More Apps, You Say? Appcelerator Raises $15 Million For Development Service
The growth of mobile apps — there are well over one million on the market already — shows no sign of slowing down, and Appcelerator, which… Read more at paidContent »
Kleiner Perkins wants startups to net top-notch summer interns
Exclusive: There are lots of great summer internships at Silicon Valley startups. But top engineering students often pass them up for the money and name recognition companies like Google can provide. So Kleiner Perkins has partnered with InternMatch to attract top-flight students to its portfolio companies. Read more »
Sincerely secures $3M funding, debuts greeting card line
Sincerely, the San Francisco startup aimed at making it easier to get physical copies of the photos taken on mobile phones, is announcing Wednesday it has secured $3 million in Series A funding. The company is also set to launch a holiday card app, “Sincerely Ink.” Read more »
Peter Thiel launches Breakout Labs to fund bold early-stage research
Peter Thiel, the tech industry magnate known for co-founding PayPal and being an early investor in Facebook, is launching a new program called Breakout Labs aimed at funding cutting edge technology research ideas. It’s a big effort, but Thiel himself is known for bold ideas. Read more »
Must be Halloween. Sevin Rosen trying to rise from the dead
Sevin Rosen is trying to raise a tenth fund, according to Al Schuele, a partner with the Texas-based venture capital firm. Sevin Rosen hasn’t been big since about 2006, when it stopped raising money on a proposed fund and returned money back to investors. Read more »
PlayJam Takes $5 Million To Go Global With Its Connected TV Games
PlayJam, which distributes its own and now third-party casual games to TVs in Europe, is taking a $5 million first investment round to help… Read more at paidContent »
WPP Buying Further In To Chinese Online Ad Measurement
photo: Yodel Anecdotal
Chinese digital ads measurement firm Moment Systems is taking a $20 million second round investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers… Read more at paidContent »
Phorm Raises Yet Another £30 Million, Valuing Itself At £100 Million
photo: barkaway
Phorm, the controversial targeted web ads company that fled to Brazil after privacy concerns blocked its domestic UK fortunes, is taking yet… Read more at paidContent »
At Qwiki, trouble over company’s future
Qwiki, the San Francisco-based search startup, may be going through a rough patch. Qwiki’s two top technical executives and at least one early engineer left abruptly last week, sources say, after major disagreements with the CEO over the company’s future product strategy. Read more »
Cardpool acquired by Safeway’s gift card division
Cardpool, the San Francisco-based startup that lets people buy, sell and trade unused gift cards, has been acquired by Blackhawk Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of grocery giant Safeway. Details about the deal are scarce, but Cardpool co-founder Anson Tsai says his investors “are quite happy.” Read more »
Liftopia closes on $1.3M to help you hit the slopes
Liftopia, a website that sells discounted ski lift tickets and alpine resort packages, has closed on $1.3 million in new funding. The five-year-old company, which was founded by former Hotwire executives, says it plans to add deals on summertime “mountain-related activities” to make more year-round revenue. Read more »
VC funding dips, and seed investments nosedive
Although Silicon Valley has generally fared better than many other parts of the world, the venture capital industry is not immune to the macro-economic slowdown. In the third quarter of 2011, VC funding fell 12 percent in dollars and 14 percent in deals compared to Q2. Read more »
Crowdsourced Navigation App Waze Takes $30 Million To Launch In China
Remember the days when GPS satellite navigation apps were one of the most expensive categories of mobile apps? Some still have premium price… Read more at paidContent »
So, is venture money drying up or blowing up?
One report says venture capital firms are investing more now than in recent years, but another says startups aren’t seeing enough money. So is the system healthy or sick? Perhaps it depends on where you think investors should be putting their cash — and why. Read more »
LocalResponse Raises $5 Million For ‘Check-In’ Ads
LocalResponse, the “check-in” ad network formerly known as Buzzd, has raised $5 million to build up its sales team as it tries to attract ag… Read more at paidContent »
Is Consolidation In Mobile Ads Overrated? Madvertise Raises $10 Million
photo: Flickr / Tracy O
We have seen some evidence of consolidation in mobile advertising, but if anything, there seem to be even more signs of investors looking to… Read more at paidContent »
The Diamond Age 2.0: De Beers opens Silicon Valley VC arm
Can diamonds be a geek’s best friend? De Beers, the global diamond conglomerate, thinks so. Element Six, a De Beers subsidiary focused on manufacturing synthetic diamonds, has opened a new venture capital office in Silicon Valley to “proselytize” the use of diamond material in tech. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Green IT Q3: Solar stumbles while car sharing zooms ahead
The trials and tribulations of the solar industry dominated the third quarter as warnings about a storm of dangerous market forces in the industry finally reached an outcome with Solyndra’s bankruptcy. But not all was dismal for the cleantech industry during the quarter. Car sharing continues to reduce resource consumption, and much capital flowed to that sector. On the data center side of the industry, Google provided insight into exactly how much energy the tech giant uses, as well as the carbon footprint of its data centers. Companies mentioned in this report include Solyndra, Zipcar, Airbnb and Silver Spring Networks. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Startup Fastly offers radical new CDN using flash memory
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
Fastly, a startup created this year, is turning the economics of delivering content on it’s head with a content delivery network comprised of solid state drives. By placing two servers packed with SSDs in customers’ data centers, Fastly can speed up the load times. Read more »
Halo Networks Gets £1.6 Million First Round To Offload Mobile Data To WiFi
The high cost of mobile data — not just for consumers but for mobile operators facing huge traffic on their networks with the rise of smart… Read more at paidContent »
Ad Optimizer Yieldex Raises $10 Million From Hearst, Amazon
Yieldex, which offers services designed to protect publishers’ pricing from the the downward pressure often brought by ad exchanges and ad n… Read more at paidContent »
myGengo lands $5.25M for online translation that really works
myGengo, a startup that provides customized language translation services, has taken raised $5.25 million in new funding. myGengo is unique because it’s priced competitively — less than half the average price of professional translation — but its translations are made completely by humans, with no machine translation. Read more »
TechMediaNetwork Raises $33 Million For Acquisitions
photo: Corbis / Don Mason
Tech and science publisher TechMediaNetwork has raised $33 million in a second round as it looks to add its content roster with a series of… Read more at paidContent »
The Morning Lowdown 09-26-11
» Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) Secures Streaming Deal With DreamWorks (NYT)
» Mediabank Merges With Donovan; Combined Company… Read more at paidContent »
Quantance gets $11M for boosting battery life
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 »
What can startups do if the euro topples?
With Europe’s currency on the brink of collapse, is there anything startups and investors can do to avoid risking their businesses? We asked some of the continent’s top venture capitalists what they are doing to try and sidestep the crisis. Read more »
Love It Or Hate It, Business Insider Raises $7 Million Round
Financial and media news online site network Business Insider has raised $7 million for what founder and editor Henry Blodget says will be a… Read more at paidContent »
Adchemy Gets Microsoft Backing; Krux Funding Expands Ties To IDG
photo: Corbis / Tim Tadder
With audience buying becoming the primary focus on online ad spending, analytics is likely to remain a hot funding area for some time. And t… Read more at paidContent »
Adchemy nabs $61M in Microsoft-led funding round
Adchemy, the six-year-old online ad technology company, has raised $61 million in a Series E funding round led by Microsoft. This round brings the total venture capital invested in Adchemy to $116 million, Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala told me in an interview on Tuesday. Read more »
Top10.com Scores $3.5 Million For Its Website Of Lists
How much does it cost to make a website full of other people’s lists? $3.5 million, if you are Top10.com. Read more at paidContent »
How Stormpulse made more money on fewer customers
What if five years into your startup, you decided to move from a revenue-generating consumer business to sell the same product to enterprises for ten times the price? That’s exactly what Stormpulse did, and it’s still signing up customers and breaking even. Read more »
Africa’s Umuntu Gets $1 Million To Build Web And Mobile Portals
Of all the markets, Africa is perhaps talked about least in a digital media context. Now Umuntu Media, which operates the iNamibia and iZamb… Read more at paidContent »
Mobile Ad Network InMobi Takes Huge $200 Million Investment From Softbank
Very big news today for the mobile advertising world, and a major boost for the mobile ad network InMobi: the company has just announced tha… Read more at paidContent »
MyVideoRights Takes Money And Changes Name For Global Device Assault
The online video rights exploitation company helmed by former The Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie’s son has raised £2.75 million to fund develo… Read more at paidContent »
Meet Valhalla Partners’ new storage whiz kid
In a Silicon Valley technology landscape where young hotshots tend to make their marks with innovative new startups, Farah Giga is different. After nine years in various mangement positions at Hitachi Data Systems and HP, Giga, now 27, has joined Valhalla Partners as a principal. Read more »
Community Writing Site Wattpad Raises $3.5 Million In First Round Funding
Wattpad, an online writing community that lets users share and collaborate on stories across platforms including mobile apps, has closed a $… Read more at paidContent »
Adfonic Raises £4.7 Million To Grow Its Mobile Ads Auction Business
If you think Android is a fragmented marketplace, take a look at mobile advertising: while there are clearly a few very big players like Goo… Read more at paidContent »
Subscriber Content
Solyndra and the future of cleantech investing
When all was said and done, solar panel maker Solyndra raised over a billion dollars, making it No. 2 on the list of companies that have raised the most equity, according to a 2010 list from Dow Jones VentureWire. But unlike Facebook or MetroPCS, two other names on ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
