VentureBeat

With the major U.S. telecom carriers rolling out ways to track the location of mobile phones with more precision, startups are rushing to offer services exploiting this.

Krillion is the latest Silicon Valley company to seek possible salvation in this so-called “location based” technology.

Krillion emerged last year with a way to find specific consumer electronic and other products in local stores, and their exact availability in those stores. However, it’s service originally targeted the PC Web. Like many other companies, the Mountain View, Calif. startup found it difficult to become a destination site online because of all the noise out there. So for starters, it changed course and offered its local product search technology to third parties, including manufacturers like Panasonic. (Using Krillion, Panasonic lets visitors to its Web site find out which local stores carry that Panasonic flat-panel 32LX70 TV they’re dying to buy.)

But now Krillion is placing a big bet on a mobile application for the first time. It’s just raised $6.1 million more in venture capital backing, in part to help it go after the mobile opportunity, including writing an application for iPhone. The financial backing comes from Leapfrog Ventures, which led the round, and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. The round is an extension of the first round of capital raised last year, when the company raised $3 million.

The new Apple iPhone being released next week is just the latest development whipping up a frenzy in this area. The iPhone is widely expected to offer Global Positioning System technology, which uses satellites to pinpoint the whereabouts of iPhone users. Whrrl, Yelp and many other companies are writing applications that draw on the iPhone’s location awareness, as VentureBeat staff writer MG Siegler pointed out yesterday. The iPhone’s great browsing interface arguably makes it more likely people will use the iPhone to interact more with their surroundings.

Aside from the hype around the iPhone’s expected GPS technology, Krillion chief executive Joel Toladano tells me the iPhone’s existing ability to tap into WiFi routers to judge the location of a user (iPhone uses a WiFi mapping company called Skyhook to do this) will already help his application. Unlike GPS, which relies on line-of-site to judge location, WiFi works well indoors. The company expects the mobile application to be released later this year.

Aria Systems, a startup that provides software to handle online billing and subscriptions, just received an undisclosed investment from one of the early innovators in the field.

Dave Labuda, who is also joining Aria’s board, may not be familiar to most of our readers, but he co-founded market leader Portal Software, which has since been acquired by Oracle. In describing his excitement about the deal, Aria chief executive Edward Sullivan used a rather impressive sports metaphor.

“Dave is the Michael Jordan of billing, and we’ve got him on our team,” Sullivan says.

As with other companies that deliver their product through the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Sullivan says Aria offers substantial savings over the traditional competition — because it doesn’t require on-site hardware or installation, he estimates Aria costs 60 to 70 percent less than older billing companies that do, like Portal. There have been some technical challenges and security concerns in “crossing the SaaS chasm”, he says, because recurring subscriptions are much more difficult to manage than one-time purchases. But the market is heating up now, with OpSource’s acquisition of billing startup LeCayla in February, and Benchmark Capital’s $6.5 million investment in Zuora.

But Sullivan says Aria was the “first mover” in the market. It launched more than three years ago, and manages subscriptions in 236 countries, including Antarctica. That gives it a pretty big head start over competitors like Zuora, which just launched in March.

Last year, Aria raised a $4 million first round from Hummer Winblad.

Move Networks, a company offering video delivery technology for customers such as ABC, Fox, CW, Televisa, Discovery and ESPN.com, has raised a whopping $34 million round of capital.

This makes Move one the best funded video delivery companies out there. Late last year, it raised $11.3 million. The company is helping the large broadcasters get online, and competes against a number of other well-funded companies, such as Brightcove. These companies could put a dent in plans by newer sites such as Veoh or Joost to aggregate video content for such Internet delivery. At stake is potentially billions of dollars of ad revenue, though it isn’t clear how much Move or Brightcove can tap into this, and how much they’re simply licensing their technology to the broadcasters.

Also today, San Francisco’s BitTorrent, which offers a popular peer-to-peer technology used by many people to illegally download copyrighted video, continues its efforts to become legit. It said it has cut a deal with Brightcove to deliver video for that company’s clients, including CBS Corp., Viacom Inc.’s MTV Networks and New York Times. Its product is called BitTorrent DNA, and says its delivery is secure enough to meet these broadcasters’ needs. Brightcove has raised $80 million in backing, including $60 million of that early this year.

Move’s technology encodes high-quality video, and cuts down on buffering delays. It allows the broadcasters to stream long-form programs like Grey’s Anatomy or Bones over the Internet, delivering it across multiple platforms (to PC, mobile, etc) and adjusting speed depending on your broadband connection speed.

Silicon Valley venture firm Benchmark Capital led the round, which also included previous investors Hummer Winblad and Disney’s venture arm Steamboat Ventures.

Also investing in this round are large broadcasting industry players (including the “largest cable company” and “largest content provider,” according to our source, though the names haven’t been disclosed yet; the official announcement has been held up, we’re told, because another investor wants in).

Move’s technology also accommodates advertisers who want to target users.

The seven-year-old company is based in American Fork, Utah.

Two months ago, the company several new hires in sales and marketing, including industry veterans — for example, Doug Parrish arrived from Walt Disney Co., where he served as executive vice president and chief technology officer for the Walt Disney Internet Group. He’s senior VP of operations at Move.

Here’s a timeline of Move’s deals:
2006
- August: Fox (myspace) goes live with Move Networks
- Sept: Televisa switches to Move

2007
- January: CWTV went live with Move
- April: ABC dumps Flash for Move
- July: Many Fox Owned and operated stations
- August: ABC launches HD stream with Move
- August: Discovery launches with Move
- Sept: ESPN360.com launches with Move
- Sept: ABC/AOL launches with Move

Sample list of shows streamed by Move Networks:
- ABC High Definition (abc.com): Lost, Desperate Housewives
- Fox (fox.com/fod): 24, PrisonBreak, The Simpsons<- CWTV (cwtv.com): Girls Go Cruisin, Beauty and the Geek
- ESPN360.com (espn360.com - certain ISP/broadband connection required): college football games, NASCAR races, etc
- Discovery Networks: Discovery Channel’s “DIRTY JOBS”; TLC’s “LA INK”

Krillion is a search engine that lets you find consumer appliances in stores near you.

This start-up, based in Mountain View, is a response to strong evidence that most people prefer to buy in a store, even after they research prices online — particularly big ticket items like refrigerators, ovens, washers, dryers and dishwashers. (Krillion cites research that it says shows 75 percent of people make more than 90 percent of their purchases offline).

So Krillion lists the specific makes of fridges and other appliances carried at the stores near you, and that are in stock, thus giving you more direct help in your quest to find them. Eventually, Krillion wants to expand coverage to other categories, including consumer electronics, lawn and garden and seasonal appliances.

Joel Toledano, chief executive, gave VentureBeat a preview last week, and it does the job it says it does. It is better ShopLocal and other search engines, which don’t offer such detailed local information. ShopLocal will show which stores are supposed to carry an item in your area, but it often links you back to the retailer’s main site, and there’s no guarantee the local branch carries your item. Krillion, by comparison, offers that information, and lets you click to call the local store — to double check something is in stock or ask other questions. Krillion’s challenge is that, so far at least, it serves a very narrow niche. Its service is predicated on getting the consumer in touch with a store, so the purchase won’t be made at Krillion.

That’s why Krillion kicks off with an advertising product too. It lets advertisers track ad campaigns at Krillion with an analytics tool. This way, advertisers can hawk their wares with ad beside the results of competitors, and watch how their campaigns are doing.

Krillion covers more than 40,000 U.S. cities and towns.

Users should be able to find Krillion’s results by searching in Google and other search engines, Krillion says.

Founded in February 2006, Krillion is funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Chief exec Joel Toledano was previously director of business development and chief negotiator for Yahoo’s search unit. Before that, he did business development for Yahoo’s consumer services, and managed Yahoo’s alliance with SBC. Earlier, he was at Rentals.com, and before that a lawyer at Wilson Sonsini.