Response Logix captures $5.6M for car dealer lead gen
Response Logix, maker of software deigned to help car dealers catch and respond to online leads within ten minutes and offer reasonable quotes, has raised $5.6 million in a round of venture financing led by Emergence Capital Partners and including AH Belo, Belo, GRP Ventures and Shasta Ventures, reports Dow Jones VentureWire. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company also helps dealers keep in touch and follow up with their customers to improve their customer service… 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
Mint.com rakes in $14 Million in third round of funding
Personal finance site Mint.com raked in another $14 million in funding, bringing its total to $31 million. The round was led by DAG Ventures, with new financing from Founders Fund and a top-up from existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Sherpalo.
Although the valuation wasn’t released, “it is a decidedly up-round” and it was “pre-emptive,” meaning Mint.com didn’t raise the funding because it was running out of cash. The company now has… Continue Reading
Baby boomer social network TeeBeeDee implodes
TeeBeeDee, the online social network tailored to the over 40 set, is going out of business. But instead of blaming the poor economy like so many of his peers — CEO Robin Wolaner says the site’s business model wasn’t able to grow its userbase big enough and fast enough to survive, reports VentureWire.
Things began auspiciously enough, with the company raising $4.8 million in a first round of funding two years ago. But, as Wolaner says,… 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
Outright raises $2M for dead simple finance software
Outright, a company that offers simple web software to help small businesses manage their finances, has raised $2 million in a first round of venture funding.
Chief executive Kevin Reeth gave me a demo last July, back when the company was called Bootstrap, and I was impressed by the way he’d been “absolutely ruthless in simplifying and paring things down.” Services include tracking sales and business expenses, organizing your business records for taxes, and reminding you… Continue Reading
Underdog Roost lands $8 million for real estate search, foreclosure watch
Roost, a real estate search engine that aggregates listings from the reliable Internet Data Exchange (IDX), has brought in $8 million in second-round funding. At the same time, it announced that new information about 1.5 million foreclosure-related properties will now be available on its web site — bumping its total listings to 3.1 million.
Much like competitors Zillow, Trulia and Redfin, Roost provides basic details on properties, including size, number of bedrooms, etc. Now it also… Continue Reading
Zuora raises $15M to manage online subscriptions
Zuora, which offers online services to automate customer subscriptions and payments, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding.
Chief executive Tien Tzuo said he wants Zuora to be the web’s top “online subscription platform,” the way PayPal is the default platform for web payments. Zuora has released two complementary products so far, Z-Billing and Z-Payments (the latter launched earlier this month). The Redwood City, Calif. startup says it now has 45 customers.
And as… Continue Reading
Sustainable Spaces raises $6M for efficient, environmental homes
It’s difficult to nail down exactly what Sustainable Spaces does, because the San Francisco company seemingly has its fingers in every aspect of home construction and retrofitting. The company does everything from testing for leaks and dangerous gases, to replacing lighting with more efficient bulbs, to installing solar panels.
According to the company, it has worked on 400 homes since 2004, somewhat fewer than other local companies that work to make homes more energy efficient. However,… Continue Reading
Right90 raises $10 million to sell the world on “bottom-up” sales forecasting
Right90, a Foster City, California, company specializing in “bottom-up sales forecasting” software, has raised $10 million in its third round of financing.
According to salesopedia, a handy glossary for sales and marketing terms, bottom-up sales forecasting is “an approach…which takes market conditions rather than the company’s objectives as its basis.” In practice, this means looking deeper than executives’ predictions and assembling granular data from the people doing the selling, themselves. Instead of projecting that “we’ll do… Continue Reading
UpTake, the travel search engine that gets its traffic from Google, takes in $10M
UpTake , the travel search engine formerly known as Kango, has raised over $10 million in a second round of financing.
Unlike many content-focused travel sites, which seem to proliferate daily (see TripWolf, IgoUgo, TripSay), UpTake has no illusions about becoming the first place people turn for travel info. It has instead built a strategy almost entirely based around aggregating high-quality content from other sources and pulling in traffic from travel searches executed on major search… Continue Reading
Lithium scores money to grow corporate social networks
updated
Lithium Technologies, which builds and operates social networks for enterprises, has raised $12 million in venture capital today.
The company’s clients include Dell, AT&T, Sony PlayStation, Univision, and PayPal — all businesses with large user communities and heavy customer service and product support needs. Lithium’s community sites are designed to help these clients streamline the interaction with their customers and improve brand loyalty. To get an idea of how the sites function, take a look at… Continue Reading
Mocana takes $7M for security on non-PC devices
Mocana, a San Francisco, Calif. startup that makes security software for non-PC devices like PDAs and DVRs, has raised $7 million in its second round of venture funding.
The company’s software, called the Device Security Framework, attempts to secure communications passing over a network from any device, not just computers.
Southern Cross Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Shasta Ventures. Mocana previously took $3.5 million in its first round; to date, it has raised a… Continue Reading
Investors flock to Flock with a new $15 million round
Social web browser Flock has garnered a lot of hype since its release in 2005. It’s also won a lot of fans. Both likely played a role in its new $15 million fourth round of funding announced today. The round was led by Fidelity Ventures, with all previous lead investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures and Shasta Ventures, participating.
Impressively, this round of funding actually surpasses all of Flock’s previous rounds combined.
This money will be… Continue Reading
Travel startup UpTake set to launch opinions super-site
With so many online travel sites crowding the market, you’d think we were nearing a Web 2.0 travel bubble. But according to travel information search engine UpTake, which is launching May 14, there’s still an untapped niche in the market: a travel-opinions supersite.
The market is extremely fragmented with thousands of micro-sites for individual hotels, beaches, airlines and leisure activities. UpTake’s goal is to gather opinions from all of those sites together and become the most… Continue Reading
Marketcetera gets $4M to bring open source to automated trading
Marketcetera, maker of an open source platform for automated trading, has raised $4 million in a first round of venture funding.
To stay competitive, Wall Street firms need to make trades more and more quickly, says chief executive Graham Miller, so many of them are going automated. The equity market is already 30 percent automated, and should reach 50 percent by the end of the decade, he says. Although FlexTrade offers a proprietary automated service, most… Continue Reading
Online content management company Clickability raises $8 million
Clickability offers an all-in-one package to help clients like the New York Times, CNN Interactive and others manage their web sites.
It’s an online content management system that comes with analytics tools, its own content delivery network, data storage, email newsletters, RSS feeds and other services, so large publishers can more efficiently manage their web properties.
The San Francisco-based company started in 1999, raised $7.3 million in 2000, and has been profitable since 2004, according to VentureWire.
Its… Continue Reading
Kango makes travel search personal and raises $4mm
Kango, a travel search engine that finds lodging and activities that match your personal preferences, is launching a closed testing version and announcing that it raised $4 million from Shasta Ventures earlier this year.
This area is extremely competitive. Companies like Kayak and Sidestep, which search multiple sites for the best ticket prices, have raised millions from marquee VCs; cFares, which finds wholesale plane tickets at discount rates, recently raised $4.5 million. TripIt makes it easy… Continue Reading
Shasta Ventures braves new world, raises $250M more
Shasta Ventures, a Silicon Valley (Menlo Park, Calif.) venture capital firm, has raised another $250 million fund to continue early-stage investing in technology companies.
Limited partners in the fund are primarily returning investors from Shasta’s first fund. Shasta is one of a handful of new venture firms to have launched after the pop of the Internet bubble and then survived.
It began investing its first fund of $210 million in early 2005, and has made 22 investments… Continue Reading
Doostang takes $3.5M for elite-focused job site
Doostang, a Silicon Valley company that seeks to hook up highly qualified people with high-end employers, has raised $3.5 million in a round led by Shasta Ventures.
Doostang is in a very crowded industry. It is filled job-oriented sites like TheLadders, a job board for six-figure salaries and up, and more specialized job boards on multitudes of niche-oriented Web sites. Also, sites like LinkedIn are gaining currency among highly networked people – who ask their friends to give… Continue Reading