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
Benchmark’s Peter Fenton nails both FriendFeed, SpringSource deals in one day
Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton scored two exits in one day — a rarity in the world of venture capital.
Fenton was the lead partner behind SpringSource’s $420 million sale to VMWare, the company’s biggest acquisition yet, and FriendFeed’s sale to Facebook. A competitive triathlete, Fenton has his hands in several of Silicon Valley’s most talked-about companies: He joined Twitter’s board of directors in its most recent fundraising round and holds a seat on Yelp’s board, after… Continue Reading
Mobile payment startup Boku rolls up social rivals, raises funding
Mobillcash, Paymo and Zong have spent the last year or so competing to offer mobile payment services, most prominently for social gaming applications and casual gaming sites. Now, as social gaming continues to grow in users and revenue, the competition is getting fiercer — and that means consolidation. Mobillcash and Paymo have been rolled up into a new, fourth company: Boku.
Founded at the beginning of this year by serial entrepreneur Mark Britto, Boku is trying to combine… Continue Reading
G.ho.st offers “virtual computer” product
updated: clarifying total funding
G.ho.st, the company that wants to give you a free “virtual computer” to perform most of your computer tasks from any browser, has raised $1 million more in backing.
G.ho.st is notable because it may be first joint Palestinian-Israeli technology start-up, with its development work based in the Palestinian territories. We’d written earlier the company had raised $2 million, so this new round brings it to total of $3 million. Benchmark Capital is… Continue Reading
Benchmark entrepreneur talks making money from open source
We’re seeing a paradigm shift in open source business models, said Benchmark Capital Entrepreneur in Residence Rob Bearden at today’s InfoWorld Open Source Business Conference. In the past, open source companies normally moved into a mature market dominated by a few large, complacent players, then found traction by offering innovation and low (or nonexistent) cost.
Now, however, there are new opportunities for the next generation of open source companies: Rather than moving into existing fields, they’re… Continue Reading
Benchmark Capital keeps hiring — adds four more professionals
Benchmark Capital, the respected Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed eBay, continues a hiring spree: It has just hired three new entrepreneurs-in-residence, and an executive-in-residence.
And it could herald a new model for the way VCs work in Silicon Valley: By outsourcing, or perhaps more accurately, insourcing.
The new appointees include Rob Bearden (top left), who was a senior executive at JBoss, Red Hat and OpenSpan; Lewis Cirne (top right), founder of Wily Technology; Dan Finnigan… Continue Reading
Benchmark has raised a sixth fund of $500M
Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture firms, has just finished raising its sixth fund, totaling $500 million, the firm told VentureBeat earlier today.
Partner Steve Spurlock said the firm’s partners haven’t changed, and that its focus will remain on enterprise software, internet and security companies. The latest fund is somewhat larger than the firm’s previous 2004 fund of $425 million, in part because the firm has added two more partners, but also because it… Continue Reading
Vontu’s $350M win shows how patience, focus pays off
If you’re an entrepreneur, you may want to avoid the Web 2.0 area, which is littered now with unpromising me-too ideas. You may want to consider something less sexy — data security, for example.
Vontu, a six-year-old Silicon Valley (Cupertino, Calif.) company which makes software to avoid data loss, said it has been acquired by Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, for a cool $350 million. That’s ten times the amount invested in Vontu by… Continue Reading
Yahoo to buy email provider Zimbra for $350M
Yahoo is set to announce the acquisition of open-source email provider Zimbra, a company that has made headway providing services for other big companies such as Comcast. The news was first reported by AllthingsD, but there was no price mentioned. It’s rumored to be $350 million, according to Techcrunch.
San Mateo, Calif.-based Zimbra’s clients include ISPs and a number of colleges. It was backed with $30.5 million in three rounds from Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Accel… Continue Reading
Two top Google engineers leave — to Benchmark Capital
Two more high-level Google engineers have left the Googleplex — this time to join well-known venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
Bret Taylor (left) and Jim Norris (right), two of the masterminds behind Google Maps and several other Google products, have joined the firm as “Entrepreneurs in Residence.” This gives them paid positions to hang out at Benchmark’s offices on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road and think through starting a business. They have a specific idea in… Continue Reading
OpenTable seating 2 million a month, appoints Jeff Jordan as CEO
Jeff Jordan, a former eBay and PayPal executive, has joined San Francisco online reservation service OpenTable as chief executive.
His mandate is to help take the company to the next level, now that it is seating two million diners a month.
OpenTable has said very little about its financial performance. In an interview with VentureBeat Tuesday Jordan declined to mention whether the company is near profitability. However, the company says 7,000 restaurants use the service, and that… Continue Reading
Collactive seeks to overwhelm Digg, Reddit with interested stories
Updated
Collactive is a new company that lets users mobilize friends and others to get more attention for causes they care about by overwhelming news-ranking sites such as Digg.
Users identify articles or video clips they care about, and then specify what actions they want their friends to take, such as voting for the video or article on Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, YouTube and other news sites. Collactive blasts the request out to the user’s contacts, and makes… Continue Reading
Ericsson picks up broadband services co., Entrisphere, for reported $290 million
Ericsson said it has acquired Entrisphere, a Santa Clara company providing fiber technology so that people can access broadband.
The amount was not disclosed, but Network World hears a rumor that it was $290 million. For a company that soaked up at least $146 million since launching in 2000, that’s an ok outcome for investors.
This is another story of the staying power of Accel Partners, which backed the company in all seven rounds of financing. It… Continue Reading
Secretive Benchmark-funded company, Vvond, raises $15M for large movie library site
Marquee Inc. (f.k.a. Vvond), a Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer of software for secure on-demand access to a large movie library, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding, according to a regulatory filing cited by PE Week. Benchmark Capital was joined by return backer Greylock Partners.
Red 5 Studios wants to bring Web 2.0 to games — raises $18.5M
Red 5 Studios, a new start-up formed by the team that built popular online game World of Warcraft (WoW), has raised $18.5 million in venture capital to create online games that integrate more social networking aspects from the outset.
The funding comes from Benchmark and Sierra Ventures. Red 5 Studios is based in Aliso Viejo (southern California), not far from the team’s former employer, World of Warcraft’s parent Blizzard. The new company is led by Mark… Continue Reading
Zimbra’s rocking email service
Updated
Zimbra, the open source messaging software company, has just announced that it has sold four million Zimbra mailboxes, an impressive milestone for the three year old San Mateo company.
Zimbra, you’ll recall, gives you an email platform that implements the latest AJAX majic. It started last year by letting you do things like pull up Google maps by scrolling your mouse over an address written in the e-mail, or pop up your calendar when you mouse… Continue Reading
Local review site Yelp raises $10 million from Benchmark
Yelp, the Web site offering user-generated reviews of bars, restaurants and other places, has raised $10 million in venture capital from Benchmark Capital.
We recently mentioned Yelp’s wave-making with its parties.
Yelp, like other recent Internet companies, is challenging incumbent sites like Citysearch by developing a community of local reviewers. By encouraging loyalist users to review often, Yelp bets its site will be fresher and more compelling.
It is noteworthy that the venture money comes from Peter… Continue Reading
oDesk, marketplace for developers, raises $8 million
oDesk is a start-up that provides a marketplace for companies to hire developers online and then keep near unprecedented control over them remotely.
The Palo Alto company has just raised $8 million more in venture capital.
Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley firm known for its backing of auction site eBay, led the round. Bechmark has now invested in numerous marketplaces, including LogoWorks, eBags and Ingenio.
oDesk has some momentum, with revenues growing at 10 to 15 percent a… Continue Reading