VentureBeat

DeviceVM, a company that allows you to use your computer while it’s booting up, has raised another $15 million in funding.

The San Jose, Calif. company’s software is called Splashtop, and it comes preinstalled on PCs and motherboards. When those PCs are turned on, or when users hit a special key, they can use Splashtop within a few seconds to check their email, chat with friends, get on the Internet and more. (See screenshot below.) Although it’s kind of sad that computer boot times are slow enough to make this product useful, it’s cool that you don’t have to just twiddle your thumbs as you wait for your computer to start.

In addition to snagging some positive press and awards, DeviceVM has also landed some high-profile investors. This new round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from existing investors Storm Ventures, DFJ Dragon, Tim Draper and Larry Augustin (the last two are high-profile individual investors). Earlier this year, DeviceVM raised $1 million from Merus Capital, the firm created by former managers and executives from Google and Microsoft. The company has now raised a total of around $36 million.

DeviceVM says Splashtop has already shipped on millions of ASUS computers, while HP will be including the software in some of its notebooks soon.

Splashtop is a newly released technology that lets you browse the Internet within 20 seconds of pushing a PC’s start button. It has just gotten $10 million in venture capital to help it get to market.

See video below about how it works (RSS readers will have to visit site).

The technology is owned by DeviceVM, a San Jose, Calif. company. It works by offering you features without fully booting the computer. See full announcement here.

The company hopes to have the technology integrated in PCs and other products before they’re shipped. ASUS, the largest manufacturer of motherboards, will include DeviceVM on its new $360 ASUS P5E3 Deluxe model. It will brand the Linux desktop feature “Express Gate.”

The lead investor for this round is DFJ Dragon, the Chinese affiliate of Silicon Valley’s Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Other investors include Sumitomo’s venture arm, Presidio, HTC founders Cher Wang and Chen Wen Chi, and WR Hambrecht Ventures.

The funding follows quickly on the heels of a $10.5 million investment in August, led by Storm Ventures, and including DFJ Dragon, ASUS, iDInnovations (Acer), Harbinger (Mitac-Synnex), and angels.

DeviceVM falls into the hot category of “virtualization” (we first mentioned the company here). It was founded last year, and also has offices in China and Taiwan.

RotoHog, a site with an original approach to online fantasy sports, has raised $6 million in its first venture round.

There’s no revolutionary technology here; it’s just an effort to enhance an existing concept, and reflects the significant push to make money entertaining the masses who are spending ever more time online. For those who aren’t familiar, fantasy sports are like massively-multiplayer online role games, except for sports nuts instead of geeks. Fans spend multiple hours in front of their computers, building and managing teams.  The point is to win bragging rights, and, if you’re willing to pony up an entrance fee, some real cash.

In the standard fantasy sports scenario, like those you will find online at ESPN, CBS, or Fox Sports, you set up a league with 10-12 friends or internet strangers and spend a few hours drafting the teams. Throughout the season, trading players can be an irrational process, where people over-value players for emotional reasons. In cash games, it can even be corrupt, when a losing competitor trades high value players to potential winners in exchange for a piece of the pot.

RotoHog, however, is different in a number of ways. Its two main hooks are its drafting method and trading system. In most fantasy sports, the drafting order is arbitrary and therefore unfair. RotoHog seeks to change this by creating chaos: After a countdown, the draft begins for everyone at the same time; and people draft players by clicking on them before anyone else. It’s a mad rush that in theory gives everyone an equal shot. Each draft round lasts two minutes, and the whole thing is over in 25 minutes. This is significantly faster than the traditional method, which gives each player two to six minutes to make each pick.

The trading system also strays from the norm: Instead of inflated values set by an individual manager’s perceptions, the value of players is based on supply and demand. RotoHog has a “trading floor” that functions like a stock market, where prices for players rise and falling in real time. This eliminates the possibility of collusion, and gives everyone the chance to build a winning team.

The $100,000 cash prize “Marshall Faulk League,” which pits your team against every other team on the site, is free, setting RotoHog apart from companies like the Ultimate Fantasy Football League, where prices range from $40 to $300, depending on how many teams you want to manage at the same time.

RotoHog plans to make money through advertising, premium services, and small contests — the precise nature of which the company has yet to flesh out.

The funding was co-led by DFJ Dragon and Mission Ventures, with contributions from Allen & Co. and SCP Worldwide.