Scoopler gets seeded for real-time search
Scoopler, one of the newest companies providing real-time search capabilities, has brought in a seed round somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million. Based in San Francisco, the company was backed by Avalon Ventures, XG Ventures and high-profile individual investors Ron Conway and Michael Birch.
Scoopler, which… Continue Reading
Who are Foursquare’s big-name angels?
Fresh off its London launch, location-sharing service Foursquare revealed the rest of its big-name roster of angel investors. The company raised $1.35 million in a first round of funding last month from Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
Foursquare is one of the few breakouts… Continue Reading
Factery raises $1.2M to find facts in real time
There’s a flood information in all the links posted by users on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious. Now a startup called Factery wants to help you dig up the facts in those links with a new technology called FactRank (the name is a… Continue Reading
Vidly changes name from TwitVid.io, pulls in angel funding from Ron Conway
Vidly, which builds apps for instantaneous video-sharing from mobile phones, rebranded itself and landed $500,000 in funding from angel investors including Ron Conway.
The company, which used to be TwitVid.io, changed its name partly to emphasize its new focus beyond Twitter. But it also wanted to… Continue Reading
Ron Conway accelerates investments to real-time
Ron Conway, arguably the most prolific investor in new Internet companies, has shifted his attention almost solely to “real-time data” companies, saying the market will experience astronomic growth and a value reaching at least a billion dollars within three years.
In a call with VentureBeat today, Conway said… Continue Reading
BookFresh raises $500K more to help you schedule everything online
BookFresh, a startup that helps a wide range of service providers (everyone from doctors to handymen) with the tools to schedule their appointments online, has raised $500,000 in new funding from well-known angel investor Ron Conway and other individuals.
San Mateo, Calif.-based BookFresh says it can… Continue Reading
Motally to deliver reliable mobile analytics
Existing techniques for measuring mobile traffic to Web sites are pretty awful.
Motally, provider of an analytics platform for mobile phones, has emerged from stealth with $1 million raised from BlueRun Ventures and well-known Silicon Valley angel Ron Conway. The company says it wants to establish… Continue Reading
ScanScout nabs $5.1M for contextual video advertising
ScanScout, an online advertising network that places ads in contextually relevant video content, just brought in $5.1 million of an anticipated $8.1 million third round of financing, according to PE Hub. Based in Cambridge, Mass., the company’s backers include General Catalyst Partners, Time Warner, First… Continue Reading
Mobile payment company Mogees acquires BerryStore
Updated
Mogees, a company that wants to give mobile developers more flexibility in how they make money from their applications, is now getting into the app store business too. The Mountain View, Calif. company just told us it has acquired BerryStore, a store for third-party applications… Continue Reading
Bit.ly nabs cash, gives TinyURL a run for its money
At first glance, Bit.ly looks like every other URL shortening service — turning lengthy web addresses into something compact and easily-tweeted like http://bit.ly/11BCd2 — indistinguishable from the Short.tos and Doiops of the world. Of course, TinyURL, the first of its kind, remains the heavyweight, seemingly… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
Aster Data raises $12M for cheap warehousing
Aster Data Systems, which stores data for social networking site MySpace (and others), has raised $12 million in a second round of venture funding.
The Redwood City, Calif. startup offers “frontline data warehousing,” which basically means storage of all of a company’s data for business analysis…. Continue Reading
Weebly scores 1 million users, reaches profitability
Weebly, an AJAX-based drag and drop web page creator, today announces it has reached a million registered users — and perhaps more importantly — that the three-year-old company is now profitable.
The San Francisco, Calif.-based start-up, seeded with $650k by Ron Conway (who participated in… Continue Reading
Sequoia has emergency meeting, tells startups to try to survive downturn
Leading Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia held an emergency meeting yesterday to tell its portfolio companies to get ready for the worst, GigaOm is reporting and which we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. To drive the point home, startups were greeted at the gathering with a… Continue Reading
Iminlikewithyou raises $1.5M for social gaming site
Iminlikewithyou, a startup that began as something close to a dating site and has become closer to a casual game portal and social network over time, has raised a $1.5 million second round tor expansion.
The New York-based company only features its own games on the… Continue Reading
Shawn Fanning negotiating to sell social gaming company Rupture for $30M
Shawn Fanning, who gained fame after launching early music file sharing company Napster, is in advanced stages of talks to sell his most recent social gaming start-up, Rupture, for $30 million.
The buyer would be Electronic Arts, but unlike first reported by Techcrunch, the deal hasn’t… Continue Reading
Online gambling is illegal, right? Not quite; the poker is still going on PurePlay
It’s pretty rare that venture capitalists will bet on a company that shows a hint of impropriety. Yet happens occasionally, for companies that don’t push the envelope too far.
In March, for instance, soft-porn site Zivity got $7 million from two prominent firms. The latest is… Continue Reading
Buddy Media launches another “social media” ad network, raises $6.5M
Buddy Media is a small player in the game of trying to build businesses on Facebook’s developer platform, and on other social network platforms, but it has big plans.
Today, it is rolling out an ad network of its own — meaning it is competing against… Continue Reading
Start-up info wiki TradeVibes gets $900K
Mill River Labs has raised a $900,000 seed round for its start-up information wiki TradeVibes, which just launched in public testing mode.
TradeVibes is far from the only website to offer some kind of company database — read our hot-off-the-press coverage of LinkedIn’s new features, for… Continue Reading
Seesmic, the Twitter of video, gradually opening for public use — unveils investors
Seesmic, yet another video-sharing site that encourages quick, conversational clips that can be recorded and replied to, is opening up for public use, with the waiting period for membership requests down to less than a day. It has also unveiled the names of some high-profile… Continue Reading