IntelligenceFocus (Italy) - Nov 2007

unquote
01 November 2007

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Italian venture capital firm Innogest Capital has provided a second round of financing to internet intelligence company IntelligenceFocus injecting approximately €2m capital. This is Innogest’s first round of institutional funding to the company. Future rounds of funding have not been planned. The financing comes after an initial round of funding valued at approximately €1m and provided by various business angels in 2006. Innogest Capital is an important Italian seed and early-stage fund, with more than €80m under management. In 2007 the company provided support totalling €5.5m to Silicon Biosystems, a company specialising in miniaturised cell-biology testing and to IT security business HT in a joint €1.5m deal with Finlombarda. The fund focuses on providing seed capital exclusively to Italian companies mainly located in the northern part of the country. It has offices in Turin, Milan and Padua. Main investment sectors range from information and communications technology, energy, biomedical, advanced mechanics and new materials. Innogest SGR is a founding member of the Italian Venture Capital Hub comprising many of Italy’s venture capital firms. Innogest strategic partners include wealth management institution Ersel Group and Torino Wireless Foundation, which supports ICT technology growth in the Piedmont region.

Company

Turin-based IntelligenceFocus was founded in 2004 by Maurizio Attisani. The company employs 12 people and is projecting a turnover for 2007 of approximately €1m. The company’s legal and R&D divisions are located in Turin with a commercial division based in the US (Boston and San Francisco). According to the investors the company has shown its potential in the North American market and the new round of funding will be used to further develop the range of products offered and to expand the firm’s sales and marketing capabilities in the US and UK markets. Currently the company offers two types of services. One focuses on web intelligence that allows web managers to track who is accessing the website, providing insight on the people visiting it. The second range of services falls under online community monitor and security category and carries out realtime data correlation on who in the community is doing what. This service allows online community administrators to block those users failing to abide by site rules.

People

Claudio Giuliano and Marco Pinciroli are the managing directors and founders of Innogest SGR.

Advisers

Equity - Hammonds Rossotto & Associati, (Legal)

Sourced from: Southern Europe unquote" 71 (Feb 2008)