AllThingsD reported this morning that Yahoo’s board approved a $1.1 billion all-cash acquisition of microblogging site Tumblr.

ATD had earlier stated that the board would be meeting on Sunday to consider the acquisition. Yahoo plans to announce the acquisition on Monday, according to “numerous sources” contacted by ATD.

“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” a Yahoo spokesperson told VentureBeat this morning.

Yahoo has scheduled a mysterious event for Monday morning in New York, to announce “something special.” If that “something” is the Tumblr acquisition, it would be quite surprising, since the event was announced before the board reportedly confirmed the acquisition. But it would also be a convenient venue to announce a major deal like this.

If it pans out, this would be Yahoo’s largest and perhaps riskiest acquisition since former Google executive Marissa Mayer assumed the chief executive job. By one metric, Tumblr is massive: It hosts 51 billion blog posts, a number that grows by 74 million new posts each day. It draws 216 million visitors globally each month, who collectively generate 16 billion monthly pageviews. That kind of monster traffic puts Tumblr in the ninth position among the most-popular U.S. websites.

However, it generated just $13 million in revenues last year, its first year of revenues, as it slowly began integrating ads into its content stream. The company anticipated making $100 million in revenues this year.

As with Facebook’s acquisition of revenue-less Instagram, the acquisition is less about bringing in a new source of revenue and more about capturing growth and traffic. Yahoo’s traffic, while enormous, has stagnated. It desperately needs a faster-growing property, along with a younger, hipper demographic, and Tumblr would seem to provide both.

That is, if Yahoo doesn’t kill it off or stifle its growth through negligence and mismanagement, as it has done with so many previous acquisitions, including Flickr, Delicious, Geocities, Upcoming, and more.

Top photo: Tumblr founder David Karp is about to be a very rich man. Source: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat.

The popular and fast-growing blog service is mulling a $1.1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo. But while the massive blogging powerhouse only pulled in $13 million in revenue in 2012, and raised $125 million at a lower $800 million valuation, Tumblr CEO David Karp feels $1.1 billion is too little.

I guess it depends what yardstick you use.

If you look at an Instagram-style deal, which was originally around a billion dollars but eventually, due to Facebook’s stock market woes, came in a little lower, he might be right. But that deal had one thing going for it that Tumblr does not.

Instagram chief executive and co-founder Kevin Systrom had multiple suitors, while Tumblr only has one.

That’s because, as Forbes reveals, Yahoo is currently negotiating under a lockup. So even though Facebook, Microsoft, and potentially other acquirers are interested, Yahoo has at least a period of time in which it is the only one on the dance card.

In addition Tumblr, which famously hates advertising and only started trying to make money after five years in existence, is in a bit of a pickle, as its $125 million in funding is running out, giving the service only a few-month window in which to raise a new round or find a sugar daddy.

That’s likely a strategic error on Karp’s part, who has said that advertising “really turns our stomachs.”

Tumblr only started to get serious about ad revenue in mid-2012, and is only planning to roll out its third major ad product — pay per view, in which you pay to get others to view — sometime later this year. Being more aggressive on monetization would have given Tumblr more runway to make a leisurely decision about an acquisition, or made the company more attractive to investors if it tried to raise another funding round.

There’s no question, however, that Tumblr is a traffic powerhouse. It ranks ninth on the list of most-popular U.S sites, and with 217 million global monthly unique visitors and 74 million million posts each and every day, the site is both huge and fast-growing. Few companies could monetize its 108 million blogs, 51 billion posts, and 16 billion monthly pageviews as well as Yahoo.

So while Yahoo is likely to come up a little, Karp could pick worse partners. And he might do well to finalize a deal sooner rather than later.

Readers, I think we need to talk. Communication is really important, and I’m just feeling like I need more ways to connect with you.

Good thing investors dumped millions into communications-based companies today. We saw $10 million go to a texting app that competes with companies such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Texting over anything but data is so passé anyway.

On the flip side of communication, Skyword got $6.7 million to communicate your brand through stories. PR through content is wildly popular now-a-days, but do people actually trust what they’re reading?

For more funding news as it happens, subscribe to our Deals Channel feed. You can also follow VentureBeat on Twitter, @venturebeat, to view funding news as it’s published.

Check out more about these companies below:

MessageMe nabs $10M from Greylock, Google, & others to take on WhatsApp

Better watch out, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Hot messaging app MessageMe has just raised $10 million in its first round of funding, the company confirmed today. MessageMe offers iOS and Android apps that send rich messages to friends, family, and groups. The app also lets you share YouTube videos, iTunes tracks, voice recordings, emoticons, and other things you might not share over traditional text messaging. MessageMe has risen quickly in status; it only just raised seed funding about a month ago. At that time, the service said it had one million users. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Skyword takes off with $6.7M for content marketing

Consumers these days expect their favorite brands to tell a story, and Skyword helps them tell it. Skyword has announced closing $6.7 million in growth financing for its content marketing solutions. This Boston-based startup provides agencies, brands, media, and retail customers with a platform to publish content and tools to distribute it effectively. It has a database of more than 20,000 professional writers that publishers can use to recruit and manage freelancers and keep track of workflow. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Doc talking via Shutterstock

Nevahold is a platform where people rally together to get the attention of large companies. Users compose a “shout” and share it with the community to rally support for their cause. Other members of the community can join in the action by sharing on their social media accounts. The ultimate goal is that enough people participate to elicit a response.

“In today’s culture of huge, faceless companies, chances are high that you’ve hit the hair-pulling, mind-numbing, high-pitched-screeching frustration of overpaying for services, buying cheap quality products, being hit with hidden fees, dealing with the worst of customer service skills, or not even getting through to customer service and staying on an endless elevator-music hold cycle,” said cofounder Kena Amoah to VentureBeat. “Nevahold allows consumers to crowd source their social media accounts to harness their power and increase their influence when reaching out to a company.”

Consumers are increasingly turning to social media as a means to express their gripes, grievances, and appreciation for products and services. On the other end, businesses across the board are using social media to connect with consumers and for customer service support. Nevahold’s goal is to give consumers as much efficacy as possible when reaching out to these companies and is based on the principle of “strength in numbers.”

On Nevahold, people send their shout to a company’s social media contact and wait 30 minutes for a response. A shout can include photos, videos, or be a simple comment. If the company is radio silent, then advocates start to retweet an share the shout until the company responds. If the company still doesn’t respond, the question is shared one all of Nevahold’s 12 social media channels.

Nevahold gives each company a customer service score based on their response rates and time. The compare tool helps consumer see how different companies fare side-by-side. There is also a campaign feature that consumers can use to petition for a change in the company’s policy or service.

Amoah said that during beta testing, Nevahold has helped resolve 23,990 questions and complaints in the airline, wireless, and consumer electronics industry and had a 91.5 percent response rate. It recently helped students traveling to a conference stand up against American Airlines and against Barclays U.K.

The three founders met at the Meltwater School of Technology in Ghana. Meltwater Foundation has invested $90,000. Competitors include Gripevine, Gri.pe and Publikdemand.

This Boston-based startup provides agencies, brands, media, and retail customers with a platform to publish and effectively distribute content. It has a database of more than 20,000 professional writers that publishers can use to recruit and manage freelancers and keep track of workflow.

“The art of content marketing is in the beauty and quality of the writing itself – its voice and ability to speak to an audience in a personal and compelling way,” the company said on its site. “To excel at the science of web content creation, you need a technology framework to adhere to the 3 Ses of successful content.”

The three in question are “searchable, snackable, and shareable.” Once content is created, Skyword recommends keywords and suggestions for SEO and provides built-in tools for sharing across social media. Skyword also includes analytics so publishers can track marketing and writer performance, social media metrics, and search engine rankings and make editorial decisions accordingly.

Clients include IBM, MarketWatch, and AutoTrader.com. Cox Media Group led this round which will expand the team and help the company meet increasing customer and partner needs, “as content marketing becomes an integral part of brand marketing initiatives.” Skyword was founded in 2010. This brings its total capital raised to $12 million.

Photo Credit: Mike Cogh/Flickr

Better watch out, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Hot messaging app MessageMe has just raised $10 million in its first round of funding, the company confirmed today.

MessageMe offers iOS and Android apps that send rich messages to friends, family, and groups. The app also lets you share YouTube videos, iTunes tracks, voice recordings, emoticons, and other things you might not share over traditional text messaging. MessageMe has risen quickly in status; it only just raised seed funding about a month ago. At that time, the service said it has 1 million users.

It will take more momentum on MessageMe’s part to displace WhatsApp’s traction. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum recently told the world his app is “bigger than Twitter” and is now processing 8 billion inbound messages a day and over 12 billion outbound messages a day.

MessageMe’s new funding first leaked out through an SEC filing. The round was led by Greylock Partners’ John Lilly, with participation by Google Ventures, True Ventures, First Round Capital, SVAngel, Resolut.vc, and Social+Capital Partnership. Every firm that participated in MessageMe’s $1.9 million seed round participated in this round except for Andreessen Horowitz.

Top image via MessageMe

Today, not that much has changed.

After debuting close to $40 and cratering to just under $18 in August, the stock has somewhat stabilized in the $25 region, down 30 percent from its opening-day high. And along the way, the story emerged of how Facebook tried to hide some of the mobile risk inherent in its business and how the company panicked and botched its IPO by using vague positive language in its public prospectus and, apparently, specific negative information about slowing revenue growth to institutional investors privately.

Not to mention the $100 million paid to banks to stabilize the stock — on top of $176 million in IPO fees — for efforts that ultimately failed. And technical glitches that cost the NASDAQ $62 million in compensatory fees.

All of which negatively affected the overall IPO market.

That all said, however, Facebook has seemingly nicely recovered from the disaster — at least from a business fundamentals perspective. Revenue growth was strong in its latest quarterly earnings release, with the company booking $1.46 billion in revenue for Q1 2013, compared to about $1 billion a year ago. More importantly, mobile was significantly up, accounting for 30 percent of ad revenues, and Facebook singlehandedly accounted for 6.5 percent of all online ad dollars spent in the U.S.

Not exactly Google numbers, but pretty good nevertheless.

And the company has massively beefed up its advertising options. It’s now posting retargeted ads right in the news feed, once sacrosanct territory. And in a move aimed directly at advertising giant Google, Facebook has launched a self-serve tool that allows advertisers to target its users based on what they actually buy and want to buy offline … which is a significant move to targeting the intent graph that Google hits so well by virtue of being a search engine, but Facebook has often missed since its visitors are on the site to meet and greet people. In addition, as soon as July, Facebook will be rolling out 15-second video ads in the news feed, a product that it will be charging major brands millions of dollars for.

All of which is having an effect.

The consensus recommendation for Facebook is currently a buy, with a price target of $34. Most analysts are in the Strong Buy category, with few or none in the dreaded Underperform or Sell slots. And in the past four weeks, analysts have revised their earnings estimates upward by a factor of 6 to 1.

So there’s a lot of positive in Facebook’s future, and there’s a ton of potential. But it’s still challenging when analysts compare Facebook stock with other internet high-fliers like LinkedIn or Yelp, which rose 148 percent and 48 percent in their first years, respectively.

But at least it’s better than Groupon and Zynga, both down around 75-80 percent.

And, I would argue, while there are a ton of challenges and many very significant competitors — primarily Google — the future for Facebook is bright.

Even if the public start was a stubbed toe.

AirWatch, which helps companies manage employee’s mobile devices, raised another $25 million in a follow-on to its first round of funding today because the $200 million it received in February just wasn’t quite enough.

Today’s funding was led by Accel Parterns. The $200 million round it got three months ago was led by Insight Venture Partners.

AirWatch makes a suite of mobile security products used by customers such as Delta, Lowe’s, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It covers a range of different IT needs such as managing not only the phones themselves, but the apps, emails, and other content on those phones. It covers Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone, and other devices and can be tailored by industry.

The company’s goals with this addition are the same as those it had when it took on the original amount: expand globally, and beef up its sales team. It also looks like AirWatch wants to branch out with new research and development. This funding gives it the resources to do so.

What likely happened is Accel Partners wanted in on this company and offered up some extra cash. Accel is a very well-known venture firm that has invested in such companies as Facebook, Spotify, Rovio, and mobile security company Lookout Mobile.

AirWatch was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Atlanta.

Man catching money image via Shutterstock

As the one writing about the funding news AND going to see Star Trek on day 1, does that make me queen of the nerds? Probably not, but a girl can dream.

SAP boosts startup fund by 2.6X to stimulate big data innovation

SAP is betting big on startups. And big data. The business software behemoth is more than doubling its commitment to the SAP HANA Real Time Fund, going from $155 million to $405 million, to support innovation surrounding real-time applications and big data. The SAP HANA fund launched in 2012 and primarily makes investments in early stage venture capital funds and startups building off SAP’s technology. Read more on VentureBeat.

Airwatch adds $25M into its coffers, because $200M isn’t enough

AirWatch, which helps companies manage employee’s mobile devices, raised another $25 million in a follow-on to its first round of funding today because the $200 million it received in February just wasn’t quite enough.  The round was led by Accel Partners. The Atlanta-based company makes mobile security software that manages devices, apps, email, and other content. It’s customers include Delta and Lowe’s. Read more on VentureBeat. 

MicroVentures doles out $16M in investments while it ‘patiently waits’ for the SEC

MicroVentures has a powerful pitch for startups: We’ll help you raise money. The Austin-based company helps accredited investors pool their cash together (usually somewhere between $1,000 and $30,000 per person) to fund early-stage startups like Ribbon and Medigram. For investors, it’s the opportunity to fork over as little as $1,000 but still get in early alongside more seasoned angel investors. MicroVentures has reached $16 million in investments today and claims to have surpassed any other equity-based crowdfunding platform. Read more on VentureBeat. 

Pebble raises $15M, launches SDK update for better smartwatch apps

After raising more than $10 million on Kickstarter, smartwatch maker Pebble announced today that it has received $15 million in first round funding from Charles River Ventures. That’s a pretty heft sum for a company that was initially shot down by VCs, a blow that led to the Kickstarter campaign. After nabbing around 85,000 orders on Kickstarter and successfully kicking off Pebble shipments, it’s not surprising to see investors taking a second look. Pebble says the funding will let it expand its software engineering team, scale for demand, and grow its open development platform. Read more on VentureBeat.

Marqeta raises $14M to bring ‘Starbucks-type loyalty to every merchant’

Loyalty and payments startup Marqeta has raised $14 million and announced that it will power the Facebook Card. Marqeta’s approach to e-commerce encourages consumers to make their purchases online to earn rewards from participating retailers. Marqeta keeps tracks of all that information in one place. Consumers save money and retailers gain loyalty. Existing investors Greylock IL and Granite Ventures participated in this round, along with new investor Commerce Ventures. Read more on VentureBeat.

¡Más dinero! BPM solutions provider BonitaSoft raises $13M

BonitaSoft, the business process management (BPM) solutions provider, announced today it has raised $13 million it its third round of funding thus far. The company’s open source software allows for easy business process modelling and implementation. It is based in Southern France. The Series C was led by the French National Fund for Digital Society (FSN PME), a French government initiative that invests in technology companies. Returning investors Ventech, Auriga Partners, and Serena Capital were also involved. Read more on VentureBeat.  

Luvocracy raises $11.5M in venture capital to power social commerce

Social e-commerce site, Luvocracy has raised $11.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, RPM Ventures, XG Ventures, CrunchFund, Marissa Mayer, Ali Pincus, Jim Lanzone, and Tony Robbins. Luvocracy is a San Francisco-based startup that lets you buy products you “luv” based on recommendations from the people you trust. You can also earn rewards if someone buys a product you recommend. Read more on VentureBeat.

EdgeSpring launches with $11M in Series A funding to help simplify analytics 

The “big data” and analytics startup EdgeSpring officially launched today with $11 million in financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightspeed Ventures. The company’s business intelligence and analytics platform enables you to quickly obtain business information from any size, structure or data without having to depend on data analysts or information technology professionals. The platform makes it easy for average users to ask questions about data like financial or user information any time and anywhere across data silos. Read more on VentureBeat. 

I don’t think you’re ready for this Jelly

Biz Stone’s under-the-radar startup has raised money from some very well-known people. In a blog post today, the Twitter founder announced closing a funding round led by Spark Capital with participation from SV Angel. An elite group of individual investors also contributed, including Jack Dorsey, Bono, Reid Hoffman, Steven Johnson, Evan Williams, Al Gore, Greg Yaitanes, and Roya Mahboob. Read more on VentureBeat.

Bitcoin startups get hotter: BitPay nabs $2M from Founders Fund & others

Relatively young Bitcoin startup BitPay has announced it has raised $2 million more in funding to lead the market in Bitcoin payment processing. This follows a $510,000 seed round it raised in January. BitPay specializes in e-commerce, B2B, and enterprise solutions for Becton and it claims processing fees as low as 1 percent with no setup fees. It signed up more than 1,900 new merchants in April, and it claims to sign up about 100 new merchants per day at this point. The new funding was led by Founders Fund, the fund behind the so-called “PayPal Mafia.” Also on the round is Max Keiser’s fund Heisenberg Capital, a London-based fund targeting Bitcoin-focused companies. Read more on VentureBeat.

Ringadoc nabs $700K to bridge the communication gap between doctors & patients

Patients need a better way to communicate with their physicians, and Ringadoc believes it can help. The San Francisco-based startup added another $700,000 to its seed round today, bringing its total funding to $1.9 million.Ringdoc helps doctors separate personal and professional messages, and enables them to triage patients before speaking to them on the phone or in person. Investors include Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion (Ringadoc is currently incubating in Practice Fusion’s offices), Sharon Knight, cofounder of One Medical, the chain of concierge primary care practices, Siemer VC, Telegraph Hill Group, and Dr. Lyle Dennis, the neurology chief at Bon Secours Health System. Read more on VentureBeat.

TheMadVideo raises $500K for video of Steve Job, among other things

TheMadVideo has raised $500K in seed funding for its platform that brands and content creators can use to make video moments taggable and shareable. The technology indexes moments in a video by people, place, things, topics etc…  so brands can pinpoint moments in videos the feature their products and link them to sale pages. The company was founded in Spain and is now based in San Francisco.

Photo Credit: Edward Beaver/Flickr

Data visualization company Tableau Software has raised the price range of its initial public offering to $31 per share.

In a media release, Seattle-based Tableau announced that it has raised $254 million by offering 8.2 million shares at $31, above the revised range of $28 to $30. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 17 under the symbol DATA.

The company originally filed for its IPO in early April. Back in November, we picked it as one of 10 startups leading the way in ‘big data.’

“Our mission is to help people see and understand data,” Tableau’s prospectus says. The company offers products to help technical and nontechnical users create interactive charts and simulations based on raw data. Tableau offers a variety of public, corporate and premium products, and caters to a range of customers.

Source: Tableau

Tableau CEO Christian Chabot

Tableau’s is the latest in a series of high-performing enterprise IPOs, including Workday, Splunk, and Palo Alto Networks, making 2013 the year for business software.

“Data visualization applications like Tableau are ushering in a post-spreadsheet era, threatening to kill Excel as the killer app for desktop analytics,” said data scientist Mike Driscoll, who is also the CEO of Metamarkets.

Still, Tableau faces strong competition from giants like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP as well as startups like Tibco Spotfire. And maybe even Google.

“Our mission, to help people everywhere see and understand data, isn’t all that different from Google’s,” Christian Chabot, the company’s cofounder and chief executive, said in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley are acting as lead joint book-running managers for the offering.

BonitaSoft, the business process management (BPM) solutions provider, announced today it has raised $13 million it its third round of funding thus far. This is good news to fans of the company’s open source software, which allows for easy business process modelling and implementation.

Based in Grenoble (Southern France), the company’s open-source software is available for free download from its website and is offered with three optional subscription packs: teamwork, efficiency, and performance. Each subscription package unlocks new product and support features.

The Series C was led by the French National Fund for Digital Society (FSN PME), a French government initiative that invests in technology companies. Returning investors Ventech, Auriga Partners, and Serena Capital were also involved. The company has raised over $28 million since it was founded in June 2009.

According to the company’s press release, it is planning on using the new capital to expand further expand its business into Latin America, the United States, and Europe. It will be targeting mid and large sized businesses as it attempts to increase its number of clients. Part of this expansion will be the addition of 60 new employees at its San Francisco, Paris, and Grenoble offices.

“We are delighted with the support from the FSN PME fund established by the French government,” said Miguel Valdes Faura, BonitaSoft’s chief executive and cofounder, in the press release.

“The vote of confidence shows the value BonitaSoft brings to the BPM market. Customers have made it known that they want innovative, flexible and cost-effective solutions to improve their business processes, and we will continue to deliver solutions that meet this need,” he said.

BonitaSoft saw sales growth of 130 percent and a 390 percent revenue increase in the United States last year. It has over 600 clients worldwide, including Accenture, DirecTV, Old Dominion University, Teach for America, and Michelin. The company’s open-source BPM solution has been downloaded over 2 million times.

Photo credit: BonitaSoft

Want to call your doctor but can’t abide that awful 1970s call center system and the hour-long wait?

Patients need a better way to communicate with their physicians, and Ringadoc believes it can help. Investors agree; the San Francisco-based startup added another $700,000 to its seed round today, bringing its total funding to $1.9 million.

Startups like One Medical are taking on some of the biggest challenges in health care. But sometimes the right approach is to start small and focus on one specific problem. Ringadoc is laser-focused on building simple tech to bridge the communication gap between doctors and patients.

Ringdoc helps doctors separate personal and professional messages, and enables them to triage patients before speaking to them on the phone or in person. In addition, physicians can access after-hours calls on a smartphone or tablet device anytime through the answering service.

Ringadoc initially developed and launched an app that let patients record video messages ahead of a virtual visit with a physician. But the company has dropped video for now and shifted to phone consultations.

“Ringadoc reduces the human error associated with costly answering services and live operators by allowing the doctor to hear the patient’s issue in their own voice and words,” said CEO and co-founder Jordan Michaels (pictured above, right, with co-founder Micah Grossman).

Michaels said that conversations between patients and doctors are “an instrumental part of the health care conversation” and were “previously overlooked.”

The company claims its cloud-based answering service has now successfully handled over 100,000 calls for practices across the country. The business model is also clear and simple; Ringadoc charges physicians $49 per month.

Investors include Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, Sharon Knight, co-founder of One Medical, the chain of concierge primary care practices, Siemer Ventures, Telegraph Hill Group, and Dr. Lyle Dennis, the neurology chief at Bon Secours Health System.

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The business software behemoth is more than doubling its commitment to the SAP HANA Real Time Fund, going from $155 million to $405 million, to support innovation surrounding real-time applications and big data.

The SAP HANA fund launched in 2012 and primarily makes investments in early stage venture capital funds and startups building off SAP’s technology. HANA, which stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance, is SAP’s next generation in-memory database. It can store up to 500 terabytes of data and execute at high speeds.

Big data technology is hot right now as large corporations and enterprises look for better ways to store, process, and analyze their data. SAP’s head of database and technology product marketing Amit Sinha told VentureBeat in an interview last year that “innovation in data management has stagnated” and there is a $2 trillion market opportunity for HANA and related database management technologies. HANA is SAP’s answer to the big data trend.

In an effort to stimulate innovation, SAP began the SAP Startup Focus program which is like an accelerator program for enterprise and IT companies that are working on predictive analytics products. Innovation can be tough in large companies and initiatives like Startup Focus and the Real Time Fund are intended to keep SAP ahead of the curve, or at least keeping pace with it. The company has actively been acquiring startups to this end as well.

The increased size of the fund is a reflection of the strong interest of entrepreneurs and VCs in participating in the SAP ecosystem. Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson, COO and Managing Director at SAP Ventures, said it is also indicative of a changing venture capital landscape.

“We believe we have a new model for corporate venture the start-up ecosystem is embracing,” she said. “The additional funding allows us to broaden the scope of what the SAP HANA Fund invests in to include all SAP platform technologies, for example, cloud, mobile or analytic technologies as well as HANA.  We will also be able to extend our investment horizon for the SAP HANA Real Time Fund from 3-5 years to 7-10 years. Further, we will hire a business development staff and develop programs and partnership opportunities with the SAP ecosystem that deliver additional business value, like helping companies to grow internationally and exchange insights with industry experts.”

So far the fund has made investments in three startups — Gild, a recruiting solution that helps organizations find developers skilled in big data, FeedZai, a Portuguese startup that provided real-time fraud detection and prevention, and a third unnamed Israeli company. SAP HANA RTF (enough abbreviations for you?) has also committed funds to ten early stage venture capital funds including SV Angel, August Capital, and Data Collective in the Bay Area, and Point Nine and Magma in Berlin and Tel Aviv, respectively.

The fund is managed by SAP Ventures, which also manages a $353 million direct growth fund that invests in growth-stage IT companies. Over the past 15 years, SAP Ventures has invested in more than one hundred companies round the world including LinkedIn, Box, Violin Memory, and Lithium.

Photo Credit: SAP’s president Sanjay Poonen on stage at CloudBeat/Michael O’Connell

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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As research indicates that the U.S. is an increasingly difficult place for foreign founders to come and build companies and founders tell horror stories of the massive challenges they faced dealing with byzantine U.S. immigration policies, Canada is burnishing its reputation as open for business — and open for new residents.

Canada’s new startup visa has received a huge amount of attention in the U.S. as the the global war for talent heats up. Senators such as Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) have tried to address the situation via legislation like the Startup Act 3.0, but that’s a slim hope after deaths of 1.0 and 2.0.

Source: Wikipedia

Jason Kenney, Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism.

The Startup Visa provides immediate permanent residency in Canada if a founder meets just three criteria. An applicant must:

1. Secure an investment from a designated Canadian VC or fund
2. Demonstrate English language proficiency
3. Have at least one year of postsecondary education

This weekend, Canadian member of parliament and Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney is in Silicon Valley promoting his country’s Startup Visa.

We chatted with Kenney about the visa’s goals, his intentions, and the U.S. immigration system.

VentureBeat: What’s the ultimate goal of the Startup Visa?

Jason Kenney: We want a pathway for the world’s best and brightest to come to Canada and to harness that drive and innovation to be at the cutting edge of the modern economy.

VentureBeat: Why are you coming to Silicon Valley right now?

Kenney: The U.S. immigration system is dysfunctional, and it’s really difficult for talented immigrants to stay in the U.S. permanently. I’m coming to further raise the profile of the program and send the message that Canada’s open for business.

If you’re a young startup entrepreneur having trouble renewing your visa, come here! We offer immediate permanent residency.

VentureBeat: What’s the response been so far?

Kenney: There’s been a great amount of interest, but we only opened for applications on April 4, so it’s too early to tell. We will issue up to 2,500 per year, but I don’t anticipate it will be fully subscribed for the first year because it’s still new.

I know there’s a huge pent-up demand in the U.S., and I think the word is going to spread virally: If you want to stay permanently in NA, think of Canada.

VentureBeat: You’re offering permanent residency to anyone in who secures an investment. What about those who fail?

Kenney: Many countries, such as Australia, only offer temporary resident status. In Canada, we’re going to give you the “green card” right up front.

We know full well the rate of failure in startups is high, but if they come up here and don’t succeed, they have demonstrated they they have high human capital. And in the long run, their chances of succeeding and building a successful enterprise are high.

We want Canada to become a magnet for people like that.

VentureBeat: Why is Canada a good place to come build a startup?

Kenney: We have really strong tech sectors in Kitchener/Waterloo, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and a few other places, an increasingly strong venture capital industry, and very well-run industry associations, angel associations.

Plus, we have the lowest business taxes in the developed world, and the strongest fiscal position in the developed world.

In terms of macro-economic terms, that’s important … Canada weathered the storm of the economic downturn better than any other country.

In addition, we have an immigration system that works, which means you have access to global talent … and human capital is even more important than financial capital.

VentureBeat: Any other message for Silicon Valley?

Kenney: While here we’ll be meeting with the CEOs of many major IT companies just to emphasize what a great place Canada is to invest in.

I think we’re really going to kick this into hyperdrive.

photo credit: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via photopin cc

There’s no shortage of money being thrown at digital currency Bitcoin. Last week, Bitcoin wallet startup Coinbase scored $5 million in funding. And this week, both Boost.VC and Liberty City Ventures allocated more funding for Bitcoin-focused startups.

Now relatively young Bitcoin startup BitPay has announced it has raised $2 million more in funding to lead the market in Bitcoin payment processing. This follows a $510,000 seed round it raised in January.

BitPay specializes in e-commerce, B2B, and enterprise solutions for Bitcoin, and it claims processing fees as low as 1 percent with no setup fees. It signed up more than 1,900 new merchants in April, and it claims to sign up about 100 new merchants per day at this point.

The new funding was led by Founders Fund, the fund behind the so-called “PayPal Mafia.”

“We were not looking to raise any capital until later this year, but we could not ignore the opportunity to have Founders Fund involved with BitPay,” BitPay CEO and cofounder Tony Gallippi said in a statement. “There’s no single investment firm we would rather have on our team right now than Founders Fund.”

Also on the round is Max Keiser’s fund Heisenberg Capital, a London-based fund targeting Bitcoin-focused companies.

Bitcoin artwork via Deviantart

So you’ve developed a cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) or medical device that will drastically change the way we deliver health care.

Just a few years ago, you may have faced a prolonged struggle to gain investment. Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, one of the more dynamic new EHR companies, recalls having to use the cash from a motorcycle accident to pay the salaries of key employees. But by 2009 when the Obama administration calling for doctors to shift to electronic health records, investors saw opportunity.

Today, investors are rushing to invest in digital health.  This will be a “record year” for investment in the health care, Rock Health recently predicted. The research shows an uptick in deals in the first quarter of the year and an increase in venture capital.

But will the elite venture capital firms open their check books for you? With our inaugural health conference HealthBeat coming up next Monday and Tuesday (it’s almost sold out, but you may be able to get a ticket still if you move fast), I caught up with Sequoia Capital‘s Warren Hogarth, and Morgenthaler Ventures‘ Missy Krasner to dig deeper into their digital health investment thesis.

VentureBeat: What’s the primary area of health that you’re currently interested in? What’s the future?

Warren Hogarth: One of the key areas is bioinformatics. It’s everything that is enabled by cheap genome sequencing. We’ve made about a half dozen investments to date in the U.S. and Asia. We have also taken a keen interest in the consumer side and health IT. These new technologies will play a role in engaging people in their health in a complete way.

Morgenthaler’s executive in residence, Missy Krasner.

Missy Krasner: A sister theme would be “big data” analytics and business intelligence in health care. There is a tremendous amount of interest in sucking data out of health records and mining data from clinical performance.

Hogarth: We’re talking now about the microbiome, not just the genome. We’re understanding that the microbiome interplays with our health, and we’re seeing a new opportunity for non-invasive treatment and testing.

VentureBeat: Have you addressed the ethical concerns around mining data about the human body?

Hogarth: Patients will have choice and control when it comes to their data. Hopefully, we’ll overcome some of the concerns about the broad misuse of data. The trick is to do it in a de-identified way with a clear process.

Krasner: And in 2014, medical underwriting will be banned so patients won’t be rated based on preexisting conditions. [Medical underwriting is already prohibited for children. -Ed.]

VentureBeat: Are you buying into this “quantified self” trend? Is it empowering for patients to have access to all this data about their health?

Hogarth: I think it’s empowering. I just had my genome sequenced, and my doctor was able to use that information to make a decision regarding my health. Companies like Jawbone are taking reams of data and surfacing it to a physician in a meaningful way.

Krasner: I spent five years at Google Health trying to get patients to engage. We tracked some of the early adopters of Basis, BodyMedia (recently acquired by Jawbone), and other great activity trackers. But there are a couple things that still need to happen. The data that is collected needs to actually be put into nuggets that are actionable. We need to take this data and figure out how to use smart algorithms to provide usable clinical insights. Otherwise we’ll get alert fatigue.

Hogarth: We need to go beyond the “chronically worried well.” We need to make an impact on people who are obese.

Krasner: I did some interesting research by signing up for Weight Watchers. I went to the meetings and subscribed to the mobile product, the device that helps you count activity. It’s a great program but we are still in the stage where patients have to record what they’re eating and put manual data into the app. The next piece of technology will automatically know my patterns. We’ll see a fantastic amount of adoption.

[Editor's note: Krasner will moderate a panel at HealthBeat on the "death" of the personal health record (PHR). That's different from the Electronic Health Record (EHR), which is alive and well and seeing serious innovation. Also at HealthBeat, we'll have executives of the major disruptor EHR companies speaking, from Practice Fusion's Ryan Howard, to the leaders of CareCloud and AthenaHealth).

VentureBeat: Are there areas that you wouldn't invest in?

Hogarth: We don't invest in drug discovery or medical devices that are pre-FDA approval. [Venture capitalists say it's a nuclear winter for medical devices. Read more on that here. -Ed.] It’s too risky, and there is a lack of control. When it comes to devices, I would love to see a culture where things happen in a timely manner.

VentureBeat: What’s the one big health care transformation that you’re most excited about?

Krasner: The one area we haven’t talked about is the new insurance models for health. Patients are being asked to pay more out of pocket than ever before. That whole wave is forcing people to think much harder about where they go. There is no transparency around quality and price. There is a big opportunity here.

Hogarth: We will see a big transformation with employee sponsored healthcare — we’ll see businesses not offering insurance. You’ll shop and make a decision about health care based on price. We’re looking hard at startups that consumerize this experience.

Meet and mingle with health investors at HealthBeat, VentureBeat’s conference in San Francisco on May 20 and 21. Partners from Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Beyers will speak on a panel “Health IT: The Numbers, The Funding, The Exits,” about the drivers making this industry segment more appealing to investors. 

photo credit: Emmanuel Gadenne via photopin cc

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HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here.

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Social e-commerce site, Luvocracy has raised $11.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, RPM Ventures, XG Ventures, CrunchFund, Marissa Mayer, Ali Pincus, Jim Lanzone, and Tony Robbins.

Bing Gordon, partner at Kleiner Perkins will also be joining the Luvocracy board.

Luvocracy is a San Francisco-based startup that lets you buy products you “luv” based on recommendations from the people you trust. You can also earn rewards if someone buys a product you recommend.

“Recommendations are an ancient thing; it’s different than reviews,” said Nathan Stoll, chief executive, and co-founder of Luvocracy, in an interview, recalling the story of his grandmother who sold Avon products. “It’s part of the way we think. It’s someone you know and trust saying: ‘Go get that.’”

Stoll, an early Googler, co-founded Aardvark, the first social search engine, which was acquired by Google in 2010, sending him back to his alma mater.

His current co-founder, Roger Barnett, was founder and chief executive of Beauty.com and the chief of Arcade Marketing.

Luvocracy layers the social graph on top of a direct sales model to enable a world of curated commerce, according to the company’s website. It competes with popular social commerce startup Wanelo. 

The company has recruited one of Pinterest’s most influential users, Christine Martines, who has a following of over 5.5 million users, to quickly build a community of early users.

“Luvocracy as a technology is about connecting the right recommenders and making it possible to take their social content and make it seamlessly buyable,” a rep from the company told VentureBeat. ”It does that with a blend of algorithms and human support to make sure it’s done right.”

Image Credit: Luvocracy

In a blog post today, the Twitter founder announced closing a funding round led by Spark Capital with participation from SV Angel. An elite group of individual investors also contributed, including Jack Dorsey, Bono, Reid Hoffman, Steven Johnson, Evan Williams, Al Gore, Greg Yaitanes, and Roya Mahboob.

Not much is known about Stone’s startup beyond the fact that it is called Jelly, involves mobile technology, and has something to do with promoting social good.

“As mobile devices have taken an increasingly central role in our lives, humanity has grown more connected than ever — herein lies massive opportunity,” Stone wrote. This financing will support advancing Jelly beyond the prototyping stage through hiring and product development of “what we think of as the natural next step for our connected society.”

Jelly has hired former Twitter engineering manager Ben Finkel as CTO and the man behind Twitter music, Kevin Thau.

News leaked that Stone was working on a new startup in March 2013. He and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams left Twitter and founded the Obvious Corporation, which launched in 2011 as a startup incubator and investment vehicle. In August 2012, Obvious announced a new publishing platform called Medium that encouraged medium-length, thoughtful content and was intended as a “better place to read and write about things that matter.” Williams said this would be his main focus. Now with Jelly, Stone has his own pet project and there is speculation about whether this means Stone is leaving Medium/Obvious.

Until we know more about Jelly, we must be content with details about jellyfish themselves. Perusing Jelly’s blog yields interesting information, like the fact that jellyfish brains are decentralized and “more ‘we’ than ‘me’” and a group of jellies is called a bloom.

Marqeta blurs the lines between online and offline commerce with its “pay in advance” approach. Consumers make their purchases online through the platform, and Marqeta sends them a free card to swipe when picking up their purchase. Retailers use the platform to offer perks like gifting, loyalty, promotions, cash back offers, charitable donations, and so on. Customers earn rewards as they use their card and Marqeta keeps tracks of all that information in one place. This system saves consumers money and offers retailers a channel for loyalty and marketing campaigns.

“Consumers are challenged with managing multitudes of offers, gift cards, and reward programs along with a lack of meaningful incentive to provide repeat business,” said Jason Gardner, the founder and CEO of Marqeta in an interview. “Retailers struggle to crack the code to easily capture customer loyalty and often need POS installation to run a rewards program, and enterprises are often unable to readily participate in relevant transactions within the payments stream, limiting their opportunities to optimize revenue. Marqeta makes the successful ‘pay-in-advance for your coffee’ Starbucks card model possible for everyone.”

The system works without any new software of hardware at the point-of-sale and requires no cashier training. Through the API and platform, merchants can customize their campaigns with different product uses and features. It is available at nine million locations on the Discover network.

Marqeta also announced today that its +M platform will drive Facebook’s gifting product Cards. Cards are like regular gift cards but work at a range of retailers like Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, Sephora, and Target. The cards can be reloaded and the balance checked from Facebook.

“Gifting is a very unique form of e-commerce, and we thought there was a lot more innovation that could be going on there,” said Gifts creator Lee Linden in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

Marqeta claimed in a statement issued this morning that the gift card space is worth $115 billion, but that merchants face significant challenges maintaining consumer relationships once the gift cards are issued. By requiring users to register on Marqeta, retailers can convert their loyalty campaigns into a “true marketing and engagement engine.”

This funding will go towards forming new national partnerships, “aggressively” expand its footprint, and contribute to product development. Existing investors Greylock IL and Granite Ventures participated in this round, along with new investor Commerce Ventures. Marqeta was founded in 2010 and has raised $22 million to date. The company has 37 employees and is based in Emeryville, Calif.

After raising more than $10 million on Kickstarter, smartwatch maker Pebble announced today that it has received $15 million in first round funding from Charles River Ventures.

That’s a pretty hefty sum for a company that was initially shot down by VCs, a blow that led to the Kickstarter campaign, one of the first big crowdfunding success stories. But after nabbing around 85,000 orders on Kickstarter and successfully kicking off Pebble shipments (despite significant delays), it’s not surprising to see investors taking a second look.

Pebble says the funding will let it expand its software engineering team, scale for demand, and grow its open development platform. (I backed Pebble via Kickstarter and am still waiting for my watch.)

Pebble could be credited with kicking off the latest smartwatch craze — now Apple, Google, and several other companies are rumored to be working on similar devices. The Pebble communicates with your smartphone to show incoming calls, email messages, and calendar entries, and it can also run apps on its own. After launching its initial SDK for developers in March, the company is today releasing an updated SDK that allows for two-way communication between your smartwatch and smartphone. That means Pebble apps can now be built to remotely control your smartphones or other web-connected devices.

The company is also launching a Sports API for fitness apps, which would give developers the ability to connect their apps with the smartwatch similar to RunKeeper’s integration a few weeks ago.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Vend’s technology integrates with existing systems like printers, cash drawers, and barcode scanners. It collects data and stores it in the cloud, and it’s accessible on Macs, PCs, and iPads. Business can manage their inventory, monitor and track sales, and look at real-time reporting.

Traditional POS systems are not connected to the Internet, difficult to manage, and expensive. A host of startups have cropped up over the past few years building on developments in mobile technology, cloud computing, and the growth of digital payments to give the POS industry an overhaul.

The most well-known of these startups is Square which pioneered a small piece of hardware known as a dongle that is plugged into an iPhone or iPad to accept credit cards payments. The dongle is accompanied by a suite of software called Square Register that includes checkout customization features, management tools, and data analytics. PayPal and a host of clones such as iZettle and Payleven have similar solutions.

Vend is like Square (or PayPal or iZettle or Payleven) without the dongle.

Vend’s funding news comes on the heels of announcements by Square and PayPal yesterday that could sound the death knell for cash registers. PayPal announced that it would offer free credit, debit, check, and PayPal processing to U.S. businesses that adopt its PayPal Here solution, and Square released a new piece of hardware called the Square Stand that provides a more “elegant” alternative to the cash register.

However, businesses that already have POS hardware may not want to throw them out and start fresh, which is why Vend’s solution is appealing. Vend launched in 2010 and now powers payments in 6,500 stores in 100 countries. Customers include businesses in fashion, sports, tourism, food and drink, and healthy and beauty who pay a monthly subscription fee for the software.

Vend is based in Auckland, New Zealand. Half of the funds came from new investors in New Zealand and Australia, including the Milford Active Growth Fund, and entrepreneurs Craig Winkler, Paul Bassett, and Matt Rockman. Existing Berlin-based investor Point Nine Capital also contributed. This brings Vend’s total capital raised to just under $10 million.

If you haven’t heard of Tech Cocktail, you probably haven’t partied much with the startup community.

Tech Cocktail‘s goal is to support emerging tech hubs through events and provide relevant news and information for entrepreneurs on its website. And today, the company raised its first $2.5 million funding round from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

As part of the funding, the team opened a new office in Las Vegas, which will serve as its headquarters. On the company blog, CEO Frank Gruber said the goal is to become the “leaders” of the local, burgeoning tech community.

Entrepreneurs are relocating to Vegas in large part due to the efforts of Hsieh’s “Downtown Project.” Hsieh and his team are on a mission to revitalize the downtown economy through a $500 million fund. Investments are already being made in urban planning and development, schools and hospitals, small businesses, and technology startups.

Last week, I travelled to Vegas with a group of entrepreneurs and investors to find out more about the Downtown Project. Most of the activities, including speaker sessions and networking events, were organized by Tech Cocktail.

“We’ve known Tony Hsieh for over five years, dating back to a party that we threw together for CES 2009,” Gruber said on the Tech Cocktail blog. “It’s great to have a strategic partner who really understands entrepreneurship and the importance of celebrating and building community around it.”

It should come as no surprise that the founders would raise a sizable round of funding (especially for a media company) from the downtown project. Gruber said the team will focus on expanding throughout the United States, and building the brand. He claims that 30,000 people attend one of Tech Cocktail’s events last year alone.

Tech Cocktail will also release a “national platform” for entrepreneurs, but hasn’t disclosed much at this point.

Apptio’s software is used by businesses to manage their IT systems and services. Its Technology Business Management (TBM) solutions monitor financial and operational data about IT and technical customer support to provide added transparency and cost-efficiency.

IT systems are complicated and expensive. Developments in computing, such as the migration to the cloud, have changed the way businesses structure their IT systems. With these shifts comes the need to gain an understanding of how the various products, services, resources, and assets are being used. Apptio gathers and analyzes data about IT system performance so businesses can make data-driven decisions and get the most out their IT investments.

Apptio has subscriptions from 29 of the Fortune 100 companies and has more than 125 global enterprise customers, including Boeing, Royal Bank of Scotland, Safeway, Target, and Xerox. This financing will support Apptio’s accelerating growth and expand its international presence. New investors Janus Capital and the Hillman Company led this round, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowtiz, Grelock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Shasta Ventures, and accounts managed by T.Rowe Price Associates. The company closed its $50 million Series D last March.

“Apptio has everything we like to see in investments — a big market with a significant problem,” Ben Horowitz said to VentureBeat about the 2009 investment. “The way companies get information about modern IT is extremely broken, and they’ve built a terrific product to address that.

Apptio was founded in 2007 and is based in Bellevue, Washington.

Both cities now share investment activity from Dave McClure.

Berlin-based Versus IO was Dave McClure’s first investment in a German startup. McClure invested $100,000 in December 2012 and now Versus IO has closed its first round of $2.8 million led by Earlybird Venture Capital, as well as follow in investment from McClure.

Versus IO is a comparison engine. All the information and noise on the web can make it difficult to draw conclusions from data and make intelligent purchasing decisions. Versus IO addresses this challenge using natural language processing to generate point-by-point comparisons. Users enter two things they want to compare, such as electronic products, cities, or services, and the system culls information from around the web and presents them in a list of pros and cons.

Comparing the iPhone 5 to the Samsung Galaxy S4 shows that the Galaxy has almost twice as many pros as the iPhone, including more flexible charging capabilities and a camera with more megapixels and faster max shutter speed. If you pit Mumbai against Shanghai, you see that Mumbai has a higher average temperature and cheaper Big Macs, while Shanghai has public health care and significantly more museums and sport facilities.

When Versus IO first launched, it was solely a product comparison engine. 25 million companions are now available in 18 languages and the company said traffic has increased an average of 35% a month. This financing will support Versus IO’s expansion into other modes of comparison.

Travel news startup Skift has closed a new $1.1 million round of seed funding, the company announced today.

Skift is a hybrid news publication that seeks to provide data and reporting services to the travel industry as well as those who are interested in following it. The site was co-founded by paidContent founder Rafat Ali, who decided on the idea after his many travels made him realize how much the travel industry converges together, with hotels, transportation, tech services and startups, and more. By all intents and purposes, Skift does sound like it wants to be a digital offspring of those old school trade publications common in many industries during the heyday of print — except this one is aiming to be something that’s not only useful, but also something that will appeal to the everyday consumer audience. It also wants to be more diverse in what it offers, both in terms of its products/services and business strategy.

“All media companies need a diverse revenue stream,” Ali said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Advertising is one part, but at least for us we’d like to build out our data services and premium offerings.”

The funding, he said, will be used to double Skift’s team of employees from 5 to 10. Those positions pretty much span across all areas, with 2 developers, a social/audience manager, a data analyst, and an additional reporter. Skift will also use the new capital to further develop its travel-brand index SkiftSocial as well as two premium subscriptions services that will roll out in June.

The new funding is led by Leer Ventures, with participation from Advancit Capital, Ironfire Angel, Mesa+, and Growlabs/LX Ventures as well as angel investors including Martin Nisenholtz, Michael Yavonditte, Shakil Khan, Paul Noglows, Sean Keener, Duncan Jennings, Skift CFO Michael Cunniff, and Eric Lawson.

Founded in 2012, the New York-based startup has raised a total of $1.5 million in funding to date.

Photo via Skift

The latest city that incubator program TechStars will expand into is bustling tech city Austin, Texas, the organization announced today.

TechStars is an incubator program that selects only a handful of startups in each city it operates in, which receive $118,000 in seed funding ($18,000 plus optional $100,000 convertible note), support from plenty of mentors at successful startups, opportunity to pitch investors, and lots of perks that an up-and-coming company would need to make a big impact. Hundreds apply for a spot in the program, but it only selects 10 in each location. The program itself runs three months and is only conducted once per year.

Austin seems like a shoo-in for the program, as its already a booming tech city with tons of vibrant startups and a good base of offices from large tech companies like Intel, Dell, Samsung, Applied Materials, IBM, National Instruments, and plenty of others. A handful of the company’s successful startups — Mass Relevance and Stormpulse, both of which count the White House as a client of its services — even got praise from President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Austin last week. There’s also the week-long (or two weeks, if you count music) SXSW event every March.

So, what exactly took so long for TechStars to get here?

“We know that Austin is one of the top startup communities in the country. But timing is everything,” TechStars cofounder David Cohen told VentureBeat via email. “We don’t do anything unless we can do it with very high quality, and we haven’t been ready until now. It’s not so easy to just launch new locations and do it with extreme quality.”

Jason Seats will manage TechStars Austin. He previously founded Slicehost and was VP of software development at RackSpace. He’s also managed TechStars Cloud in San Antonio for two years, which means he has a very good background when it comes to running the Austin branch.

Applications for the Austin program open today. As for what TechStars is looking for, Cohen said:

“In terms of company selection, we’ll be opportunistic in Austin, like we are anywhere else. We are not focusing on any particular vertical area for that program – it’s just like our others in New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Boulder, and Seattle in that sense. As you know, we generally see about a 1 percent acceptance rate, so we’re looking for disruptive companies which leverage the power of the Internet, most importantly founded by amazing entrepreneurs. Team, team, team, market, progress, idea – in that order.”

The new Austin branch will also see support from the city’s most notable venture firms and investors, including Austin Ventures, Silverton, Live Oak, Brett Hurt, Sam Decker, Jeff Dachis, Josh Baer, Rony Kahan, Bill Boebel, and others.

Austin downtown skyline photo via Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

Mark it on your calendars: Today, no social media, photo-sharing, casual gaming, consumer-y app-y startups announced funding raises.

No, for today belongs to cloud companies, finance companies, data companies — the solid, boring stuff that stands half a chance of seeing us through this bubble with slightly less egg on our collective face than last time around.

As the fella said, “He that outlives this day and comes safe home will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d, and rouse him at the name of Cloudant!” Or something like that.

And the winners are:

Cloudant pulls down a $12M round

Hot database-as-a-service startup Cloudant has raised $12 million in its second round of funding, the company announced today. The Boston-based startup was founded in Cambridge, Mass., in 2008 by three MIT physicists. The team struggled to move and analyze multi-petabyte data sets. So they ended up creating what would become Cloudant. Cloudant offers a highly scalable database-as-a-service that makes it possible to store, access, and analyze your operational data in the cloud. In the layers of the cloud, Cloudant becomes a “data layer” that can be run on top of most infrastructure-as-a-service providers, including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, and Joyent. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

GraphLab gets $6.75M

GraphLab, an open source, distributed graph computation framework, has announced a $6.75 million funding round led by Madrona Venture Group and NEA. Seattle-based GraphLab, Inc. is building a commercial product the open-source project, applying advanced machine learning to massive graph datasets. “Data has the ability to make our lives better, whether applied to public health, economics, or suggesting the perfect song. But as the complexity of data sets grows, the need for entirely new ways of thinking about them has grown as well,” said Carlos Guestrin, GraphLab CEO, in a statement on the news.

TransferWise secures $6M

London-based TransferWise has just earned the distinction of sealing the first European deal by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. The startup specializes in peer-to-peer international money transfers, undercutting traditional banks with its crowdsourced currency exchange. A previous investment round in 2012 brought in $1.3 million from IA Ventures, Index Ventures, and a group of angels.

SugarSync sweetens its deal with another $3M

Dropbox competitor SugarSync just closed an additional $3 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. A spokesperson for the company just confirmed the debt raise and said it would be used to bolster the product development team. The funding was brought in through an existing investor — likely Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Andreas Stavropoulous, whose name appears on the Form D. The company has not raised funding since February 2012, when it pulled in $15 million to grow and define itself in the crowded cloud storage market. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

WegoWise gets $3M

WegoWise, a company that uses utility data to help owners and managers track their utility use and encourage energy efficiency investments, has taken $3 million in add-on funding from existing investor Boston Community Capital. Right now, a company rep tells us, the startup is focusing on apartment/condo complexes as well as commercial real estate. The startup’s platform tracks and compares utility use across large portfolios of buildings to find energy-wasting elements. “Think of it as Mint.com, but for utility data instead of finances,” the rep said.

Pangea Payments takes $1M in oversubscribed seed round

Money-transfer startup Pangea Payments wants to “help underbanked people around the globe.” To that end, the Chicago-based startup has taken an initial million-dollar funding round from OCA Ventures, Origin Ventures, i2A Fund, and FireStarter Fund. Angel investors also participating in this round include former Navteq CEO Larry Kaplan, Cloverhill Bakery exec Bill Gee, and Potbelly Sandwich Works founder Bryant Keil. Pangea’s multiplatform service (including mobile, web, and retail options) lets users send money to anyone, anywhere around the world, at any time.

Image credit: NBC

Cloud startup SugarSync just closed an additional $3 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. 

A spokesperson for the company just confirmed the debt raise and said it would be used to bolster the product development team. The funding was brought in through an existing investor  – likely Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s Andreas Stavropoulous, whose name appears on the Form D.

The company has not raised funding since February 2012, when it pulled in $15 million to grow and define itself in the crowded cloud storage market.

“This small cash infusion was from existing investors who were simply supporting our focus to continue to improve the user experience,” said the company’s CEO Mike Grossman in an email. ”We’re very disciplined related to what we’re delivering and who we are targeting,” he added.

San Mateo, Calif.-based SugarSync helps individuals and small businesses manage and back up files across multiple platforms, including PCs, Macs, and iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Unlike its primary competitor Dropbox, SugarSync has grown organically through word of mouth.

The company would not confirm whether it will use the additional resources for an acquisition, but it’s certainly a possibility. Another competitive Box has made a few small strategic acquisitions of late — most recently, Crocodoc.

Loop plans to reinvent the customer-experience survey with its launch today to help businesses get customer feedback in the moment.

Loop is an iOS app that presents customers with a quick survey about their experience at a business. Loop captures the responses then and there, and founder Rajit Marwah said that this could result in up to 30 times more responses, as compared to traditional methods or user-generated sites like Yelp.

 ”Feedback and reviews are everywhere,” he said in an email. “They are at the bottom of your receipt, the check at the end of a meal, and in your inbox. Businesses want to know how they are doing so they can improve and many consumers want to share their experiences, good or bad. But when was the last time you (or anyone) bothered to fill out one of those cards or go to their feedback site? Everyone is in a hurry and just moves on.”

Marwah said that Loop’s main value is its immediacy. Surveys only contain five questions, so very little is required of the customer. It was founded by Marwah and his former Stanford classmate, Mike Liu. The two were working on a different project creating iPad menus for high-end hotels and restaurants, and he saw how challenging it was for these businesses to get feedback and reviews despite their efforts to do so. They saw the potential for mobile technology to improve upon this.

“The existing solutions are a bit intimidating,” Marwah said. “I know many people that don’t want to fill out 15 minutes surveys or write a long essay to review a place. We wanted to create a lightweight experience. Plus, companies like SurveyMonkey and Yelp are billion-dollar companies, so it told us that value can be created around this area.”

Gaining a glimpse into consumers’ minds is a hot ticket at the moment and scores of venture-backed data and social media analytics startups have cropped up to offer insight. There are also competitors like Vision Critical and Qualtrics Mindshare Technologies that also collect customer feedback through surveys. Loop is a simpler alternative to these products, but sometimes simple is better, particularly for small businesses.

Loop is “global on day one,” meaning it is available in 34 languages and in 155 countries. Archimedes Labs in Palo Alto led a seed round for the startup, which is based in San Francisco.

Photo credit: Loop

RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace where people can offer their cars for daily or weekly rentals. Wheelz adopted a similar model as well as proprietary DriveBox technology that facilitates keyless access to cars. With this acquisition, RelayRides will absorb Wheelz and its marketplace, technology, and several “key people” from the Wheelz team.

“RelayRides has been growing rapidly and we are confident that this acquisition will turbo-charge our growth,” said RelayRides director of communications Steve Webb to VentureBeat. “We are going to be better positioned to extend the benefits of peer-to-peer car sharing to more people across the U.S. This acquisition demonstrates that the peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace is maturing and consolidating. As an industry matures, consolidation follows, and the peer-to-peer car sharing industry is no exception. We are witnessing the evolution and maturation of an exciting space.”

Webb said that RelayRides and Wheelz share the goal of having a car within a 10-minute walk for at least 100 million Americans by the end of 2015. Instead of owning a car or renting one from an agency, people can turn to services like RelayRides for a more personal and affordable mode of transportation. Each car on the site has a profile with information about its features, ratings and reviews, and owner bio. All drivers are screened, and RelayRides provides insurance on the rentals, so drivers don’t have to worry about damages.

RelayRides and Wheelz are part of a trend surrounding “the rise of disownership.” Consumer attitudes and behaviors surrounding renting, borrowing, and leasing items, versus ownership, are shifting across the country. People are increasingly engaging in disownership by putting their under-used property to work. Internet startups facilitated this movement by adopting ‘shared economy’ or ‘collaborative consumption’ models that connect people with available assets to people who need them. AirBnB did this for homes, TaskRabbit for services, but the transportation space is still a dynamic and crowded area. Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar can be used instead of taxis, and RelayRides is providing an alternative to traditional rental agencies. It mainly competes with Zipcar and Getaround.

Since launching in 2012, RelayRides added tens of thousands of members into its marketplace and thousands of postings for cars. Webb said rental reassertion hours increased by 500 percent and April was the company’s best month yet in terms of revenue and new members added. By scooping up Wheelz, RelayRides will expand its marketplace.

RelayRides has raised $13 million in venture capital. In 2012, it teamed up with General Motors so that 6 million of GM’s OnStar subscribers could rent out their cars using RelayRides. Wheelz had raised a total of $15.7 million and includes Zipcar has an investor. Both companies are headquartered in San Francisco.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Photo Credit:  Darryl W. Moran Photography