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
Twitter search engine Topsy launches with $15M
Topsy.com, launched last week, is a brand new search engine focused exclusively on Twitter content. Like Google, it presents its results based on popularity metrics, namely the popularity or influence of the tweeter in question — a factor determined by how many followers the user has and how many time his or her messages have been re-tweeted.
Based in San Francisco, the company says it plans to branch out from Twitter if it sees initial success,… Continue Reading
Visible Technologies raises $6M to help companies track buzz
Visible Technologies, a service that lets companies follow what’s being said about them across the web, has brought in $6 million in a third round of funding. This bumps its total capital raised to $18 million since its founding in 2003. Based in Bellevue, Wash., the company’s investors include Ignition Partners and WPP Group. Two other companies, BuzzLogic and BuzzMetrics do roughly the same thing, reports paidContent.
Its two main products, TruCast and TruView, monitor blogs,… Continue Reading
Skytap soars with new $7M to extend cloud services
Skytap, a company that provides virtual computing environments for application testing, announced that it brought in $7 million in a second round of funding from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The new money will be used for product development and to bolster sales efforts, the Seattle-based company says.
Skytap specializes in delivering cloud services to companies that are actively developing and testing applications. Its technology can help lower hardware and software costs… Continue Reading
Zenprise nabs $10M for automated mobile troubleshooting
Zenprise, a company that has automated troubleshooting processes for mobile phone customers, just raised $10 million to grow its sales and marketing operations, as well as its presence in the U.S. and abroad. The Fremont, Calif.-based company says it monitors mobile phone systems and can provide step-by-step resolution instructions to smartphone customers encountering problems, thereby lightening the load of calls into IT and customer support teams.
Mobile management products are in greater demand than ever before,… Continue Reading
FiREapps raises $8.75M to manage foreign currency risk
FiREapps, which helps companies manage financial risk by providing up-to-date foreign currency data, has raised $8.75 million in a second round of funding.
Demand for the Scottsdale, Ariz. company’s software, which is delivered on-demand via online subscription, has been climbing in the last two quarters, says chief executive Wolfgang Koester. After all, he says, during the past few years there wasn’t a pressing need for this data among companies based in the United States — if… Continue Reading
Entellium execs fudge the numbers, face fraud charges
Two top executives at management software provider Entellium Corp. were arrested Tuesday for allegedly exaggerating the company’s revenue in order to attract more private funding.
We’re not talking about a little white lie. Former chief executive Paul Johnston and former chief financial officer Parris Jones are accused of cooking the books to show 400 percent more revenue than was actually brought in over the last three years. In 2006, they reported $3.95 million in revenue, when… Continue Reading
AdmitOne Security uses keystroke identification to screen users
Identity thieves are everywhere. A teenager snatched the login of his real-estate agent father and threw wild parties at homes that were up for sale. Students get someone else to take a test for them. Loan officers get hacked and the profiles of 7,000 of their customers are stolen.
This is the problem that AdmitOne Security is trying to solve. It uses the novel technology of keystroke identification. That is, it uses software to detect the… Continue Reading
Virtualization startup InstallFree raises $8.5M
InstallFree, a company whose virtualization products allow users to access their Windows applications remotely, has raised $8.5 million in a second round of funding. The round was led by Ignition Partners and Trilogy Equity Partners.
The Bellevue, Wash,-based startup raised $1.7 million last November, and launched its first product in April. That product gives comapnies a cost-efficient way to give their employees access to applications whether they’re in the office, at home or on the road.
Avvo: get advice from lawyers using Web 2.0 techniques
With any luck, Avvo is going to make finding lawyers and getting legal advice a lot less intimidating.
That’s because the company, which formally launched its site today after more than a year of beta testing, applies Web 2.0 techniques that keep the lawyers honest and give consumers more options.
We already know it works — not least because of the controversy it has stirred. When Avvo first launched, negative ratings poured in on certain lawyers, and… Continue Reading
Roundup: Executives leave, hackers move in, robots invade
Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson moves to Juniper Networks — Microsoft’s lead on the failed Yahoo acquisition has called it quits, heading for the top post at software and device firm Juniper Networks. Johnson was the president of Platforms and Services, which meant he oversaw most of Microsoft’s web initiatives.
Xobni’s first employee heads to the Xobtuo — Gabor Cselle, a vice president and the first official employee at email startup Xobni, has resigned, stating that he wants to start… Continue Reading
Xeround raises $16M for cloud database
Xeround, the maker of a cloud-computing database dubbed the Intelligent Data Grid, has raised $16 million in a second round of funding.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company (which was founded in Israel) says the IDG stands out because it allows applications to work without knowing where data is stored, or in what format. Xeround is targeting the telecommunications industry initially, where it can manage subscriber data across networks.
The round was led by Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership,… Continue Reading
Ad network WidgetBucks raises $10M
WidgetBucks, a self-styled ad network for e-commerce widgets, doesn’t offer ads for the sorts of widgets that you see on social networks. Rather, it offers interactive ads that otherwise look like more traditional banner ads. See screenshot, below.
Sites can add WidgetBucks widgets to their own sites, somewhat similar to Google’s Adsense. Advertising revenue is based on both cost per thousand page impressions (CPM) ads, which pays based on the number of times an ad is… Continue Reading
Jobster raises another $7M
Updated
Job site Jobster has raised another $7 million in a fourth round of funding. It’s not a huge amount of cash, but it comes on top of the $48 million that Jobster previously raised at a $100 million-plus valuation.
With all the job sites out there, we’ve been skeptical about Jobster’s (and other sites’) ability to be heard above the noise. Since we voiced that concern more than a year ago, even more sites have emerged… Continue Reading
GlobalScholar lands $27M for online tutoring
Started in late 2006 as Infilearn.com by former Drugstore.com CEO Kal Raman, GlobalScholar is an online education startup that offers online tutoring services for K-12 students.
The Bellevue, Wash. company also offers test prep tutoring and CollegeFinder, which helps high school students find the right college to go to.
GlobalScholar will use part of the funding to acquire Excelsior, a Colorado company that makes software used by school districts to track student performance. It will continue to… Continue Reading
FCC gets $10 billion minimum for wireless auction — but who is Triad?
updated with info on who is behind Triad
The Federal Communications Commission has gotten bids for more than the minimum of $10 billion it had set for its 700-megahertz spectrum auction, and there’s word that AT&T has been an active bidder.
Google and Verizon are also assumed to be bidding on a chunk of the spectrum. The auction is significant, and closely watched in technology circles, because it could open up innovation in the wireless industry —… Continue Reading
Modiv Media takes $8M for mobile marketing
Ever wanted to get coupon offers sent to your phone as you walk down the aisle in a grocery store? Perhaps not, but for those that are interested, Modiv Media offers promotions for on-the-go shoppers.
The Boston, Mass. company has also partnered with Subway and Stop & Shop, and has various niche offerings, like an application shoppers can use to make deli orders in a store to avoid waiting in line.
The $8 million funding was provided… Continue Reading
Airbiquity raises $25M for vehicle telematics
It’s been a long road for Airbiquity, but it appears to have finally found its home in wireless communications for vehicles.
Founded before the dotcom-boom, Airbiquity had big plans centering around adding GPS capabilities to mobile phones, but failed to execute. The company nearly disappeared during the tech crash.
It has since reworked its business into a wireless service for vehicles that tracks factors like performance, airbag deployment and navigation, and also allows some features like emergency… Continue Reading
Fat Spaniel bulks up with $18 million, plans expansion to Europe
Along with alternative energy generation comes a host of attendant technologies, from storage and transmission, to grid management, and measurement and analysis. Fat Spaniel is in that final category, with a set of tools used to measure power output of installations like solar cells.
The company has taken a substantial $18 million second round of funding, which it plans to use to expand in Europe and reach profitability in mid-2009. It has done more than a… Continue Reading
Blowtorch: Offers group-created movies
These days, it’s easy to shout “bubble” in the crowded theater of online video startups. Only YouTube has been a runaway success — but even YouTube hasn’t proven it can make money. Yet online video sites continue to raise millions of dollars in funding.
Blowtorch, a California company that has just launched with $50 million in funding, joins the crowded field. But it has a new twist at least: It will produce films based on ideas… Continue Reading