At the Time Life Center in New York on Wednesday, startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures showcased its latest class of 15 startups. The companies were selected from a pool of 500 applicants and originated from cities across the country and around the world. Read more »
Crowdfunding has grown from a $33 million market to a $128 million market in the past two years and is expected to reach $500 million in 2012. While it won’t completely replace more traditional fund-raising methods, it’s nonetheless an important space to watch, with plenty of opportunities. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
New York-based SecondMarket Thursday announced that the company was adding former U.S. Congressman Scott Murphy to its board of directors. Murphy, an entrepreneur, was previously managing director at Advantage Capital, a venture capital and small business financing firm. Read more »
Even as we analyze larger trends in VC investments right now, debating if there’s too much money or if it’s going to the right companies, it’s important to note that every VC is different and takes a unique approach to picking and mentoring companies. Read more »
A panel of investors and startup founders speaking at Venture Shift on Thursday debated whether there really is a bubble in venture capital right now, and whether the talent and money in the startup area is directed at solving the best problems. Read more »
Aryaka, a startup offering cloud-based wide area network optimization raised $25 million in Series C funding. The round was led by InterWest Partners and brings Aryaka’s funding to $54 million. As the reliance on clouds and remote working grows, Aryaka is poised to succeed. Read more »
The big health news of the summer will undoubtedly be last week’s Supreme Court decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. But the industry has also made headlines for the major investments in health tech startups. Here’s a look at how it’s tracking so far. Read more »
Eight-figure VC investments don’t show up every day, but website tools firm Jimdo turned it down on principle – even though it knew the decision would make it harder to get to number one. Read more »
Facebook’s meteoric rise and multibillion-dollar valuation may have created an incentive for thousands of entrepreneurs and investors, but veteran venture capitalist Bill Davidow says its philosophy of customer exploitation has also helped distort the values that Silicon Valley technology companies used to hold dear. Read more »
Skype and Lovefilm backer Index Ventures has just added a new €350 million early stage fund to its arsenal, and now plans to use it to back dozens of companies across Europe, America and Israel over the next three years. Read more »
Tandem Entrepreneurs has closed its second fund, raising $32 million, which it will use to further its core mission: investing in early-stage mobile startups. Tandem began in 2007 as a capital fund for mobile startups, but has since expanded to become a small mobile-only accelerator. Read more »
In an interview, Terry Howerton, co-founder of Chicago-area incubator TechNexus, argues that rather than view big companies as innovation killers or community destroyers, it’s time for some segments of the startup and coworking communities to grow up and leverage corporate America. Read more »
Lending Club, the peer-to-peer financing platform, announced Wednesday that it was adding Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker to its board of directors. Read more »
Although the majority of API attention has centered on consumer Web services, an emerging cadre of startups are focused on infrastructure and business processes. Robin Vasan, managing director at the venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, gives an overview of the potential infrastructure categories and disruptive companies. Read more »
After raising $230 million in venture capital and developing LED lighting components for a decade, Bridgelux in Livermore, Calif., is making a technology transition to drive down costs. The company is now counting on its partnership with Toshiba to make this transition a success. Read more »
The Windy City is famous for one big giant startup Groupon, but the folks at Chicago’s newest incubator Catapult believe there will be many more, and — for a short while at least — it hopes to play host to the next big Web sensations from the Midwest. Read more »
The cult of Kickstarter and the looming promise of the JOBS Act, have presented an opportunity that Fundable wants to fill. The service, which is part of Virtucon Ventures debuted today with five projects and a goal of helping entrepreneurs raise capital for their businesses. Read more »
According to some doomsayers, innovation is dead and Silicon Valley is just a muck pond where social media companies breed and reproduce like mosquitoes. That’s not entirely true, but the face of innovation has changed. Cloud computing has made innovation something anyone can do. Read more »
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten wants to plug Pinterest in to purchasing, after leading a $100 million investment in the social pinboard curator. Read more at paidContent »
New York-based Internet company Betaworks is announcing today that, along with Glam CFO Bruce Jaffe, it is making a “significant” investment in Stockholm-based, visual RSS reader Bloglovin. Read more »
Fotolia is taking a $150 million private investment as Shutterstock goes public to raise $115 million. Coincidence? Crowdsourced-photo rivals are bulking up to challenge microstock’s market-leading iStockPhoto. Read more at paidContent »
Konstantin Guericke, a co-founder of LinkedIn, has become a Silicon Valley-based venture partner for the Berlin firm Earlybird, giving its investments a direct link to Californian capital and business networks. Is this a turning point for German startups? Read more »
Carter Bales, the co-founder and Chairman of private equity firm NewWorld Capital Group, is driven by dire pessimism and over-whelming optimism that converge through his livelihood: environmental investing. Read more »
Riding a new wave of growth, analytics startup Mixpanel today announced that it had raised $10 million in new funding from Andreesen Horowitz and other investors. Read more »
For the past couple of decades, venture capitalists have had the upper hand. They’ve had the funding and most of the power in the startup ecosystem. But, said venture capitalist Fred Wilson, as that balance of power shifts, VCs need to rethink their role. Read more »
The investment team at the Kauffman Foundation believes the venture capital industry is broken and they — or rather investors in VC funds — are partially to blame. The report condemns venture firms for being to big, not delivering returns and not adjusting to the times. Read more »
Ask a VC about big data and she will probably tell you about visualization of the user interface. We’re talking about intuitive UIs that let users visually work with data using charts and tools, not algorithms. It’s hard to do right, but the payoff could be huge. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Over the last few years, European venture capitalists have seen their biggest sources of investment change dramatically — and now governments provide more cash for the continent’s startups than anyone else. How’s that for a bailout? Read more »
Venture capitalists greeted the new year with fewer overall deals and dollars invested during the first quarter, but in the rapid-fire world of investing in web startups this data is about as relevant as a day-old newspaper. In a post-Instagram world the tides have changed. Read more »
Higher education costs have skyrocketed by over 430 percent since the 1980s. Now two startups aim to make college courses more affordable. Coursera offers free online courses from universities like Stanford and Princeton. And a new tool from Akademos helps professors find less expensive — or free — textbooks for their courses. Read more at paidContent »
Index Ventures co-founder Neil Rimer has helped steer his company to success with investments in Skype, Betfair and many more. He explains why he’s obsessed with education and marketplaces — and why he wishes he’d invested in Kickstarter. Read more »
French business networking site Viadeo has long played second fiddle to LinkedIn. But with a fresh round of funding in the bank, the company plans on becoming the world’s leading player thanks to growth in countries like China, Russia and Brazil. Read more »
VC firm Earlybird has raised a $100m fund that will be largely focused on Berlin — and partner Ciarán O’Leary says the German capital could become as important as Silicon Valley by playing to its single-minded strengths. Read more »
Based on statistical modeling, Rags Srinivasan believes there is only a .25 percent chance that Pinterest is making enough money to support its $200 million valuation. Here, Srinivasan considers all the scenarios — not just the most optimistic ones — to show us how much Pinterest earns. Read more »
Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies — a significant backer of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other Silicon Valley darlings — is raising a new $1 billion fund. So where will this tranche of money go? Read more »
PeerIndex, a service started by a former Reuters (NYSE: TRI) and Economist journalist to measure Twitter users’ influence in topics, is taki… Read more at paidContent »
Orange and Publicis hit the headlines this week for underpinning a €300m venture fund targeting European startups. But in fact only a third of that money is actually fresh funding that will end up in the hands of continental businesses. Read more »
A prominent local VC has called for German venture capitalists to band together and create a seed platform, but others say the likes of Kickstarter and AngelList need to appear naturally and organically if they are to work Read more »
Cloud computing provider Virtustream, a hot player in the enterprise cloud space, with a cloud platform designed for mission-critical and heavy-duty enterprise applications such as SAP, has raised another $15 million in investment capital. The money brings Virtustream’s total funding to $75 million. Read more »
Internet TV box service Roku is prepared to take on a big and high-risk new investment to support its international ambitions. Read more at paidContent »
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