StudiVZ, the German clone of Facebook, has been sold to the German publishing group Holtzbrinck, apparently for more than 100 Mio. Euro according to the news magazine Spiegel Online. The founders of StudiVZ confirm the sale to Holtzbrinck on their blog.
StudiVZ was funded mainly with money from Holtzbrinck itself through Holtzbrinck Ventures and the European Founders Fund (profile on alarm:clock), which is run by the Samwer brothers, who themselves have a start-up background with Alando (acquired by Ebay) and Jamba! (acquired by VeriSign). A completely list of the StudiVZ backers is available on the StudiVZ blog. According to the blog, StudiVZ was funded with only 2.5 Mio. Euro, of which Holtzbrinck Ventures provided the lion share with 2 Mio. Euro. Spreadshirt.com founder Lukasz Gadowski pitched in 5,000 Euro.
StudiVZ is reported to have some 1 Mio. registered users as of November 2006 (more from from Spiegel Online in English).
http://ifyoucandreamityoucandoit.wordpress.com/2007/01/03/holtzbrinck-kauft-studivz/
Posted by: MPB | January 03, 2007 at 04:27 PM
That's a proud amount. The site is similar to facebook.
Posted by: Doctor Doom | September 02, 2007 at 05:45 PM