It’s a pretty good day — and year — for Accel Partners
It’s weird how good news for VCs seems to have come in pairs.
This morning, Electronic Arts said it’s buying social gaming company Playfish for up to $400 million in cash and stock, and a couple hours later Google announced that it’s buying mobile ad network Admob for $750 million. The common thread? Accel Partners, which invested in both companies.
Previously, Accel’s Jim Breyer was behind two big acquisitions on Sept. 1: Raytheon’s acquisition of BBN Technologies,… Continue Reading
Kosmix issues $238K more in stock after CruxLux buy
Kosmix, a search engine that provides comprehensive pages of information in response to queries, has brought in $238,000 from a new stock issuance related to its recent acquisition of CruxLux, a startup that determines connections between people, places and things. Based in Mountain View, Calif., Kosmix is backed by Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Time Warner. It raised $20 million last December.
This post corrects an earlier one published today reporting that Kosmix… Continue Reading
Causata takes $4.5M to help companies customize their offerings in real time
Causata, maker of software that allows companies to tightly customize their offerings for their individual customers, has raised $4.5 million in first-round venture funding from Accel Partners. It used the money, closed back in April, to launch its website and lead product: a platform that helps retail and financial companies collect millions of data points about their customers’ interests in order to tailor offerings to their needs in real time.
Founded at the start of 2009,… Continue Reading
Get ready for femtocells: Ubiquisys raises $11 M
If you’ve used an iPhone, you’ll know how frustratingly spotty its wireless coverage can be.
Fact is, wireless carriers such as AT&T (which serves the iPhone) are desperately searching for ways to unload the huge amount of traffic that are hitting their networks from iPhone and other smartphone owners. These users are slurping up large amounts of bandwidth to do things like browse the Internet and watch videos.
Ubiquisys is getting ready to attack cell phone dead… Continue Reading
SunRun takes $18M, advice from Accel to make solar consumer-friendly
SunRun, a company that sells rooftop-generated solar power to residential consumers for flat monthly fees (and a one-time startup cost), announced today that it raised $18 million in a second round of funding to market its services even more broadly.
Backed primarily by Accel Partners, SunRun is also implementing an aggressive web-based strategy to boost its profile and attract interest. It says Accel gave it helpful tips to grow traffic on its web site, now at… Continue Reading
Report: Yahoo acquires Xoopit; will Yahoo Mail get even more social?
Yahoo is about to acquire Xoopit, a startup that brings social tools into email programs like Yahoo Mail and Gmail, for $20 million, according to multiple press reports.
The Wall Street Journal and BoomTown (both owned by Dow Jones, incidentally) have reported on the deal — the WSJ says talks are in their final stages, but BoomTown says the deal is done. I’ve emailed Yahoo, Xoopit, and Xoopit investor Accel Partners; Yahoo and Accel say they’re… Continue Reading
Aptana scores $7.8M for open source web building tools
Aptana, maker of open-source software used to build, implement and manage web sites and applications, has raised $7.8 million in a second round of funding to scale its virtual environment offering, Aptana Cloud — a free service that allows users to deploy and manage their web applications from a central location.
Based in San Mateo, Calif., Aptana is known for making web deployment fairly easy for users of varying skill levels, providing tools to run apps… Continue Reading
YuMe takes $2.9M for broadband video ads
YuMe, an advertising network specializing in broadband video, has brought in $2.9 million of a $4.5 million round of equity. In the past, it raised about $16 million in capital from Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures and Khosla Ventures, reports VentureWire. It is very similar to video ad network Blinkx.
Navify lets you see what Wikipedians are reading
Wikipedia is all about words words words. The big arguments at the user-edited encyclopedia are always about the wording of articles — and even a casual user can see that the articles emphasize written over audio or visual content. For those who think that’s a problem, a new web site called Navify wants to deliver a richer Wikipedia experience, with more focus on images, videos and comments. And it just added a continuously-updated list of… Continue Reading
Integral Development raises $11M for electronic foreign exchange trades
Integral Development, provider of a software platform that connects global financial institutions for electronic foreign exchange trading, just raised $11 million in a round of capital provided in part by Adams Street Partners. The system allows individual investors to make their own trusted trades or broker trades for clients, reports VentureWire.
Based in Mountain View, Calif., the 100-employee company has also taken financing from Accel Partners, Hudson Ventures, MMV Financial and Sand Hill Capital. It recently… Continue Reading
Cloudera raises $6M more for serious data processing
Cloudera, a startup that helps companies process large amounts of data using an open source platform called Hadoop, has raised $6 million in a second round of funding.
The San Francisco company has an impressive founding team, including high-level folks from Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. Previous backers include Accel Partners, former VMware chief executive Diane Greene, former MySQL chief executive Marten Mickos, and Facebook chief financial officer Gideon Yu. Cloudera CEO Mike Olson says the eight-month-old… Continue Reading
Peer-to-peer lending site Prosper gets second wind in California
For the last six months, peer-to-peer lending service Prosper has suspended transactions while it waits for the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve its new system for online lending. But now, with the blessing of the California Department of Corporations, the company has legally resumed activity — as long as the lenders in question are located in the golden state (borrowers can be from anywhere in the U.S.)
Even as its future hinges on the SEC’s… Continue Reading
European cleantech feels the pinch — looks to distinguish itself from U.S.
European cleantech is finally feeling the funding crunch. Market analysts at the Cleantech Group released a report today showing that investment in the sector during the first quarter fell to $281 million, an 11 percent drop from the previous quarter and a 31 percent drop from last year. Fourth quarter figures for 2008 were also down from the previous quarter.
Given this grim outlook, opinion is split on where green industry in Europe is headed in… Continue Reading
Facebook’s fbFund incubator program looks to cash in on the site’s growth
This year, Facebook and two of its venture investors, Accel Partners and the Founders Fund, are changing up their fbFund incubator-style program from handing out grants to making equity investments. Venture capitalists aren’t generally known as purely altruistic, so the switch suggests these two firms see more money to be made on the platform this year than last. The program is also broadening in scope to include sites that use Facebook Connect for sharing user… Continue Reading
Accel Partner’s Jim Breyer joins Dell board, brings internet connections
Accel Partners invests in areas like social networks, technology-driven media and advertising companies, mobile services and online storage outfits — so why would Jim Breyer, one of the firm’s better-known partners, be joining the board of PC maker Dell? He’s on the boards of ten companies, including startups like Facebook and Etsy, and public companies like Wal-Mart and Marvel — so is this just another board seat for him, or something more significant? I tried… Continue Reading
Ad network Collective Media raises $20M more, targets the big three
Collective Media, an ad network you probably haven’t heard of, has been slowly rising through the ranks of ad networks. It is the 19th largest ad network, according to the most recent Comscore data (February), up from 21st last year.
It has just raised $20 million more in a financing round led by Accel Partners, with iNovia Capital participating.
Collective chief executive Joe Apprendi tells me the company seeks to differentiate itself by focusing on serving leading… Continue Reading
Yet another Googler leaves: Singh Cassidy joins Accel Partners
The exodus from Google continues at a torrid pace.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google’s president for Asia-Pacific (APAC) & Latin American Operations, has left the company to join Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed companies from Facebook to Glam, Macromedia and MetroPCS.
This follows the departure of the company’s top sales executive, Tim Armstrong, two weeks ago, after his vision for a cross-media strategy disintegrated. And just yesterday, we broke the news that… Continue Reading
Digital storage provider Omneon calls off IPO
Omneon, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of digital content storage and data processing services for media companies, announced that it has canceled its $115 million filing to go public due to poor market conditions. Its application had been in the hopper since December 2006.
The company has raised $105 million in capital to date from Norwest Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Invesco Private Capital and Lucent Ventures.
Transera raises $17M for on-demand call center technology
Transera, provider of software that lets its clients set up cost-effective call centers with agents (in-house or outsourced) all over the world, announced that it brought in $17 million in a fourth round of funding from Accel Partners, Apax Partners, Lighthouse Capital Partners and Storm Ventures. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company says it will use the money to go after new customers, improve its service infrastructure and continue developing its products.
In particular, Transera’s software, called Seratel,… Continue Reading
Cloudera closes $5M to deliver data mining software
Cloudera, the Burlingame, Calif.-based distributor of open-source data processing engine Hadoop, brought in $5 million in first-round funding led by Accel Partners. Founded just last year by executives and data managers at Facebook, Google, Oracle and Yahoo, the company works to adapt the Hadoop system to gather and organize massive sets of data for use by companies of all different sizes.
In the past, Cloudera has taken funds from individual investors including Palm senior vice president… Continue Reading