Fund Me

Who would fundme nominate for funding?

2007-03-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

One of this blogs readers recently asked me if I had a choice which company would I fund? After thinking for 20 seconds I had my answer.

The company I would fund is Yugma. Yugma is sanskrit for coming together. This blog or anyone associated with this blog has no relationship with Yugma.

Why Yumga? After being a longtime user of WebEx I was always on the look out for a cheaper, easier to use solution. Thats where Yugma comes in. Its actually free if you want to do demos for your clients and there are no more than 10 participants. You can pay to upgrade your account. Upgrade allows you to share your mouse and keyboard with other people and increase the number of participants. Paid accounts start from $9.95 per month, much cheaper than other alternatives.

Setup was a breeze and I was sharing desktops with my team in less than 15 minutes. It worked very well over a wireless connection.

My only hope is that they have enough paid customers and they are making enough money to continue providing this great service.

Magnify gets $1.2 million

2007-02-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

Magnify.net recently received $1.2 million in funding. The round was led by New York Angels and NextStage Capital. Magnify allows websites to add video channels to their own sites. Individual website owners dont have to worry about storage or bandwidth. They claim to share ad revenue with the channel owners. Magnify has a lot of templates and tools to manage your video channel.

From what I can gather Magnify is like the MySpace of videos. Monetization will be through ads.

Via newteevee

Imagekind receives $2.6 million

2007-02-26T17:54:00.000-08:00

Seattle based Imagekind has raised $2.6 million in funding. Imagekind allows artists to upload their artwork and sell it at prices of the artists choosing. Imagekind takes a charge to cover the cost of printing, framing and shipping. In addition they charge a service fee, $8.99 is the minimum charge for Imagekind. This round was led by Holtzbrinck ventures.

Art.com is their direct competitor.

Via techcrunch

Koolanoo secures $3 million

2007-02-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

Koolanoo announced that they have secured $3 million in funding. Koolanoo is a Jewish social network. Giza Venture Capital is leading this round of investment.

Other companies with some link to Israel in the news are Zlango and AniBOOM.

Via Mashable

Shelfari gets $1 million from Amazon

2007-02-26T11:51:00.000-08:00

Amazon has made another investment into a social networking site for book lovers. Shelfari actually taps into Amazon apis to get book covers, author names, reviews and other book details. They plan to make money by selling books through amazon and getting an affiliates fee. The main appeal seems to be the way you can display your books on a shelf and find out who else owns these books. You can then share your book shelf on blogs and other websites.

Amazon has made investments in FantasyMoguls recently.

Via seattlepi

AniBOOM raises $4.5 million

2007-02-25T18:37:00.000-08:00

AniBOOM raised $4.5 million with Evergreen leading the round. AniBOOM is based in Israel and is a YouTube for animations. They are involved in different projects including contests and tools for animators.

Israeli based Zlango also got a round of funding recently.

Via newteevee

FantasyMoguls receives $1 million

2007-02-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

FantasyMoguls a game from Atomic Moguls has received $1 million from Second Avenue Partners and Amazon. The game is based on Hollywood movies. Members can draft six movies and points are handed out based on variables like performance, reviews from IMDB, per theater average. In short its a twist on fantasy sports leagues.

Monetization will be through online advertising and partnerships with other entertainment sites.

Via seattlepi

PBWiki receives $2 million

2007-02-25T14:09:00.000-08:00

PBWiki has raised $2 million in funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures. PBWiki allows anyone to start a wiki. This company seems to be going after the same market that Wetpaint and countless other wiki providers are trying to capture.

Via Mashable

Zlango secures $12 million

2007-02-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

Zlango, an Israel based company, announced on Feb 12th 2007 that they had secured $12 million in funding. The funding was led by Accel partners and Benchmark Capital. Zlango has created a brand new language using colorful icons. So as long as you know the meaning of these icons you should be able to get your message across to people who cant speak the same language. The idea is pretty good. It remains to be seen how many people are willing to take the plunge and learn a new language.

Benchmark seems to be big on these kind of companies. Earlier this year they funded Gigya which is an email company that allows you to embed different digital media. Accel made a sizeable investment in Wetpaint.

Via startupsquad

Brickfish gets $11.2 million in Series A funding.

2007-02-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

Brickfish announced on Feb 21st 2007 that they got $11.2 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was led by DCM. Brickfish provides a platform that connects advertisers and consumers through user generated content. For example person x who likes hyper comics can blog about it and create a contest/campaign that rewards people with real cash for original comic ideas. The rest of the brickfish community will vote on the user submitted ideas. The rewards would be provided by the owner of hyper comics. Brickfish is located in San Diego, California.

Via vcaonline

Mozes raises $5 million

2007-02-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

Palo Alto based Mozes raised $5 million in series A funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Mozes allows people to manage text based mobile campaigns. Anyone can register a keyword. When I text Mozes with that keyword I will get messages from the owner of that keyword. First keyword can be registered for free. Seems like a lot of bands are grabbing up the keywords. This can be an ideal solution for people who are on the go and need to get the latest news fix.

Norwest Venture Partners also made an investment in SideStep this year.

Via techtoken

iSkoot receives $7 million

2007-02-24T19:44:00.000-08:00

iSkoot announced that it had received $7 million in Series B funding. Charles River Ventures led this round. iSkoot allows people to talk with their Skype contacts through a mobile phone. iSkoot is a phone software application. They plan to be compatible with Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk.

iSkoot is trying to convince mobile phone operators to bundle their software on different mobile phones. Microsoft compatibility is conspicuously missing. The download is free so I guess they are hoping that cellphone operators will pay them.

Via Mashable

SideStep secures $15 million

2007-02-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

SideStep announced on Feb 7th 2007 that they had secured $15 million in a Series C round. This round was led by Norwest Venture Partners. SideStep allows consumers to find the best travel bargains by searching on more than 150 sites. According to SideStep more than 5 million consumers turn to SideStep each month. SideStep Press Release.

The travel category seems to be heating up. Recently we saw a $12.1 million deal for Farecast.

Via SiliconTap

Gigya gets $4 million

2007-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Gigya has secured $4 million in funding from Benchmark capital. Gigya was launched in November 2006 and is a webmail service that allows you to add MySpace layouts, rockyou slide shows, photobucket pictures and youtube videos to name a few. Users can import hotmail, yahoo and gmail contacts.

This seems squarely aimed at the MySpace crowd.

Via thealarmclock

Vizu raises 2.9 million

2007-02-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

Vizu announced on Jan 31 2007 that they had raised $2.9 million in funding. This funding will be used to develop Vizu Answers. Draper Fisher Jurveston led this round of funding. Vizu Answers is like google adsense for polls. Companies can create polls that are then distributed to sites/affiliates within Vizus network. Sites that display the polls get a share of the revenue.

Draper Fisher Jurveston also made an investment in Meebo in January.

Via techcrunch

Jan 2007 Funding Roundup

2007-02-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

Im going to do a highly unscientific analysis of the state of venture capital for the month of Jan 2007. Lets see how un/profitable is it to be in the world of web 2.0.

In Jan there were deals in the

1 to 5 million range. (5)
     Vizu, Shiny Media, MyYearBook, Wize, Kiptronic

5 to 10 million range. (4)
     Wetpaint, Buzzlogic, Wikio, Meebo

10 to 15 million range. (3)
     Piczo, LinkedIn, Farecast

0 to 1 million range. (1)
     Lijit

Promising Deals: (5)
     Piczo, LinkedIn, Meebo, MyYearBook, Kiptronic

On the Fence Deals: (3)
     Vizu, Shiny Media, Farecast

Doomed Deals: (5)
     Wetpaint, Buzzlogic, Wikio, Lijit, Wize

Total Deals: 13 worth 89.7 million dollars

23% of the deals seem to be doomed while 38% are likely candidates for success. The other 38% have a 50/50 chance.

Overall seems to be a good time for VCs and 2.0 companies neeeding funding. However we still have some time to reach the madness of 2000.

Disclaimer: This is not a complete list of the deals that took place in Jan.

LinkedIn Receives $12.8 million

2007-01-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

Although LinkedIn came before the 2.0 mania, its good to know that they recently raised $12.8 million dollars with the help of Bessemer. The company had more than 10 million in revenues for 2006 and has achieved profitability.

LinkedIn allows you to expand your professional network by tapping into your friends network. Once you join LinkedIn you do feel like you have to increase your network just to have bragging rights. They make money by charging for some of the connections you make.

Via techcrunch

Shiny Media secures $4.5 million

2007-01-31T18:29:00.000-08:00

Shiny Media a blogging company received $4.5 million in funding from Bright Station ventures. Shiny Media is a family of blogs similar to Weblogs or Gawker media. They have more than 20 blogs currently. They claim to have more than a million unique users a month.

Via mashable

Farecast receives $12.1 million

2007-01-31T18:05:00.000-08:00

Farecast recently got another round of funding worth $12.1 million. Sutter Hill Ventures was one of the investors. The total raised by Farecast is now $20.6 million.

Farecast has a very interesting service. They will predict the price of an airline ticket over the next 7 days. Farecast will give you a tip and let you know whether you should wait or buy. They will also tell you how confident they are in this prediction. On top of all this Farecast will also sell you a guarantee for $9.95. According to the site

if in the next 7 days Farecast’s predictive technology says that the current lowest price will stay about the same, Farecast will offer to consumers a Fare Guard product ($9.95). Fare Guard protects consumers when the price rises in the next 7 days. If the price does indeed increase, customers can provide proof of purchase to Farecast and redeem the difference in price.

Pretty cool. I would be really interested to know how many people are willing to pay for this guarantee.

Via techcrunch

MyYearBook gets $4.1 million

2007-01-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

MyYearBook announced that they have secured $4.1 million with the help of U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) and First Round Capital. MyYearBook claims to be an online yearbook for high schoolers. However it looks and feels like Facebook and MySpace. The target audience seems to be younger high school kids. They have 1.7 million members in the USA.

The site was started by two siblings in high school. The company is in New Hope, PA. Pretty decent for two youngsters. This deal seems to be much better than the wize deal.

Via mashable

Wetpaint Secure $9.5 million

2007-01-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

On Jan 9th 2007, Wetpaint announced that they had secured 9.5 million dollars in Series B financing. Accel Partners led this round of financing. Wetpaint allows anybody to start a wiki styled site. However the Wetpaint offering seems to be more pleasant than a typical wiki. Competitors include Jotspot that got acquired by Google and Wikia that got funding by Amazon.

Wetpaint says that they have 150000 unique wikis with 2.5 million user contributions. They are monetizing by showing relevant ads on the wikis. Currently Google Adsense seem to be the only ads. $9.5 million seems a tad high to run a company whose sole product is easily recreated. But maybe thats why Im not getting any funding. Congrats to the 15 month old company.

Via SeattlePi

Piczo raises $11 million

2007-01-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Piczo announced that they raised $11 million dollars in series C funding. Piczo is an online social networking site for teens. U.S. Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners led this round of funding.

Piczo seems to be more focused on privacy than rivals MySpace and Bebo. It seems to be more popular in the UK.

Via SiliconTap

BuzzLogic hits a $9.6 million pay day

2007-01-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

On 16th Jan 2007, BuzzLogic announced that they had secured $9.6 million series A funding. This round was led by Adams Capital Management, Ackerley Partners and Transcosmos Investments & Business Development.

BuzzLogic tries to make sense of the conversations going on in the social media sites (blogs). Their service is useful for Marketing and PR folks that want to understand who is driving conversations about their products or brands. Once the key influencers are identified the PR and marketing teams can concentrate on improving their brands, reputations, products and customer relationships.

This service is mainly useful for the fortune 500 companies. However they do have plans to engage the mom and pop bloggers through widgets.

Via venturebeat

Meebo solidifies its position

2007-01-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

Meebo is an online IM service. Meebo allows you to chat on the aim, yahoo, google talk and msn platform without downloading anything. On Jan 18th 2007 Meebo announced a second round of funding worth $9 million. Draper Fisher Jurvetson lead this round of financing. Meebo is looking to monetize its service by showing ads, personalization and providing other services such as sending IMs over the SMS network.

Im sure Meebo is also hoping to sell itself to some big pocketed company. Whatever their intentions are Meebo is an extremely well designed and useful service that I have had the pleasure to use. Competitors include ebuddy, mabber and koolim.

Via mashable

Kiptronic receives $4 million

2007-01-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

San Franciso based Kiptronic received $4 million in Series A funding. This round was led by Blueprint Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. Kiptronic has a platform to deliver ads for podcasts. They are trying to send ads to iPods, mobile phones, laptops via podcasts. The platform inserts ads at the start or end of a podcast. Kiptronic also helps in negotiating the ad rates. According to the press release they now have 47 million available downloads.

This company may have some staying potential. In fact Google may end up buying them if they demonstrate a growth curve.

Via techcrunch