ONStor sells for $25M, taking $105M in capital down with it
ONStor, the ill-fated maker of data storage equipment for enterprises, has sold to software provider LSI Corporation for about $25 million, a paltry sum compared to the $130 million in venture capital it raised since its founding in 2001.
The big losers in the deal are ONStor’s fairly prestigious investors, including Foundation Capital, Velocity Interactive Group, Mayfield Fund and Worldview Technology Partners, among others.
Signs of trouble arose in April 2008 when the Campbell, Calif., company yanked… Continue Reading
Velocity starts fund with Best Buy, gets new name
Velocity Interactive Group has already invested in a wide range of digital media companies, and it’s going to be doing more of that with the help of retailer Best Buy. The two are starting a fund together, targeting the same mobile, gaming, video, and other media-related startups as Velocity has been. Best Buy is going to be using its brick-and-mortar clout to help with the investment.
Separately, Velocity is changing its name to Fuse Capital due… Continue Reading
Pano Logic closes $6M more for virtual desktops
Pano Logic, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based provider of software and computing equipment used to run virtual Windows desktops from data centers, has brought in $6 million more, upping its second round of funding to $18 million. It already has a customer base of 150, including SanDisk and Bank of Montreal, according to VentureWire.
The company says its technology lets several people use the same computer at once, cutting down on the number of computers needed by… Continue Reading
SpectraLinear nabs $9.8M for computing timers
SpectraLiner, a company that provides internal clocking devices used in computing and internet communications systems, has raised $9.84 million in third-round funding, according to peHUB. It hasn’t disclosed plans for the new money but currently has six products on the market.
The Santa Clara, Calif. firm had previously raised $28 million and a $3 million bridge loan. Its investors include Horizon Ventures, Cypress Semiconductor, InterWest Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Velocity Interactive Group.
Source: P2P startup SkyRider has shut down
Troubled peer-to-peer technology startup SkyRider has shut down, a reliable source tells me. I’ve reached out to the company for comment but haven’t heard back.
Mountain View, Calif-based SkyRider took a round of bridge financing last winter, as we reported then; NewTeeVee subsequently unearthed a management shakeup.
Notably, SkyRider was a portfolio company of top venture firm Sequoia — the one that last week told its portfolio companies to cut costs as much as possible in order… Continue Reading
Stealthy web publishing platform Crowd Fusion raises $3M from Velocity, Greycroft, Andreessen
How to publish on the web? Crowd Fusion, currently in stealth, is promising some fancy-sounding features like “Innovative content management, database management & performance evaluation/optimization tools” that has this web publisher interested in learning more.
The big blogging platforms — Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress — offer easy ways for anyone to create and publish their own blog. But Wordpress and TypePad also offer more complex versions to help larger publishers manage lots of content coming from many… Continue Reading
Innotas, a project portfolio market company, gets $6M boost
Innotas, a company offering something called project portfolio management (PPM), has raised $6 million more in funding.
PPM is software designed to help groups tackle projects, with an eye toward managing resources and meeting goals. Where Salesforce has become a titan from selling customer relationship management (CRM) software to sales divisions at big firms, Innotas and others hope to fatten from peddling PPM to the rest of the company. Both CRM and PPM are broadly categorized… Continue Reading
Storage company ONStor pulls IPO plan, raises $25M
ONStor, a data storage equipment maker that had hoped to go public, has pulled those plans and raised another $25 million from investors.
We wrote about OnStor here when signaled its intent to go public, and mentioned the large number of storage companies that were seeking to go public, even when they were losing money and facing fierce competition. 3Par, Compellent, Data Domain and Netezza all held IPOs last year, and all of their stocks have… Continue Reading
Publish2 raises a round, aims to bring more journalists to the web
In recent years, many journalists (including myself) have experimented with web services intended to help journalism go online, and those efforts have failed.
We’d hoped that things like better newsroom software or local community sites would allow quality reporting to run efficiently and survive as web businesses. But these efforts were often top-down. Newsroom software tried to mirror the needs of the traditional newsroom, for example.
But newsroom software hasn’t thrived. Rather, the more successful software has… Continue Reading
Generate, a video creation shop, joins Velocity’s digital media portfolio
Generate is a two year old effort run by executives who have left their big companies for the startup life. The company creates compelling short videos on small budgets, that are distributed across the web, television and mobile devices.
The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company has just raised $6 million from Velocity Interactive Group — this is also another move by Velocity to assemble a portfolio of complementary media companies. More on that in a minute.
Generate’s model… Continue Reading
Radar Networks receives $13M for Twine, plans to start opening in March
The funding round for Radar Networks that we briefly mentioned last week has been officially announced. It turns out that the company took $13 million more, and added Ross Levihnson, the former News Corp. exec and head of Myspace, to its board of directors.
We spoke with CEO Nova Spivack toward the end of the week, and he filled us in on a few more details. Twine, the semantic application aimed at collecting and organizing information… Continue Reading
Radar Networks receives new funding for Twine
Radar Networks, the San Francisco semantic web startup, has received a fresh round of funding for development of its first application, Twine.
New investor Velocity Interactive Group participated in the round, according to Dan Primack at peHUB. We’ve also heard from our own sources that the investment is probably in the $15-$20 million range (no giant, Metaweb-style $40+ million fundings here).
More details are due to be announced next week. Radar previously took a round of about… Continue Reading
Velocity’s saga reveals the art of ripping up a VC partnership
Controversy has swirled around digital media-focused venture capital firm Velocity Interactive Group from its beginnings last year. Now, more details about the Silicon Valley-Los Angeles firm’s saga are being reported by PEHub.
The tale of Velocity shows how unnerving change is hitting the digital media investing market. Astronomic valuations for companies like Facebook have led to many other digital media companies raising their own valuations, as PEHub’s Dan Primack describes — throwing Velocity’s original investment plans… Continue Reading