More money for online real estate: Redfin raises another $10 million
Real estate site Redfin announced today that it has raised $10 million more in a fourth round of funding.
The round was led by Greylock Partners, meaning that the firm (which just raised a new fund) is the latest high-profile venture capital firm to enter the online real estate market. Real estate search engine Zillow’s venture backers including Benchmark Capital, while Sequoia Capital invested in Trulia. Unlike those companies, Redfin describes itself as an “online real… Continue Reading
Data Robotics takes $10M for data storage
Data Robotics, maker of data storage equipment for small businesses, has brought in $10 million in a fifth round of funding. The Santa Clara, Calif. company is backed by Focus Ventures, Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, RRE Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.
GreenBeat spotlight: Picarro’s “sci-fi” box may prevent cap-and-trade fraud after Copenhagen
As the United States and world consider new policies and legislation to help stop climate change, verifying whether they actually work is going to be a big deal.
And it’s really encouraging to see a bunch of companies already trying to help. Picarro is one of them. It helps monitor the atmosphere’s gases to determine whether one of the main ideas for fighting global warming, a “cap-and-trade” system, is working.
By the way, startups that help verify… Continue Reading
Financial reporting software maker HyperRoll sells off assets to Oracle
HyperRoll, developer of software for data aggregation and financial reporting, says it will sell off its intellectual and technology assets to Oracle. Based in Mountain View, HyperRoll was backed by Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. The deal continues Redwood Shores-based Oracle’s strategy of acquiring smaller companies to expand its own software offerings, particularly its Enterprise Performance Management portfolio.
Previously, HyperRoll provided software to help large companies tally up their finances at the end of each quarter… Continue Reading
Greylock Partners invests $4M in Indian healthcare IT
Why is Valley firm Greylock – which has Facebook, Pandora and Zipcar in its portfolio, as well as advertainment producer The Box — putting four million bucks into an Indian healthcare tech company? Because HealthHiway, in Greylock’s view, has the potentional to become India’s Salesforce.com for the medical industry.
“Tech infrastructure between hospitals, labs, doctors, insurers, is far behind what we have here in the U.S.,” Greylock’s director of marketing, Erika Brown (yes, the former Forbes… Continue Reading
First Andreessen Horowitz investment, Apptio, raises $14M
Andreessen Horowitz, the much-hyped $300 million fund founded by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his Opsware co-founder Ben Horowitz, has chosen its inaugural investment: Apptio, maker of software that makes information technology management more transparent and cost-efficient. It co-led the company’s $14 million second-round of funding with Shasta Ventures.
The Bellevue, Wash. company may not be the sexiest selection, but it makes sense based on its background. Apptio’s chief executive, Sunny Gupta, is a longtime friend… Continue Reading
RichRelevance snags $12.5M for e-commerce recommendations
RichRelevance, a company that provides consumers with e-commerce recommendations tailored to their preferences and interests, has brought in $12.5 million in second-round funding from Greylock Partners, Tugboat Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Draper Richards, reports VentureWire.
OpenDNS takes funds to prevent outages, block sites
OpenDNS, a Domain Name Service provider that helps users avoid ISP outages and block specific web domains, has raised an undisclosed amount of first-round funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. Founded in 2006, the San Francisco-based service reported that it was handling 7 billion DNS queries a day, bringing in as much as $20,000 a day — that was a year ago. Today, it says it manages 15 billion queries.
In addition to its two… 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
Greylock Partners joins the Sand Hill neighborhood
Greylock Partners is uprooting its headquarters after 44 years in Boston to move to venture capital’s west coast mecca on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. While the firm has been actively involved in Silicon Valley and the tech startup scene for years, leadership decided it was time to make a bigger commitment.
As part of the shift, Greylock is adding several new positions, including partners. It’s currently cooling its heels in an office in… Continue Reading
Xsigo raises funds for wireless data centers
Xsigo, maker of a device that virtualizes network connections in data centers, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from North Bridge Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, among others. The San Jose, Calif. company says its technology can drastically reduce the number of wires running through server farms.
Xsigo says the new money will be used to grow its sales and marketing organization. It already has 35 customers and… Continue Reading
Auditude raises more money to match and monetize copyrighted online video
Back in November, Auditude signed a big deal with MTV Networks to monetize premium content uploaded to MySpace. It would appear that it’s working, as the company has just received a $10.5 million second round of funding to expand its reach.
Much like Google’s “Content ID” system, Auditude has technology that determines if a video is from a copyright holder’s library, and if so inserts an ad on top of it. Auditude now has partnerships to… Continue Reading
Vehicle sharing service Zipcar brings plug-in hybrids on board
Zipcar, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company that allows users to rent cars online without ever speaking to an agent, has added plug-in hybrid vehicles to its San Francisco fleet. This is part of a national pilot program to increase public awarenss of new electric vehicle technology, says the service, which integrated hybrid vehicles in 2003.
Essentially, this pilot will allow one of the greenest cities in the country to test-drive the cars of the future, Zipcar executives… Continue Reading
Delphix raises $8M for database management
Stealthy database management startup Delphix has raised $8 million in a first round of funding, according to Private Equity Hub. The Palo Alto, Calif. company’s website doesn’t offer many specifics, but boasts “the enterprise database ecosystem is about to change” and says Delphix’s databases reduce costs, power, and footprint while increasing manageability, accessibility, and flexibility.
The funding comes from Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Awareness launches “best practice” templates for social marketing
“Social media marketing” is one of those catchphrases that sets off every right-thinking person’s jargon alarm, but the concept of engaging customers directly and interactively is becoming increasingly important to brand survival. Dave Carter, founder and chief technology officer of a marketing company called Awareness, says the strategy may even benefit from the economic downturn, since it’s faster, cheaper and more engaging than a traditional ad campaign. Now, Awareness wants to make social media campaigns… Continue Reading
Palo Alto Networks pulls in new funds to ride out recession
Bracing for the downturn, Palo Alto Networks has added $10 million to the third round of financing it announced in August.
Lane Bess, chief executive of the enterprise firewall and security firm, raised $27 million just a few months ago but felt it was prudent to raise more. He said that the company was taking the advice of one of its venture capital investors, Sequoia Capital, which advised clients to hunker down in a now-famous presentation… Continue Reading
ZeroG Wireless raises $17 million for embedded Wi-Fi chips
ZeroG Wireless is announcing today that it has raised $17 million in a second round of funding for its business of designing embedded Wi-Fi chips. This company is looking for the day when billions of everyday gadgets and sensors are connected to the Internet.
John Cummins, chief executive of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, says it’s able to get off the ground because it’s going the opposite direction of other wireless broadband chip makers. Others are focused… Continue Reading
Digg beefs up its funding for major expansion plans
With over 30 million monthly unique users, Digg is a juggernaut of a site. Despite perpetual rumors of an imminent acquisition by major players like Google or Microsoft, the social voting site is now gearing up for a major expansion on its own. And it’s just secured a big round of funding to make that expansion possible.
Interestingly, almost half of Digg’s users are outside of the U.S. now, the service claims on its blog. So… Continue Reading
WEbook raises $5M more to crowdsource the novel
WEbook is a site that brings wiki-style methodology to the writing of books — you can create a project, invite others to help and solicit feedback. Readers can even vote, American Idol-style, for which books are best, and the top vote-getters will be published. The site launched in April, and WEbook just announced another $5 million in venture funding.
As a wannabe fiction writer myself, I have to say that WEbook’s model doesn’t excite me at… Continue Reading
Data Robotics raises $15 million for Drobo backup storage business
Data Robotics has raised $15 million in a fourth round of funding for its consumer-focused Drobo backup storage business.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company makes “data robots,” or external backup storage units that make it easy to back up data on a computer or a network of computers. The lead investor is Greylock Partners. Other participants include new investor New Enterprise Associates, as well as existing investors RRE Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures. To date, the… Continue Reading