It isn't immediately obvious from the website what Index Ventures is. Clearly, as the name would indicate, the company is a venture capital firm, but the site was sent to me earlier this evening to check out for future coverage, and for a minute, I thought it was a redirect to Planet of Internet, a game site that has been trying to get us to review them for about a month.
The flash gizmo on the front page actually is just a clever portal to the myriad of successful investments the firm has made in the past. Companies like Skype, MySQL, FON, TrollTech, Last.FM, Zend, SpotRunner and StarDoll.Today, they are announcing the creation of a $585 million (€400 million) index. The new fund will focus primarily on seed and early-stage investments. The fund was formed to address the market opportunity created by the apparent maturity of Europes start-up industry as well as the fact that late-stage investors have moved into larger deal sizes in the tech and science sectors.