VC Perspectives

Before joining Creandum, I did an MBA at Stockholm School of Economics. The whole experience was really fantastic but many of us still felt a lack of entrepreneurial aspects in the curriculum and therefore we formed an initiative called the Entrepreneurship Forum with the aim to promote entrepreneurship and create a meeting place for everyone (students, entrepreneurs, investors) interested in entrepreneurship. Since then we have organized a number of events and last year we decided to create an annual event with a panel debate and networking opportunities.

Now it is time for our second annual event! We have gathered a really interesting panel who will discuss how to monetize digital content.

The panel includes Henrik Torstensson (SVP Stardoll and General Manager Piczo), Sorosh Tavakoli (CEO Videoplaza) and Ted Valentin (annonskartan, sushikartan etc), and will be moderated by Ville Vesterinen from Arctic Startup.

Hope to see you all on June 10!

What: Panel debate followed by a food and wine networking reception

Where: Stockholm School of Economics IFL - Sveavägen 63, Stockholm

When: June 10 from 18.00 (panel starts at 18.30)

Nota Bene: SEK 50 payable at the door to cover for food and drinks. Full-time students are free.

Please RSVP by June 5 latest by sending an email to courtney@open.se stating name & business/school. Seats are limited to 90 people so it’s first come first served.

Link to invitation on slideshare

Although IBM in many ways looked like a more likely candidate, it now seems like Oracle instead will acquire SUN. Some questions immediately spring to mind:

• Why did SUN reject the IBM offer?
• What’s in it for Oracle?
• What will happen to MySQL?

As for the first question, I don’t think it was valuation. IBM offer is believed to have been around $6.85-7 billion and Oracle’s bid is supposed to be around $7.4 billion (or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt). More important was probably the fear of SUN that the deal wouldn’t go through, because lack of commitment from IBM for example in case the deal would be subject to an antitrust review. More views on this question from Bloomberg.

As for the second question, Oracle is officially mentioning control of Java and Solaris as the main reasons, but I think there are a few more. The acquisition will help Oracle to really take on IBM as it can start offering integrated hardware and software solutions. Through the indirect takeover of MySQL, it also enables them to remove an important competitor while taking an even more powerful stab at IBM in the database market. Henrik Torstensson has posted a link to a good analysis by GigaOM of the acquisition.

As for what perhaps is the question closest to our Nordic hearts, Monty Widenius co-founder of MySQL offers some thoughts on his blog Monty Says. Knowing what problems SUN have had in integrating MySQL (and still SUN is a much more open source friendly and savvy company than Oracle), my feeling is that Oracle have a gigantic task at hand making the MySQL integration successful and I woudn’t be surprised if we will see many more MySQL employees leaving the company sooner rather than later. Maybe an opportunity for other open source companies to pick up some very talented people…