Y Combinator gets a $2M shot in the arm from Sequoia, angels
Seed-stage venture firm Y Combinator is branching out in its funding strategy today, raising about $2 million from Sequoia Capital and a handful of angel investors. Previously, the firm was funded solely by founders Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston and Trevor Blackwell.
The money from Sequoia will be funneled into a new investment arm of Y Combinator, which will increase the number of companies it can fund each year from 40 to about 60. With… Continue Reading
Auctomatic launches better tools for eBay powersellers
Auctomatic wants to make it easier for eBay’s most active sellers to manage sales. The San Francisco-based company launched its public beta yesterday.
So-called “powersellers” range from self-employed individuals to large firms like Dell. EBay doesn’t offer all the tools needed to manage the process of selling a lot of merchandise at once.
A range of third parties provide software tools designed to streamline the process. The largest, ChannelAdvisor, raised $30 million in May from New Enterprise… Continue Reading
Friendfeed, a company lets you see all your friends’ feeds
updated
Four former Google software designers who helped create its mail and mapping services have started a new Silicon Valley company Friendfeed, to help you track news items your friends are reading and their other activities.
It centers around a feature made famous by the popular social network Facebook: The “feed,” which gives you a steady stream of news about what your friends are doing, i.e., what they’re reading, what applications they’re adding, videos they’re viewing, and… Continue Reading
Weebly wants to help you design blogs
Weebly, the free AJAX website creator, has just raised a $650K angel round and launched a way for you to create blogs from within your site.
The move pits the young San Francisco company, which has garnered about 25,000 users, against entrenched players like Google’s Blogger, Automatic’s WordPress and SixApart’s TypePad — each of which have millions of users.
The money comes from Ron Conway, Steve Anderson, Paul Buchheit (a creator of Gmail), Aydin Senkut and Mike… Continue Reading