Library House, a data gatherer whose online products offer intelligence on VC deals and innovative venture-backed European companies, is itself facing tough times as the credit squeeze begins to affect those very markets.
The Cambridge-based firm, whose web databases offer stats and news on the media-technology and cleantech spaces and track institutional funding, has let go of 12 of its 30 staff so far this year, we have learned and confirmed via a spokesperson, acknowledging the market is tough. Five staff left by mutual consent about five weeks ago to spin out Library House’s research business in to another company for themselves, also based in Cambridge – the rest was a mixture of redundancies and choosing not to refill posts that became vacant. The company denied the situation was any worse than that, saying it’s “business as usual”.
The problem – newly cautious VCs are supposedly sitting on their hands, trying to raise new funds, rather than make the investments that populate Library House’s database. So it’s “revising” its model, trying to diversify in to events, for example, claiming it just had a successful Mediatech event this month. Others operating in a similar space include StrategyEye, which has a bigger focus on news than numbers.
Though Library House is led by CEO Andrea Favale, chairman of its board is former Dragon’s Den investor Doug Richard, who, we learned yesterday, has also let the majority of staff go from his Cambridge-based Trutap mobile social startup as he seeks a bail-out through a possible sale.