Double Fine Adventure shatters Kickstarter record with $1M raised in first 24 hours (updated)

Updated at 4:30pm PST for record $1 million amount.

Earlier this week, crowd-funding site Kickstarter set a new record when the Elevation iPhone Dock became the first project to close in on the $1 million dollar mark. But that milestone has officially been bested. In its first 24 hours, gaming studio Double Fine Adventure’s Kickstarter project has raised more than $1 million and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Double Fine’s Tim Schafer tweeted … Continue Reading

Blip chops off its “.tv” branding with a $12M investment sword

Indie streaming video startup Blip.tv announced today that it will ditch the “.tv” from its name in the first of many steps to refresh and improve the company. Blip has also secured a $12 million round of funding to help see those improvement efforts through.

“Our research actually showed that people didn’t really identify web series as associated with television, so dropping the ‘.tv’ from the brand just made sense,” said Blip COO Steve Brookstein … Continue Reading

LA-based Viddy steals $6M from Silicon Valley VCs for social video

Social video startup Viddy has raised its first round of institutional funding — a healthy $6 million from Silicon Valley venture firms.

Battery Ventures led the round, which also saw participation from Qualcomm. Outside the Valley, New York’s Greycroft Ventures also joined in the financing.

Viddy, which lets users share 15-second video clips, will use the funding to bring its app to Android tablets and smartphones as well as to the iPad. BlackBerry and Windows … Continue Reading

Dwolla raises $5M to continue its work on “really freaky stuff”

Payments startup Dwolla has just announced a $5 million round of funding.

The round was led by Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures and saw participation from Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, and LA-area angel Paige Craig, among others.

Dwolla’s services let you send and receive money to and from other users. The startup’s maximum transaction cost is 25 cents per transaction — a distinct and very important competitive advantage in the crowded and cutthroat payments arena. … Continue Reading

LA-based telemarketing software startup raises $15M

Telemarketing is a dirty business, but someone’s gotta do it — because somehow, it’s still profitable.

Also profitable is selling software to telemarketers that allows them to track the calls they make, the responses they get (or don’t get) from consumers, and the next follow-up actions they need to take to close a sale or get a meeting.

The Leads360 team has just closed a significant funding round for building exactly that kind of software.… Continue Reading

Bluetooth-accessory startup Mosoro gets $1.5M in funding

Mosoro, a startup that makes Bluetooth hardware with complimentary smartphone apps, has raised $1.5 million in its first round of funding.

Mosoro creates “appcessories,” or Bluetooth devices with dedicated companion apps for iOS and Android. The company has made two Bluetooth devices so far, 3-D Sport and Weather, and has two more in the works, Talk, and Bonsai. They all connect with smartphone apps to record motion, report weather conditions, play audio, stream video, and … Continue Reading

Vegas startup Rumgr raises $500K for a better, prettier Craigslist app

Startup classifieds service Rumgr has just received funding to be a sort of suped-up Craigslist. It’s a mobile and web location-based marketplace that lets you snap images of your unwanted stuff, browse pictures of other people’s unwanted stuff, sell, trade, barter, and buy to your heart’s content.

You can post items for sale with just a picture if you like, no description needed, then you field offers from would-be buyers. When you decide to accept … Continue Reading

Business intelligence startup Domo pulls in another $20M

Domo, which is building a dashboard for real-time business intelligence, has landed another $20 million without even trying.

The funds come from Silicon Valley-based Institutional Venture Partners, which also invested in Domo founder Josh James’ previous startup, Omniture. It brings the company’s total funding to $63 million.

“There’s probably three people a week that I turn down, who want to put money into our company,” said James, in an interview with VentureBeat. He agreed to … Continue Reading

After finding Chinese malware, AlienVault gets $8M round

AlienVault, developer of open source security software, announced an $8 million second round of funding after recently identifying Chinese Malware infecting the Department of Defense.

The round comes from Trident Capital, which was most interested in AlienVault’s SIEM (security information and event management) software. SIEM is, in essence, what watches your computer networks and alerts you to potentially harmful events within the system. AlienVault’s form of SIEM is unique because it packages open source tools … Continue Reading

StormWind seals $4M funding deal for online learning

StormWind isn’t just a 1984 single by Swedish heavy metal outfit Europe. Nor is it merely a human kingdom in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It’s also an online IT and bespoke-training company that’s just closed a $4 million funding round.

The round was led by GSV Capital, a firm that also has a stake in huge companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Zynga. Also participating in the round is Tim Crown, Insight.com co-founder.

Training employees … Continue Reading

Game-like restaurant app MOGL raises $10M for a mixed bag of loyalty & charity

MOGL, a customer loyalty platform that’s all about psychology and game mechanics, has raised its second institutional round of funding.

The $10 million round brings the startup’s total amount of venture capital raised to $12.4 million. The new funding round was led by Sigma Partners, with participation from Austin Ventures and Avalon Ventures.

Naturally, the new cash will be used for hiring and bringing more features to the platform. I know, we’re shocked, too.

“We’ve … Continue Reading

Betaworks rewards its investors and looks to the future of real time networks

Digital studio Betaworks is all about the real time web, so how’s this for speed? It took the company less than a year to generate a return on the $20 million it raised last March. Over the weekend PandoDaily reported that Betaworks gave back all invested capital plus a dividend with cash left over for its balance sheet.

Founder and chief executive John Borthwick used his letter to investors to lay out the four trends … Continue Reading

Social enterprise startup Igloo raises a cold $5M

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NY Tech Meetup’s Nate Westheimer building new startup with OMGPOP’s Charles Forman and Jacob DeHart of Threadless

The New York Tech Meetup, a monthly gathering where startups can demo their products, is now more than 21,000 members strong and is the heart and soul of the Silicon Alley scene. It launched hometown heroes like Foursquare and Tumblr, and more recently brought the community together for a massive protest against the SOPA and PIPA bills.

For the last four years, Nate Westheimer has been the NYTM’s executive director and master of ceremonies, helping … Continue Reading

Semiconductor startup Avalanche closes $11.5M funding round

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

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

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

CapLinked wants to modernize startup investment, takes money from new investors

CapLinked, the startup that wants to make it easy to invest in private companies, has just taken in a $500,000 round of from a new group of investors.

“Investing in private companies has depended on outdated technology for too long,” said CapLinked CEO Eric M. Jackson in a release this morning.

“Emails loaded with attachments, spreadsheets for tracking leads and clunky enterprise data rooms are straight out of the 1990s. CapLinked makes the process easier … Continue Reading

Link aggregator Buzzfeed secures $15.5M round

Buzzfeed, a site known for curating the best viral content across the web, has raised a new $15.5 million round of funding and has added a handful of staffers responsible for the Huffington Post’s early success.

Buzzfeed’s aim is to feature fresh content that you’d want to pass along to friends, such as “an outrageous video that’s about to go viral, an obscure subculture breaking into the mainstream, a juicy bit of gossip that everyone … Continue Reading

Chartbeat takes $1M from current investors, raising more later this year

“She’s got to feed the monkey, I mean, hasn’t that ever occurred to you man?”

That might be a quote from cult classic The Big Lebowski, or it might be what Chartbeat recently told their current investors. Who’s to say?

While we don’t know the play-by-play of the conversations, we do know that hot-as-molten-gold analytics startup Chartbeat has taken an additional $1 million from existing investors only. This type of deal is called an … Continue Reading