LuxeYard, a site selling high-end home decor products, is launching Tuesday. Yes, it’s technically another flash sales site. But what’s interesting about LuxeYard is that it’s doing things a bit differently from the established players in the space such as One Kings Lane and Gilt Groupe. Read more »
Codecademy, which teaches users how to program for free with an interactive and social web application, has garnered more than 1 million users in less than five months. We talked to co-founder and CEO Zach Sims about how Codecademy started and where it’s going. Read more »
Asia, with its rapidly growing number of car owners and large pollution problems, could very well be the biggest market for biofuels and green chemicals one day. LanzaTech, which announced Monday it has raised $55.8 million, is certainly finding more willing customers and partners Asia. Read more »
Personal security app Guardly, which launched back in April 2011 on the iPhone and iPod touch, announced Thursday morning that it will now offer a special program for students at 67 universities and colleges across Canada, designed as an extension of on-campus security measures. Read more »
Updated. Outdoor recreational startup AllTrails today announced a major partnership with National Geographic that will bring unique, co-branded content to the startup’s website at AllTrails.com and its mobile applications. That will give it a lot more data, and opens the door for a subscription service. Read more »
Apple is holding an event in New York next week, in which the company is planning to make “an education announcement.” Many are connecting the event with comments Steve Jobs made to his biographer and expecting Apple to announce a digital textbook initiative through the iBookstore. Read more »
Michael Mathieu, former CEO of video ad network YuMe, has taken the chief executive role at Affine Systems. He’ll take over for Co-Founder Mike Sullivan, who will stay on at the startup in an executive role. The management change comes as Affine just raised $5 million. Read more »
Affine Systems, which makes software to scan and sort the content in online video, has raised nearly $5 million in a new funding round, according to a regulatory filing. Affine’s software gives advertisers the tools to analyze online video in a way that’s similar to television. Read more »
The 2012 CES show hasn’t even officially kicked off and already the smart energy home has emerged as a key target for a variety of sectors, including telcos, big box retailers, startups, chip companies and now cable operators like Time Warner Cable. Read more »
Lithium Technologies has raised a $53.4 million funding round led by New Enterprise Associates and SAP Ventures. The round includes existing investors Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Emergence Capital, Greenspring Associates, Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital, and brings total funding to more than $100 million. Read more »
Oil giant BP has invested in biofuel startup CoolPlanet BioFuels, according to an announcement on Thursday. CoolPlanet BioFuels is the biofuel startup you have never heard of but that has unusually famous investors like GE, Google, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips. Read more »
Out of all of Google’s close to $1 billion in clean power projects, turning biomass into energy seems like the least relevant technology to Google’s core business. But Google has made a few small investments into biomass projects, including a hog waste to energy project. Read more »
Wahooly has created a group of 25,000 influential testers and is now opening the doors to startups to apply to engage this group. Startups will create testing groups of 5,000 to 8,000 people, who will share in a pool of equity ranging from 4–6 percent. Read more »
TaskRabbit has raised $17.8 million in a Series B funding round. It’s just been 7 months since the company announced its $5 million Series A, but growth has been fast and furious: TaskRabbit has tripled net revenue and seen a seven-fold increase in customers since May. Read more »
Updated. Now we know why Ustream has been raising new funding, and possibly why former CEO John Ham recently stepped down. The startup collected less than half of the $75 million funding round from Japanese mobile and Internet behemoth Softbank that it announced in early 2010. Read more »
It’s easier than ever to build a web or mobile app and call yourself a startup. But with new funding opportunities and technology tools, entrepreneurs can easily — and cheaply — use technology to solve larger problems, rather than create another lifestyle app. Read more »
Hotel Tonight, the app that lets you book last minute hotel rooms for discounted rates, is currently raising a $9.1 million funding round, according to documents filed with the SEC Wednesday. The company has raised $8.65 million in the round so far, the filings show. Read more »
Parse, which makes a software platform that adds a cloud component to any mobile app, has raised $5.5 million. The funding round serves as a Series A for the company and brings its total investment to $7 million. Parse calls itself “the Heroku for mobile apps.” Read more »
American Express wants to have a stake in the next big digital commerce start-up and it’s establishing a new $100 million fund to make sure it doesn’t miss out. It’s another sign that 162-year-old American Express is anxious to keep evolving. Read more »
Hadoop isn’t the only thing going in big data, but it’s driving the bus at this point and it seems to have a reverse Midas touch: everything that touches it turns to gold. The latest to experience this is Cloudera, which has raised another $40 million. Read more »
Big data technology is attracting some big bucks. Kaggle, a startup that helps companies outsource large business analytics projects by turning them into large-scale competitions for scientists around the world, will announce Thursday it has secured $11 million in venture capital funding. Read more »
Waddle, the San Francisco-based startup that makes a group photo sharing app for the iPhone, is preparing to get a bit bigger: The company has landed seed funding from Chinese Internet giant Tencent. It has also released an update to its photo sharing app, Waddle 2.0. Read more »
Video ad startup Jivox has raised $8.2 million in an attempt to bring its technology to multiple screens. In addition to the funding, which was led by Fortisure Ventures and existing investors Opus and Helion, Jivox will add two new members to its board of directors. Read more »
Livefyre, the software platform that embeds live commenting on websites, has secured $4.5 million in a new round of funding. The startup says it plans to use the money on hiring and new products — which will come in handy since it has some stiff competition: Facebook. Read more »
Bravo, the cable television network known for such reality shows as The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Millionaire Matchmaker, is apparently looking for young professionals to star in an upcoming reality show based on Silicon Valley. Read more »
Surprisingly there are still semiconductor companies getting funding out there, as Quantance, a chip maker proved Monday when it scored $11 million in third-round funding from TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and DOCOMO Capital. This money will help it expand beyond the mobile market. Read more »
Vidyo has raised a $22.5 million Series D round of financing led by QuestMark Partners, with participation from existing investors Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Star Ventures and Four River Group. Since being founded in 2005, the startup has raised a total of $96 million. Read more »
Dashlane, a stealth start-up, is still a few weeks away from unveiling its product but the company announced today that it has raised $10 million. It is trying to tackle the problem of inputting information, passwords and payment data into websites from desktop and mobile devices. Read more »
Tremor Video raised another $37 million in venture funding, bringing total funding to $145 million. It plans to use to acquire some smaller competitors, as CEO Bill Day expects a round of consolidation to hit the online video advertising market. Read more »
Proving that virtual currency can be worth a good amount of real-life cash, social stock market Empire Avenue has landed $1.2 million in funding. Empire Avenue serves a unique and somewhat controversial purpose: It’s a stock market that puts a price on people instead of companies. Read more »
Roku has raised another $8 million, according to an SEC filing. The round comes just a few weeks after Roku launched the latest version of its broadband set-top boxes, which in addition to streaming video, also features casual games. Read more »
Okta, a startup that makes identity and access management software for enterprises, has closed $16.5 million in new funding. Okta’s software enables multiple people within an enterprise to sign in to the company’s web-based applications, whether they’re in the cloud or behind a firewall. Read more »
Music streaming company TouchTunes is said to have secured $45 million in Series E funding at a $300 million valuation. Although those are some pretty impressive figures, the news is perhaps most notable for how it’s been made public — through an apparently accidental email address typo. Read more »
Confirming weeks of speculation, Twitter announced Monday it has closed on a “significant” amount of new funding led by Russia-based venture capital firm DST Global. The specific amount raised has not been disclosed, but various reports have pegged the round at $800 million. Read more »
ReadItLater, the mobile and web app that allows you to save webpages to read later, has has taken on $2.5 million. The company is using the funds to make the shift from “quiet giant” app developer to full-fledged tech startup, CEO Nate Weiner says. Read more »
Web security startup CloudFlare has raised $20 million in a series B funding round. The San Francisco-based company, which has seen impressive growth since its September 2010 launch, makes a cloud-based software program that purportedly helps protect websites while also making them faster. Read more »
Is this Bubble 2.0? This infographic, which Column Five Media did for Udemy, examines the state of startups. Though VCs are doing fewer deals than they were before the recession really took hold in late 2008, the amount of money invested is up to prerecession levels. Read more »
Airbnb, the peer-to-peer apartment and house rental website, is rumored to be raising $100 million in new funding at a whopping $1 billion valuation. But based on the company’s revenue and growth prospects, that number may not be as shocking as it seems. Read more »
Boticca.com, an online marketplace connecting high-fashion,independent jewelry and accessories designers with fashonistas looking for hand-crafted Czech crystal collar necklaces and gold-foil-and-pearl jellyfish rings, has received $2.5 million in funding. The Series A round comes from both international and Silcon Valley investors. Read more »
TaskRabbit has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by Shasta Ventures. The three-year-old startup, which currently brokers tasks in San Francisco and Boston, will use the money to expand its reach to other metro areas nationwide. Read more »
