There’s a hacker who’s sure
All that glitters is old
And he’s buying a stairway to funding.

In Toronto he knows
If the doors are all closed,
On Sand Hill he can get what
He came for.

Ooooh, ooo-ooh, and he’s buying a stairway to funding!

There’s a term sheet that sucks
But for some fewer bucks
He says he can keep more of his equity.
In a bank run by crooks, there’s an old dude who sings,
“Sometimes all of our thoughts are collusion.”

And it makes me wonder.

Zalora scores $100M

Zalora, the Zappos-like fashion and beauty store for Southeast Asia, announced this morning that it has closed a $100 million financing round. That’s a lot of lipstick and high heels. Zalora focuses on 10 countries in Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The year-old startup says it has already achieved “annualized double-digit million USD revenues.” Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Urturn raises $10.7M

Urturn, a U.K.-based social networking startup for iOS and desktop, has just taken a whopping $10.7 million in its first round of institutional funding. First time at bat, Urturned knocked it outta the park. I believe the expression is, “Nailed it.” The remarkable Series A was led by European Union firm Balderton Capital, which previously invested in Bebo. “It’s an important vote of confidence from a well-recognized VC for the company,” said a Urturn rep. From what we can see so far, the vote of confidence is, to be blunt, badly needed. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Cloudscaling climbs to $10M

Elastic cloud infrastructure startup Cloudscaling has raised $10 million in its second round of funding so it can keep growing at a quick clip and innovating its cloud technology. The San Francisco-based startup ‘s core product is the Open Cloud System, which can deliver the same benefits as providers like AWS and Rackspace. But unlike those companies, Cloudscaling’s solution is deployable in a client’s data center under an IT team’s control. It can also run its solution on Amazon and Google’s public clouds if a customer wants to do so. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Remote Medical raises $8M

Seattle-based Remote Medical just scored $8 million to bring health care to virtually anyone in need, anywhere in the world. Remote Medical serves companies and individuals in remote places; it’s a good option for military personell, research teams, law enforcement groups, or those lucky billionaires living out their days on private islands. Remote Medical offers a variety of services, including telemedicine (physicians can securely chat with patients via video), medical training, drugs, and equipment. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Ex-Facebook/Dropbox product guy gets $1.2M for stealth startup

Mystery meat of the day is YesGraph, a stealthy recruiting startup. Founder Ivan Kirigin, a former product manager at Facebook and Dropbox, has already secured $1.2 million of a $1.8 million round, according to a Form D. “The financing has enabled us to build a good product and hire talent — there is a lot that is hard about this space,” said Kirigin on a phone call. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

UpOut comes up with $850K

Bay Area find-stuff-to-do app UpOut has raised an $850,000 seed round. The app serves up quirky, hipstery, “interesting” personalized recommendations for local events — so basically, it’s Stefon in your pocket. That sounded weird. Moving forward, the funding came from leading Silicon Valley angels. The company claims “tens of thousands” of users in and around San Francisco and has desktop and mobile apps.

Video robotics company Swivl raises $500K

Swivl makes personal robots with a video twist, and the company has just raised a $500,000 round from Grishin Robotics. Swivl — well, think of it as a Roomba for Facetime or YouTube. It swivels (hence the name) to track a speaker and capture video without the need for a dedicated cameraman. It’s designed with iOS devices in mind, but it works with any smartphone or video camera. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Neurotrack gets $90 for its tech to predict the onset of Alzheimer’s

The $90,000 boost from angel investors is the first outside capital for the startup with a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease. Neurotrack offers a computer-based cognitive test that can detect an impairment on the Hippocampus, the first structure in the brain to be impacted by Alzheimer’s.
Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Swivl makes personal robots with a video twist, and the company has just raised a $500,000 round from Grishin Robotics.

Grishin is a global investment company (founded by one of the Mail.ru co-founders) that specifically supports personal robotics.

And Swivl — well, think of it as a Roomba for Facetime or YouTube. It swivels (hence the name) to track a speaker and capture video without the need for a dedicated cameraman. It’s designed with iOS devices in mind, but it works with any smartphone or video camera.

Here’s a demo clip showing the Swivl mount unit and tracker in action:

Swivl and its new investors see particular opportunity in the education market. “The global educational industry is undergoing huge transforming changes, and robotics plays an increasingly significant role in that process,” said Grishin founder Dmitry Grishin.

“Swivl represents a rare combination of strong technologies, beautiful design, and affordable price-point — exactly the type of product we are looking for. Swivl is very well positioned for disruptive penetration of mass-market educational technologies, taking online education to a new level by dramatically increasing the amount of published, high-quality video content.”

Swivl is located in San Carlos, Calif., and was founded in 2010.

Image credit: Swivl

Urturn, a U.K.-based social networking startup for iOS and desktop, has just taken a whopping $10.7 million in its first round of institutional funding.

First time at bat, Urturned knocked it outta the park. I believe the expression is, “Nailed it.”

The remarkable Series A was led by European Union firm Balderton Capital, which previously invested in Bebo.

“It’s an important vote of confidence from a well-recognized VC for the company,” said a Urturn rep. From what we can see so far, the vote of confidence is, to be blunt, badly needed.

Urturn’s main feature is something called “Expressions.” You might also call it a “picture” or a “macro.” Urturn’s WYSIWYG editor lets users create content (“Expressions”) and post it to a public stream. The images could be doodles they draw, digital collages they create, or pics they grab from the web. They can add text if they like. The end result is a Frankenstein’s monster somewhere between Pinterest and Tumblr.

But hey, we’re old. Our not loving it at first sight is no barometer for how Kids These Days will react to the product — or whether the company will be any kind of success.

Image credit: Urturn

Guuuuurrrrl, the Valley is on fayah today. In a huge wave of announcements, we saw a bevy of businesses from the Bay getting fierce funding deals.

Trust: From Mountain View to Redwood City, from Los Gatos to not-so-sunny San Francisco, our Bay Area startups were snatching term sheets and serving business executive realness.

And it wasn’t just deal volume on the Peninsula, either; the numbers these companies posted were pretty sickening, too. No tea, no shade, but if the New York/Austin/L.A./Boulder scenes want to keep up, they. Bettah. Werk.

(If you haven’t seen Paris Is Burning nor do you watch an awful lot of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, this whole thing hasn’t made much sense to you, has it? Have no fear, familiar territory is here.)

Now, sashay — away.

Adaptive Planning nets $45M

Mountain View, Calif.-based Adaptive Planning has raised a massive $45 million in its fourth and final round of funding with a goal to further dominate the CPM space, the business said Tuesday. Adaptive Planning offers a suite of budgeting, planning, forecasting, and data discovery software in the cloud. Its software works for small businesses all the way up to large enterprises, which now represent 25 percent of its business. The company had 1,500 customers at the end of 2012 and it estimates it will have 2,000 customers at the end of this year. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Alexza to raise $25M for health-tech gadget

In a Form D filing with the SEC, we learned that health-tech company Alexza Pharmaceuticals is rustling up a $25 million round of debt financing. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company makes Staccato, a new gadget for quickly and effectively delivering drugs to our frail human systems.

Change.org raises $15M

Popular social petition service Change.org has raised $15 million in new funding — cash that will help it further build up the “world’s largest petition platform.” Change.org, the brainchild of two Stanford students, provides an accessible way to enact social change and it makes it simple to create and sign petitions. The service has grown quite a bit in the last year, jumping from 6 million users in early 2012 to more than 35 million users today. More than half of Change.org’s users are outside the U.S. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

ConsultingMD secures $10M

Palo Alto, Calif.-based ConsultingMD has secured a $10 million funding round led by venture firm Venrock, the health-focused venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family. The mission is to create a virtual clinic where patients are served by the top doctors in the world. “We don’t believe you need a network of thirty thousand doctors to be effective,” said Tripp [pictured above with cofounder Dr. Lawrence "Rusty" Hoffman] in an interview with VentureBeat. “We would rather use the same 750 doctors who achieve successful outcomes again and again.” Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Wanderful takes $9M to the bank

S’wanderful! S’marvelous! You should get a check! Wanderful Media, a local shopping and discovery app company based in Los Gatos, Calif., told us today that it’s gotten $9 million in new funding from existing investors. This addition brings the company’s total funding to $36 million and comes on the heels of the April launch of the completely reimagined Find&Save, an online community offering a comprehensive collection of local savings.

Brightpearl seals an $8M Series B

Brightpearl, a UK company with a San Francisco office, has just taken a lovely $8 million in its second round of institutional funding. The company makes loud software that integrates orders, inventory and customer data across multiple retail channels. “We’ve seen customers experience growth rates of 40-50% by adding new sales channels on the Brightpearl platform vs. single-digit growth for the overall retail sector,” said co-founder Charles Grimsdale in a statement on the news.

Clique Intelligence goes home with $5M out of $20M

Another Form D yielded the mystery meat for today: Clique Intelligence, based in Redwood City, Calif., has taken $5 million of a $20 million equity offering. The filing lists Robert Scott and Dudley Mendenhall as execs; the former was mighty hard to pin down and the latter was a former HP and Websense guy. There’s no URL for the company, but we did see in a Whois lookup that Dreamworks, the animation studio, is listed as the registrant for CliqueIntelligence.com. This could mean something; it could mean nothing. But so far, it all smells like stealth to us.

Timbaland throws $800K at Open Labs

In a non-Valley tidbit, entertainer Timbaland has led a seed round for Open Labs, the Austin, Texas-based maker of StageLight. StageLight is music creation software that aims to make the whole process a bit easier on the common dude or dudette. “We wanted to allow anyone to create music quickly, inexpensively and socially,” we read in an email from CEO Cliff Mountain. “The Open Labs team introduced our software, StageLight, to the market six months ago and we have been overwhelmed with positive customer feedback; over 110,000 unique people have come to our website and over 50,000 have downloaded the product.”

NASA is funding the Star Trek replicator

Tea! Earl Grey! Hot! NASA has thrown a $125,000 grant at a research project to bring 3D-printed food into our reality. This project comes from mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor of Systems & Materials Research Corporation. Coincidentally, Contractor was also a speaker at the recent Humans to Mars conference.
Naturally, this kind of food replication would be a great way to survive in space or on other planets, where plant-growing natural resources are scarce. But it’s also a great idea for feeding hungry people around the world when economics, famine, or war come between people and sustenance. Read the full story at VentureBeat.

This Monday morning, we opened our inboxes to find a whole boatload of manic-sounding funding announcements sent by twitchy PR people. Seems like every hopped-up investor and his mom threw money at some startup or other — but don’t worry, we had our police scanner set to “stun” and caught all the action for you.

Let’s start the show.

Disclosure: Only commercially available, retail-grade, street-legal stimulants were used to fuel the writing of this and other deals-related posts on VentureBeat today. Today.

Rimini Street takes $15M to go global

Enterprise software maintenance company Rimini Street has secured a healthy $15 million round of funding. The Las Vegas-based startup took the new money from the sticky hands of Bridge Bank, a Silicon Valley firm. Execs said the investment would be used to move beyond the startup’s U.S. origins and into international waters — namely, Brazil and Asia Pacific.

Alteryx announces $12M investment

Analytics company Alteryx has received $12 million in financing from new investor Toba Capital (recently formed by former Quest Software CEO Vinny Smith) and existing investor SAP Ventures. Over the past year, the big-data startup has developed partnerships with Tableau, Teradata, Cloudera, and Hortonworks. Previously, the company took a $6 million round in April 2011.

Secretive startup Reflektion raises $3.3M

Reflektion is still in super-stealth mode, but it’s raised another round of funding. Following a previous raise of $1.5 million, the company filed an SEC Form D today stating it’s taken another $3.3 million. Congrats, mystery company! Here’s what we do know: The San Mateo, Calif.-based startup is helmed by electronic design engineer and serial entrepreneur Rajeev Madhavan; the startup is hiring; and the company has the same name as a stupid DJ, who is currently Google-spanking the PageRank for the name.

Newsle gets $1.65M for news app

Newsle — is that pronounced “news-lee” or “noozle,” do you suppose? — has taken a $1.65 million round for its news app for professionals. We wonder whether LinkedIn’s news-focused redesigned homepage might have Newsle beaten to the punch, but Newsle reps assure us the young company is “totally killing it,” so no worries there, right? At any rate, the Newsle team already moved from the East Coast to a nauseatingly trendy SoMa address in San Francisco, so they can’t really go home just yet. The funding led was by Advance Publications through subsidiary American City Business Journals. The app first launched in 2011; this is the startup’s first institutional round of funding.

Sensopia seals $1.2M deal

Sensopia, creator of reality augmentation app MagicPlan, announced today a $1.2 million round of funding and the release of a development kit to embed its software in any application. The funding will accelerate Sensopia’s growth and development to make the MagicPlan application easy and accessible to normal users. MagicPlan lets you take a photo of your environment and generate a floor plan in minutes. The application can automatically measure, draw, and publish a floor plan by taking a photo with your iOS device. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Minbox gets a mini-round of $800K

Little things mean a lot! A little goes a long way! Other meaningless clichés about wee things! Minbox, a Dropbox competitor, has taken a $800,000 round of investment. The service, created by online journal Penzu founders, contains free (and to-be-announced Pro) features. Notable participants in the round include Charles River Ventures, CNN president Jeff Zucker, Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut, and a handful of other folks who are praying for an acquisition within the next year or so. Because let’s be honest: Dropbox already has more than enough competition.

Image credit: Comedy Central

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.

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.

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.

Trulia buys Market Leader for $355 million

Yes, that’s actually a company named Market Leader, the phrase is not just a hopeful description. Trulia, the real-estate marketplace, announced the deal today.

Market Leader provides a suite of software solutions that real estate professionals use to manage their business online. Products include a website-builder, tools for lead generation tools and marketing, and contact management. The combined marketplace will have 46,000 premium subscribers, which the company said is more than any other online real estate marketplace. This deal means Trulia can provide an “end-to-end solution” for these professionals.

More details here.

Microsoft offering $1B for Nook?

This deal is not yet a deal, but a rumor: Microsoft may be attempting to buy Nook’s digital media and tablet business. More details …

NowThisNews raises $4.8M

NowThisNews, a video-news startup from the brains of former Huddington Post execs, has just raised a healthy round of institutional funding. The $4.8 million round (out of a total $6 million in equity the startup is attempting to raise, according to SEC documents) comes from Oak Investment, Lerer Ventures, Bedrocket, and new investor SoftBank Capital.

Here’s the full story.

HealthTap Secures $24 Million Series B

Health Q&A startup HealthTap has raised $24 million in its second round of funding and added former Square COO Keith Rabois to its board of directors, the company said today.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HealthTap offers a popular service for doctors to answer questions from everyday folks. More than 38,000 accredited doctors in the U.S. are on the platform and more than 8 million unique visitors connect with those doctors each month via apps for smartphones, tablets, and the web.

Full details here.

Octopus leads £2m funding round into TrialReach

Octopus today announced that it has led a £2 million ($3.1 million U.S.) investment round into TrialReach, an online platform that is transforming clinical trials by connecting patients with healthcare companies and research organisations to make new treatments available more quickly and efficiently. Octopus is investing alongside existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, which first invested in TrialReach in 2011.

Axiologix announces $7.5 Million preferred equity investment

Axiologix, Inc., a technology services company focused on delivering cloud-based products and services announced today that it has entered into a $7.5 million Preferred Equity Investment with Ironridge Technology Co. The company plans to use the proceeds from this investment to fund operational growth, make strategic and immediately accretive acquisitions, and to pay down remaining debt over time.

JumpStart invests $250,000 in eFuneral

End-of-life planning startup eFuneral has received a $250,000 investment to help people find resources online for funeral planning including funeral home reviews, estate planning, and cemetery information.

“This industry is completely antiquated,” Belsito told VentureBeat. “We saw a big gap and decided to make a better solution.”

More details here.

photo credit: DerrickT via photopin cc

Health Q&A startup HealthTap has raised $24 million in its second round of funding and added former Square COO Keith Rabois to its board of directors, the company said today.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HealthTap offers a popular service for doctors to answer questions from everyday folks. More than 38,000 accredited doctors in the U.S. are on the platform and more than 8 million unique visitors connect with those doctors each month via apps for smartphones, tablets, and the web.

HealthTap founder and CEO Ron Gutman told VentureBeat that the average doctor on the platform uses the app a crazy “69 minutes per session.” Doctors get hooked so easily because the app provides a way to put their names out there, attract more patients, and compete to answer questions.

“A large number of doctors use the app every single day,” Gutman said. “I think many of them do it because they are good people.”

HealthTap does not make any money off its robust network at present. Gutman says the company could be profitable today if he simply allowed advertising across the applications. But he’s forgoing advertising with the promise that the apps will eventually facilitate digital doctor appointments, which could be extremely lucrative.

“We want to provide access to care,” Gutman said. “25 percent of doctor visits are just exchanges of information. We want to take over those appointments … and we will charge less than a traditional visit.”

The new funding was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation by prior investors Mayfield Fund and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Including the new funding, HealthTap has raised about $38 million to date. Its previous round totaled $11.5 million.

Having Rabois onboard to help the company will come in handy since he’s known for helping early companies grow and become successful. He previously worked for PayPal, LinkedIn, and Slide. Following a rough departure from mobile payments startup Square, Rabois became a VC at Khosla Ventures. Vinod Khosla himself will also join HealthTap as “an adviser.”

HealthTap was founded in 2010 and has just over 30 employees. The new funding will allow it to hire aggressively. Gutman specifically said he plans to hire workers for “big data, engineering, product, design, and health informatics.” Looking forward, Gutman also said he’d like to take the service global, but the focus will remain on the U.S. in the near term.

Photo via HealthTap

In a rare twist, the majority of startups closing funding rounds today are targeted to consumers. We’ve recently seen business-focused tech dominate the deals channel.

Bitcoin, crowdfunding, foodie, usability testing, mobile events, and community sports startups landed a round of venture capital and/or angel investment. Apologies for the torrent of buzz words!

Without further ado…

Foodpanda suited up with $20M to conquer online food delivery

Foodpanda, based in Berlin, has raised $20 million to continue expanding its delivery service around the globe. In the past few months, Foodpanda and its affiliated brand hellofood entered 15 new countries, and it’s now active in 27 different markets. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

CircleUp raised $7.5M to feed hungry consumer-products startups with capital

CircleUp is using crowdfunding to get your favorite snacks onto store shelves. This startup, which connects up-and-coming consumer product businesses with accredited investors, has raised $7.5 million to build out the platform. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Chute raised $7M and gets its first dose of user-generated advertising

San Francisco startup Chute has raised a second round of institutional funding: $7 million led by Foundry Group with participation from existing investors Freestyle Capital and U.S. Venture Partners. It also announced today the advent of Chute Ads, which use “real-time,” user-generated content as commercial fodder for big brands. Read the full story on VentureBeat. 

FTBpro got $5.8M to bring its fan generated sports platform to new markets

FTBpro, a UK-based fan generated platform for online football (soccer in the U.S.) has secured $5.8 million financing from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures, as the startup continues to expand into key geographical markets. The platform is driven by 1,000 regular contributors, generating over 200 daily articles in English, Spanish, German and Italian.

Coinbase got $5 million in the biggest funding for a Bitcoin startup

The online platform that lets people buy a virtual currency called Bitcoin nabbed $5 million from Union Square Ventures. In April, the founders told the Wall Street Journal that it has grown to 116,000 members who converted $15 million of real money into Bitcoin.

Canada’s mobile event app QuickMobile pulled in $3.2M

QuickMobile, a provider of mobile event app solutions, announced that it has closed a $3.2 million round of funding led by existing investors, BDC IT Venture Fund and Vancity. The startup will use the funding to expand internationally.

YouEye nabbed $3M for its new approach to usability testing

Customers like Airbnb and Eventbrite are using the technology to watch testers browsing their websites through webcam, and they can listen in to any feedback. Today it closed a $3 million angel round for its “UX in the cloud.” Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s become far easier for ed-tech startups to sell software to schools.

With this shift, a number of new companies have experienced rapid adoption in K-12 school districts. Netchemia, a startup providing talent management tools, claims more than 1,100 K-12 school districts and institutions in 42 states use its services.

The Kansas-based company says it makes easier to recruit, hire, and retain the best teachers and administrators. Today, Mainsail Partners invested $6.5 million to fuel revenue growth by expanding its sales and marketing efforts.

Mainsail Partners’ Jason Payne said by phone that the firm sees a major opportunity in “teacher evaluation and performance” software. Payne has kept an eye on the company for three-and-a-half years, and believes it’s reached an “inflection point” in which it makes sense to invest.

Mainsail specifically invests in bootstrapped companies, meaning they have not taken external funding. This is Netchemia’s first institutional round.

“Developing the best teachers and school leaders is fundamental to improved schools and high student achievement,” said Netchemia CEO Carlos Antequera. “It is a key part of our current national discussion over education.”

Let’s start with that one:

DreamWorks buys a YouTube network for $33 million

DreamWorks Animation bought YouTube network AwesomenessTV for $33 million, which could go as high as $117 million with incentives. That’s a massive price for a channel built on the YouTube platform, but AwesomenessTV has “aggregated over 14 million subscribers and 800 million video views.”

“Kloud” startup Kloudless raises $1 million

Kloudless, which helps companies move data on-demand from one cloud service to another, raised “approximately $1 million in new funding to grow its customer base.” Participants included the founder and CEO of Yammer, David Sacks, and Tim Draper, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Lex Machina raises $4 million

Legal and patent-focused startup Lex Machina raised a $4 million series A round to continue to build its machine learning and natural language processing legal text classification system.

MindMixer grabs $4 million

MindMixer closed a $4 million funding round to expand its current set of services and tools, as well as hire developers. The funding round was led by Nelnet with existing investors Dundee Venture Capital and Optimas Group also participating.

HybridCluster raises $1 million

HybridCluster, an early stage software solution provider to the cloud and hosting industry, announced completion of a $1m fundraising, and immediate availability of version 2.0 of its suite of storage, replication and web clustering software. Based in Bristol, UK, HybridCluster provides high availability, intelligent auto-scaling, and rapid restore software.

A variety of angels led the funding round, including Jason Seats (former VP of Engineering of Rackspace Cloud), Charles Grimsdale (partner at Eden Ventures and former CEO & founder of OD2), Anil Hansjee (former Head of Corporate Development, Google EMEA), and Toivo Annus (former Head of Engineering at Skype).

MyNewFinancialAdvisor closes a $1.1 million series A

MyNewFinancialAdvisor, which helps advisory firms grow their client base via online connections, closed $1.1M in a Series A round of financing led by Siemer Ventures, and said another round was imminent.

MNFA also says it has on-boarded $2.35 billion in investable new client assets.

nChannel raises a $2.4 million Series A funding round

nChannel, which makes a cloud-based multi-channel management platform, announced the closing of a $2.4 million Series A funding round led by the Ohio TechAngels Funds. nChannel says that in the last year it has processed over 833,000 subscriber transactions worth over $365 million.

photo credit: Viktor Hertz via photopin cc

Startups targeted to businesses, rather than consumers, are increasingly closing the largest rounds.

Today was no exception. Analytics startups Clicktale and Skytree raised the most sizable sums. As our own Rebecca Grant whimsically put it in her Clicktale write-up, “every mouse has  a story, whether its Mickey and Minnie, Alice in Wonderland’s Dormouse, or the one helping you navigate around the Internet.” A further three enterprise tech companies also secured funding.

The moral of the story? It’s wise to invest in enterprise. Here’s our full list of the startups that received funding today.

Skytree gets $18M for its “big data” analytics tools

The company that applies machine learning for “big data” analytics raised $18M in funding led by U.S. Venture Partners, joined by joined by USP, the world’s largest package delivery company, and Scott McNealy, co-founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems.

Clicktale raises $17M to tell the story behind every [computer] mouse

Clicktale has raised $17 million for its ‘in-page analytics’ technology that provides insights into customers’ online behavior, down to the last click. Read the full story on VentureBeat. 

Dwolla raises $16.5M from Andreessen Horowitz to revolutionize banking

Dwolla’s software allows anyone or anything connected to the Internet to move money. Individuals all the way up to enterprise companies can use the technology to send, request, and accept money from anyone else, and transactions can be conducted through email, mobile devices, and even social media. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Alpha Payments Cloud gets $12 million for its enterprise app store

The Singapore-based startup raised $12 million from an angel investor. The company has a cloud-based IT startup, and today launch an enterprise app store. APC hopes to change the way payment products are developed.

Fashion commerce company Ruby Ribbon gets $8.5 million

Ruby Ribbon claims to be the first company to sell unique shaping apparel through technology-enhanced, person-to-person social commerce. The company’s second round was led by Mohr Davidow Ventures and joined by the company’s original investor, Trinity Ventures.

Top Image via TellApart 

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google is going to likely acquire Wavii, a summary startup that helps you “consume content,” soon. But sources very close to the deal tell VentureBeat that this has not happened yet. 

We reached out to Wavii’s chief executive Adrian Aoun, who declined to comment.

Rumors about a deal between Google and Wavii first appeared last week, although at the time sources close to the companies cast doubt on the story. Now, we understand from multiple sources, a deal is in the works — although it is not final. We believe that it will close within a week.

One source told us that the acquisition price would be between $30 million and $40 million.

Wavii’s technology looks at pieces of content and summarizes them into quick, digestible blurbs people can use to help decide what to read. It’s rumored that the team will move from its Seattle headquarters and join Google’s Knowledge Graph team. We have not been able to independently confirm this, but it makes sense, given Wavii’s language processing capabilities.

Yahoo recently purchased a similar company, Summly, which it has already started incorporating into its mobile apps. When a hot technology is involved, deals like these generally entertain many offers, and this can draw out negotiations.

Wavii was founded in in 2009 and has thus far raised $2 million in funding.

Today, we saw an inordinate amount of funding announcements from startups based in Silicon Valley and in tech hubs around the world. As far afield as Japan, disruptive companies raised multimillions to bring their products to the next phase of growth.

Whether it’s 3D printing or a new take on enterprise search, here’s our list of today’s cool tech funding deals.

Not your grandmother’s search: SRCH2 launches ‘Google-like’ tech for the enterprise

SRCH2, the startup with a new take on corporate search, was founded by a group of ex-Googlers. Today, the Irvine-Calif. based company raised an undisclosed amount of seed capital from a roster of high-profile investors, including Data Collective’s Zachary Bogue and Matt Ocko, Redpoint’s Brad Jones, Horizen Ventures, and TenOneTen Ventures. Read the full story on VentureBeat. 

Chris Dixon and Andreessen Horowitz invest $30M in 3D printing marketplace Shapeways

If you weren’t sure whether this whole consumer 3D printing thing was going take off, Chris Dixon and Andreessen Horowitz may have answered your doubts. Dixon and company made a hugely symbolic $30 million investment in Shapeways, a 3D printing marketplace where designers may upload and print their 3D creations. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Japanese translation service Gengo gets $12M from Intel Capital

Gengo, a Tokyo-based startup specializing in people-powered translation, has just taken its second round of institutional funding. The deal, which totals $12 million, was led by Intel Capital with participation from previous investor Atomico as well as new investors Iris Capital, Infocomm (Singapore), NTT-IP (Japan), and STCV (Saudi Arabia). Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Infer raises $10M to help companies win customers with their data

Infer is a new predictive data applications company founded by the former architect of Yahoo BOSS Search Vik Singh.  The company claims its already profitable and counts Box, Jive, Yammer and others among its first competitors. The first round of funding was led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Social+Capital Partnership, and Sutter Hill Ventures.

SkyKick raises $3.7M to hustle businesses onto Microsoft’s cloud

SkyKick publicly launched an application suite today to help migrate small and medium-sized businesses to Office 365. It also announced a new $3.7 million in funding. SkyKick is headquartered in Seattle. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Ad startup Nativo gets $3.5M

Another day, another online ad startup funding deal. Today, it’s a Nativo‘s moment in the sun. The startup’s first institutional round, totaling $3.5 million, comes from  Greycroft Partners with participation from Signia Venture Partner and e.ventures. Nativo makes a platform that lets advertisers and publishers deploy and manage native ad campaigns across multiple media properties.

Zooz’s people-first payments platform zooms off with $2M

Zooz is a payments platform that helps e-commerce vendors create the “ultimate checkout experience.” Today, the company announced closing $2 million in funding to add new products, customers, and partnerships. XSeed capital led the first institutional round. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Investor buys $2 billion of MSFT, says Microsoft ‘will win out’ as stock jumps 4%

Hedge fund manager Jeffrey W. Ubben disclosed that his fund, ValueAct Capital, has taken a $2 billion position in Microsoft stock, causing an almost immediate 4 percent jump in the stock. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Top image via Shutterstock

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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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Gengo, a Tokyo-based startup specializing in people-powered translation, has just taken its second round of institutional funding.

The deal, which totals $12 million, was led by Intel Capital with participation from previous investor Atomico as well as new investors Iris Capital, Infocomm (Singapore), NTT-IP (Japan), and STCV (Saudi Arabia).

Earlier this year, the startup announced it was partnering with YouTube to improve video captioning for international audiences.

“Recent wins like our integration with YouTube are great steps on our mission to help anyone and everyone communicate freely across languages,” wrote Gengo CEO and co-founder Robert Laing (pictured above) today on the company blog.

“I’m also very excited that we have such an international group of investors including US, Japan, Singapore, and the Middle East. People get it.”

Gengo works by the power of crowdsourcing. Pre-vetted translators can view and select translation jobs, have their work reviewed, and get paid per translation job.

Gengo was founded in 2008 in Tokyo. The company also has offices in San Mateo, Calif. The company has previously taken $6.8 million over four rounds of angel, seed, and Series A funding.

Image credit: Robert Laing

The Samwer brothers just invested in Kreditech, a German startup that uses thousands of data points to determine how creditworthy you are.

This is the first known investment Oliver (pictured, above) and Marc Samwer, founders of the Rocket Internet incubator, have made since launching Global Founders Capital. Founded in March 2013, the firm’s €150 million fund is aimed at startups around the world.

Kreditech is a credit-scoring and micro-lending company aimed at emerging markets; it competes with UK-based Wonga. According to the website, Kreditech has grown to 30 employees, and has also procured funding from the Rocket Internet startup incubator program.

Global Founders Capital co-invested a “mid-seven digit” sum (the exact figure has not been disclosed) in the company alongside existing investors Blumberg Capital, Point Nine Capital, and Bigpoint founder Heiko Hubertz.

“This team moves faster than just about any team I have seen,” said Blumberg Capital’s Jon Soberg, who led the firm’s investment in Kreditech. “Despite that, there are countries with different regulations and customer patterns.”  Kreditech just launched in the Czech Republic and is making its way across Europe.

“It is only fitting that Oliver [Samwer] is investing in Kreditech — they scale businesses at his pace,” Soberg continued.

The Samwer brothers are controversial figures in the startup ecosystem. Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis tweeted the investors are “despicable thieves,” referencing the brothers’ habit of imitating high-growth web companies, from Airbnb to Pinterest, and selling the businesses back to the founders with the original idea.

Incorporated in February 2012, Kreditech isn’t the only company in the credit-scoring space. But it appears to be one of the most successful — the company said in a statement that it is already “profitable.”

Top image of Oliver Samwer via Rocket Internet

Smart electricity and lighting startup Enlighted has raised $20 million in new funds to expand and bring its smart sensor tech that cuts electric use to many more companies.

Enlighted’s sensor tech and software now covers more than 10 million square feet of commercial real estate, which is double the space it covered just five months ago. The company claims more than 55 Fortune 1000 companies have reduced lighting energy costs by 50 to 75 percent using its products. Customers include Google, LinkedIn, Turner Broadcasting, and Bank of New York.

“Lighting consumes approximately 19 percent of the electricity around the world and demand for electric lighting is anticipated to increase by 80 percent by 2030,” Tushar Dave, CEO and co-founder of Enlighted, said in a statement. “Yet a substantial portion is used inefficiently. Our technology will help building owners, utilities and others get a handle on this hidden problem.”

The new funding round was led by new investor RockPort Capital, with participation by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, and DFJ JAIC. Including the new funding, Enlighted has raised $35.4 million to date.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Enlighted was founded in 2009.

Light bulb concept image via Shutterstock

What could Amazon do with its own virtual assistant app?

Amazon has reportedly purchased Evi, a British startup that has developed its own spin on Apple’s Siri, for $26 million, TechCrunch reports.

Naturally, Evi, its investors Octopus Ventures, and Amazon aren’t commenting on the deal. But public records show that something definitely went down between Evi and Amazon. The companies now share the same Company Secretary and Mitre Secretaries, and Octopus Ventures’ records show that they’ve disposed of their shares in the company.

The acquisition of Evi is particularly interesting considering Amazon bought the text-to-speech company Ivona Software in January. Amazon is already using Ivona’s software for the Kindle Fire’s voice guide, but it also has plenty of potential to help make Evi’s virtual assistant client even smarter.

Amazon has been rumored to be working on a smartphone since last year. But in the aftermath of Facebook Home, I wonder if Amazon even needs to play the hardware game at all. The company’s Kindle Fire was a smashing success because there weren’t any other inexpensive tablets on the market — that’s certainly not the case for Android handsets.

Like Facebook, Amazon already has popular apps on every mobile platform. And also just like Facebook, it’s in Amazon’s best interest to keep users in its apps as long as possible. Perhaps we could see Amazon transform Evi’s technology into more of a virtual shopping assistant (that’s also smart enough to tell you the weather and random trivia).

Imagine asking Amazon’s app to find you the best deals for Mother’s Day. Since Amazon already gives you recommendations based on your purchase history, its virtual shopping assistant could be like a friendly shopping buddy who knows your size and tastes.

At this point, Amazon’s plans are still a mystery. But making its apps more fun and engaging makes a lot more sense then spewing out another Android phone.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat.

Streaming music startup Songza has raised $3.82 million in new funding, according to a new filing with the SEC.

Songza CEO Elias Roman told us the company has “no comment” on the filing but would let us know when they decide to talk about it.

The company offers up smart curated playlists for any mood and time of day. It promises to “effortlessly find music that makes your life better.” Songza has apps for the web, iOs, Android, and Kindle Fire.

Songza is based in the Long Island City neighborhood of New York City and was founded in 2007 by the same team that built MP3 download store Amie Street. Amazon acquired Amie Street for its users back in September 2010 for an undisclosed amount while the Amie Street team decided to focus its efforts on Songza. Prior investors in Songza include Deep Fork Capital and Geoff Judge.

Check out the latest video from Songza below for more on the company.

Screenshot via Songza/YouTube

Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reads Business Insider. And likes it.

In fact, Bezos is leading Business Insider’s latest $5 million funding round, joined by existing investors RRE Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners.

While the exact amount of Bezos’ investment wasn’t disclosed, Business Insider editor-in-chief Henry Blodget said the Amazon’s CEO’s share was “significant.”

“This capital will allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business, including editorial, tech/product, sales and marketing, subscriptions, and events,” Blodget said last night in a memo sent to employees.

Bezos’ reason for the investment? Apparently he sees a lot of Amazon in Business Insider. As Blodget writes:

Jeff’s investment grew out of a dinner he and I had about a year ago. We talked about the business, and he was excited about it. (He sees some parallels with Amazon). A few months later, he expressed an interest in investing. My reaction was basically “Hell, yeah!”

Business Insider has been on a tear as of late. Revenue was at $10 million last year, according to sources, and the site is expected to bring in $15 million in 2013 (though it’s still not profitable; it had a net loss of $3 million last year). The site has to date raised $18 million.

Photo: Flickr/jurvetson

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Trying to steal a bit of attention away from Facebook’s big Home event, Microsoft has just announced a new program to get Windows Phone apps more attention called “Red Stripe Deals.”

Apple and Google both offer ways to see featured applications and games in their respective app stores, but they aren’t regularly pointing out which apps are for sale. (However, there are several third-party apps that show you what is for sale.)

Now, every Thursday, Microsoft will offer up a new collection of Windows Phone apps and games that are discounted.

“Each week the Store’s Red Stripe Deals Collection will feature three popular apps and games — typically one Xbox game, one indie game, and one top-rated app — for at least 50% off the original price,” Microsoft writer Michael Stroh wrote in a blog post.

The first apps and games available under the Red Stripe Deals banner are Runtastic PRO, Assassin’s Creed: Altairs Chronicles HD, and King Oddball. All of them cost $0.99 each.

Man pushing sale buttons via ra2studio/Shutterstock

Here’s a quick overview:

Femtocells sell

Cisco bought femtocell and small cell manufacturer Ubiquisys for $310 million today.

Femtocells and small cells, apparently, are important for helping boost 3G and LTE reception in homes and buildings. Cisco SVP Kelly Ahuja said in a statement that “by acquiring Ubiquisys, we are expanding on our current mobility leadership and our end-to-end product portfolio, which includes integrated, licensed, and unlicensed small cell solutions that are tightly coupled with SON, backhaul, and the mobile packet core.

Boring stuff sells, apparently.

Cash for enterprise startups

Ignition Partners closed a new $150 million fund to focus on enterprise startups: business software and cloud computing. The fund is also opening a Palo Alto, Calif. office.

Human organs on chips

Hurel, the company that created a breakthrough organ-on-a-chip to replace skin allergy testing on animals, announced that it’s receiving $9.2 million Series A funding from Spring Mountain Capital. The funds will support the commercial launch of current products and continued R&D of its technologies and future products.

Space, infinity, and high-def

UrtheCast is launching the world’s first high-definition video platform of Earth, streamed live from the International Space Station. A new $25 million financing agreement is going to help that become a reality, apparently.

“When you begin using the platform, it will feel much like you’re interacting with a mashup of Google Earth and YouTube,” the company said.

Dollars for tags

Tealium raised $15.6 million from Tenaya Capital, Battery Ventures, and Presidio Ventures to continue building and marketing the “fastest, easiest to use, and most data-focused tag management platform on the market.”

Tealium’s total funding is now $27 million.

Big money for small loans

Small loan company Kabbage has closed a credit facility of $75 million, its largest to date. The company provides working capital to small business-owners so they won’t need to put personal assets on the line, like a house or car.

Victory Park Capital led the funding round, and equity investor Thomvest Ventures also contributed.

Integrating $37 million

API and data integration company MuleSoft raised $37 million from just about everybody. New Enterprise Associates led, with participation by other investors including Salesforce, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAP Ventures, and Bay Partners.

Hopefully, the company will use some of the money to brainstorm a new name.

Including the new round, MuleSoft has raised $81 million to date.

Mobile device management for $2 million, Alex

MokiMobility announced $2 million seed round from Epic Ventures, Allegis Capital partner Spencer Tall and Fusion-IO’s Tyler Smith.

And, briefly …

• EAT Club announced $5 million from August Capital for expansion beyond Silicon Valley.
• New York based startup BA Insight announced a $4.5 million round of funding with participation from all four of its initial investors: Milestone Venture Partners, Osage Venture Partners, Paladin Capital Group and Originate Ventures.
• Neon, the Carnegie Mellon University startup that uses cognitive neuroscience to improve online video clicks, has secured venture capital (VC) funding in a seed round led by True Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Terms were not released.
• iPad presentation creator Haiku Deck has raised a first round of $3 million from Trilogy Partnership, with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, and various angel investors.

It’s been a big day for the deals beat with Marketo and Tableau filing for hotly-anticipated IPOs.

It’s also the beginning of a furious startup funding season in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs. We saw a significant uptick in funding today; almost a dozen companies closed rounds in diverse industries, such as sports, consumer-tech, and political-tech.

But as always, in this funding mayhem, VentureBeat has you covered. Check out the full list of deals here in no particular order.

Auctionata modernizes the auction house with $20M from VCs

Auctionata claims to be the first patented online producer of live auctions. And today, the company announced investors are throwing down $20.2 million to support global expansion, recruiting, and product development. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

ElectNext gets $1.3 million for its open political database

The political news media has a new weapon: ElectNext. The company gleans its information from organizations like The Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack, and Follow the Money, and it also works with open data-friendly cities like Philadelphia. Its political database can now be used by publishing partners like Hearst and The Washington Post. Read the full story on VentureBeat. 

Arkansas’ Collective Bias storms marketing scene with $10.5M in funding

This “social shopper media company” connects brands with consumers through its Social Fabric community of 1,400 influencers. These influencers tell “real-life” stories about their shopping experiences and product usage and share them on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Deep pulls in $10m in first round funding

“Big data” startup Deep Information Sciences (formerly known as CloudTree) raised $10 million from Robert Davoli and others to help its customers with a “new approach” to database architectures. The flagship product is a database appropriately called DeepDB, and it provides simultaneous transactions and analytics in the same data set in real time. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Grand St. grabs $1.3M from First Round & others for its ‘creative tech’ marketplace

There are many places you can buy cool technology products on the web — ThinkGeek, Wantful, Amazon, etc. But the next place on your list of sites to buy from might just be Grand St., an online marketplace for buying “creative technology” products that has received $1.3 million in new seed funding. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

South Asian lingerie conglomerate gets $20M for its enterprise management solution

Attune is a provider of technology solutions for the fashion and lifestyle industry. Today, the company announced a $20 million round of investment to expand its offerings “across all areas of the fashion and lifestyle value chain” to help brands to streamline and manage their operations and optimize their performance. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Sport Ngin revs up with $6M in Series C financing

Sports software provider Sport Ngin (formerly known as TST Media) closed a $6 million round led by El Dorado Ventures. Sport Ngin creates web and mobile solutions for youth, amateur, and professional sports organizations, which powers the online presence of more than 100,000 sports teams, leagues, clubs, association, tournament, facilities, and businesses around the world. This funding will support the company’s growth and accelerate product development, as well as marketing and sales efforts.

Favourit’s investors place $3.6M bet on betting

Favourit launched globally today and revealed $3.6 million in funding to expand its social sports betting platform. This Melbourne, Australia-based startup provides sports fans and bettors an online forum to wager virtual currency or real cash in regulated markets. Favourit’s “Facebook for the sports betting world” is a community that connects sports fans and their friends with licensed betting operators. The round was raised through angel investors.

Appland enter the Middle East, raises $1M

Appland has secured $ 1million for its white label app store platform. Today, the company also announced entering the Middle East through a partnership with Saudi Telecom Company. Appland’s technology supports on-click operator billing, soil marketing, virtual currency, and geo-location targeting. Appland is based in Sweden and has offerings for Androird, iOS, and Blackberry.

CreditKarma gets $30M to help flustered Americans track their credit scores

Instead of charging people $10 or so per month to monitor their scores, Credit Karma offers the service for free, supplementing it with tools for tracking other financial information like bank accounts, bills, mortgages and loans. It’s a powerful, effective, and potentially very lucrative tool — which is why it’s no surprise to see that Credit Karma has raised $30 million in a big Series B round led by Ribbit Capital and Susquehanna Growth Equity. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

KeepTree Announces $2.62 Million Investment from Japan’s Faith Inc. & Others

KeepTree, a developer of a new video messaging technology that allows people to record videos and deliver them immediately, or at a future date and time, today announced it has secured a $2.6 million investment led by Japan-based Faith, Inc, a mobile technology development firm. The Company will use the funding to expand its team and to drive the ongoing development of its business and technology.

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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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“Big data” startup Deep Information Sciences has raised $10 million in its first round of funding to help its customers with a “new approach” to database architectures.

Deep was previously known as CloudTree, but the company took on the Deep name and a new focus on big data today. Its flagship product is a database appropriately called DeepDB, and it provides simultaneous transactions and analytics in the same data set in real time. Companies can access DeepDB from on-premise or via the cloud, depending on company needs. The big three things it aims to solve are “minimizing disk space, maximizing cache effectiveness, and optimizing CPU and core concurrency.”

“We are bringing to the market an innovative way to manage big data in real time,” Deep cofounder and CEO Kurt Dobbins said in a statement. “Our powerful technology, combined with our leadership bench strength, positions us for a fast path to market leadership in big data. We look forward to the opportunity to help our customers overcome the challenges of big data and seize competitive advantages through a next-generation approach to data management.”

The new funding was provided by Robert Davoli, Stage1 Ventures, Cabletron cofounder Robert Levine, Chamberlain & Steward, Alessandro Piol, and other angel investors.

“They are addressing the fundamental issues around performance and scale that have challenged databases for decades, and they’re coming at them from a unique perspective,” Davoli said in a statement.

Deep is based in Portsmouth, N.H., and was founded under the CloudTree name in 2010 and it claims to have spent “thousands of hours” developing DeepDB.

Top photo via Deep Information Sciences

B2B marketing startup Demandbase has raised $15 million in new funding to help it add more sales members and push for growth in U.S. and European enterprises.

San Francisco-based Demandbase offers real-time targeting and personalization for B2B marketing efforts, and its tech can be embedded into other systems. It helps you see which companies are visiting your website and gives you ways to reach out to them or change content on your site based on visitors. Companies such as Adobe, HP, Dell, and Informatica have already embedded Demandbase’s software into their marketing systems.

Scale Venture Partners led the new funding round, with participation by existing investors Sigma Partners, Altos Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Adobe Systems. Including the new round, Demandbase has raised $44 million to date.

“Demandbase’s unique ability to not only personalize a prospect’s first engagement with a brand site but also to focus ad spend on reaching target customers is why ScaleVP is so excited to work with [founder and CEO Chris Golec] and his team.” Scale Venture Partners partner Stacey Bishop said in a statement. “We believe Demandbase delivers tremendous value to B2B marketers, and we look forward to helping fuel its growth.”

Marketing concept via Peshkova/Shutterstock

An attempt to find an overarching theme for today’s funding led to an image of a fashionably-dressed robot bride walking down the aisle. Don’t ask.

Here are today’s tech funding deals, in no particular order:

Fashion site Videdressing gets a $6M first round

French website Videdressing is one of many fashion ecommerce/consignment sites popping up, but the investors at Earlybird Venture Capital think it’s got something special going on. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Wesley Group stays ‘bullish’ with its $160M cleantech fund

The venture capital firm has closed a $160 million fund to invest in up-and-coming clean/green tech startups. Its investments in Tesla Motors, biofuel company Amyris, and China Recycling Energy Corp have all gone public, and Steve Westly sees this area growing in the future. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

$45M for data-collecting ocean robots

Liquid Robotics’ unmanned aquatic vehicles have netted the company $45 million in its company’s fifth round of funding. The money comes soon after Liquid Robotics sent one of these vehicles across the Pacific Ocean to collect data. The funding was led by Riverwood Capital with participation from VantagePoint Capital Partners. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

LinkedIn analytics startup raises $3.2M

PeopleLinx, a startup that makes LinkedIn engagement and analytics software, has collected a $3.2 million round of funding to continue its growth among the Fortune 1000. This is the company’s first institutional round of funding; it was led by Osage Venture Partners with participation from Greycroft Partners, MissionOG, and a handful of angels.
Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Hot messaging startup MessageMe nabs $1.9M

MessageMe has been busy since its launch a week and a half ago. The messaging application has been cut off from Facebook’s Open Graph, raised $1.9 million in seed funding, and attracted more than 1 million users. Read the full story on VentureBeat. 

Digital Capital invests $5M in Dream Weddings game apps

Zug, Switzerland-based Digital Capital is investing in Dublin, Ireland-based Dream Weddings so that it can make a game for both web and mobile devices. The game is expected to be unveiled in 2013 and will launch in early 2014. Read the exclusive story on VentureBeat.

Newswire startup NewsCred picks up $15M

New York-based content syndication and newswire startup NewsCred just raised a fresh $15 million round of funding led by Mayfield Fund, with participation by new investor Greycroft Partners and existing investors FirstMark Capital and IA Ventures. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

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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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Update on March 19, 2013 7:30 a.m.: Vasona Networks’ funding has been confirmed, with $22 million in total raised.

Vasona Networks has raised $12 million in fresh funding to help it continue to fix bandwidth problems plaguing mobile networks and smartphone owners, according to a Form D filed today with the SEC.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vasona Networks was founded in 2010, but it only came out of stealth mode in January. The company’s focus is on developing devices and software that enables mobile network operators (like AT&T and Verizon Wireless) to fine-tune all the traffic happening on their networks, down to each cell.

The company’s recently introduced SmartAir1000 edge application controller allocates bandwidth on mobile networks based on where it needs to go. So, for example, if someone is watching Netflix over LTE 4G, the SmartAir1000 gives that person more bandwidth that isn’t being used by the text-messaging teen down the street.

“We understand the nature of the cell, and we understand the capacity of the cell,” Vasona CEO Biren Sood told GigaOM in January. “With that understanding, we can get the right bits to the right applications in the most efficient way.”

The new funding was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation by New Venture Partners and Vodafone Ventures.

Top photo via Vasona Networks

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Storage may not be the sexiest space, but it’s catching the attention of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists.

Mayfield Fund has led an investment in SwiftStack, which helps large companies roll out their provide cloud storage. Mayfield investor Navin Chaddha said the firm has a long history of investing in storage startups; most recently, StorSimple.

Cofounder and CEO Joe Arnold said companies see benefits of using the public cloud, but want to deploy storage on-premise in their own data center. “The reason why is they want more control over their data,” he said. SwiftStack’s software defined storage solution can run on commodity hardware, and is cheaper than building a storage system from scratch.

Arnold and a few other members of the founding team previously worked at San Francisco-based Engine Yard, and built out the first widely used platform as a service (PaaS) products, which ran on top of Amazon. “We had a front row seat to see how the cloud could be used,” Arnold explained.

The current project is based on OpenStack, and core contributors have joined the team. OpenStack is a cloud operating system that kicked off two-and-a-half years ago to enable any organization to create, and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware.

SwiftStack is attacking incumbent players like EMC and NetApp, but Arnold admits that it’s a “very early market.”

With the funding, the company will expand its sales and marketing team, and continue to build out the product.

Today, the startup closed a $6.1 million funding round led by Mayfield with additional participation from Storm Ventures and UMC Capital, bringing its total funding to $7.6 million.

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