Deals
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Nice pants: Bonobos raises $30m off of strong growth and Nordstrom deal
A lot has changed since I last spoke with Bonobos founder Andy Dunn in 2010. For starters, I no longer work at TechCrunch, and his success metric for his line of well-fitting pants is no longer whether a girl grabs his butt in a bar. (Related: He also assures me he no longer does press interviews after a few whiskeys.)... -
Bracketology: Fanhood’s March Madness sweepstakes targets the casual fan long-tail
The world is filled with casual sports fans who love to cheer on their team and talk trash with their frenemies, but who have never played fantasy sports or placed a bet in a sportsbook. The majority of the more than 75 million fans that filled out March Madness brackets last year fall into this category. For these people, the... -
Thanks for the cash, everyone else: How Sand Hill Road is becoming Downton Abbey
I can’t get over the two big surprises from my interview with outgoing NVCA president Mark Heesen we posted this morning: That a quarter of all the money flowing into venture capital is coming from international markets and, yet, the industry has become more geographically constrained, not less. Like the very British traditions at Downton Abbey staying afloat with... -
Mark Heesen: “VCs have increasingly worked themselves out of a job.” What the next head of the NVCA needs to know
Everyone has to be a nerd about something. For some people, it’s math. For others, it’s baseball stats. For me, it’s venture capital. I may have been the only person who gasped last week when I read in my email that Mark Heesen– head of the National Venture Capital Association was resigning. “This is a huge deal!” I said. Maybe... -
Bitcoin me: Adam Draper’s Boost VC makes a big bet on the virtual currency
As a fourth generation Silicon Valley VC, Adam Draper has early stage tech investing in his blood. Or as the subheader of his personal blog reads: “I have two missions in life: Help entrepreneurs and build an Iron Man suit.” The son of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) co-founder Tim Draper, the 26-year-old has already dabbled in operating a secondary market... -
SXSW Contest: Ad.ly wants to give your startup a free celebrity Tweet
Startups hoping to stand out at South by Southwest (SXSW) face a tall order. As the festival has grown larger, so has the noise created by companies looking to be the year’s breakout star. That means that those companies that do succeed in delivering their message will do so through a combination of creativity and some luck One company that... -
FabFitFun dabbles in content+commerce with quarterly VIP boxes
Consumers increasingly want a brand narrative around the products that they buy. So it makes sense that connecting content and commerce is a hot business strategy. There’s been some debate, however, about how to combine content and commerce, and in what cases it leads to distrust or erodes brand authenticity. As our Erin Griffith and the guests of our... -
Austin’s Bloomfire raises another $8M, updates cloud collaboration tools
When Craig Malloy pitched Silicon Valley venture capitalists with his idea to buy a six-person company in Salt Lake City, Utah, and move it to Austin, Texas, they looked at him like he was crazy. Ultimately, though, one venture firm, Redpoint Ventures, got on board, and with support from Austin Ventures, Malloy got his way. Armed with $10 million of…
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Groupon may be the ultimate goat right now, but mark my words: We’ll see a Groupon 2.0
It’s never a good idea as a tech journalist to try to predict the future, particularly in the digital age where those predictions can hang out on the Web mocking you when they are wrong. Nonetheless, I will tell you right now that within the next 10 years we will see another Groupon. By “another Groupon,” I don’t mean a... -
Media marketplace Pond5 acquires European stock photo startup Pixmac
Emboldened by the recent IPO success of stock imagery service Shutterstock, New York’s Pond5 has agreed to acquire Prague-based stock image service Pixmac to bolster its marketplace for media makers. Pond5 CEO Tom Bennett wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but he says the acquisition of Pixmac’s assets will help the company become more global while…
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Are European entrepreneurs actually better at ecommerce?
Back in 2008 I wrote a column for BusinessWeek on how ecommerce had hit a wall. Although numbers– and all empirical evidence– backed my griping up, at the time there was only one venture capitalist I knew who was aggressively betting on a new generation of ecommerce companies: Danny Rimer of Index Ventures. And — astonishingly enough– a lot... -
Scopely announces first five developer partners, adding Double Fine and others to publishing platform
Two months ago LA game publisher and distribution platform Scopely finally pulled the curtain back to reveal what it’s been building with the $8.5 million it raised since July 2011. The vision was, not surprisingly, bigger than its “with Buddies” franchise of mobile games, despite the fact that all three titles released to date have been Top 5 games in... -
Launchpad LA adds former MySpace exec Jamie Kantrowitz as partner
The leadership bench at Santa Monica’s Launchpad LA accelerator got significantly deeper today with the addition of Jamie Kantrowitz as a partner. As the first Head of Marketing and Content at MySpace, and most recently the co-founder of cloud storage for creative professionals startup Gobbler, Kantrowitz is one of the more experienced and well respected operators in Los... -
Spark raises fourth fund at $450m. Its ambitions have grown well beyond just media
Back when Spark Capital launched in 2005, sources in the Boston venture community whispered to me that they worried that Todd Dagres might be having a mid-life crisis. In general, the world wasn’t super hot on consumer Internet companies back then. And the original premise of his new venture firm Spark Capital was to combine the Internet and old media... -
Crowdfunder announces CROWDIMPACT LA, a contest for social enterprises
Anyone looking to get their feel good on should plan on being in Los Angeles on April 23. That’s the day that Crowdfunder and Demand Media will host CROWDIMPACT LA, a social enterprise pitch event. The companies have paired up with a variety of well known social enterprises including Toniic, TED Fellows, Kairos Society, Thiel Foundation, Christie Communications, and... -
FastPay raises another $10M, crosses $100M in digital receivable lending
Building a business around online advertising is hard enough without having to combat the cashflow issues created by lengthy payment terms. A survey by industry regulatory body IAB indicates that nearly 80 percent of digital advertising invoices take 60 days or longer to pay. Yes it’s great that Pepsi and Ford want to advertise on your site, or purchase inventory...
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WibiData raises $15 million Series B
WibiData, a big data startup focused on software for building customer-facing applications on Hadoop, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from Canaan Partners. Existing investors NEA and Eric Schmidt participated. [Source: WibiData]
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AlephCloud raises $7.5 million
AlephCloud, which makes technology to help manage content privacy in public clouds, has raised $7.5M in a Series B round of financing led by Handbag, LLC, a venture capital firm founded by Seth Neiman. The company has raised $9.5 million total. [Source : AlephCloud]
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Bent on European domination, JustFab continues M&A
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Interactions Corp. raises $40 million
Interactions Corporation, which builds Virtual Assistant applications raised $40 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Capital with participation from Sigma Partners, Sigma Prime Ventures, RED LLC, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, North Hill Ventures and Updata Partners. [Source: Interactions Corp.]
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Rallyverse, a platform that helps brands spread authentic content, releases API
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How Qualaroo hacks the marketing conversion funnel
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Nextdoor: “We stopped everything we were doing and trained every engineer on mobile”
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As WeChat grows, Tencent opens office in Malaysia
Chinese Internet giant Tencent is opening an office in Malaysia, in part to consolidate its gains in the country with popular messaging app WeChat. The app has more than 1 million users in the country, representing 70 percent market penetration among Malaysian smartphone users. The app has about 400 million users worldwide, Tencent claims. [Source: The Next Web]
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Low-fee investment platform Loyal3 raises $18M Series C round
Loyal3, a startup that lets people invest in companies without having to pay transaction or management fees, has raised $18 million in Series C funding, led by DNS-L3, with participation from former Facebook privacy officer Chris Kelly, and Loyal3 Chairman and CEO Barry Schneider. The company has raised a total of $45 million. [Source: TechCrunch]
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Facebook’s Home phones delayed in Europe
Facebook Home, the social network’s new launcher for Android phones, has been trashed in the US and is now striking trouble in Europe. HTC First, the phone that comes with Home pre-installed, won’t be launching on time in the UK or France, because Facebook has decided to instead improve the software before rolling out to international markets. [Source: TechCrunch]
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Messaging service imo.im raises $13M, adds Broadcasts
Uber-messaging app imo.im, which is reminiscent of the old Meebo, has raised $13 million led by its co-founder Georges Harik, an early Googler. The universal messaging dashboard has also unveiled a new “Broadcasts” feature for its Android and iOS apps that connects users with similar interests. [Source: The Next Web]
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Mailbox releases its email app for iPad
Mailbox, the stupidly popular email app for iPhone that recently sold to Dropbox, is now available on the iPad. Looks pretty much the same, but bigger. Apparently a version of the app is coming to Android soon. [Source: Mailbox]
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Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito’s H2 comes out of stealth
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Forty more tickets on sale for our John Doerr PandoMonthly! (And a new venue…)
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Report: Square drops two execs
Two execs, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov (who hadn’t even started at the company yet!), have been dropped by Square, according to AllThingsD. Cutright was Square’s vice president of international, while Petrov was going to be the new vice president of partnerships. [Source: AllThingsD]
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Are "quantum dots" the future of displays?
Today, 3M and Nanosys announced that “quantum dot technology” (tiny nanoparticles that emit light) are almost ready to be built into smartphones, tablets, and TVs. [Source: 3M via Mashable]
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HP's PC sales are down 20%
Although HP’s stock was up 13% in after-hours trading, the company’s PC sales keep plummeting, down 20% for the year. Meanwhile, although CEO Meg Whitman was once a fan of Windows 8, today she namedropped the company’s non-Windows products at every opportunity. [Source: Business Insider]
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Yelp says it does not play favorites
Yelp has dealt with claims for a long time that say the company benefits businesses that advertise with it by featuring those reviews more prominently. Today, Yelp’s VP of Communications and Public Affairs fired back at these claims, saying, “The sensational allegation that Yelp manipulates reviews and ratings to reward advertisers or punish non-advertisers… is not — and has never been — true.” [Source: Yelp via The Next Web]
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Too small to fail: The partnership-driven nature of fintech startups
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Jaron Lanier: Information doesn't want to be free
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Google releases new Trends product
Google Trends now has charts updated monthly that list the top searches in over 40 categories. A smattering of top searches — actor: Salena Gomez; athlete: Michael Jordan; authors: William Shakespeare. [Source: Google Trends]
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Paul Allen is putting out a blues/rock album
The microsoft cofounder announced via Twitter that his band the Underthinkers will be putting out its debut album, “Everywhere at Once.” Amazon describes it as full of “blues-based rock guitar nuggets.” [Source: BetaBeat]
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Data, heart, virality, and leadership: Five tips for today’s entrepreneurial journey
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Hewlett Packard beats earnings expectations, sales fall short
HP reported earnings per share of $.87, while analysts predicted $.81. Revenue was weaker at $27.58 billion, while the street had predicted $28 billion. [Source: Hewlett Packard]
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GiftCards.com to buy Giftly
Pittsburgh-based GiftCards.com will buy San Francisco-based startup Giftly to grow its mobile platform. Giftly has raised about $2.8 million in venture capital. It will remain in San Francisco but rolled into GiftCards.com. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. [Source: TechCrunch]
