Investment News

New York’s Zelkova Ventures tries an evergreen approach to funding startups

Investing in startups is a funny business. Sometimes venture capitalists find themselves with a company that is growing and profitable. But if there is no opportunity for an IPO or acquisition by a bigger competitor, there may not be an exit on the table that allows the VCs to get a return on the money they invested which satisfies the backers who support their fund.

“It’s a broken system in some ways,” says Jay Levy, … Continue Reading

Social enterprise startup Igloo raises a cold $5M

Did you know that if you add “social” and “enterprise” and “mobile” and “cloud,” you get $5 million dollars? It’s crazy!

The crazy kids at Igloo Software have signed a $5 million dollar funding deal; it’s the company’s second institutional round, with money coming in from RBC Venture Partners (the “RBC” stands for Royal Bank of Canada) and the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund (OETF).

Igloo makes social intranets and extranets for businesses, so the company … Continue Reading

“Dreamy” mobile startup closes “hefty” $3.25M seed round

955 Dreams, a mobile publishing startup, has sealed a sweet deal: $3.25 million from some of Silicon Valley’s buzziest angel investors and venture capitalists.

The funding comes from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups and former TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington’s CrunchFund.

Also participating were UK mobile funding firm m8 Capital, Kapor Capital, and Felicis Ventures.

The iOS shop has been focusing their energies on two of the more fun and exciting disciplines available in the world as … Continue Reading

HelloWallet keeps track of your money, raises $12M

HelloWallet, an online service that encourages you to spend your money more wisely, announced Thursday it has raised $12 million in its second round of funding.  Investment research company Morningstar, Inc. and TD Fund led the round.

“HelloWallet helps workers figure out how to spend money, focusing on savings and reducing spending. We give you financial advice to manage day to day expenses,” Matt Fellowes, HelloWallet chief executive and founder, told VentureBeat in an interview.… Continue Reading

Intel buys RealNetworks patents for $120M

Intel has purchased 190 patents and 170 patent applications from RealNetworks for $120 million.

The patents include technology invented to create next-generation video codecs, which encode or decode video so that it can be sent over networks efficiently. It’s one more example of a giant company “armoring up” to deal with potential patent wars in the future.

As part of the deal, Intel will acquire RealNetworks’ foundational streaming media patents, expanding Intel’s diverse portfolio of … Continue Reading

Rhapsody acquires Napster’s European assets for Spotify battle boost

Rhapsody has just announced it’s buying Napster’s business in Europe.

Rhapsody’s European expansion begins today with the acquisition of Napster International, Napster’s European subscription music service. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rhapsody will own and operate the Napster service in Germany and the United Kingdom, and the company sees it as a opportunity to expand its reach in that geographical area.

“The acquisition of Napster and its subscriber base in the UK … Continue Reading

Guess which Silicon Valley powerhouse is raising $1.5 billion?

Venture capital megafirm Andreessen-Horowitz is likely in the process of doing some fundraising.

Sources say the firm could be looking for up to $1.5 billion — an amount that would almost double the amount of current funds it has under management. Currently, the firm holds three funds totally $1.75 billion.

Two anonymous sources told the New York Times the funding from this alleged new raise would be divided into a $900 million fund and a … Continue Reading

Startup Intercom nabs $1M from Biz Stone and other prominent angels

Intercom, a customer relationship management-focused startup, has raised $1 million from a bevy of Silicon Valley’s trendiest angel investors.

Yeah, we said trendy. Rather than taking checks from a slew of long-time angels in the area, Intercom has turned to newer investors, most of whom were relatively recently on founding teams, themselves. Participants in this angel round include Biz Stone, formerly of Twitter; Huddle founder Andy McLoughlin; Flowtown founder Dan Martell; and Dave McClure’s 500 … Continue Reading

Social ad startup 33Across buys Tynt, taps into the power of copy and paste

Like a match made in social data heaven, social ad targeting startup 33Across announced today that it has snapped up Tynt Multimedia, a company that helps publishers track reader engagement through the age old technique of copy and paste.

Combined with its own extensive data on brands, 33Across says that the acquisition gives it “the largest social and brand graph in the world,” thanks to the 500,000 publishers using Tynt’s technology. Tynt alone reaches 1.25 … Continue Reading

Skyfire gets $8M to stream mobile videos without any wait

Mobile browsing and video optimization company Skyfire announced today it has raised $8 million in its third round of funding.  The round was facilitated by Verizon Investments, Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Skyfire gained popularity as an alternative to the stock browsers on Android and iOS devices. Since Apple does not provide Flash support for its mobile devices, many people flocked to Skyfire’s browser apps to watch in-browser Flash videos on their … Continue Reading

Guidewire Software seeks $115M IPO, debuts tomorrow

Insurance software company Guidewire will begin trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tomorrow. It has raised $115 million in the initial public offering by selling 8.85 million shares at $13 apiece. That’s well above the 7.5 million shares at $10 to $12 that the company had planned.

Guidewire provides software targeted at insurance companies that provides property, workers’ compensation and casualty insurance to its customers. Its software product includes a web-based claims … Continue Reading

Yahoo revenue down 13 percent in Q4, CEO says better execution needed

Yahoo‘s revenue dropped 13 percent compared to the same period last year, the company reported today. In its quarterly earnings’ announcement Tuesday, Yahoo reported $1,324 million in GAAP revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011, while costs increased by 10 percent. Excluding traffic acquisition costs from Yahoo’s partnership with Microsoft and others, the company brought in $1,169 million — down just three percent compared to last year.

The numbers aren’t very surprising as Yahoo continues … Continue Reading

Movie backed by Irish tech investors is nominated for an Oscar

Are you an early-stage, technology investor? Is there a certain lack of glamour and red carpets in your life? Then follow in the footsteps of early-stage tech investors Lough Shore Investments who partly funded a short film called “The Shore”, which has just been nominated for an Oscar.

“The Shore” is directed by screenwriter and director Terry George who was previously Oscar-nominated for his screenplays for “In the Name of the Father” and “Hotel Rwanda“.… Continue Reading

Freelance marketplace Elance secures $16M in funding

Elance, a freelance marketplace that connects clients and freelancers, announced Tuesday it has raised $16 million in funding. Stripes Group led the funding, with participation from New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“Elance has experienced tremendous growth over the past two years by enabling access to a flexible and independent online workforce,” CEO Fabio Rosati said in statement to VentureBeat, ”The additional funding will allow us to continue to build our platform … Continue Reading

Founder of Facebook for Russia donates $1M to Wikipedia at DLD

The founder of Russia’s largest social network proclaimed his love and support for Wikipedia today by promising to donate $1 million to the not-for-profit organization while onstage at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich.

Twenty-seven year-old entrepreneur Pavel Durov founded Russian social network VKontakte, or VK for short, five years ago. The site has grown to 33 million daily unique visitors, 17 million monthly active users and a total of 160 million registered users. … Continue Reading

Choose your own sale with LuxeYard, launching today

Flash sale and daily deals sites have gained a lot of popularity in the last year with Groupon, Gilt, and Fab.com bringing consumers discounted products and services.

LuxeYard, a new flash sale site focused on luxury home furnishings and decor, delivers a fresh feature to the daily deal market: it lets its customers request which items they want offered at a discount. The site launched Monday evening with $3.5 million in funding from private investors.… Continue Reading

Semiconductor startup Avalanche closes $11.5M funding round

A startup is hard at work making a new type of high-speed memory that stores data even when the power is turned off. Avalanche Technology, a company focused on Spin Programmable Memory (SPMEM) non-volatile memory class storage solutions (not pictured), has raised $11.5 million in a new round of funding.

This is the semiconductor startup’s third round of institutional funding.

Previous investors Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Thomvest Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Leader Ventures all … Continue Reading

Intel buys QLogic’s Infiniband networking business for $125M

Intel announced today it is to acquire the InfiniBand networking business from QLogic for $125 million in cash.

The acquisition is a bid by Intel to increase its share of the high-performance computing market. Infiniband is a fabric technology, or one that can connect speedy computers and other devices such as storage inside high-performance data centers.

QLogic said the deal will help it focus on growth opportunities in the data center, including enterprise Ethernet and … Continue Reading