Monthly Archive for September, 2005

Investment in Grisoft, Czech security software company

Published
by
Vlastimil Vesely
  on  September 24, 2005
  in  Case studies
. 0 Comments

Enterprise Investors, the largest and oldest private equity firm in the Central and Eastern Europe with offices in Warszaw, Bucharest and New York, and Intel Capital, Intel’s venture investment fund having in its portfolio also Centrum (the Czech web portal Nr. 2), have acquired 65 % stake in Grisoft, Brno based security software company, for $52 million from current owners Benson Oak Capital.

Founded in 1991, Grisoft is a leading global provider of antivirus solutions with offices also in the US. The product line includes the AVG antivirus programme and firewall supporting all major operating systems and platforms with over 25 million users.

Next to Grisoft there is a bunch of several more successful Czech security software companies with their products collecting the prestigious awards - for example Kerio Technologies (with offices in California and Cambridge and its development team in Pilsen) contracted by US Air Force, Prague based Alwil or Brno based AEC and Trusted Network Solutions.

National financial support for Czech FP6 project applicants

Published
by
Vlastimil Vesely
  on  September 3, 2005
  in  EU funding programmes
. 0 Comments

You can imagine the frustration stemming from the experience you had spent a lot of time and cost with a FP6 project proposal that received very good marks but in the end could not be funded because of a high competition and limited resources. FP6 proposals usually represent about 80 pages and 2-4 months of hard work (STREP example). Two or more rejected proposals in a row may discourage teams from submitting another one and even kill cash flow of small enterprises.

That is why some governments introduced schemes financially motivating the proposers and reimbursing at least a part of the cost spent on project proposals ranked just under the line dividing the list between those funded and those left behind. The Czech Republic has recently joined them.

Continue reading ‘National financial support for Czech FP6 project applicants’