Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009: VC Partners Announced

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Smaato Inc., a leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company announced today the distinguished VC partners for the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009. Smaato is delighted to have Tim Draper (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Frédéric Veyssière (Innovacom Venture Capital) and Niall Davis (aeris CAPITAL) supporting the award for a second year and being introduced to the winning companies. We are also thrilled to a have the following VCs participating this year:

Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital)
Rich Wong (Accel)
Jörg Sievert (SAP Ventures)

Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato stated: "We are pleased to announce a fantastic line-up of VCs for the forthcoming Smaato Award. It’s an honor to have the support of so many distinguished individuals for making this competition come to life. For the award winners it’s a great opportunity to meet top tier VCs from around the world and to have a real shot of getting funding."

About the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award:
The award will honor mobile publishers or developers with an outstanding mobile ad-enabled solution in three categories: iPhone, in-application (any platform) or mobile web. Developers shall provide a description of their website, application or game, a download location, along with high res images and screenshots. In addition they may provide up to three PDF pages of supporting materials. Deadline is October 9^th, 2009. For more information and to participate please visit: www.smaato.com/award.

Besides meeting with the above named venture capital partners, Smaato will invite the winner to participate at the Mobile World Congress, taking place in Barcelona, Spain in February 2010. Additional prizes are also on offer, including a free booth at M-Days in Munich, Germany in January 2010.

VC biographies

Tim Draper (Draper Fisher Jurvetson)

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His original suggestion to use "viral marketing" in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by hundreds of businesses. On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim serves on the boards of Glam, Kyte.tv, Meebo, ShareThis, SocialText, and Wigix. Previous successes include: Skype (EBAY), Overture.com (YHOO), Baidu (BIDU), Parametric Technology (PMTC), Hotmail (MSFT), PLX Technologies (PLXT), Preview Travel (TVLY), Digidesign (AVID), and others.

Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital)

Mark Kvamme is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital focusing on investments in enterprise data management software and consumer media and advertising services. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 1999, Mark was Chairman and CEO of CKS Group, an advertising agency that pioneered new advertising strategies by integrating marketing with technology. Earlier in his career Mark was a Director of International Marketing for Wyse Technology, the President and CEO of International Solutions, and was a founding member of Apple France. Mark has a BA in French Economics and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rich Wong (Accel)

Richard joined Accel in 2006, with a focus on mobile services, enterprise software/SaaS, and energy technologies. Rich currently serves on the board of AdMob, the largest mobile advertising player, Parature, a leader in SaaS based customer support, SunRun, the leading provider of residential solar power, and Getjar Networks, the largest mobile development community and open mobile app store. Prior to Accel, Rich also served as a board advisor to Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Sana Security (acquired by AVG), and Simplicita (acquired by Sandvine).

Frédéric Veyssière (Innovacom)

Based in San Francisco, California, Frédéric Veyssière heads Innovacom's investments in North America. Frédéric serves on the board of Actelis Networks, Mobile Complete, PixSense, Vantrix and is a board observer with Bytemobile and Envivio. Previously he was a board member with Atrica (acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks) and a board observer with Bitfone (acquired by Hewlett Packard).

Prior to joining Innovacom in 2000, Frédéric worked with TeleSoft Partners, a San Mateo–based venture capital fund, as a consultant in charge of business development for Europe.

Jörg Sievert (SAP Ventures)

Jörg Sievert covers Europe and Israel for SAP Ventures and provides a tight linkage to SAP's headquarter in Walldorf, Germany. Prior to joining SAP Ventures, Sievert led Business Consulting for BEA Systems for Central and Eastern Europe and provides significant experience in developing and executing solution selling strategies for SW products and is well connected in several industries.

Niall Davis (aeris CAPITAL AG)

Niall Davis is Partner at aeris CAPITAL AG since 2006. Prior to founding aeris, he was IT Investment Manager at first Ventury and Director at Astarte New Media AG. Niall Davis is one of the Board Members of Smaato.

The jury members are: Bambi Francisco (vator.tv), Bena Roberts (GoMoNews), Caroline Lewko (WIP), Giselle Tsirulnik (Mobile Marketer), James Cameron (Camerjam), Jim Cook (MobiAdNews), Kei Shimada (Infinita), Lubna Dajani (Mobile Monday, NYC), Mark Wächter (Mobile Monday, Germany & BVDW), Matthäus Krzykowski (Editor, Venture Beat), Matthew Snyder (ADObjects), Michelle Sklar (bnetTV), Peggy Anne Salz (MSearchGroove), Ragnar Kruse (Smaato Inc.), Rudy De Waele (dotOpen/mTrends), Tim Green (Mobile Entertainment UK), Tomi Ahonen (Author), Trey Harvin (mobiThinking).

About Smaato Inc.

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the leading mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of multiple leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was an Andrew Seybold Choice Awards finalist at CTIA 2008 for best Newcomer, among other awards.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany.