VentureBeat

TeachStreet, a company that seeks to helps people connect with local teachers, coaches and other instructors with the classes that fit their needs, launched today and announced it had raised $2.25 million in a first round of venture financing.

It starts with a focus on Seattle, including a guide to more than 25,000 Seattle-based teachers, classes, instructors, and schools. It plans to make money from targeted advertising and by charging premium services.

It’s the latest social networking site to target schools. Related services include DonorsChoose, which is different, letting people earmark money for certain schools and teachers, and TakeLessons.com, a website focused on connecting students and teachers, which is more of competitor.

The Seattle company is led by former Amazon executive Dave Schappell, and he’s getting his backing from local investors: The round was led by Madrona Venture Group and included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions and other angel investors from Amazon among others.

Melinda Lewison, of Bezos Expeditions, says the market has been underserved and that students and teachers outside of formal schooling have been forced to rely on coffeehouse posters and Craigslist postings.

John Cook of the Seattle PI has more details on the background.

Microsoft has acquired travel website Farecast for a rumored $115 million. The Seattle startup’s technology will likely be incorporated into the software giant’s site MSN Travel — even before the deal, Farecast had already partnered with MSN.

Farecast’s technology made it a pretty tempting target for acquisition. As we noted a year ago, the Seattle startup owns its niche of predicting airfares. At the time, we also said that some of the big tech players wanted to increase their presence in the market — looks like we were right, and that this course of events has worked out pretty well for Farecast.

There’s definitely been a lot of money pumped into online travel. For example, travel search engine Kayak raised $196 million and purchased rival site Sidestep for $193 million last December. Also, as we reported this morning, online travel organization site TripIt just received a fresh $5.1 million round of funding.

We’re getting the $115 million price tag from an article by Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter John Cook, who cites an unnamed source. Earlier this week, he reported that a “secret buyer” wanted to acquire Farecast for more than $75 million. In an interview with Cook, investor Matt McIlwain of the Madrona Venture Group says Farecast received multiple offers, and he calls the deal a “home run”. No wonder — Farecast was funded for a total of $20 million from Madrona, Par Capital Management, Greylock Partners and others.

Chief executive Hugh Crean confirms the deal but offers few details here.

BuddyTV has raised a $6 million second round as it expands its independent TV community site on the web.

Madrona Venture Group led the round for the Seattle-based company, which was founded in 2005 by Andy Liu and David Niu. BuddyTV raised its previous round in June 2007 from Gemstart-TV Guide and Charles River Ventures.

The site says it has several million fans visiting monthly to keep up with their favorite TV shows and stars. The site  Geoff Entress will join BuddyTV’s board of directors and Madrona managing director Greg Gottesman will serve as a board observer.

Here’s the latest action:

1. Search Wikia could go live by Christmas, to take on Google
2. Nick Denton, the nemesis of Silicon Valley, makes himself editor of Gawker
3. DocStoc, fresh with cash, gives away $50 Amazon gift certificate daily to user uploading best quality docs
4. AdReady, the Seattle advertising startup offering online banner ads, raises $10M more
5. Why Google is going after Wikipedia
6. EyeQ, tracks contributions of developers to projects
7. Ideeli, a invite-only Web retailer for high-end goods, gets $3.8M

Search Wikia could go live by Christmas — Just as Google starts to experiment more with social search, the open-source search engine called Search Wikia, backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, could go live as early as this week, according to New Scientist. Unlike Google, Search Wikia will not share search data with advertisers, nor encroach on privacy by storing users’ search terms. A reported 500 volunteers are running web-crawlers to compile Search Wikia’s web index, which so far totals 100 million pages, according to the report. (See our earlier coverage here).

Nick Denton, the nemesis of Silicon Valley, makes himself editor of Gawker — His Valleywag blog has harassed the high-and-mighty in Silicon Valley with constant gossip. But Vallewag is just of many blogs in Denton’s empire, and now he wants to take the company to the next level.

DocStoc, fresh with cash, gives away $50 Amazon gift certificate daily to user uploading best quality docs — DocStoc, the new company which faces fierce competition with Scribd to become a destination for online documents, has finished raising its seed round of $750,000. The latest investor is Matt Coffin, of LowerMyBills.com. So now DocStoc can afford to give $50 certificates for users who upload the best quality content to the site each day.

AdReady, the Seattle advertising startup offering online banner ads, raises $10M more — The company builds ads for various categories of sites, from real estate to travel. Advertisers in these sectors get to customize these ads, and then insert them into large ad networks where they will be displayed on relevant Web sites. Bain Capital and Khosla Ventures led the investment, together with existing investor Madrona Venture Group. The company was founded last year by former Classmates.com executives. The company, which launched in October, says it has about 1,000 customers. It takes a 20 percent commission on the campaigns. (More in-depth coverage by John Cook)

Why Google is going after Wikipedia — Here’s why Google is going after Wikipedia, by creating Knol, a feature that lets people contribute entries about objects and things. Hitwise shows the phenomenal growth of Wikipedia, which is dependent on Google for just more than half of its traffic.

EyeQ, tracks contributions of developers to projects –SourceKibitzer, an Estonian company based out of St. Petersburg, Russia, has launched EyeQ — a tool for analyzing the contribution of developers to individual projects. Through proprietary algorithms this software computes each developer’s “know how,” contribution, and the complexity of every statement written. Mark Kofman, co-founder, saw the need for “multi-location software development team” analysis in his own experience as a developer for an outsourcing provider. The other co-founder, Anton Litvinenko, developed the basis for the algorithms EyeQ uses in his studies at the University of Tartu, located in Estonia. SourceKibitzer was angel funded and will be looking for venture capital in order to expand.

Ideeli, a invite-only Web retailer for high-end goods, gets $3.8 million — This new service has the feel of gimmickry too it, though its exclusivity might appeal to high-end consumers. Ideeli features luxury products typically valued at between $200 and $700, and it informs its members when products are about to go on sale the coming week. The New York company notifies its members both on the Web and with SMS alerts. Members, so far about 10,000 of them, get to see the sales prices, but only those members who pay a $7.95 monthly subscription see the sales early — and so have an advantage in the mad dash to buy while quantities last. The company launched in May. The funding comes from rs from Kodiak Venture Partners and angel investors. Oscar De La Renta and Baccarat have signed up as partners.

[Note: This story was originally published Tuesday evening, but a software bug caused it to disappear. We're publishing again]

Updated

Redfin is one of the more controversial web companies trying to make home buying and selling more profitable. Specifically, it’s cutting out real estate agents.

Eager to do more cutting, it has raised another $12 million, led by venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It is expanding its listings from most West Coast cities and Boston, now adding the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

The company handles the most of the home-buying process online, effectively cutting out real estate agents who perform similar services in person. For sellers, Redfin typically charges a flat fee — of several thousand dollars– which works out to be lower than the percentage-based commission most agents charge. For buyers, the company rebates two-thirds of the commission.

Here’s the kind of headline the Seattle, Wash. company inspires: “Realtors brace for area debut of Web rival Red Fin.”

CEO Glenn Kelman makes no bones about wanting to “disrupt” the real estate industry, which he estimates to be worth over $90 billion. Other large real estate sites, such as Zillow and Trulia, also help users learn more about prospective homes, but don’t take over the role of the broker.

[Clarification:] Redfin’s business model of giving rebates to homebuyers is banned from Oregon, New Jersey and Tennessee. Additionally, the site has been fined by the Pacific Northwest regional listing office of the Multiple Listing Service, a nationwide database of home listings. It has also taken heat from the National Association of Realtors, which in many cases owns local and regional MLS offices. The reason for the fine, Kelman says, is that RedFin was altering the data after receiving it to include independent reviews by its users of the properties.

Kelman has told Congress that the MLS rules hinder innovation (official PDF here).

Realtors also charge that Redfin is taking their money by taking the information from the MLS and using it to more efficiently serve clients.

Even as they scream “unfair,” some argue people want a human touch when looking at buying or selling homes, and that such personal service will appeal to most even if the cost is slightly higher.

The company made more than one million dollars in net revenue last year — after the home-buyer rebates — but has made even more than that during just this past quarter, says Kelman.

This helped spur the investment, no doubt. Kelman said he wanted DFJ because the company needed Silicon Valley connections, and daily exposure to innovations happening here.

Besides DFJ, investors include the Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital and BEV Capital.

Farecast.com, the young Seattle start-up that now owns the niche of predicting airfares, and which continues to roll out new features (like letting you guarantee low fares), has raised $12.1 million more.

The round was led by Sutter Hill Ventures, and includes PAR Capital Management, Pinnacle Ventures, and Farecast board member and former Expedia CEO, Erik Blachford. Existing investors, Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and WRF Capital also participated — it has raised a total of $20.6 million. VP of Marketing Mike Fridgen told VentureBeat earlier today the funds are to help expand the team.

Indeed, this is a lot of cash, but it helps the company keep ahead in an area where some big players may eventually become eager to move.