Federated Media raises huge round of funding - $50M
In a period full with launch of new ad networks and deals about such Federated Media has raised a huge amount of money - $50 million in a C round led by Oak Investment Partners and Omidyar Network as a returning investor from their first round. The rumor has it the company has turned down a $100M buy out offer some time ago and apparently they have chosen to go through the investors' road.
fix8 takes more money to fiddle around animated avatars
It was just a few months ago when fix8 took their first round of funding from Vickers Venture Group . The amount taken was then $3M. Vickers Venture Group is a Singapore-based private equity firm . This time the company says it has landed SK Telecom , which is a leading South Korean telecom, taking some $3M more to make it $5M in total funding. Fix8's first part of the funding took place last year in October.
More instructional videos on the horizon
Creating educational and instructional videos , clips and episodes is something hot lately. The space is crowded and has just emerged from the popularization of the online video sector. MindBites is yet another player jumping the bandwagon.
An online career community that connects people through personal relationships and affiliations
Doostang is an interesting concept built upon the belief that over 50% up to 70% of recruiting today is done through the personal network of contacts and a large portion of which is done by email communication. Using your personal network is the most effective way to find the right candidate for a position and to find the perfect job.
Li Ka-shing invests $40M more in Facebook; total funding is now $378M from $338M before
The Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has reveled in a recent conference call that he raised his stake in the social networking site Facebook with some $40M more. That amount comes on top of his previous commitment of $60M , which brings his total investment in the popular site to $100M.
Wisdom of the crowds principle effectively applied to predict markets, events
While doing our daily research on the web 2.0 deals we came across a very interesting start up that deserves to make our web 2.0 innovations list - Predictify. Essentially it is a very interesting and pretty innovative idea of using the wisdom of the crowds and the collective intelligence principles to predict in behalf of advertisers and market researchers.
Modu, an innovative approach to cell phones, is on its way to raise $100M
Modu is an Israel based start up founded just in 2007 and has already raised $20M in its Series A round of funding . In that first round the backers are Gemini Israel Funds and Genesis Partners. Today there are rumors spreading around web that Modu is about to take a second round in the $100M range at $150M pre-money valuation, which means the company is ready to give up to 40% from its equity.
SocialMedia totals $4M in funding and is one of the top ad platforms for Facebook
SocialMedia offers a suite of tools and services for developers building applications that run on social networking platforms including Facebook and MySpace .
Gaming is hot in China; 9You raised $100M, talks IPO
9You , a Chinese online games operator, has received $100 million in equity investment from Temasek Holdings , among other investors . Well, any time someone talks $100M funding rounds the IPO plans are not that far away in the future.
SpinVox raises $100M at a whopping $500M valuation
SpinVox , a London based voice-to-text technology is raising $100M round of funding from a bunch of high-profile investors among which are Goldman Sachs , GLG Partners , Blue Mountain Capital Management and Toscafund Asset Management . The service can basically be described as a solution that transcribes voicemails to text so that they can be more easily digitized, searched, and manipulated.
If your business is impacted by the weather WeatherBill might be a good solution for you
The San Francisco based WeatherBill started their service, which lets you cover your business from potential losses that might occur due to bad weather conditions , in early 2007 with a bunch of famous private and institutional investors
Jivox, yet another video ad network, has raised $2.7M
The funding was led by Opus Capital and also includes investments from individual investors including Jivox founder Diaz Nesamoney . The funds will be used to continue development of the Jivox online video advertising platform , as well as to expand the company's sales and marketing efforts. No other names of private investors are publicly disclosed.
Video advertising networks are hot, Brightroll gets its second round, claims it already served over 1 Billion video ads
After having covered the video ad networks BlackArrow and YuMe Networks today we have discovered that yet another one called Brightroll has also recently closed its Series B funding taking $5M more.
Mint keeps on taking money, closes its third round of funding
Today we have read over Internet that Mint is about to announce its third round of funding today - $12.1 million from new investor Benchmark Capital and all previous investors, including Shasta Ventures , Sherpalo Ventures , Felicis Ventures , Hite Capital and First Round Capital . The company has now raised a total of $17 million, most of it since October of 2007. Benchmark's Bob Kagle is joining the Mint board.
Google invests more in DNA projects
After having spent almost $4M on 23andMe , which plans to make the human genome searchable and whose founder is the wife of Google's Sergey Brin, last year and is in heavy preparation for the launch of the Google Health, Google has now financially backed a project from a Harvard University scientist to unlock the secrets of common diseases by decoding the DNA of 100,000 people.
Yelp: $200M valuation, $31M total funding, 8M uniuqes, SEO – all for local reviews
The 4 years old Yelp , which is a local review site , has already reached a hefty popularity on Web. Today we have read online the site claims to have more than 8M unique visitors per month, which can already be called a hugely popular site and all that achieved within 4 years only. Pretty impressive one may say. But the company seems to have raised tons of money in 4 rounds totaling $31M to date.
Glam Media raises a massive round of funding - $85M
A controversial site Glam that runs both a network of its own web sites as well as runs ads on a network of third party sites geared towards women online has raised a massive amount of funding - $85M.
Page creator Jimdo landed the Samwer Brothers as investors
Just two months before they invested in Facebook with plans to take the company to Europe, the brothers have poured money into Jimdo through their European Founders Fund.
Mint.com - the financial-planning startup with an army of high-profile investors
Total funding in no time reached $5.5M for Mint Software. Institutional investors include Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital and the company's angel investors are Josh Kopelman, Rob Hayes, Tod Francis, Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Geoff Ralston, Jeff Clavier, Sy Fahimi and the last but not least Ram Shriram.
Peanut Labs closes its Series A round of funding
Yesterday we were tipped off that both LeapFrog Ventures and BV Capital have invested in San Francisco start-up called Peanut Labs. The funding is in the $3.2M range and is the company's Series A round.
Sharing digital media start up has raised $2.5M
A couple of months ago a tiny start up called Treemo has taken its first round of funding in the $2.5M range. The funding was led by JK&B Capital.
fix8 has taken $3M for animated avatars for your cam
A couple of months ago the tiny start up company fix8 has raised $3 million in a series A round of funding from Vickers Venture Group, which is a Singapore-based private equity firm.
Qunar, a Chinese travel search engine, raised $10 million
Qunar.com is an online travel search engine that we've just found out it has raised $10M in its 2nd round a couple of months ago.
InfoSpace has sold its mobile unit for $135M to Motricity, the second prepares to go public
A couple of months ago Motricity , a mobile content solutions service, has acquired the mobile services business unit of InfoSpace for what is said to be $135M in an all cash transaction. From what we have found out it seems the acquisition is being funded largely by Carl Icahn and Advanced Equities since the company has then announced the completion of its $185M a round of funding, which was led by Advanced Equities, Inc., Carl Icahn and New Enterprise Associates, Inc.
YuMe, a broadband video advertising network, has taken $16M so far to tackle the video advertising
WThe well-funded YuMe Networks is aiming to match video publishers with video advertising using a bit of contextual analysis. The company said video content is targeted based on tags and metadata, something that generally works much better for established content creators who label their work well. YuMe uses such information to slot videos into ad-friendly content buckets such as auto, finance, and entertainment.
BlackArrow took $12 Million to tackle the video advertising, relies on cable companies
A couple of months ago BlackArrow has taken a big round of money - $12 million in Series B funding. The company offers an advertising management platform for video , allowing web sites to monitor their inventory while enabling advertisers to insert ads on-the-fly. BlackArrow's money for its Series B funding came from Comcast Interactive Capital , Cisco Systems , Intel Capital , Mayfield Fund , and Polaris Venture Partners.
Sequoia Capital invested in TokBox, hoping for Web's next big communication tool
Sequoia Capital has recently provided $4 million in Series A round of funding to Tokbox - a new startup providing real-time video chat via a browser. Sequoia joins an already impressive collection of angel investors including founding members of YouTube, Bebo, and Netscape along with execs from Slide, PayPal and Cisco.
An online collaboration tool built around Microsoft Excel took $2M, plans for $2M more
eXpresso, an online collaboration tool around Excel spreadsheets, has raised $2M round of financing from Novus and Rocket Ventures.
The Founders Fund creates Founders Fund II
Founders Fund, a non-traditional investment group, has raised an institutional fund in the amount of $220 million. The new fund, Founders Fund II , will allow this team of four managing partners, who themselves are founders and entrepreneurs, to leverage their individual expertise and deliver their unique business model, which puts the entrepreneurs first. Founders Fund has developed a comprehensive package designed to create near perfect alignment of interests between founders and their investors
After Internet Brands, LogMeIn, now Al Gore's Current TV files for an IPO and plans to go public
It seems it is time for small-sized Internet and technology IPOs. After Internet Brands, Inc. went public on NASDAQ , LogMeIn, Inc. filed to do so now Al Gore's Current is looking forward to do the same. Unlike Internet Brands Inc and LogMeIn, Inc, Current TV is purely from the web 2.0 age, so it would be of particular interest for all companies from the web 2.0 sector to see how the company goes public and what is going to happen after their IPO.
Mobivox takes $11M series A round from IDG Ventures
A couple of months ago IDG Ventures Boston led an $11 million series A round of funding for a Canadian company called Mobivox , which lets registered members make cheap or free phone calls around the world. The Montreal-based company is essentially letting members call to a number of countrieres free of charge and to other countries at around 2 cents.
Yet another seed round, this time for MyLifeBrand
MyLifeBrand, the social network that offers private label solutions for online community-building, has received $750,000 in seed money. However, the angel investors were not disclosed.
Inform receives $15 Million investment from Spark Capital
Inform Technologies, a technology solution for established media brands, has received a $15 million investment from Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture fund focused on the intersection of the media, entertainment and technology industries.
Secretive video site has raised $800,000 seed round
A couple of months ago a secretive video site has raised $800,000 seed round from Concept Ventures and its founder and managing director, Julien Nguyen, according to multiple sources on Web. The company was rumored they were in quest for its series A round of funding some time across Silicon Valley.
More deals in the enterprise search sector
A couple of weeks after Microsoft announced its $1.2 billion acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer , enterprise search competitor Endeca is getting a $15 million cash infusion from both Intel Capital and SAP Ventures. This is on top of the $50 million Endeca has already raised in the past few years from Lehman Brothers , Granite Global Ventures , Ampersand Ventures , Bessemer Venture Partners , Venrock Associates and DN Capital.
After Samwer brothers Nokia is also going to invest in Facebook
It has been deal time for Facebook over the past months, or year? After Microsoft, the Honk Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and the Samwer brothers Nokia is now rumored to be in talk to invest in Facebook. Let's however first take a look at what the Samwer brothers have gotten last week for their money.
Massive second round of funding for Freebase - $42 Million
Freebase, the open and shared database of the world's knowledge, has raised a whopping amount of money in its Series B round of funding , $42 Million, in a round that included Benchmark Capital and Goldman Sachs. Total funding to date is $57 million.
LogMeIn files for an IPO hoping to raise $86M
It seems it is time for small-sized Internet and technology IPOs. After Internet Brands, Inc. went public on NASDAQ it is now turn of yet another second-tier technology company LogMeIn, Inc. to do the same looking for pretty much the same amount to raise. It has filed to trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol LOGM.
Internet Brands, Inc. went public on NASDAQ
Internet Brands, Inc., the smaller brother of IAC in terms of Internet strategy, and an Internet holding company with a number of second tier e-brands went public in the last weeks of 2007. They filed for their IPO back in July 2007 and were then planning to raise $100M/$115M million.
Technorati's total funding revealed - $21.6 to date in 3 rounds
Technorati, the blog search engine, has always been quite secretive about the funding it got over the years leaving people like us, always interested in the money behind the Web 2.0, speculate about the right numbers. Things changed the last month when we have read over multiple trusted sources on Web that the company has raised $21M so far in three rounds of financing. Those numbers are believed to be the right ones. Our attempt to dig some more information about what are the different numbers for the 3 rounds yielded some results. Who the Technorati's investors are, anyway?
Virtual television network start-up has raised $8 million in second round
The virtual television network start-up RayV Ltd. has raised $8 million in its second financing round as the money is coming from Accel Partners. RayV describes its business as follows: “Why is everybody so hell-bent on replacing TV? We here at RayV, like TV. The only thing is, we want more of it.
Online storage sector is hot, yet another player is entering the game
Just it was a couple of days ago when we reported and analyzed the two major acquisitions within the online storage sector IBM announced it has acquired XIV, an Israeli company for what is believed to be $350M and some months ago EMC Corporation has snatched up Mozy for $76M. Today we have dug up yet another deal from the same industry.
Behavioral recommendation service for shoppers raises $10 Million, market heats up
A couple of months ago MyBuys raised $10 Million in Series B funding aimed to help online merchants sell more by utilizing behavioral targeting techniques. The company provides software to ecommerce stores that allows them to serve up ads and products based on your behavior – for example, tracking what you search for and showing related items during a future visit. Lightspeed participated in this latest round, which was led by Palomar Ventures.
Small round for Mesmo.tv
The social video bookmarking and recommending service Mesmo.TV and provider of a very popular Facebook application, has secured over half of a $900,000 round of Series A financing.
Hakia takes $5M more, totals $16M
In a new round of funding Hakia , the natural language processing search engine has raised additional $5M. The money came from a previous investor, some of which are Noble Grossart Investments, Alexandra Investment Management, Prokom Investments, KVK, and several angel investors. Sequoia Funding for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Firm Kenshoo
Kenshoo, a search engine marketing firm, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Sequoia Capital. The end-to-end search marketing solution aimed at advertisers and ad agencies operates on an automated technology for advertising campaigns, and a core feature of the company’s suite of offerings relies on the longtail keyword expansion.
MyPunchBowl gets angel funding, relies on algorithm to recommend best dates
MyPunchBowl, the event planning site that has joined the new crowd of Evite rivals, has recently been angel funded. According to some sources like VentureBeat and Mashable, the exact amount of funding has not been disclosed, but it's less than $1 million, and is enough to keep the team in development for another year, at least.
Sportingo has raised $3.2 in funding, moves to London
Sportingo, a sports fan portal and blogging community, has raised $3.2 million in funding from London-based Ingenious Media. Launched early this year in Israel, Sportingo is a site where users can write their own match reviews and commentary, and discuss others' content.
BillMeLater - $1 Billion in funding so far
By putting different pieces together we have just realized that all the funding for the so called credit card alternative BillMeLater totals $1 Billion. Pretty impressive at first sight but on second reading we guess it is in norms for a financial company with such ambitious goals and operations.
Force.com takes $25 million from Bay Partners & Bessemer Venture Partners
Bay Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners have teamed up with Salesforce to invest $25 million in businesses building on the recently announced Force.com application platform over the next three years. Investments will be around $500,000 each where some convertible notes are also included. Investments may go as high as $2 million depending on the company's stage and needs.
Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing Invests $60m in Facebook. Funding totals $338.20M to date
Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing Invests $60m in Facebook. Facebook now has $338.20M in cash to play with. Plans are the company to go public in 2008 or 2009 according to some rumors within the sector.
Classmates prepares for an IPO
Classmates Media has just filed to go public at a valuation of $600 to $700 million. Compared to Facebook's $15 Billion valuation, which the company took as a private entity, it ranks the company more in the bottom level of the Internet sector rather than within the top 100. It appears that Classmates is trying to cash in on the social netowrking market craze.
ReachLocal Stands at Good Chances When it Comes to Location Based Advertising
As we wrote yesterday a couple of months ago a company called ReachLocal raised a massive amount of money - $55 million at a pre-money valuation in the $300 million range. ReachLocal provides online advertising services for small businesses. The company’s investors include Rho Ventures, with Galleon Crossover Fund also participating, and VantagePoint Venture Partners as return investors.
$12 million more for online local advertising. No it's not ReachLocal it is now Yodle
Yodle has raised a whopping amount of money in its second round - $12 million for its web-based local advertising business. The company manages online advertising campaigns for small businesses on all of the big search engines and drives traffic to pages designed specifically to attract new leads. Yodle also employs customer management tools for tracking both incoming calls and emails that your small business is generating from its web presence.
China-based video-sharing Youku takes $25 million, totals $40M
In its the third round of funding for the company Youku raised $25 million which is pretty large amount for a China based web site. We remember large scale funding happened before for a couple of other China Internet companies one of which is Maxthon, the China based browser organized as donateware (part of Charles River Venture's portfolio).
Bay And Bessemer Add $25 Million In Monetary Muscle Behind Force.com Bay Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners have teamed up with Salesforce to invest $25 million in businesses building on the recently announced Force.com application platform over the next three years. Investments will be around $500,000 each (some convertible notes). However, others may go as high as $2 million depending on the company's stage and needs. The investments are a boon to the evolving Force platform and sure to lessen the appeal for a host of other database-driven application platforms.
Wikinvest Gets $2.5M in Series A Round
Wikinvest, the wiki community for stock junkies, is officially launching today, with $2.5 million in a Series A round of funding, led by DCM venture capital firm. You'll remember that wikinvest operates around individual contributions to information regarding the stock market, all within the transparent community consisting of wikis. Establish yourself as an authority by providing useful information to other users. Searching for information is also a primary objective for Wikinvest, and you'll find several filtering options for narrowing down your queries, according to things like analysts' user names and companies.
DECA, bringing Hollywood online, raises $5M
With the profusion of video sharing services on the internet, a number of startups are helping produce professional online content. Every Silicon Valley venture capital firm, it seems, wants to back one. DECA , a Santa Monica, Calif., studio that calls itself 'the best of Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and Silicon Valley,' is the latest to bring professional production values to computer screens and mobile phones.
Asklaila Adds $10 Million Funding
The India portal asklaila, was successful in its Series B fundraising. The new round of capital was secured from Lightspeed Venture Partners, SVB India Capital Partners and existing investor Matrix Partners India. The company plans to use the capital to expand its service across the country.
Deca.TV: VCs Invest New Media Production House
Mayfiled, General Catalyst Partners, and Atomico Investments have put $5 million into Deca.tv, a newly launched production house for mainstream digital entertainment. Deca was started by Michael Wayne and Chris Kimbell, both from Sony Pictures.
Project Playlist Raises $3 Million for Social Music Sharing
Project Playlist, a service that lets users share music playlists on blogs and social network profiles, has raised $3 million in its first round of funding, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. No investor information was disclosed. Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Project Playlist's technology allows users to add their music playlists to blogs and profiles on social networks including MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Gaia Online.
Demand Media Takes $100 Million Series C
Domain holding company Demand Media has taken $100 million Series C funding in a round led by Goldman Sachs that included 3i Group, Generation Partners, Oak Investment Partners and Spectrum Equity Investors. The new round takes Demand Media's total funding to the rather extraordinary figure of $320 million and values Demand Media at $1 billion.
Huffington Post Raises Another $5 Million
The cool thing to do if you have a famous blog, it seems, is raising funding - and more funding. The Huffington Post, world's 5th most popular blog according to Technorati, has raised another $5 million in its second round of funding. The investors are the same as in the first round: Softbank Capital, Greycroft Partners, CEO and co-founder Ken Lerer as well as Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. This rounds it up at $10 million of funding total - not bad for, you know, a blog.
Acebucks Gets $1.5 Million For Virtual Facebook Currency
Acebucks, the maker of a virtual currency for Facebook has raised a $1.5 million round of investment. AceBucks was originally purchased by Michael Lazerow to form Buddy Media, whose investors include Howard Lindzon, Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus and James Altucher. Acebucks is a virtual economy that pays users Acebucks for installing applications and referring their friends (kind of like a virtual pyramid scheme). Users can then spend the currency on either virtual goods in the Acebucks mall or put them toward real items like an iPod Nano.
Ad Network Turn Raises $8 Million
Turn, an online ad network that automates the process of selecting the best ad placements, has raised $8 million in financing. The company is notable for being founded by Jim Barnett, the former CEO of Altavista, which was one of the more popular search engines of the 1990s. Turn hopes to differentiate itself from the dozens of competing online ad networks through an automated process that saves time for both advertisers and publishers by using algorithms to select the best ad placements.
DocuSign Raises $12.4 Million
DocuSign, an eSignature service, has raised a $12.4 million series C led by new investor WestRiver Capital, LLC and their existing investors Ignition Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Sigma Partners. It follows a Series B investment of $10 million in April 2006 from Frazier, Ignition, and Sigma. DocuSign, which has been around since 2003, enables companies to get legally binding signatures quickly over the internet instead of over the fax or mail. The whole digital signature business was really opened up during the turn of the century with that passing of the UETA and ESIGN acts, which clarified the legal grounds for electronic signatures nationwide.
Visible Technologies Takes A $12 Million Series B
Visible Technologies is a company that helps corporations manage their online reputations by becoming more aware of and responsive to these conversations. Visible Technologies was started in 2003 and took a Series A investment of undisclosed size from U.K.-based advertising giant WPP in July 2006. WPP announced it acquired 25% of the issued share capital of Visible Technologies LLC for $3.5 million with the option to buy 26% in August of that year. Today they're announcing a $12 million series B led by Ignition Partners with WPP also participating.
MatchMine Raises $10m for Media Recommendation Engine
MatchMine, a Massachusetts company building a cross-platform media recommendation engine, announced this morning that they have received a $10 million investment from The Kraft Group. The company released an early product called MyMovieMatch in July, but in the bizarre DEMO dance of 'now you see us now you don't,' the product has gone back under wraps before it launches next week. Hopefully there will be more disclosed than there has been so far. You can sign up for a beta account now on the company's site. See RIA expert Ryan Stewart's review of the original product for background from this summer.
Snapvine Raises $10 Million
Online voice messaging service Snapvine has raised a $10 million round led by Bridgescale Partners, a new Silicon Valley firm. This is on top of a $2 million round they raised back in last year from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, First Round Capital, and Russell Siegelman.
IT Marketplace OnForce Closes $6.75 Million
OnForce has closed a $6.75 million series A1 financing round led by Accel Partners. OnForce is a 'marketplace for on site IT services'. Companies use the site to post contract gigs for registered IT professionals in your area. Postings can be made to the site for $11 with 10% of the parts and labor taken after completion of the job and final payment transferred. OnForce plans on putting the financing toward expanding their operations into new markets outside of their current U.S. operations.
PlaySpan Lands $6.5 Million For In-Game Commerce Network
PlaySpan 's plan is to sell virtual goods from within virtual worlds, and while not yet launched, has received $6.5 million in its first round of funding between Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC and Novel TMT Ventures. According to the website they've signed up seven MMOG publishers, and will attempt to be the only "official" commerce providers for them.
MeeVee Takes $3.5 Million Series D
TV listings discovery service MeeVee has taken $3.5 Million Series D in a round that included original backers Bay Area Equity Fund, Defta Partners, FCPR Israel Discovery Fund, Labrador Ventures, Rothschild Ventures and WaldenVC. The investment takes MeeVee's total funding to $18 million.
Zillow Raises $30 Million More, Up To $87 Million in Venture Capital
Seattle-based real estate site Zillow has raised another big round of capital. Tonight they're announcing a $30 million financing, bringing their total capital raised to a whopping $87 million. The round was led by asset management firm Legg Mason Capital Management, with participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and PAR Capital. Their last round, $25 million, was announced in July 2006.
Streetfire's Video Network Gets $6.1M
Car enthusiast site Streetfire has raised $6.1 million in a Series A round of funding. The network, which operates around the premise of video-sharing, managed to survive the dot-com bust by opening up for user-submitted content. The funding will pretty much go towards building out the site, and bringing in more premium content from top creators and publishers. The hope to steal market share from YouTube is a lofty goal that most video-sharing networks, like ustream, have in common.
Caring.com Gets $6 Million To Help With Your Parents' Elder Years
Caring.com, a website community about elderly care, just announced a $6 million Series A round of financing from DCM and Split Rock Partners. It's yet another one of the subject-specific knowledge communities to pop up over the last year. The site, as you can guess, is about caring for your parents in their 'Golden Years'. It provides articles about dealing with your parent's healthcare, financial, legal, housing, and life issues written by professionals or other users. It seems like a more smartly age-related service than Eons social network for the over 50.
RingCentral Raises $12 Million From Khosla And Sequoia
RingCentral provides phone system integration and utilities to a traditionally under-served category, small to medium sized businesses. Similar to GrandCentral, RingCentral (founded in 1998) uses a virtual number to offer more services to their users existing mobile, fax, and landlines. RingCentral numbers can feature an auto-attendant, multiple extensions, call forwarding, voicemail, click-to-call, screening, logs, and Outlook integration.On Monday, the company will announce they raised a $12 million series A financing from two highly respected firms, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia. RingCentral is also adding a new CFO, Dinesh Lathi, who was an ex-VP of eBay. They have currently provisioned over 100,000 numbers and serve over 40,000 paying customers with plans ranging from $9.99 per month to $24.99 per month.
SEOmoz Announces VC Funding, Staff Shuffle & Future Goals
First up (yes, there's lots of big news) is that we've decided to go the outside investment route. We're giving up an undisclosed (but small) percentage of the company (sorry, had to keep that one piece under wraps) for precisely $1.25million in outside capital.
Facebook, Accel and Founders Fund Launch fbFund; To Give Grants To Facebook App Startups
During his keynote conversation with Michael Arrington this afternoon at the TechCrunch40 conference, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be launching a new entity called fbFund with Accel and Founders Fund. The size of the fund will be $10 million (coming from Accel and Founders Fund) with anywhere between $25 to $250 thousand in grants available for each selected startup dedicated to developing Facebook applications. Founders Fund and Accel will get the right of first refusal for the first round of financing of any company in the fund.
Docstoc Comes Through On That Financing
They raised a first round of financing from Scott Walchek (investor in Baidu), Brett Brewer (co-founder of MySpace parent Intermix Media) and Robin Richards, the former president of MP3.com. They won't disclose the size of the financing to me, but they certainly closed on the investors they said they would. Like Scribd, Docstoc is a sort of YouTube for documents - users can upload just about any document type (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, and PDF) and display via a Flash interface on any website. But there are key differences, too.
vSocial Completes Series B Funding Round With Investments from Biltmore Ventures, Consor Capital
vSocial, a leading provider of hosted social networking for video services, announced today that it has closed its second round of corporate funding, led by investments from Phoenix-based Biltmore Ventures and previous vSocial investor Consor Capital. vSocial's new financial support will be used to expand development and grow its sales and marketing capabilities, enabling it to more aggressively attack the burgeoning online video field.
Satisfaction, the Web 2.0 customer service site, raises $1.3M
Satisfaction, a San Francisco company that aims to improve online customer service by letting the customers effectively take over the process, has raised $1.3 million seed funding. Satisfaction creates customer support pages for companies and their products. But it goes beyond the standard customer support pages. It gives companies a way to provide answers -- but also lets customers answer the questions.
Socializr Raises $1.5M Series B Round of Funding
Socializr, the event-sharing network, has raised $1.5 in a second round of funding. The round was led by Rembrant Venture Partners. The funding from this particular venture capital firm is apparently rather important for Socializr creator, Jonathan Abrams, as it should be. Rembrandt partner Richard Ling knew Abrams before Socializr was launched, and is involved enough in the San Francisco night club scene to better understand the objectives for Socializr.
More Money For Product Reviews; PowerReviews Lands $15 Million
On the heels of Bazaarvoice raising an $8.8 million series B, competitor PowerReviews has just raised $15 million, adding to the $6.25 million they raised in late 2005. The round was led by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners along with current investors Menlo Ventures and Draper Richards. Since its launch in April 2007, the number of reviews and products offered on Buzzilions.com has tripled. Today, the site offers more than 400,000 reviews on 125,000 products from over 1,000 ecommerce sites.
Greylock Partners Invests In Stealth Search Engine Cuill
We got (at least) one thing wrong when we wrote about super-stealth search startup Cuill last week. We said we believed the company self funded after searching for venture capital. But we now have it from two solid sources that they actually raised a $4 million Series A round from Greylock Partners, with partner David Strohm taking a board seat.
Time Warner Invests In Video Ads Startup ScanScout
ScanScout, a Boston startup often described as providing 'AdSense for video', will announce this morning that it has received a strategic investment from Time Warner. The size of Time Warner's investment has not been disclosed. However, CEO Doug McFarland claims that many of the benefits for ScanScout will come from the connections and opportunities created by its partnership with Time Warner, aside from the financial gains.
Bazaarvoice Closes $8.8 Million Series B
Bazaarvoice has closed $8.8 million in Series B funding in a round led by Battery Ventures with Austin Ventures and First Round Capital also participating. Battery Ventures General Partner Neeraj Agrawal has joined Bazaarvoice's Board of Directors as part of the deal.
$15 Million For VideoEgg As They Redefine Their Business
VideoEgg has just closed a $15 million series D round of funding led by Focus Ventures with WPP, Maveron, and August participating. VideoEgg cites plans to accelerate the development of their ad products and international sales network as the reasons behind the investment.
Dopplr Picks Up Strategic Funding From Users
The travel based social network Dopplr has received a first round of funding. In what CEO Lisa Sounio describes as a strategic investment, Dopplr users and entrepreneurs Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and Saul Klein's The Accelerator Group have financed this early-stage funding. It's an impressive role call of investors, many of whom have been involved with a number of Web 2.0 success stories (including Last.FM, Flickr, Six Apart and FON).
LinkedIn Competitor Viadeo Raises €5 Million
Viadeo, a European social network for business contacts which is quite similar in idea and execution to LinkedIn, has raised a further €5 million in funding from its existing investors, AGF Private Equity and Ventech. The extra cash will be used to fuel the growth of Viadeo in Asia; so far, the network has been doing very well in Europe, with over 1.3 million members.
DailyMotion Raises $34 Million; Another Copyright Infringing Success Story
French social video site DailyMotion has raised a $34 million round from Advent Venture Partners LLP and AGF Private Equity, a division of Allianz AG. The new round comes on top of $9.5 million in previous financing from Atlas Ventures and Partech International. The round puts DailyMotion's total financing beyond that of their competitors, even MetaCafe's $45 million total financing. Dailymotion's executive chairman, Mark Zaleski, said the new funds will 'allow us to reach operating profitability'.
SayNow Lands $7.5 Million Series A
SayNow, a service that enables 'celebrities to connect to their audience over the phone' will announce $7.5 million Series A funding September 12, in a round led by Shasta Partners. Tugboat Ventures' Dave Whorton, a SayNow advisor since early 2006, also participated in the round as did Costella Kirsch. Rob Coneybeer, MD of Shasta Ventures will join the SayNow board of directors ...
Zivity's Model Contest Site Raises $1M in Funding
Zivity, the social network aiming to be a user-generated Playboy Magazine online, has received $1 million in funding in a Series A round of funding, from private investors. We mentioned Zivity yesterday–you can read about it here...
SeatSmart's Ticket Search Funded in Angel Round
SeatSmart, the search engine dedicated to finding tickets for concerts, games and events, has raised a round of angel funding for an undisclosed amount. The company is a ticket search aggregator of sorts, perusing Stubhub, Razorgator, eBay, and other major ticket-selling sites to bring you a variety of search results.
Jaxtr Closes $10 Million Series A; Announces 1 Million Users
Jaxtr has raised a $10 million Series A round led by August Capital with Mayfield Fund, Draper Richards, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Luxemburg-based Mangrove Capital participating. They've also doubled their registered user base over last month, totalling 1 million users. They plan on getting to a break even point on the investment and to total 20 million users by the end of next year.
SpiceWorks Raises $8 Million; Google Adsense Even Supports IT Software
IT software maker SpiceWorks just closed an $8 million in series B financing. The funding round was led by Shasta Ventures with participation from Spiceworks series A investor, Austin Ventures. Their series A was $5 million. Shasta Ventures co-founder and managing director, Ravi Mohan, and former Dell senior executive, John Hamlin, have joined the Spiceworks board of directors. The money will be used to support over 120,000 users as well as software development and sales and marketing.
Wis.dm Raises $5M for Bookmarking and Media-Sharing Site
Wis.dm, the social bookmarking and media-sharing site that's relaunched with a Q&A slant, has received $5 million in funding. The funding was provided by North Bridge Venture Partners, with its Michael Skok joining the board.
MocoSpace Raises $3M for Mobile Network
MocoSpace, a mobile social network, has received $3 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, and Pilot Group and Michael Daring, a former eBay executive, participated as well. The funding will be used to expand the company's sales and marketing.
FM Raises Another $4.5M; Are They Having Difficulty Filling Inventory?
Reports from PEHub and Mashable indicate a new $4.5 million Series B round of funding for Federated Media. Congrats! Federated Media provides advertising for some of the world's largest blogs including: TechCrunch (TC is in "open warfare" and looking for a replacement), Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm, Mashable, ArsTechnica, TechDirt and about 100 other blogs.
LendingClub To Close $10.26 Million Series A
Peer to peer lending service Lending Club will close a $10.26 million series A round of financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners tomorrow. This comes a few months after the company's $2 million angel round. Coinciding with the investment, Jeff Crowe and Dan Ciporin (former ceo of shopping.com) are joining Lending Club's board of directors.
Conduit Labs Closes $5.5 Million Series A Funding
Conduit Labs, a yet-to-launch gaming virtual world, just closed a $5.5 million series A round with Charles River Ventures and Prism Venture Works. In addition to the financing, CRV's Susan Wu and Prism's Will Kohler have joined the company's Board of Directors.
SINOHUB Receives New RMB 23.5 Million Letter of Credit Line from Commercial Industrial Bank
SinoHub Technology Company, Ltd. today announced that it has successfully closed a RMB 23.5 Million Letter of Credit facility with the Commercial Industrial Bank . The company will use the funds to expand its electronic component procurement fulfillment business in China. Already a leading company in the rapidly growing field of electronic component supply chain management services in China (import, buffer inventory, procurement fulfillment, VMI, just-in-time delivery, export and other services), SinoHub will use these funds to propel itself into a dominant position in this field.
Global Grind's Pageflakes Clone Raises $4.5M in Series A Round
Global Grind, the niche start page for hip-hop news and information, has raised $4.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by Accel Ventures. New York-based Global Grind was founded by three creators of 360hiphop, which is a social network which was acquired by BET Interactive.
The Filter Brings Home $5M in Second Round of Funding
The Filter, a UK-based music recommendation company, has received $5 million in a second round of funding. Peter Gabriel has led the round, along with Eden Ventures, with both parties participating in the first round of funding, bringing the grand total to $6.8 million.
Kongregate Closes $5 Million Series A For Casual Gaming
Casual gaming community Kongregate has closed a $5 million series A round led by Greylock today. This is on top of a $1 million angel round they raised from Reid Hoffman, Joe Kraus, Jeff Clavier and Richard Wolpert, among others. The casual gaming category consists of all those addictive online flash games that often distract you during your downtime (remember desktop tower defense?). James Slavet of Greylock pegs the casual game market at $500 million and expects it to grow even larger.
SocialMedia Raises $1M for Facebook App Network
SocialMedia, the aforementioned Facebook apps and MySpace widgets company that will combine hosting, promotion and an ad network, has raised $1 million in funding in a round led by CRV Ventures, SoftTech VC and the Hitforge seed fund.
Doppelganger Gets $11M in New Funding
Doppelgagner, the company that offers programmed virtual worlds for the teen demographic, has raised $11 million in funding, led by new investor ComVentures, and existing investors Draper Fisher Jurveston, Trident Capital, Draper Richards, KPG Ventures and Greycroft Partners. That brings the grand total to $25 million.
Diet Television Trims Name, Takes $2 Million
Later this week, weight loss community Diet Television will announce it's shortened its name to DietTv.com and raised a $2 million series A. The round was led by MentorTech Ventures.
Kontera closes second round, faces competition by Vibrant Media and LinkedWords
Kontera, an Israel-based startup (officially headquartered in San Francisco), is raising $10.3 Million second round from Sequoia and other investors. It seems that the ad networks online are very hot these past months after the major acquisitions done by Google, Microsoft, AOL and others.
VOIP Startup Fring Raises $12 Million Series B
Israeli-based VOIP start-up Fring has closed an estimated $12 million second round, led by US VC fund North Bridge Venture Partners. VenFin and previous investors Pitango, Veritas and Yossi Vardi also participated. If the investment estimate is accurate, it would be one of the larger rounds for a VOIP company.
Technology Blog Xconomy Funded
Xconomy, a Boston-area-based technology and news blog, has received funding in a Series A round, led by CommonAngels. CommonAngels is an investment group in Lexington, MA, and it contributed funds from its investment pool as well as individual members. The financial terms were not disclosed.
The NBC and News Corp. joint venture Gets $100M in Funding
The NBC and News Corp. joint venture, which has been dubbed the YouTube Killer , has received $100 million in funding from Rhode Island-based investment firm Providence Equity Partners.
JS-Kit Closes $1.2 Million Seed Round
Web widget provider JS-Kit has been doing a lot of growing up since starting as a simple commenting widget, founder Lev Walkin's pet project in his off hours. Since then, that single widget has grown into a company with the addition of CEO Kris Loux, 12 engineers from Filmloop, and today's $1.2 million round of financing led by the Entrepreneur's Fund III.
Scrybe Closes Series A
Scrybe, the online/offline calendar and organizer, has closed their series A round of financing from Adobe Systems Incorporated and LMKR. In what is becoming an annoying trend, the company is not disclosing the size of the round.
Amie Street Closes Series A Financing Led By Amazon.com
Social music marketplace Amie Street has closed a Series A round of financing led by Amazon.com, along with some new partnerships and a site redesign. The amount of Amazon's investment and the terms are not disclosed.
Worldwide Biggies Funded by NBC and Hearst
Worldwide Biggies, a digital entertainment studio headed by former Nickelodeon and Spike TV President Albie Hecht, has closed a $9 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by NBC Universal and Platform Equity, also getting a large chunk of that change from Hearst Corporation, Alan Patricoft's Greycroft Partners and Prism Venture works.
Online Travel White Labeler EZRez Raises $15M
EzRez was founded in 2002 in Honolulu, Hawaii where it built a white label system for regional airlines, wholesalers, rental car companies, hotels, activity providers and more. Today the company raised $15M led by Canaan Partners with Azure Capital Partners and existing investors.
Content Personalization Widget Maker Minekey Raises First $3M
Sunnyvale, CA-based Minekey has raised $3M in Series A funding for their personalized news recommendation widget. The funding round was led by NEA IndoUS Ventures, which had previously invested $600K in a seed round.
Stealth Mode TuneUp Media Raises VC Funding To Help You Manage Your Music Files
Gabe Adiv, who previously worked the biz dev levers at Gracenote, has a new startup in stealth mode called TuneUp Media, that he claims has raised VC funding. What problem will the startup address? Our digital music lives are too complex the company finds and needs a better system.
Associated Content Raises $10M For Crowd-sourced News
NYC-based Associated Content has raised $10M in a 2nd round from Canaan Partners. The company is slightly controversial because of the backing of Google sales exec Tim Armstrong who invested in the company's first $5.4M round and is back in at this round along with Softbank.
Streetline Funded For Smart Cities Tech
Streetline has completed pilot projects and studies for Los Angeles and San Francisco. The LA project has learned that despite two-hour time limits, the average driver stays parked for four hours. In San Francisco, Streetline learned that only 5.4% of parking violations in San Francisco receive tickets. Streetline has raised $250K+ so far from individual investors including Internet pioneer Gordon Bell and it is planning a Series A round. They indicate on job postings that they have raised venture capital so that round may be closed but the company has not responded to confirm.
DecisionView Announces $7 Million in Series C Investment
DecisionView, Inc., the leading provider of business performance optimization applications for the Life Sciences industry, today announced the close of a $7 million Series C round of funding led by new investor, firstVentury, as well as existing investors Partech International and Granite Ventures.
Accoona Files for IPO
Internet company Accoona Corp. filed Friday for an initial public offering of its common stock. The Jersey City, N.J.-based company said it expects to use proceeds from the offering for research and development, business expansion and general corporate purposes. Accoona may also use a portion of the proceeds to acquire or invest in complementary companies and technologies.
Compete Ups Ante With $10M In Funding
Today Compete has raised another round of funding at $10M in Series III funding from return backers Charles River Ventures, idealab, Split Rock Partners and William Blair Capital Partners. Compete has raised $43M since 2000.
PayScale Gets $10.3M in Series C Round of Funding
PayScale is an online service that lets you know how you compare to others that do the same job as you. It's just raised another $1.5 million in a Series C round of funding, led by SAP Ventures. This closes the round at $10.3 million. Previous investors include Allen & Co., Corporate Executive Board, Trinity Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Fluke Venture Partners and Buerk Dale Victor.
Vringo Raises $12M in Series B Funding
Vringo, the video ringtone provider, has closed on a $12 million Series B round of venture capital funding. The round was led by Warburg Pincus, a global equity firm. The funding will be used to take Vringo around the world, as it expands markets in the US, Europe and Asia.
Curse Raises $5M in Series A for MMOG Network
Curse, the gaming portal, has received $5 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by a French venture capital firm AGF Private Equity, and some angel investors participated as well. The MMOG company already raised about $800,000 in funding from angel investors prior to this Series A round.
Action Engine Raises $20 Million
Mobile applications developer Action Engine has raised $20 million in new round led by Baker Capital. Previous investors Northwest Venture Associates and The Spangler Group also participated in the round. The company develops mobile device software that allows media companies and mobile operators to provide music, video and other content on mobiles.
Alibaba confirms IPO
China's biggest e-commerce company Alibaba has submitted its first initial public offering (IPO) application to the listing committee of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and may become the largest high-tech share on the Hong Kong bourse. Alibaba's Chairman Jack Ma confirmed the news in the company's annual meeting over the weekend. Tao Ran, a company spokesman, said there was no timetable for the market listing and also declined to disclose any details of the IPO.
Scribd Competitor Gets Angel Funding
Docstoc, the online document exchange community, has reportedly raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding, and may prove to be a Scribd competitor. The site is still in private beta. With Docstoc, you can share any document type, from Word, to PDF and Illustrator.
Boo-box Gets $300K for Contextual Ads Service
Boo-box, the contextual marketing company, has raised $300,000 in a round of seed funding, led by Monashees Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. The funds will be used for product development and expansion of the Brazil-based company.
Big Hedge Fund Investment in Zazzle
Silicon valley based Zazzle will be closing a second round of financing in the $30 million range, at a $300+ million pre-money valuation. The round is expected to be led by an as-yet-unnamed hedge fund.
Reid Hoffman invests in Care.com
The company which has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding from Matrix Partners, is also the latest investment by Reid Hoffman, godfather of Web 2.0 start-ups, and also co-founder of LinkedIn. Care.com, a Waltham, MA.-based outfit that connects families to 'qualified care givers with a national network of trusted providers.'
NowPublic Gets $10.6 Million For Crowd Sourced News
'Crowd sourced' news network NowPublic.com has closed a $10.6 milion series A round of financing led by Rho Ventures with seed investors Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund participating. Crowd sourcing is part of the widely expanding 'citizen journalism' category, which encompasses all the new ways non-professionals can participate in the news reporting process.
BuddyTV Gets $2.8M for Fan Site
BuddyTV, the online television informational community, has raised about $2.8 million in a Series A round of funding, with Gemstar-TV Guide International leading the round. The site lets you create a profile listing your favorite shows and actors.
CoolIris Gets $1M of its $3M Series A Round
CoolIris, the link preview service, has secured about $1 million of a $3.05 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers. Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, has also taken a seat on CoolIris' board.
3Jam Nabs $4M in Series B Funding
3Jam, the text messaging service, has raised $4 million in a Series B round of funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, and return investors New Enterprise Associates and NetService Ventures also participated.
Twitter Gets Their Venture Round
Twitter has raised a round of financing, led by Union Square Ventures. The size of the round has not been disclosed (yet), but additional investors include Charles River Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant. The service, which has around 300,000 users, has grown rapidly in recent months. Pownce, Kyte and others are competitors.
Family-friendly social networking start-up lands VC, will hire 4
CircleBuilder, a family-friendly church-oriented social networking site, has raised $800,000 from Great Lakes Angels and other venture capital organizations. CEO and co-founder Howard Brown currently runs the start-up from his Franklin home, having relocated to the area from Silicon Valley to be closer to family.
Going.com Lands $5 million
Event based social network Going.com has taken an additional $5 million in funding, in a round led by the sites original investors General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Grockit Raises Cash, Prepares 'Massive Multiplayer Online Learning' Product.
When we last wrote about San Francisco based Grockit , in late 2006, they were unfunded. Their business idea of holding low-cost GMAT prep courses over Webex was just getting off the ground. Now they are funded - $2.7 million total ($2.3 million from Benchmark, $400k from angel investors Mark Pincus, Rob Lord, Reid Hoffman Thomas Ryan and others) in a Series A round was closed last month. And they are changing their model completely.
Respectance Gets $1.5 Million
Respectance, which is unique among social networks since it's dedicated to remembering those who have died, has taken $1.5 million in a series A funding in a round led by Solid Ventures and Big Bang Ventures. The site also launches officially today, and says it has taken funding at a 'pre-user' stage.
GuildCafe Raises Funding for MMORPG Network
GuildCafe has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding from IDG Ventures Boston. The service that enables groups to build websites for gamers to find friends and new game content launched late last year, and has done well to create a hub for people that are heavily involved with MMORPGs like World of Warecraft, Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online. Users can connect with each other through their gaming avatars and form groups (guilds) that can move between virtual worlds together.
Cfares Raises $4.5M & Offers New Comparison Tools
Cfares, the airfare search tool, has announced a round $4.5 million of venture capital and has appointed a few new members to its team. The round was led by Claremont Creek Ventures, with previous investor Garage Technology Ventures partnering as well.
hi5 Takes $20 Million Funding
San Francisco-based social network hi5 has taken $20 million in funding in a round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The site reports 30 million members and 200 million pageviews/day, making it one of the largest players. So why the lack of hype?
Loopt Calls Down $2.25M of a $12M Series B Round of Funding
Loopt, the service that lets you geo-locate friends with mobile phones, has called down $2.25 million of a $12 million Series B round of financing. This means that while Loopt has raised $12 million, its requested access to $2.25 of this larger amount, possibly to increase its working capital costs.
EU Commission endorses €120 million aid for German R&D project THESEUS
The European Commission has authorised, under EC Treaty State aid rules aid worth €120 million that Germany intends to grant to start THESEUS, a research project for developing and testing new search technologies for the next generation Internet. THESEUS would involve both large companies and SMEs. The Commission found the aid to be in line with the criteria laid down in its Framework for Research and Development and Innovation (R&D&I, see IP/06/1600 and MEMO/06/441 ).
GreenDimes Raises Cash
Most people hate junk mail -- how many are willing to pay to stop it? Palo Alto-based startup GreenDimes is betting a lot will, and according to PEHub has raised a whopping $20.5 million in a first round of funding, led by Tudor Investment Corporation.
$15 Million For Shopping Search TheFind
Mountain View based shopping search site TheFind has raised another $15 million in a third round of venture capital, bringing their total capital raised to $26 million. Bain Capital Ventures led the round.
Redfin Takes $12 Million Series C Financing Amid Realtor War
Seattle-based Redfin, a real estate website that allows users to bypass most of the fees associated with using real estate brokers, has closed a $12 million Series C round of financing. This is on top of the approximately $8 million they raised in their previous two rounds. The round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, BEV Capital and The Hillman Company also participated
TVtrip's Multimedia Hotel Directory Gets $4.8 Million
A month after launch, TVtrip has secured another round of financing from Benchmark's European Branch, Balderton, and Partech, which will be announced tomorrow. Along with the financing they've also expanded their directory of hotel videos and added some more travel executives to their board.
Jamendo Gets Cash for Creative Commons Music
Online music has been one of the most tumultuous categories online. Ever since Napster launched in the late 90's, the music industry has been scrambling for a new model. DRM was once thought the industry's saving grace, but consumer frustrations and movements from big players like Apple have reversed the trend. Some are even streaming it for free. They just closed their series A round of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners today for an undisclosed sum.
Connectbeam Lands $3.5million Series A
Social networking for the enterprise startup Connectbeam has closed a $3.5million Series A round lead by Gabriel Ventures and Startup Capital Ventures. Connectbeam social software for business provides a corporate focused product that includes support for social bookmarking, social networking, live profiles, project spaces and intranet search integration.
Healthline Get's $21 Million and Some New Friends
Healthline has dipped it's hand into a $21 million series B financing led by GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance's Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal. This is on top of their $14 million round last January. The round also includes smaller investments from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.
Clickable Gets Funding for Centralized Ad Management Tools
Clickable is an online solution for advertisers and marketing agencies, to offer a centralized service for ad analytics and campaign modification. With Clickable, advertisers can manage their ad campaigns across the major ad networks, including Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter, among others. Clickable will give you metrics regarding your search marketing performance across all of these networks, and extend the options of self-managing your ads, from buying to pausing keywords within your campaign. The company just took first round of financing from Union Square Ventures.
AdJug Gets Millions for New Ad Marketplace
With the monster acquisitions of aQuantive and DoubleClick, who wouldn't want to be in the ad game? The latest contender is UK-based AdJug, which is announcing a 'multi-million dollar investment' today from Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark Capital Europe). The company provides an ad marketplace that will initially focus on the UK market, with expansion into Europe. Unlike Adsense, they say, they let advertisers choose where on the page their ads appear.
Wonga Raises $6M For Small Loan Service
Wonga , the UK-based small lending site, has announced its first round of investment for $6 million, led by Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe). Also participating in this round is Betfair and Setanta, and the Accelerator Group, which specializes in early stage technology funding. The site is currently in closed beta.
Lijit raises $3.3M for intimate blog search
Lijit, a provider of a more extensive search service for blogs, has said it raised a $3.3M second round of funding. Lijit, of Louisville, Colorado, doesn't limit readers to searching blog posts. It also provides them results from the host blogger's own accounts at Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, and any other place online they store information. Blogging is a cult-like sport, and this is one more way for readers to find out more about their favorite scribes.
Revision3 Raises $8 million From Greylock
Online video site Revision3 has raised an $8 million second round of financing, according to a source close to the deal, bringing the total capital raised to $9 million. Our understanding is that Greylock led the round. Greylock was also the primary investor in Revision3's $1 million first round of financing. News startup Digg, which shares founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson with Revision3, also raised money twice from Greylock.
Daylife Raises $8M in Second Round Funding
Daylife, the online news aggregator site, has raised $8 million in a second round of funding. Investors include Arts Alliance Digital Ventures and Balderton Capital. Existing investor New York Times Co. returned for further investment in this round.
Prosper raises $20M to assert lead in person-to-person loans
San Francisco's Prospser, which appears to have gained a leadership position in person-to-person lending, has raised $20 million in its third round of financing. Prosper is one of three upstarts in the person-to-person lending market, where borrowers request loans and have ordinary people bid to finance them.
DailyStrength Raises $5 Million+
DailyStrength, a social networking site which connects people with various health problems, has closed its first round of financing, estimated between $5-7 million. They plan to use the money to extend their staff, find more partners and develop more features - personalized news and widgets are supposedly on the way.
Nimbuzz Raises $10M in Funding
Nimbuzz, the interactive mobile company, has raised $10 million in a round of funding, led by Mangrove Capital Partners, MIH Group and Mangrove Capital Partners, MIH Group and Holtzbrinck Ventures.
Trivop Closes Large Round of Funding from Angel Investors
Trivop, the video guide for hotels around the world, hs closed a large round of early-stage funding from angel investors, for an undisclosed amount. See our initial coverage here. The round was led by Morten Lund, one of Skype's initial investors; Steve and Jean-Emile Rosenblum, founders of Pixmania; Oliver Jung; Lukasz Gadowski, founder of Spreadshirt; Loic Le Meur, honorary Chairman of Six Apart, and Aydin Senkut.
MyStrands Gets $25million Series B
Music discovery platform MyStrands has closed a Series B round of $25 million led by Antonio Asensio, CEO of Grupo Zeta, Spain's third largest media group, along with existing investors Debaeque and Sequal. MyStrands delivers a product that although sharing similarities to Last.fm, also extends to the desktop with the inclusion of locally stored music in its recommendation equation.
Quintura Gets Series A From Mangrove Capital Partners
Visual-based search engine Quintura has taken Series A funding of 'several million dollars' from Mangrove Capital Partners, an original seed investor in the company. The capital will be used to scale the Quintura affiliate model for site search and build a semantic web index using Quintura's 'neural networking techniques'.
Veoh Takes $26 million Round C
P2P and web video sharing service Veoh has taekn $26million in Round C funding. The new money takes total investment in Veoh to $41.25million. The pre money valuation is rumored to be between $60 million and $70 million.
DeviantArt Raises $3.5M in Series A Funding
DeviantArt has reportedly raised $3.5 million in Series A funding, with DivX Inc. as a listed shareholder. The artists community was founded in 2000, and has over 1 million unique visitors a day. It's long been a popular network for artists including photographers, painters and animators.
StudioNow Raises $1.5M in Funding
StudioNow, the video editing service, has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Claritas Capital. Others participating in the round are Fred Goad and Jim Kever, the founders of Envoy. Funding will be used for marketing purposes and technology development and operations.
SmartSheet Raises $2.69M in Funding
SmartSheet , the web-based spreadsheet creation service, has raised $2.69 million in a Series A-4 of funding, led by Madrona Venture Group. SmartSheet, which won Business 2.0's Best of Show award earlier this year, has a good management team, some members hailing from Onyx Software.
PermissionTV Gets $9M in Third Round of Funding
PermissionTV , an online video platform for creating branded Internet television channels, has closed on its third round of funding for $9 million. The round was led by Castile Ventures and Point Judith Capital. Existing investors include Common Angels, CramerOnline, inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors and the Venture Capital Fund of New England, bringing the total amount raised for PermissionTV to $18 million.
Lijit to Close on $3.3M in Second Round of Funding
Lijit, the personal network search tool, reportedly has plans to close on a $3.3 million venture round this month. The company had already raised $900,000 in venture capital and angel funds earlier this year (covered here), with investors including Colorado Fund, Brad Feld, Seth Goldstein and Paul Berberian. It also landed a partnership with Feedburner to provide search services for Feedburner's network.
Kyte Gets Investment from Nokia
Kyte, the video-sharing and distribution site, has received investment from Nokia Growth Partners for an undisclosed amount. See our initial review of Kyte here. The deal hits at an upcoming mobile distribution strategy for the video content, which is designed to offer more control from the user and a way of broadcasting multimedia content across the web.
PodZinger, Now EveryZing, Raises $10M in Funding
PodZinger, the search engine for podcasts and videos, has been renamed EveryZing, and has raised $10 million in funding led by Fairhavent Capital, Accel and General Catalyst, bringing the company's total funding amount to $15 million.
Openads Opensource project Raises $5 million
Openads, the developer of a popular seven year old opensource ad server, have spun out of London based ad network Unanimis and raised $5 million in capital to fund their business. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Index Ventures' Saul Klein joined the company's board of directors. Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital also mentioned their investment it on his personal blog.
Team and Concepts Raises $1.25million Series A
Team and Concepts Limited, the Hong Kong based company behind online spreadsheet service EditGrid, has announced a $1.25 million Series A investment from the WI Harper Group. WI Harper's previous investments include Laszlo Systems and Maxthon.
Me.dium Lands $15M in Funding
Me.dium, the social browser add-on, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding, bringing its funding to total $20 million, and coming from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, Appian Ventures, Brad Feld and Elon Musk. Read here for our initial review.
PayPerPost Raises $7 million More
Controversial pay-per-post startup PayPerPost has raised $7 million in a second round of financing, bringing their total raised capital to just over $10 million. Like their previous round from last October the financing was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures. New investor DFJ Gotham, a fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated.
CBS Invests in TicketReserve, Plans to Integrate On and Offline
CBS has announced its investment in TicketReserve, the online marketplace offering consumers the option to purchase advanced tickets to events at face value. TicketReserve lets you buy tickets for a specific team, artist or event, guaranteeing them the ability to get tickets at face-value, with a FanForward reservation.
ThisNext Raises Round of Venture Debt
ThisNext, the shopping and discovery website, has raised a round of venture debt for an undisclosed amount. The round was backed by Western Technology, Inc. See our initial review of ThisNext here. This round of funding will go directly towards an extension prior to the company's Series B funding in the fall, giving ThisNext a better position to boost valuation in preparation of raising additional funds.
MeetMoi Gets $1.5M in Funding
MeetMoi, the mobile dating site, has raised $1.5 million in funding in its first round of financing.The funding was provided by Acadia Woods Partners. MeetMoi is a service that operates in a similar manner to Dodgeball or Rabble, where you can find someone in your local proximity to meet up with you right now. But with MeetMoi, you can find a date, not just an existing friend.
FameCast Raises $4.5M in Funding
FameCast, the online talent show, has raised $4.5 million in funding from Austin Ventures. FameCast hands out $10,000 in cash prizes to the winner of each of its twelve 'stage' contests, spanning art genres such as spoken word, animation, and stand-up comedy, along with the expected music categories for Pop, Country, R&B, etc. Contestants submit videos of their work to their respected 'stage'. Users vote for who they like best, and the contests last for an entire 'season'. FameCast's recent funding will go towards expanding its marketing efforts in the U.S. and around the world.
Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint
Scribd, dubbed the 'YouTube for Documents,' was the dark horse of their Y Combinator class, but the social document sharing site now gives its critics pause to think. Since launching, traffic to the site scaled quickly to 75-100,000 uniques per day with a little help from popular link aggregation sites like Digg. This past month they logged 1.73 million unique visitors. Today Kinsey Hills is back, investing another $210,000 alongside $3.5 million from Redpoint, with Geoffrey Yang joining the company's board.
VCs re-up SocialText
SocialText, a startup that makes collaborative wiki platforms for enterprises, has raised $3 million toward a $6.5 million Series C venture financing, according to a regulatory filing. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP and the Omidiyar Network, from which it has already raised $3 million in its Series B. Other backers include tech executives Mark Pincus, CEO of Tribe.net which sold the majority of its assets to Cisco earlier this year, Reid Hoffman, the Chairman of LinkedIn.
Slacker Gets $40 Million for Growth
When Slacker initially launched their three prong web, desktop, and portable music service, we felt they needed a lot of cash in the bank to take on incumbents like Last.fm and iTunes. It looks like they got that start, with the addition of a whopping $40 million investment on top of the original $13.5 million series A funding, according to PEHub. Centennial Ventures and Rho Ventures were new investors, with Austin Ventures, Mission Ventures, and Sevin Rosen Funds returning.
Keibi Takes $6 million Series B Funding
San Francisco-based Keibi Technologies has raised around $6 million in Series B funding from Catamount Ventures and Hunt Ventures.
Biyani bullish about shopping portal
Kishore Biyani may be just a mouse click away from raising big money for his online shopping portal. His business of the future, Futurebazaar.com is in talks to rope in private equity funds Sequoia and Carlyle. Sources have told NDTV that Pantaloon retail, which owns 100 per cent in Futurebazaar.com will sell 10-15 per cent stake in the portal.
Bring Out Your Dead: Respectance Wins Funding For Eulogy Social Network
San Francisco and Kracow Poland-based Respectance says it has raised $250K in venture capital funding, and is due to announce another round next month, having secured the backing of a large Dutch VC group. Advertising might not be appropriate so Respectance.com will charge $1 for each funeral video downloaded.
Multiverse Gets $4 Million in Funding
Multiverse, the virtual world-based platform which has been around for quite a while now, has received just over $4 million in funding from Sterling Stamos Capital Management . The folks at Multiverse, some of which have worked on Netscape in its glory days, say they're gonna use the money to get more staff and to finally get their product out of beta stage. They plan to launch a consumer network of games and virtual worlds later this year or early 2008.
Mozilla Invests in Democracy TV
Mozilla has invested in the non profit, Participatory Culture Foundation, the makers of the Democracy Player , which is soon to be renamed Miro. Terms for this investment were not disclosed. Mozilla feels that Miro aligns with the goals of innovative options for the Internet that it's been dedicated to since its onset.
Jajah Announces Deutsche Telekom As Second Series C Investor
Earlier this month we announced VOIP startup Jajah had accepted $20 million in series C investment from Intel Capital . Tonight, Jajah has announced that they've added a co-lead to the round: Deutsche Telekom (T-mobile). The initial news of the investment was rushed out by Intel with Deutsche Telekom holding off announcement of their investment until today. Deutsche Telekom's investment in Jajah marks the first investment of a telco in one of the VoIP startups.
Skype Founders Invest in Frenzoo
Ambient Sound Investments, a company established by the four co-founding engineers of Skype, have invested in the Hong Kong based 3D social networking company Frenzoo as part of a Series A round of investment aimed at expanding the service through out Asia. ASI owners include Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, Senior Developers at Skype, Ahti Heinla, Chief Architect at Skype and Toivo Annu, a former Skype Head of Engineering.
Buzznet Lands $6 Million
Social media network Buzznet today announced the closure of a $6 million round of financing led by Redpoint Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners. Buzznet is the largest social networking site you've possibly never heard of.
Sequoia Leads Trulia's $10 Million Series C
Real estate search engine Trulia joins an elite Silicon Valley Club today with the announcement of $10m Series C funding in a round headed by Sequoia Capital. Trulia moved out of beta earlier this month and launched a number of new features. Sequoia is joined in the funding round by previous investors Accel and Fayez Sarofim & Co. The $10m takes Trulia's total funding to $17.7million. The new money is being used for additional staff, product development and a new marketing push.
Google takes stake in genomics info startup
Google Inc. has taken a small stake in a biotech company that was co-founded by the wife of one of Google's founders, Sergey Brin, Google said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Tuesday. Google said it had invested $3.9 million in the company, called 23andMe Inc., giving the Mountain View, California-based Google a minority stake in the start-up, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Clupedia gets $1.3 million
Santa Ana, CA, based startup Clupedia announced that it has raised $1.3 million in funding from Tech Coast Angels, a group of 270 investors in Orange County. Clupedia's founder David Saad claims that he has put down $2.3 million of his own money into startup. David Saad is a serial entrepreneur who had previously founded Braintec that was sold to Technisource. To add weight to the startup's story, Johannes Larcher sits on Clupedia's board. James had served as VP of Friendster and prior to that he was the chief of staff at Overture, which Yahoo bought in 2003 for nearly $2 billion.
Naturally Curly Raises $600,000 in Funding
Naturally Curly, the online community for people with curly hair founded in 1998, has raised $600,000 in a round of funding led by James Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers, a computer manufacturer which was bought by Compaq in 1997.
Calacanis, who is starting a new company called Kokua (scroll down) , has gotten funding from Sequoia
The Insider has learned that Jason Calcanis' stealth start-up backed by Sequoia Capital has closed on a round of funding from Sequoia, News Corporation and CBS. The undisclosed funding is interesting. Two strategic investors and the hottest Silly-con valley VC.
Fabrik raises $24.9M more for file storage and sharing
Fabrik, a company that offer online storage and easy sharing of big files, has just closed a $24.9 million funding deal and added Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive Media, to the board. Its financing came primarily from 3i, with a small chunk from ComVentures.
mTracks Gets Funded, Launches Beta Site
mTraks, the online music community and digital music marketplace, announces its public beta launch and the $550,000 it has raised in angel funding represented by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati.
Veotag Gets $750K in Angel Funding
Veotag, the video tagging service, has raised $750,000 from professional angel investors. See our initial review of Veotag here. Veotag's deep tagging service lets you create an interactive table of contents for your video clips, perfect for finding the exact portion of the video you're looking for.
Stockalicious raises $50k in funding
5 months old Singapore based startup Stockalicious is claiming that it has raised $50K in funding from angel investors. The startup enables users to keep track stocks, create portfolio, compare their portfolio performance against the market, and provides a embed code for portfolio to bring it up blogs and websites. Stockalicious currently supports Nasdaq, NYSE, AMEX and OTCBB.
Kyte Gets More Funding from Swiss Telecom Provider
Kyte, the online video-sharing and broadcasting website, has just announced new investors, telecommunications provider Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures, which have invested in Kyte for an undisclosed amount. Swisscom and Holtzbrink Ventures is the venture capital arm of one of Germany's most influential media companies.
Swedish Game Site Power Challenge Raises $8 Million From Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital put $8 million to work with Swedish game site Power Challenge, the company will announce today. Power Challenge is a rich Internet application - a game that runs in java and plays very much like a video game. Users build and customize their teams and play against others for points and status. The quality of game play is high and is designed to push the boundaries between traditional PC gaming and online gaming.
Mogulus Gets $1.2M in Angel Funding
Mogulus, the online video company aiming to make you all the next Justin.tv rock star, has raised $1.2 in angel funding, including $1 million from a New York-based Swiss private investor. The video broadcasting site is currently in private beta, and their differentiating factor is their ability to mix videos in real time for the creation of your own live broadcast.
JAJAH Lands $20 million Series C Funding From Intel
VOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel. Previous TechCrunch coverage here. As part of the deal Intel will provide JAJAH access to their community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, as well as access to Intel's range of VOIP patents.
videoNEXT Secures $5.4M in Series B Financing
CHANTILLY, Va., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- videoNEXT Network Solutions, Inc., a developer of innovative security management solutions, today announced that it has closed $5.4 million in series B financing and has appointed Joseph Costa as its president and chief executive officer. Christopher Gettings will continue in the role of chairman and assume responsibilities for business development for federal customers and strategic partners.
Encyclopedia of Life: Better Than Wikipedia? Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million.
Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million, Encyclopedia of Life aims to be an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on earth. Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort. Tens of thousands of citizen scientists with expertise around the world are responsible for the creation of content.
51.com Has 60M users and Another $10M in Funding
51.com, China's largest blogging community, has reached 60 million users, and is still growing at a rate of nearly 5 million new subscribers per month. They've also raised another $10 million in their second round of funding. 51.com is a personal blog network, ranking in the top 20 Chinese websites worldwide.
Joost Announces $45 million Funding From Sequoia, Index, CBS & Viacom
Internet TV startup Joost raised $45 million in a venture round of financing, the company will announce this evening. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, CBS Corporation, Viacom and Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing. The company has not previously disclosed any financings. Joost was started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström in 2006; presumably seed funding came directly from them.
Weebly Launches Blog Platform, Closes $650K Investment
AJAX website editor Weebly has just landed $650K in investment and launched a new blogging platform today. The investment comes from Ron Conway's Baseline Ventures, Steve Anderson, Sydin Senkhut, Paul Buchheit, and Mike Maples. Weebly plans to put the money towards new personal and product design.
Rabble's Mobile Social Network Gets Funding
Rabble, the mobile social networking community, has gotten some funding (or, more correctly, their parent company, San Diego-based InterCasting Corp ). Venrock, Avalon Ventures and Masthead Venture Partners have led and supported a second round of funding to the tune of $12 million, announced today.
VideoJug Gets Funding
VideoJug , the how-to video aggregator site, has raised $30 million in an equity round that included a private investment consortium that was led by private equity financier Jeremy Coller, founder of Coller Capital. The consortium also includes the venture capital arm of the hedge fund Sloane Robinson, which invested $20 million in VideoJug's latest round of funding for a significant minority stake in the video-sharing site.
Mig33 Gets $10M in Funding
Mig33 , the mobile Internet company that provides VoIP and instant messaging services, has raised $10M in funding in their first round, led by Accel Partners and RedPoint Ventures. Mig33, whose parent company Project Goth is based in Australia, is headquartered in Burlingame, CA. The start-up offers mobile phone users VoIP, instant messaging, SMS messaging, as well as social networking services all rolled into one mobile community.
Outbrain Raises Funding for Blog Ratings System
Outbrain, a free service for rating and delivering content to site publishers, has received a round of funding from LGiLab, GlenRock, Sigma PCM and private investors, for an undisclosed amount. Outbrain lets you add inline, 5-star ratings to your blog entries, providing you with an interactive way to see what your readers do and don't like on your site.
Minglebox Gets $7M from Sequoia
Minglebox , the India-based social network for college campuses, raised $7 million in funding, backed by Sequoia Capital India. Minglebox started with a concept similar to facebook (though less elitist), and Ning , creating customized networks for people on college campuses. The goal is for each network to be a close knit community, working like a college intranet. As with many other social networking sites, you can share videos, music, blogs, photos and events with friends and the group at large.
Frengo Raises $5.7 Million Series A Round
Redwood City based Frengo, a mobile social networking startup targeting the growing SMS/ TXT market have completed Series A funding of $5.7 million. The founding round was led by Trilogy Equity Partners, a firm led by John Stanton, the former T-Mobile USA and Western Wireless Chief Executive, and completed by Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures, both of which provided capital in the initial round of $2.3 million for Frengo in December 2006.
EQO Gets $9 Million
EQO, a mobile services company we've covered only because of its social networking integration, is announcing on Wednesday that it has raised $9M in Series B financing in a round led by Ventures West, with the return of GrowthWorks and BDC Capital. EQO launched at DEMO 2006, and offers to mobilize IM and VOiP networks including Skype, AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk and Yahoo Messenger. The funding is being used to expand the team and build new products.
Facebox Becomes Netlog; Raises €5M
Netlog , previously known as Facebox, is relaunching (again) under their latest new brand name, with €5 million ($6.8M) in their pocket from a round of funding backed by Index Ventures. Netlog has an extensive, and confusing, history. Feel free to delve deeper into their story here . Netlog has created a network of interactive communities that span Europe in nine different countries, all operating in their respective languages from English to Dutch to Portuguese.
CastTV Raises $3.1 Million, Battles Google And AOL In Video Search
San Francisco-based CastTV, a video search service that is yet to launch, announced a $3.1 million round of financing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson this morning. We first wrote about the company, which is led by husband and wife team Edwin Ong and Alex Vikati, last October. See our post and screenshots here . AOL arguably has the best video search technology through their acquisition of Truveo in early 2006. Google also has a growing video search engine that includes both Google Video and YouTube videos.
Podbridge Raises $8.5 Million, Podcasting Pops the Pilchard?
People are still throwing money at podcasting, it seems: podcast advertising firm PodBridge , which I first mentioned over a year ago, just raised a substantial $8.5 million Series B round of financing from Sutter Hill Ventures and return backers Mayfield and Worldview Technology Partners. Rivals include Podtrac , Fruitcast (missing, presumed to be plotting a relaunch), RadioTail and Kiptronic.
FunnyorDie.com: Will Ferrell Takes Sequoia Investment
What an odd mashing of worlds: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's production company has taken an investment from esteemed venture capital firm Sequoia Capital to launch a new comedy video site.
Reunion.com Receives $25M Funding
Can a social network be Web 1.0? Reunion.com , which is announcing $25M in funding today from Oak Investment Partners, certainly doesn't adhere to the principles of modern web design and features. But it does have 28 million users, making it a major force (just behind Bebo, if you can believe any of these user numbers), and it now boasts one of the largest social networking investments to date. The company was angel funded to the tune of $1.4 million by Jeffrey Tinsley, Richard Rosenblatt ( Demand Media ) and Andy Mazzarella.
Spock's New People Engine
It's not often we hear about a startup's venture financing before we see the product, but that is the case with yet-to-launch Spock, located in Silicon Valley. Rumors about their $7 million Series A round of financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures circulated last December, months before the beta service was planned to launch.
Big Round For Aggregate Knowledge
As previously rumored, Aggregate Knowledge closed a second round of financing earlier this year - $20 million to add to their previous $5 million round from Kleiner Perkins and First Round Capital. DAG Ventures led this new round, and Kleiner also participated.
RIPL Funded For Facebook Follower?
Try as we might, we can't get access to RIPL , the college social network that's currently in closed beta and open only to students at the University of Washington and the University of Central Florida. We first spotted the site back in November 2006, and the Seattle-based company has now raised $2M in Series A funding. The site provides photo and music sharing.
Ozon.ru, Russia's Amazon.com, Gets $18M Investment For Expansion
Ozon.ru, which claims to be Russia's largest e-commerce store for books, audio and video, software, multimedia games, electronic and digital goods, received $18 million in funding this week from Index Ventures, Holtzbrinck Ventures (the venture arm of one of Germany's largest publishing companies) and Cisco. The money will help develop Ozon.ru's logistics system, expand its product lines and establish new distribution centers across Russia. The investment round was initiated and managed by Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Russia's leading private equity investor and controlling shareholder of Ozon.
WebJam Bags $2 Million for Community of Personalized Pages
London-based WebJam, a community of openly editable personal pages, just raised $2 million from French early-stage VC I-Source Gestion. You can see our earlier coverage here.
FlipTrack Get's $1.5 M for Synching Slide Shows
We covered FlipTrack last November when they launched a beta version of their desktop client, which syncs a photo slide show to music. They're back, with a $1.5 million first round of financing and a new web client. The financing comes from a group angels and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The new investment included some investors in FlipTrack's former parent company, iPlay, makers of music tutorial software for Mac.
Xobni, an e-Mail Tracker, Raises $1.5M
Xobni Analytics has just raised $1.5M of a $4.26M Series A round led by Khosla Ventures.
Imbee - Disney Is Investor
Long time, no Imbee. Mashable was one of the first to mention the kid-friendly social network when it launched back in June 2006, and reports this weekend say that Steamboat Ventures, Disney's VC arm, invested $2.5 million in its first Series A round of funding in late 2006. Industrious Kid, the company behind Imbee, launched with $6 million in funding.
Voxpop.tv Gets Angel Funding
Voxpop.tv , the pop culture game maker, has just received an undisclosed amount of angel funding. Voxpop's plethora of games are wrapped in a simple format that is easy to play and quickly ties in results from other players.
Social Network Technology and VoIP Provider YFonGlobal Raises Second Angel Round for a Total of $1.8 Million
YFonGlobal, a leading-edge provider of turnkey social network marketing technology, reports raising its second angel round of funding for a total of $1.8 million with an opportunity to raise $2.1 million from one angel investor's matching funds offer.
Oodle Raises $11 million
Classified search engine Oodle got a pile of cash today, $11 million from new investor JAFCO Ventures and the leaders of their previous $5 million round, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures.
Kongregate Announces Funding
Kongregate, a social network for gamers, launches their beta version today. We first mentioned them here as a more enticing alternative than GreatGamesExperiment , as they provide an ongoing community around playable Flash and Shockwave web games.
P2P Lender Zopa Gets $13M Funding - Expands into US
One of the more innovative web apps around has just gotten another big injection of funds, and a new CEO to boot. Zopa describes itself as a 'marketplace for Social Lending', where people lend and borrow money with each other - sidestepping the middleman, i.e. banks.
YeboTV Gets $10M - For What?
Ohio-based YeboTV just scored $10 million in funding, proving that the money hasn't stopped flowing into video sites just yet. The money comes from the broadcaster Roberts Communications Network and Sunrise Operations, the investor arm of the horse betting company Winticket.com. The company was founded in October 2006.
Eurekster Gets $5.5 Million Series B for Social Search
Eurekster, known for their Swicki community-driven search platform, has just announced $5.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Technology Venture Partners of Australia and Transcosmos Investments of Japan.
ElephantDrive Gets Funding From Intel
Los Angeles-based ElephantDrive, a company that uses Amazon's S3 storage service to provide online storage and backup services, has quietly raised a round of funding from Intel. The firm targets its online storage services for photos, music, videos, and other files.
UUSee - the YouTube Killer - gets more funding - $23 million worth
UUSee, a self-called YouTube and Joost combo for the Chinese TV market, has received additional funding to the tune of $23.5 million dollars. The financing is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Highland Capital Partners, Steamboat Ventures. Other firms on board include Sequoia Capital China and SIG.
Federated Media Raising More Money, Looking to Sell
The company, which sells advertising for a number of blogs and other websites (including TechCrunch), had revenues of $4.5 million in 2006, its first year in operation. Projections for 2007 were $30 million in sales and 'several million dollars' in profit.
GeoSign Raises $160 Million For Content Acquisitions
In one of the largest private equity financings for an Internet company in recent history, Web publisher GeoSign, located outside of Toronto, has raised US$ 160 million from American Capital.
Grazr Gets $1.5 Million for Feeds and Widgets
The latest in the long line of funding announcements is Grazr, which allows users to create “custom feed-based applications”. The company has just completed Series A financing of $1.5M led by Boston-based angels Bruce Twickler and Louis Page.
$100 Million Valuation For Geni
Seven week old Geni raised a $10 million second round of financing last week, led by Charles River Ventures (see our coverage of CRV here), with a post-money valuation of $100 million. George Zachary from CRV is joining the Geni board of directors.
Eons Raises Staggering $22 Million Round
Eons, which has received a lot of mainstream press for its easily understood idea (although on closer inspection it's not very MySpace-like at all), is set to announce a Series B round of $22 million today led by Charles River Ventures, with participation from newcomers Intel Capital and Humana Inc, plus existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital. The Series A round was $10 million from General Catalyst and Sequoia.
ClearSpring Gets $5.5M from AOL Founders
Red Herring is reporting that AOL founders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis have invested $5.5-million, as a second round investment, into widget syndication platform Clearspring.
WorldFriends Networks Announces US$2 5 Million in Venture Capital Funding
Shanghai-based Meta4 Group Ltd., which operates WorldFriends Networks, the world's leading provider of private label multi-lingual online
personals announced US$2.5 million in venture capital funding from industry veterans including the co-founders of leading Internet dating service Lavalife.com
Wesabe Gets Money From Tim O'Reilly's OATV
Berkeley, California based Wesabe will announce a $700,000 round of financing tomorrow from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (as well as a couple of individual investors), and Tim O'Reilly will join the company's board of directors. A good overview video of the service, which launched in December, is below.
TrustedPlaces Raises $1 Million Funding
TrustedPlaces, a local reviews site and social network that's focused mainly on the UK market, just informed Mashable that it has raised GBP £500,000 (approx $1M) from HOWZAT media LLP, a startup investment fund.
ImageKind Raises $2.6 Million
We reported last month that Seattle-based ImageKind, where artists can upload their work and sell custom framed prints to others, was in acquisition discussions with Amazon . ImageKind competes with Art.com's new Sistino project - rumor had it that Art.com was also looking at the company late last year for a possible acquisition.
Koolanoo - Jewish MySpace Gets $3M
Jewish social network Koolanoo has raised funding of $3 million from Giza Venture Capital, a VC with offices in Israel, New York and Singapore. The company plans to launch social networks for other religious and ethnic groups, and already operates 360Quan.com, a Chinese social network and video site. Amazon Invests in Shelfari
We're hearing that Amazon has invested $1 million or so in Seattle based Shelfari , beating out at least one venture firm that competed for the deal.
Aggregate Knowledge grabs interest, will raise $20M
It is about to raise $20 million, and rumors are circulating that interest by venture capitalists is pushing the company valuation north of $50 million (before the investment). This is significant because the company launched less than a year ago, and is already raking in millions of dollars.
PBWiki Raises $2m
PBwiki closed $2 million in funding this morning from Mohr Davidow Ventures. Founder and CEO David Weekly confirmed that previous investors Ron Conway and Chris Yeh also put in an additional $100k.
Mozes SMS Service Raises $5m
SMS call-and-response service Mozes will announce in the morning that the company has raised $5 million in series A venture funding from Northwest Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.
Union Square Ventures funds Adaptive Blue
Semantic web Firefox plug-in provider Adaptive Blue announced today that the company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Union Square Ventures.
Aniboom Raises $4.5 Million For Cartoons
Israeli Startup Aniboom has raise $4.5 million in an initial round of financing. The round was led by Israeli venture firm Evergreen .
LiveOps Raises $28m More
Distributed call-center outsourcing service LiveOps has announced the closure of a Series C round of funding for $28 Million. The round was lead by Benchmark Capital, a new investor in the company and a fund that rarely makes later stage investments.
Magnify.net Funded
Magnify.net, one of the video sharing startups that launched at DEMO, has raised $1.2 million in a first round of funding led by New York Angels and NextStage Capital. Other investors included Chris Anderson of the TED Conference, Active Angel Investors of Washington DC, and Stage 1 Ventures.
Zlango Update: BenchMark and Accel Invest $12 Million
Israel-based Zlango will announce a $12 million round of financing tomorrow, led by BenchMark Capital and Accel Partners. The company launched the Zlango icon-based SMS service in the middle of 2006, and has expanded to three countries (Israel, Poland and certain Caribbean cell phone carriers).
Gigya Puts MySpace Layouts in Email, Gets $4M
You'll remember we're big fans of Gigya , the new webmail service that allows users to add MySpace layouts and other decorative elements to email. You can, for instance, add RockYou slideshows, MySpace music players , YouTube videos, photos from Photobucket and other 'blog bling'.
Force 10, waiting for that IPO?
Force 10 Networks, a maker of 10GB Ethernet switches has raised another $60 million, to bring its Series F funding to a whopping $113 million. The company has so far raised a gargantuan $400 million in private investments thus far.
European Startup Plazes Raises €2.7 million
Plazes , which is based in Zurich and Berlin, is announcing its first institutional round of financing this morning. They raised €2.7 million, or about $3.5 million, from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.
Sequoia invests in Wi-Fi startup Meraki
Meraki Networks, the wireless mesh hardware and software startup that raised seed capital from Google and a handful of angels late last year, says it has raised $5 million in Series A funding, with Sequoia Capital leading this round of investment.
Vizu Gets $2.9 Million for Poll-Based Market Research
Vizu Answers announced a $2.9 million round of financing today for its poll based market research, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Flixster Closes Very Competitive Financing Round
Flixster, a San Francisco based social network where users rate and discuss movies, closed a round of financing today with LightSpeed Ventures.
Farecast Takes $12 Million More
Seattle-based Farecast , which predicts and guarantees airline prices, made its third round of financing, taking $12.1 million from Sutter Hill Ventures and others
News Corp. Invests in ROO
The Wall Street Journal reported (behind paywall) this morning that News Corp would announce a $12 million investment in online video startup ROO.
Brightcove Raises $59.5 million
Brightcove, an online video platform and destination start-up has raised 2 a whopping $59.5 million in new funding from strategic and large institutional investors.
MarketClusters Announces $3 Million in Expansion Funding
MarketClusters Limited, developer of the 'StrategyWire' intelligence platform enabling corporate and financial clients to accurately filter - and put into context - expert opinions created in Blogs or News feeds, is pleased to announce that it has closed its first round expansion funding.
LinkedIn Raises Nearly $13 Million More
Professional social network LinkedIn will announce a previously rumored $12.8 million round of financing on Monday, led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund.
Skype Zennstrom, Euro Angels fall for wunderLOOP
wunderLOOP, a Luxembourg-based behavioral advertising and content targeting company, is about to announcing a big round of funding that would allow the company expand and take on its bigger rivals.
Podcasting Ad Network Raises $4 million
Kiptronic, an advertising network for podcasting, has closed a $4 million round of financing. Investors include Blueprint Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. The company had previously raised $400,000 in angel funding.
Europe's Digg Killer Raises €4 million
Luxembourg-based Wikio , Europe's best hope against Digg, Google News and Technorati (it is sort of a mashup of all three), has closed a €4 million ($5.3 million) Series A round of financing.
Lijit Funded, Partners With Feedburner
Lijit , which you might remember from when it was called Outfoxed, has raised $900K in funding from a syndicate that includes Colorado Fund I, Brad Feld, Seth Goldstein, Paul Berberian, Lijit's management team and other angel investors. They also announced a partnership with Feedburner today to provide search services for FeedBurner's 200 or so publisher networks.
Four Month Old Wize Gets $4 Million
Silicon Valley based Wize is a site that tracks expert and user product reviews across the Internet and churns them through an algorithm to create a single, 1-100 'WizeRank.'
Weebly has raised seed cash from YCombinator, and moved to San Francisco.
Weebly, a start-up that lets you easily create Web sites with the latest Web 2.0 tools, has raised seed cash from YCombinator, and moved to San Francisco.
Stockpickr in deal with The Street: More to Come?
Stockpickr, an investing site founded by two New York City hedge fund managers, is giving a boost to all companies in the “investing 2.0″ sector today with their announcement of a partnership with a leader from the first generation of the web investment sector, TheStreet.com.
Digg Gets $8.5 Million
Digg has raised $8.5 million more in funding in a round led by return investors Greylock Partners and the Omidyar Network, it emerged today - that’s on top of the $2.8 million they already received. That puts the rumors to rest that Digg is set to sell imminently. Instead, they want to help others add Digg’s features to their sites.
No Acquisition For Digg - Raise Series B Round Instead
Red Herring and VentureBeat are reporting that Digg closed an $8.5 million Series B round of financing from previous investors Greylock Partners and the Omidyar Network, bringing the the total of capital they’ve raised to just over $10 million. They previously raised $2.8 million in October 2005 from Greylock, Omidyar and several angel investors.
Xunlei confirms Google Investment
Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology, the Chinese P2P video software company has confirmed that Google will become an investor in the company, according to a Bloomberg news report.
Heavy.com Raises $12.3 Million
Heavy.com, the New York-based video content company, has raised another $12.3 million in funding. This will be their 5th round of funding, with Polaris Ventures returning once more and Jacobson Investments joining in, too.
CoComment Gets $1.5 Million
CoComment, the site that lets you track comments around the blogosphere, has just announced a $1.5 million funding round from Japanese investor Netage Capital Partners. Netage now has a 40% stake in the company, which was launched by Swisscom in February.
ExpoTV Takes $6 million
Today, ExpoTV, a site focused on user-generated reviews and product demonstrations, announced a $6 million Series A round of funding led by Masthead Venture Partners and Prism VentureWorks, including existing investors. Brady Bohrmann of Masthead and Will Kohler of Prism are joining ExpoTV’s board. TicketMaster Pours $13.3 Million Into iLike
In about an hour, we hear, iLike and TicketMaster will announce a strategic agreement that includes a $13.3 million investment in iLike for 25% of the company. That puts the value of iLike at a whopping $53.2 million. The company launched less than two months ago, on October 25.
Glam Media Gets $18.5 Million And A CNET Chairman
Glam Media, a fashion and lifestyle Web site, has a trifecta of news today. It has received $18 million in Series C funding, CNET chairman Jarl Mohn is joining the company as an investor and strategic adviser, and there is a new partnership with Hearst Magazines to bring articles from their popular magazines, starting with Marie Claire, to Glam.com.
Minti Raises More Money, Expanding Beyond Parenting
In a blatant attempt to raise their profile in the niche category of the upcoming social networking awards, the Minti folks are putting out a release tomorrow to say that they (or more correctly, their owners Vibe Capital) have raised a further AU $1.2M in funding, on top of the AU $1.2M they raised previously.
Wikia Gets Funding From Amazon
Wikia, a for-profit sister site of Wikipedia, received a second round of funding today, all of it coming from Amazon. No word yet on how much Amazon has forked over.
BitTorrent Raises $25 million, Bram Cohen is History
Om Malik posted a rumor today regarding a new BitTorrent financing and possible ouster of CEO Bram Cohen . We did some independent digging and have come up with what I believe is accurate based on multiple sources and a leaked document: BitTorrent has raised a $25 million Series B round of financing from Accel Partners and previous investor Doll Capital Management, bringing the total capital raised to just under $34 million.
Qihoo raises $25M for new Web 2.0 search engine
Qihoo , a fast-growing but controversial Chinese search engine for Web 2.0 content, has raised $25 million more in a second round of venture capital from credible U.S investors.
Skype early backer Mangrove invests in the hottest search startup Quintura
Quintura, which just launched its See & Find™ visual find engine at www.quintura.com , announced that it raised a significant amount of venture capital from Mangrove Capital Partners of Luxembourg, an early-stage investor in Skype, ABRT Venture Fund and the partners of OpenView Venture Partners of Boston. The deal is the first Western VC investment made in an Internet company from Russia.
Hellman & Friedman, buyout fund, raises $2.7 billion
Hellman & Friedman , the San Francisco buyout fund, has secured $2.7 billion in commitments for its sixth fund, which is being marketed with an $8 billion target capitalization, reports PE Week .
WAYN Gets $11M for 'MySpace of Travel'
WAYN , a UK-based site that claims to be the world's largest travel and lifestyle social network, announced today that they've raised $11 million in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Esprit Capital Partners.
ViTrue: User Generated Ad Video Gets New Investors
User-generated video sharing site ViTrue, Inc. has come some reputable new investors, including Ron Conway, one of the original investors in Google...
Hakia Raises $11 Million
Hakia said it has raised $11 million in its first phase of funding from a panoply of investors scattered across the globe who were attracted by the company's semantic search technology, which the upstart aims to make superior to Google's search engine.
Sermo - Social Network for Doctors Gets Funded
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sermo, which was founded early this year and launched at the start of October, is being labeled “ MySpace for Physicians “. Now the site has been funded, receiving $3M in a first round led by Longworth Venture Partners. You need to be a physician to gain access (they'll eventually launch non-physician accounts), so a full-review is off the cards, but I think the idea is an interesting one. :
Pluck Lands $7 Million, Totals $17 million
Pluck , the Austin, Texas-based RSS and publisher services company, has raised $7 million from Reuters, along with return backers Austin Ventures and Mayfield. That takes Pluck's VC funding to $17 million in total since the company formed in 2003.
AboutUs.org lands $1M
Portland, Oregon based AboutUs announced this week that it has closed a Series A round of funding and raised $1 million.
Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Hearst Corporation Lead $30M Series C Financing for Fast Growing Free Directory Assistance Provider Jingle Networks
Jingle Networks, operator of the 1-800-FREE411 directory assistance service, announced today it has raised $30 million of Series C financing led by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Hearst Corporation.
Topix.net Raises $15m More
News search engine Topix.net has announced that has taken $15 million in additional funding from three large media companies, Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy. The company raised a round about 18 months ago for an undisclosed sum that was only said to be under $5 million. That funding came from Tribune, Gannet and Knight-Ridder, who have since been acquired by McClatchy
Gather.com Gathers More Cash
Gather.com , the social network and citizen journalism site that was seriously lacking when it launched at the start of this year, has completed a further $10 million round of financing led by Pilot House Ventures Group that also included media companies Hearst Corp and McGraw-Hill Cos. Money also came from Jack Connors, chairman of ad agency Hill Holliday, and Gather.com's founder Tom Gerace.
MobiTV totals $125M in funding!
The last time mobile video startup MobiTV 1 said they raised $70 million in a third round of funding, we used them as an example of the return of the big VC money 2. Now the Emeryville-based company is announcing today that it has raised even more money as part of its Series C: $30 million with additional investors Hearst Corporation and Adobe Systems. The company says their total Series C funding comes to over $100 million bringing the company's total to $ 125 million raised since the company started in 1999 — now that is a lot of money.
Spot Runner lands $40 million
Spot Runner, a TV ad start-up that puts local shoe stores on national television networks, has announced receiving $40 million in additional funding from CBS, Interpublic Group and other investors.
Monitor110 Raises additional $11m, totals $20M
Monitior110 , the pre-launch web monitoring service for hedge fund traders Techcrunch wrote about in September , will announce on Monday that it has closed a Series C round of financing with $11 million from new and existing investors. The company, which will begin offering its product for general subscription early next year after three years of development, has now raised a total of $20 million.
TopTenSources Lands an Investor
TopTenSources Raises $3.5 Million and Acquires Blogniscient according to Techcrunch.Top10Media, parent company to Massachusetts based TopTenSources , a human edited blog aggregator, has raised $3.5 million in a venture round led by Highland Capital (see our previous coverage of TopTenSources here ).
Yelp gets $10 million more in funding
Local review site Yelp.com announced tonight that it has taken $10 million in Series B funding from Benchmark Capital. The company received as much as $6 million in a previous round from Bessemer Venture Partners.
Zillow, is $57M enough?
According to Zillow they have raised around $57M from venture capital firms (Technology Crossover Venture, Benchmark Capital and PAR Capital Management), private investors, employees and directors. eBuddy Announces 5 Million Euros from Lowland Capital
Web IM service eBuddy announced its first round of funding today, taking 5 Million Euros (about $6.25 million USD) from Lowland Capital Partners. Both eBuddy (formerly known as e-Messenger) and its funders are from the Netherlands.
Another video sharing site gets funded
Another video sharing site gets funded: New York startup Motionbox will announce today that they've raised $4.2M in Series A funding from Canaan Partners, SAS Investors and ITOCHU Corporation. The cash will be used to build out Motionbox's technology and for marketing purposes. Meebo Confirms Sequoia Funding
Meebo confirmed the rumor that they have received funding from Sequoia Capital on their blog. Congratulations to everyone involved. |
