Bionic Panda raises seed funding for Android mobile games

Bionic Panda Games has raised seed financing to develop mobile games for Google’s Android operating system, the company announced today. Not surprisingly, Google Ventures is one of the backers.

San Francisco-based Bionic Panda got its start in 2010 and has so far had one hit with Aqua Pets (pictured above), which has been downloaded more than 3 million times and is a top-100 grossing application on the Android Market.

That strong performance allowed it to … Continue Reading

Social TV startup Miso closes $4M round from Khosla, Google Ventures & others

Social TV service Miso has raised a new $4 million round of funding, the startup announced on its blog today.

Miso’s service, which has about 250,000 users, works by allowing people to check-in, rate, comment, earn badges and complete quizzes while watching things on television. As VentureBeat previously reported, Miso has partnered with satellite and cable television service providers such as DirecTV and AT&T’s Uverse, to allow users to automatically pull up the show they’re … Continue Reading

Ex-Googlers launch recommendation engine Stamped, with help from Google Ventures

A team of former Googlers has launched an iPhone app, funded by Google Ventures, for recommending experiences you might want to partake in.

Stamped connects to your Facebook and Twitter networks. It seeks to turn the social services into fun and useful sources of experience recommendations, but in a structured way. With luck, the makers hope, Stamped will eliminate the last minute group text messages and chain emails searching for the best places to eat, … Continue Reading

With $1.5 million investment Google Ventures thinks Milk will make a splash

Google Ventures has invested $1.5 million into mobile application development studio Milk, the new project from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose. The investment is both strategic and pragmatic, and will help the startup to build out its team with top talent — an area where Google has always been strong.

“It’s been nice to able to ping them when we have certain questions, and to tap into the vast amount of experience they’ve had when building … Continue Reading

Humanoid puts human brainpower to work in the cloud

Humanoid is today launching the world’s first human brain-powered API for developers and programmers “that actually works.”

With Humanoid developers can harness the strength of crowd-sourcing and get accurate results, not currently available from existing solutions such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where people around the world can complete small tasks for payment, or outsourcing hubs like oDesk or Elance. Imagine a 20,000-person workforce at your fingertips completing tasks for $4.99 per hour.

Humanoid founder Matt … Continue Reading

SweetLabs raises $13M for desktop apps interface

SweetLabs has raised $13 million in funding to bring the one-click app experience to the desktop computer.

The San Diego, Calif. company makes an app platform called Pokki, which lets developers create and distribute rich connected desktop apps using standard web languages such as HTML5. e also runs the Open Candy ad network, which offers recommendations to users when they are downloading and installing apps. Open Candy has powered more than 400 million desktop app … Continue Reading

Google Ventures’ Bill Maris talks teams, pitches and business plans (video)

Bill Maris, managing partner at Google Ventures, sat down with VentureBeat yesterday to discuss what Google looks for in investment opportunities.

Google Ventures is the search giant’s venture capital arm, investing in technology companies such as HomeAway, EchoEcho, RelayRides, HubSpot, and WhaleShark Media.

According to Maris, who the founders are is more important than the business plan or the product. Google Ventures is drawn toward engineer types, people who are “earnest in their presentation and … Continue Reading

CrunchFund invests in Getaround’s $3.4M seed round

Car sharing website Getaround announced a large seed round of $3.4 million today from a number of investors including the recently publicized CrunchFund.

People are loving the “what’s mine is yours” mentality stemming out of popular companies like HomeAway, Airbnb, Getaround and others. Now, recognizable investors getting in on the action. According to TechCrunch, this round was oversubscribed with investors like Netflix founder Marc Randolph, and WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg throwing cash into the pot. … Continue Reading

Echoecho raises $750K from Google Ventures, lets you find your friends

Echoecho, a mobile application to help you find your friends, announced a $750,000 seed round from Google Ventures and UK-based venture capital firm PROfounders today.

Have you ever been in an airport looking for a friend or get lost at a concern? Echoecho let’s you ping the person whose location you want and see where they are on a map. If they don’t have the free app, they will be prompted to download it, but … Continue Reading

Google Ventures funds RelayRides, again

Car sharing startup RelayRides has raised $3.6 million in a round of funding only five months after its last, according to a form D filed with the SEC. Involved in the round are Google Ventures, August Capital.

RelayRides takes advantage of the wasted hours in the day when your car isn’t being driven. With RelayRides, car owners can make their car available for short-term rental, and approve the people who make rental requests. RelayRides takes … Continue Reading

ChoozOn cuts the coupon clutter with $3.2M

With all the Groupon-like sites out there, the internet is starting to feel like a kitchen drawer: stuffed with coupons and hard to sort through. ChoozOn, an interactive coupon aggregator, didn’t use a coupon code to score its first $3.2 million round of angel funding on Tuesday, but it will help you find (and use) yours.

To many, coupons are clutter. They take the form of newspaper clippings, spam e-mails and miscellaneous membership benefits that … Continue Reading

Google Ventures invests in WhaleShark Media, just in time for Shark Week

Just in time for Shark Week, Google Ventures has invested in coupon website portfolio company WhaleShark Media, with an unknown slice of the company’s $10 million round.

“Deals” has become part of our daily vocabulary. Entire companies, like Groupon, are created around an interest in saving a buck. WhaleShark Media is no exception and is growing readily to meet the demands of avid savers.

WhaleShark owns a suite of coupon and savings-related websites such as … Continue Reading

Reflections on GamesBeat 2011 and the road ahead in mobile games

Our well-attended GamesBeat 2011 conference took place this week, and here’s what you missed.

As I noted in a preview story on mobile games, the conference was all about the wide-open battle for control of the emerging mobile gaming market. The highlights below follow the chronological appearance of the speakers. It’s a long story, but it will tell you what the conference was like in case you missed it.

Fireside chat with Brian Farrell

Brian … Continue Reading

Shasta Ventures pools a $200M fund, invests with Google Ventures and KP

Early stage venture firm Shasta Ventures raised $200 million dollars, according to a form D filed with the SEC. This is a growth fund intended to support start-ups.

This is a pooled investment fund, with the form citing Rob Coneybeer, Tod Francis, and Jason Pressman as involved in the pool. The company pooled its first fund in 2005 when it started investing $210 million. In 2007, Shasta raised a $250 million fund for investments in … Continue Reading

Google Ventures partner: Venture capitalists are bad at picking games

Investors haven’t been very good at figuring out which gaming companies will be successful, said Google Ventures partner Joe Kraus.

That’s not limited to social gaming companies like Zynga or Kabam but also hardcore game makers like Trion Worlds, he said.

“Half the deals for fund makers were under-subscribed in A and B rounds,” said Kraus (pictured right) in a panel at GamesBeat 2011 Tuesday. “The data suggests that we’re actually really bad at picking … Continue Reading

Google Ventures’ Rich Miner talks about the mobile revolution

Google Ventures announced Tuesday that it is investing in Astrid, a task management app, and Crittercism, an SDK that helps provide customer support for mobile.

Google Ventures’ partner Rich Miner made the announcement during VentureBeat’s fourth annual MobileBeat conference. (We have a separate story with more details on the Astrid investment.) We’ll be posting more on those companies throughout the day.

After the announcement, Miner answered the question on everyone’s mind: Where’s the Android fund? … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2011 speakers round four: Keith Rabois, Bill Maris and more!

Preparations for our fourth annual MobileBeat conference are speeding along. Today, we’re announcing our fourth round of speakers for the event: Keith Rabois, COO at Square; Bill Maris, managing partner at Google Ventures; David Williams, VP of mobile products at AT&T Interactive; Raj Talluri, VP of product management at Qualcomm; Michael Chang, general manager at Greystripe; and Bill Gajda, head of global mobile product at Visa.  You can find … Continue Reading

17 reasons to attend GamesBeat 2011

We’ve been writing a lot of posts about our speakers at GamesBeat 2011. But here’s a summary of why we think this will be the must-attend game conference for you.

We’re gathering the industry’s top CEOs, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, journalists, marketers, developers and other key executives for a two-day gathering at the elegant Palace Hotel in San Francisco, from July 12 to July 13. The event is co-located with our MobileBeat conference this year … Continue Reading

Our third round of MobileBeat 2011 speakers includes Rich Miner, Tim Schaaff and more!

Preparations for our fourth annual MobileBeat conference are speeding along. Today, we’re announcing our thirdround of speakers for the event: Rich Miner, partner at Google Ventures; Tim Schaaff, president of Sony Network Entertainment; Laura Chambers, senior director of PayPal Mobile; Omar Green, director of strategic mobile initiatives at Intuit; and Humphrey Chen, executive director of new technologies development at Verizon Wireless. You can find all of our current speakers here.… Continue Reading

Google Ventures-backed Shopobot tells you the best time to buy

If you buy that shiny gadget now, you may be paying a lot more money than necessary. At least, that’s the message of a new startup called Shopobot.

The San Francisco company leaves private beta testing today, and it also announced that it has raised seed funding from Google Ventures, AOL Ventures and others.

Chief executive Julius Schorzman and head of product Dave Matthews told me that while it may not be obvious to shoppers, … Continue Reading