Liftopia elevated by $1M for real-time ski lift discounts
Liftopia, a web site that provides a pricing and discount directory for ski lift tickets at various resorts, has taken in $1 million in a second round of funding just in time for winter. The San Francisco, Calif. company tracks prices as they rise and fall depending on the time of year, time of week, popularity of resorts and quality of snowfall — that way users will be able to find the most affordable prices… Continue Reading
Global Lost & Found closes round for tracking lost electronics
Global Lost & Found has raised a first round of funding for its business of tracking lost portable electronics. The amount was not disclosed.
DFJ Frontier led the round and Sand Hill Angels participated. The San Bruno, Calif.,-based company has an asset tracking and recovery service. You purchase a $10 E-Tracker I.D. for any kind of device ($25 for a laptop) and affix the I.D. to the device. If it is lost or stolen, the label… Continue Reading
Liftopia slaloms into funding for niche ski-ticket site
While large companies like Ticketmaster do a pretty good job of tying up the major event ticket sales market, there’s plenty of industry interest in smaller markets, most notably for secondary event ticket sites like Viagogo and Seatwave (coverage here and here). Another possibility is niche ticket sales, which is what Liftopia does with discounted lift tickets for ski resorts.
The site, which was founded in 2005, partners with resorts and allows them to make adaptive… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007
Featured companies: BioVex, FullTurn Media, Humanetics, N Spine, Novitas Capital, Reliant Technologies, Symbios, Vaxart, Virtual Radiologic, Winston Laboratories, Zosano Pharma
EXPANDING ITEMS: Stay tuned.
Vaxart receives $3.3M for oral vaccines — San Francisco’s Vaxart, a biotech developing novel adenovirus-based vaccines, raised $2.7 million in a first funding round. Vaxart also received a $600,000 small-business innovation grant from the NIH to assist in developing the company’s vaccine platform.
Vaxart’s vaccine technology involves a non-replicating adenovirus engineered to produce a particular bacterial… Continue Reading
ClickFacts, a new company countering click-fraud
(Updated with response from Google, and a counter-response from ClickFacts)
ClickFacts, a San Francisco start-up, may be worth looking at if you’re an advertiser plagued by click-fraud.
Click-fraud is the bane of the Internet: Web site owners and others with ulterior motives have incentives to click on ads.
Ask Nate McKelvey, chief executive of Jets.com, who was paying $5 to $20 per click when someone clicked on his ad beside Google search results. He caught a competitor,… Continue Reading