edu>]

Here's an opportunity, to put it mildly.  Contact Keith or me to pursue it. 

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Wednesday, March 08, 2000, 1:29 PM -1000
From: keith mattson <kmattson@hawaii.edu>
To: johnson@hawaii.edu
Subject: e-Localize.com

Philip - 

Here's an idea worthy of front burner attention...

Keith

>From:	"Weinman, Barry" <Weinman@avicapital.com>
>
>We have all been talking about "Hawaii's unfair advantages" when we discuss
>future startups. Here are a few thoughts :
>
>Our fund just got pushed out of a deal----eTranslate. The Series B round was
>at a pre-financing of $75 mil, raising $35 million. The Series A was done by
>NEA and Alloy Ventures---good friends of ours.
>
>eTranslate is an early stage internet company that has a web site that
>facilitates individual translators who want to provide services to global
>corporations. The site provides a marketplace, resumes of the
>professionals/consultants, does the billing and collections, provides a
>community to discuss issues of common interest, and will eventually provide
>services and products to help the translators do their business better. Cool
>stuff!
>
>eTranslate focuses mostly on Europe and South America---( French, Spanish,
>Portuguese, German) , and Japan with a good group of Japanese translators.
>They strictly focus on translation----localization is secondary.
>
>They chose Walden Ventures to lead the round over us because Walden has a
>strong presence in Asia  and they want to look in that direction late this
>year and next year. We wanted to invest $7.5 million but Walden cut us back
>to $3 million which would give us to small a percentage ownership--so we
>declined. During due diligence, we had talked with a few of our corporate
>partners---Boeing, GE, Siemens, Thomson, Dow Jones, Hearst, NBC/CNBC, etc
>all who were quite interested in working with eTranslate.
>
>Anyway----maybe if we look hard enough we could find some local Hawaiian
>entrepreneurs who want to start a company to localize content for the
>Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian populations. If e-Localize was seed
>funded we could make some introductions to our corporate partners and
>portfolio companies ( Women.com, Quokka, Medscape, etc). If things
>progressed we could possibly lead the Series B round and help raise
>significant money---its hard for me to convince my partners to do a seed
>deal in Hawaii. Maybe some Biz School students want to write a plan or help
>some techies work on the biz model .
>
>Action does speak louder than......
>
>o Asiacontent.com Raises $30 Million in Second-Round Funding
>
>HONG KONG -- Asiacontent.com, a developer of Asia-related 
>Internet content, advertising, and e-commerce services, 
>said it received $30 million in second-round funding, 
>led by NBC Internet and private equity firm Newbridge 
>Asia, part of Newbridge Capital. CNET Networks, 
>along with first-round investors AsiaTech Ventures, 
>GE Equity, H&Q Asia Pacific, Intel Pacific, MTV 
>Networks, TDF Management of Singapore, the Hambrecht 
>Family, Trans Cosmos, and W.R. Hambrecht & Co. also 
>participated in the funding. The company intends 
>to use the funds for hiring, e-commerce infrastructure, 
>and to develop partnerships. Earlier this week, 
>Asiacontent.com announced a joint venture with Internet 
>sports media company SportsLine.com to develop Asian 
>sports sites. Asiacontent is developing other Asia-related 
>sites through joint venture deals with NBCi, CNET, 
>and Doubleclick.
>http://www.asiacontent.comBarry Weinman
>General Partner
>
>Media technology Ventures / AVI Capital
>One First St., Suite #2
>Los Altos CA. 94022
>Tel : 650.949.9862         <www.mtventures.com>
>Fax: 650.949.8510         <www.avicapital.com>
>
>Venture Capital is simple but not easy ---invest in great people!
>
>
Keith Mattson
Director, University Connections
Bachman Hall 105
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2444 Dole Street
Honolulu, HI  96822
ph: (808) 956-8068
fax: (808) 956-4347
http://www.hawaii.edu/connections/


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