Venture Funding News

This blog features news about startups receiving funding and VC firms.

July 27, 2010

Jive Software Talks Up $30 Million

The capital will be used to accelerate Jive’s technology innovation and further drive the company’s leadership in the social business market. Ted Schlein, Managing Partner at KPCB, will join Jive's Board of Directors.

“Social Business is the most important enterprise software category in a decade,” said Ted Schlein. “Jive is the clear market leader, with a strong customer base, best-in-class technology and a deep management team. Jive is poised to become the next great enterprise software company.”

“We are honored to welcome KPCB to Jive, and to receive Sequoia’s unwavering commitment,” said Tony Zingale, Jive's CEO. “KPCB and Sequoia are unparalleled at building great companies. We are privileged to have them both on our team.”

Jive helps companies like Charles Schwab, Intel, Nike, and VMware adopt social business to create breakthroughs in competitive advantage, profitability and growth. Jive SBS combines the power of community software, collaboration software, social networking software, and social media monitoring offerings into an integrated social platform. The SBS market is projected to grow in excess of 25 percent per year and will reach nearly $5 billion by 2013.

July 18, 2010

Pixazza Raises $12 Million Series B

Pixazza provides consumers with information relevant to the images on popular websites. By enabling consumers to simply mouse over images to learn more, see related products or make purchases instantly, Pixazza has pioneered the use of images as real estate for branding and ecommerce that drives advertising and revenue opportunities for publishers and merchants. As a result, Pixazza has created a compelling value proposition for consumers, web publishers and advertisers alike, spurring widespread adoption.

The company also disclosed that it now reaches more than 25 million unique visitors per month through its extensive publisher network. Of these visitors, more than two-thirds are based in the U.S. Additionally, Pixazza delivers commerce-enabled photos at a rate of 8 billion image views per year, a 60% increase in the last three months. The company also has moved to 50 in Quantcast's top U.S. network ranking. Each of these markers underscores the breadth and depth of Pixazza's consumer reach to publishers and advertisers who hope to capitalize on consumer interest in interactive content.

"Images dominate the Internet and comprise the most visually appealing aspects of many websites, yet images have remained static for more than 15 years," said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza. "This new round of funding provides the resources to realize our vision of making every image interactive by revealing the information inside the trillions of images across the web."

July 9, 2010

Coveroo Secures $2.3 Million

The additional investment comes at a time when Coveroo has more than tripled its customer base and signed key partnerships with Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, Marvel Entertainment and several others. The company has also added thousand of new designs to its portfolio, established kiosks in major retail locations and expanded its live events business to include video game premieres, movie launches, handset launches and popular concerts such as the Coachella Music Festival.

Coveroo creates customized covers and cases for all major cell phone brands including iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and HTC. Coupled with its catalog of more than 3,000 exclusive designs, Coveroo offers the widest selection of customized covers and cases available. Designs include exclusive images inspired by World Soccer Teams, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, Barbie, Star Trek and The Simpsons. Coveroo also gives customers the ability to submit user-generated designs.

June 22, 2010

Baxano Completes $30 Million Funding

The Baxano iO-Flex System is FDA-cleared and commercially available in selected markets. Proceeds from the Series C round of funding will support the US commercial launch and additional post-clearance clinical study of the iO-Flex System.

"The closing of this round of financing launches the next phase of growth for Baxano. Adding our new investors to our extremely strong venture capital partners demonstrates our value proposition as a company," said Tony Recupero, President and CEO of Baxano, Inc. "We believe this round of investment further validates the potential value of the iO-Flex System for all stakeholders in today's cost-effective healthcare environment."

Snaptu Announces $6 Million Round

Snaptu has changed the way people with regular phones use the mobile web by bringing an easy to use, fast and powerful service that combines the most popular social networking services, news, sports, weather and web tools together in one environment.

"Reaching the 10 million mark shows the appetite from people with regular phones to have the same experiences and access to services that the relatively few people with the top-end phones enjoy. This is a very exciting time for us as we continue to roll out simple to use, high quality services that are accessible by everyone. We are delighted to have Carmel Ventures recognize the value of our vision and to join Sequoia Capital as stakeholders in our business," said Ran Makavy, Snaptu CEO.

June 18, 2010

Stion Closes $70 Million

TSMC will receive a 21% stake in the company following its $50 million investment. Stion had previously raised $44.6 million in equity financing.

"TSMC has evaluated a number of thin-film technologies and believes by working with Stion we will gain a robust thin film technology with inherent low cost structure," said Mr. YC Chao, TSMC's Senior Director of New Businesses.

Chet Farris, Stion"s President and CEO, added, "Beyond our 100 MW production facility, the strategic partnerships result in a very capital efficient production model as we will gain access to a certain amount of capacity without additional capital commitment from Stion."

Stion's panels are specifically designed for use in all major applications, including commercial / government, residential, utility and off-grid. The panels are produced using monolithically integrated circuits and offer a number of advantages over competing products, including high efficiency, a convenient form factor (2 ft. x 5 ft), improved performance in partial shading, and superb aesthetics.

As part of the expansion, Stion expects to bring more than 500 direct and indirect jobs to the region in 2010 and 2011.

June 10, 2010

Solexant Scores $41.5 Million

Solexant utilizes a "roll-to-roll" manufacturing technique to produce the industry's first nanocrystal ultrathin-film solar cell. This method allows for more efficient use of equipment space, as well as higher throughput and lower labor costs than competing thin film companies. The company's production process brings down the solar module manufacturing cost and total balance of systems (BOS) cost to below those of other thin film competitors.

Developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) by Dr. Paul Alivisatos and his team, Solexant's printable nanocrystal technology platform can produce flexible thin films using a variety of materials through a fast and simple deposition process. Solexant's first commercial products will be based on printed CdTe nanocrystals. The company plans to commercialize solar cells based on other higher efficiency printed nanocrystal materials over the next few years.

"Solexant's innovative printed nanocrystal technology platform has the potential to deliver the lowest cost per watt in the solar industry," said Damoder Reddy, CEO of Solexant. "During these uncertain economic times, our cost-effective and rapidly scalable manufacturing process attracted new investors, while retaining strong support from our existing investors. The expertise from the new investors and additions to the board will strengthen Solexant's core team and help foster success as we move from R&D toward the commercialization phase."

May 31, 2010

Booyah Lands $20 Million

Since launching in December, MyTown rocketed upwards of more than 2 million users growing at over 100,000 new users week over week. MyTown passed 60 million check-ins and 250 million virtual item impressions a month. An immersive and addicting experience, users of MyTown spend an average of 70 minutes per day, establishing Booyah as the leader in real-world interactive entertainment.

"Booyah is at the epicenter of the fastest growing markets today--mobile, social, and interactive gaming," said Jim Breyer, Partner, Accel Partners. "Not only are they a next-generation entertainment company, but they are bridging the gap between consumers and businesses. The Booyah management team has both the passion and talent to innovate and create a wholly unique experience. "

"We are thrilled to work with a world-class partner such as Accel Partners with their experience across social, mobile and entertainment," said Keith Lee, CEO, Booyah. "The combination of Jim's expertise in real world retail and cutting edge digital media mirrors our dedication to creating the most compelling real-world experiences. MyTown is a bold step to achieving this goal and we have very exciting plans in the near future to move far beyond the check-in."

May 7, 2010

Cotendo Closes $12 Million Round

Cotendo's comprehensive CDN and Site Acceleration Suite includes high-performance acceleration of dynamic and static content, intelligent load balancing, performance monitoring, real-time reporting and more. The Cotendo suite significantly improves the ability of Internet content providers -- including high-volume transactional enterprises, online retailers, financial services companies, advertising networks, professional news and social media sites -- to offer fast, secure and reliable 'whole site' acceleration of both static and dynamic content to online customers and site visitors. By improving web site performance and reliability, the Cotendo suite enhances the user's experience, increases site conversions and loyalty, and enables businesses to achieve a greater investment return on their web presence.

"This investment round is another strong validation for our unique innovation and the business momentum we have experienced since launching our CDN and site acceleration suite," said Ronni Zehavi, Cotendo's co-founder and CEO. "We look forward to using this new capital infusion to drive further rapid growth."

With the new financing Cotendo continues its market expansion and recently opened a local presence in France and Germany. In addition, the company has added several new customers to its rapidly growing US customer roster in the last few months. These include Digg, Meebo, Payoneer and Adbrite.

Cloud.com Raises $11 Million

Cloud.com is led by CEO Sheng Liang, who founded the company in 2008. Liang has extensive experience in the technology industry and has served in a number of both technical and executive leadership roles. Prior to Cloud.com, Liang co-founded and served as CTO of Teros, which was acquired by Citrix in 2005. Sheng also was a member of the senior management teams at SEVEN Networks and Openwave Systems, and was the lead developer and key contributor to the success of the Java Virtual Machine at Sun.

April 28, 2010

Zenverge Rounds Up $30 Million

Based on the Zenverge Entertainment Nexus (ZEN), a groundbreaking new architecture for HD media convergence, the ZN200 and ZN100 product classes represent industry-leading video quality and performance for media transcoding, encoding and decoding at the lowest system cost. Both classes of products are now shipping to select tier-one consumer electronics and operator equipment manufacturers worldwide, enabling them to provide consumers higher quality, universal access to all sources of content. Devices being powered by Zenverge products include HDTVs, Blu-ray recorders, set-top boxes, multimedia NAS devices, portable device adapters, PCs and network video equipment.

"We're seeing great excitement around our ICs and the products into which they are designed. Digital media is being produced and consumed on more devices and at higher quality than ever before and we're at the heart of it all. This funding gives us the financial strength to support the explosive growth we anticipate over the coming months," said Zenverge CEO, Amir Mobini, "Battery's strong semiconductor track record and synergistic portfolio will be of great value to Zenverge at this stage of our growth, and we welcome Ken to our board. Battery's participation in MaxLinear, the first U.S., venture-backed semiconductor company founded since 2002 to go public, is a great testament to the firm's value in our space. "

Freewheel Secures $16.8 Million

FreeWheel's technology enables global media companies and content distributors to effectively manage ad sales rights, produce accurate inventory forecasts for live or on demand content, deliver a yield-optimized set of ads, and analyze video business performance. With the latest version of its flagship product, Monetization Rights Management (MRM), the company offers capabilities developed to address TV Everywhere initiatives, including advanced commercial break pattern management.

"We've been huge believers in FreeWheel from the very start, since the team identified a big hole in the market and started building the business from our offices in Menlo Park," said Roger Lee, general partner at Battery Ventures. "We look at thousands of companies each year and invest in only a handful. We truly believe in the potential for this industry, and it's clear that FreeWheel is far and away the leader in this space."

The new funds will enable FreeWheel to further scale its infrastructure to support new and existing clients, expand that infrastructure globally, and continue to innovate with new products to solve the converging video industry's biggest pain points.

FreeWheel has added numerous high-profile media clients in the past year, including Turner, VEVO, MLB.com, and Discovery Communications. Since it was founded in 2007, FreeWheel has rapidly scaled to serve over two billion ad impressions per month and recently launched the PAVE Initiative, a partner program representing systems integrations with over 70 companies in the digital video space. FreeWheel has grown to over 90 full time employees with offices in San Mateo, New York, and Beijing.

April 24, 2010

BlackArrow Nails $20 Million Financing

This financing provides new capital to expand product development and accelerate the deployment of the BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System to programming networks and on-demand television content providers across North American and international markets.

In a related announcement, BlackArrow and NDS today announced the formation of a strategic alliance to offer an integrated suite of advanced advertising solutions and services. As part of its strategic investment, NDS will have a seat on the BlackArrow board of directors.

"We have aligned ourselves with partners and investors that not only share BlackArrow's vision but also stand behind us by providing a firm financial platform that ensures our ongoing success," said Dean Denhart, CEO of BlackArrow. "This investment further solidifies our long-term ability to help operators and programmers monetize on-demand content globally by leveraging the international expertise, footprint and complementary technologies of NDS, while assuring continued traction and execution in the marketplace."

April 8, 2010

Stitcher Raises $6 Million

"We know that people prefer listening to news, talk and information programming when they're on-the-go. The rise of smartphones has finally created an opportunity to give people exactly what they want to hear -- on their commute, at the gym, on a road-trip -- wherever and whenever they want it and that's exactly what Stitcher does," said Noah Shanok, CEO of Stitcher. "Benchmark's funding, combined with Bob's guidance, will help us continue to take advantage of the growing market for mobile content distribution."

Stitcher's free service allows users to create a personalized audio programming experience. With Stitcher, users can listen to the news and talk radio shows they enjoy whenever and wherever they like, using their mobile devices. Users choose their favorite programs from more than a thousand different sources, and Stitcher then delivers the audio feeds to their phone as a single, regularly updating radio station. Stitcher also helps users discover new content on a variety of topics -- including business, sports, politics, entertainment, and current events -- by recommending additional programs based on the shows users have in their feeds. A single radio station can include programming as diverse as Fox Headline News, NPR's Fresh Air, TechCrunch Headlines, Onion Radio News, and E!'s Hollywood Rap Up.

Shocking Technologies Completes B-1 Round

"We are seeing increasing interest in our embedded ESD solutions from multiple top tier companies and in products from cell phones, portable electronics, memory devices and semiconductors it has become evident we need to scale faster to meet the demand. Our investors have been both enthusiastic and supportive of the need to grow faster and support our customers due to the successes in our initial trials. Shocking will increase our staff 33% over the next several months and over 50% for the year, we are lucky there are many talented people in the valley looking for a high growth opportunity at this time," said Lex Kosowsky, President and CEO.

March 26, 2010

Aerohive Scores $23.5 Million Series C

The new funds will be used to expand the company's sales and marketing capabilities throughout the world and to continue development of the company's award-winning controller-less WLAN technology.

"When we started Aerohive, we were looking to revolutionize the wireless LAN market through innovation." said David Flynn, chief executive officer at Aerohive. "First with a disruptive controller-less architecture to meet the performance of 802.11n, eliminate single points of failure and substantially reduce cost. Subsequently, we have delivered new levels of determinism with a unique Service Level Assurance (SLA) capability and simplified the management, deployment and cost of enterprise Wi-Fi with a cloud-based SaaS solution. Today's investment validates our approach, expands our presence and allows us to accelerate the innovation."

Aerohive was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Santa Clara. The company's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Northern Light Venture Capital.

U-Systems Rounds Up $10 Million

"This funding will enable us to complete our groundbreaking clinical trial, the SOMO-INSIGHT Clinical Study, designed to evaluate whether the somo "v" Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS) from U-Systems in combination with digital mammography is more sensitive to detecting breast lesions when compared to mammography alone in women with dense breasts," said Ron Ho, president and CEO of U-Systems. "Ultrasound, which is routinely used for diagnostic studies, has been shown to find cancer not visible with mammography in women who have dense breasts. A new approach to improving breast cancer detection is critical and we believe that somo "v!" ABUS technology will play a vital role in significantly advancing breast cancer screening for this large group of asymptomatic women with increased breast density."

U-Systems was founded in 1997.

March 19, 2010

Plastic Jungle Raises $7.4 Million

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Plastic Jungle, the Web's leading gift card exchange, announced that it raised a total of $7.4 million in its Series B financing. New investor Redpoint Ventures led the round and previous investors Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Bay Partners, as well as other existing investors also participated. Plastic Jungle will use the funding to bring liquidity to the estimated $30 billion economy in unredeemed gift card cards for the benefit of consumers, retailers and other e-commerce companies.

Plastic Jungle's exchange makes it easy for consumers to get the most value out of gift cards, allowing users to get cash for unwanted gift cards for up to 92% of the unused balance and buy gift cards at up to a 30% discount. The process also directly benefits retailers, creating liquidity in idle gift card balances. When Plastic Jungle buys gift cards from consumers who are not using them, it places them in the hands of highly motivated, brand driven purchasers, driving immediate revenue and profit. In the 2009-2010 holiday season, Plastic Jungle saw 450% year over year revenue growth.

"Unspent gift cards are essentially trapped money on a mag stripe," said Gary Briggs, CEO of Plastic Jungle. "Liquidating the estimated $30 billion in unused gift cards has benefits for consumers and the retailers they shop with. Our growth this past year proves that we are filling a significant gap in the retail economy allowing retailers to drive enormous incremental value from their already successful gift card programs. With this new investment we'll be able to execute our vision more quickly."

Plastic Jungle previously secured $6 million in Series A funding, bringing its total equity funding to $13.4 million. The Series B financing was completed at an increased valuation over the prior round, which occurred in March 2009.

March 10, 2010

SIBEAM Secures $35 Million

SUNNYVALE -- SiBEAM, Inc., a leading innovator of millimeter wave (mmWave) solutions and developer of high-speed wireless communications platforms, announced the closing of $36.5 million in Series D funding led by Foundation Capital. All of SiBEAM’s original investors contributed to this round including U.S. Ventures Partners (USVP) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), joined by new partners in SiBEAM’s success, Lux Capital and Hatteras Funds. Best Buy Inc, and Cisco have also contributed strategic equity investments to support SiBEAM’s growth and propel its second generation 60 GHz wireless high definition chipsets into the mainstream consumer electronics marketplace, as well as fund future projects for personal computing and mobile devices.

SiBEAM’s 60 GHz semiconductor solutions with OmniLink60TM Technology have won multiple awards, most recently being honored with a 2010 Design Vision award in the semiconductor components category. The second generation of SiBEAM’s WirelessHD chipsets, brought into mass production earlier this year, represents the company’s movement into mass market applications with low cost, low power functionality. SiBEAM’s latest chipsets also support advanced features demanded by today’s consumer electronics market including 3D, HDCP and DTCP content protection that can be designed into A/V receivers, home theater-in-a-box systems, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, media center PCs, and consumer laptops.

As a founding member of the WirelessHD Consortium that includes 50 worldwide leaders in consumer electronics and personal computing industries, SiBEAM’s OmniLink60TM Technology is the first WirelessHD-based solution capable of streaming uncompressed high definition video, audio and data.

“This round of financing is a significant milestone for SiBEAM as it demonstrates the continued growth of our business and potential for significant investment return even in a challenging economy. With these funds, we can grow our business toward profitability in the burgeoning wireless A/V market,” said John LeMoncheck, President and CEO of SiBEAM, Inc. “SiBEAM continues to receive extensive interest from CE and PC manufacturers worldwide that are eager to integrate simple, cost effective and high quality wireless streaming capability into their products.”

Cloudmark Racks Up $23 Million

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cloudmark, Inc., a developer of carrier-grade messaging security, has secured $23 million in a round of funding led by new investor Summit Partners and joined by Nokia Growth Partners, the venture capital investing arm of Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone supplier. Existing investors Ignition Partners and Industry Ventures also participated in the round. The new funding was used to assist in Cloudmark's acquisition of Bizanga, Ltd. and is the first investment Cloudmark has raised since 2004.

"Today's carriers must deploy the best defenses against emerging and sophisticated messaging threats," said Hugh McCartney, chief executive officer, Cloudmark. "Our goal is to leverage the recently acquired messaging platform and Cloudmark's proven world-class messaging security technology to provide the industry's most powerful, unified messaging security solution for operators. We are delighted to have raised new capital from both Summit Partners and Nokia Growth Partners, and their support and global experience will help guide Cloudmark as we continue our growth into new and existing markets."

Cloudmark's carrier-grade software solution delivers the industry's fastest and most accurate spam, phishing and virus protection. Through its unique combination of Advanced Message Fingerprinting technology, real-time corroborated feedback from Cloudmark's Global Threat Network system, automated, anonymous traffic analysis and dedicated security analysts, Cloudmark detects messaging abuse with up to 99 percent accuracy and near-zero false positives.

March 3, 2010

Pivot 3 Raises $25 Million

PALO ALTO -- Pivot3, Inc., a company that develops virtual servers and scalable storage in a single platform, announced that it has raised $25 million in a new funding round led by Focus Ventures, the investor firm behind storage companies EqualLogic (acquired by Dell) and Isilon. Participation in this round also included existing investors InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial Capital Partners IX, and Silver Creek Ventures.

The investment will be used to expand sales operations beyond the Americas, as well as to develop and promote innovations that open up new markets for the Pivot3 Serverless Computing platform. '

"With this overwhelming investor support, Pivot3 will aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts to accelerate our already rapid market share growth," said Bob Fernander, CEO of Pivot3. "We now have the resources to expand our lead in the surveillance vertical and also take our product into new markets."

Pivot3 Serverless Computing is the first scale-out storage solution offering integrated server virtualization to enterprise customers. Integrated server virtualization consolidates physical servers into Pivot3 storage appliances for high availability while realizing significant savings in power, cooling and rackspace.

Pivot3 has more than 140 customers such as the Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton. The largest installation at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is a regulated installation with four petabytes of SAN storage that simultaneously provides more than 200 virtual servers.

Audience Closes $15 Million Series E

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Audience, Inc. announced today that is has closed a new round of financing with $15 million in Series E funding from existing investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Tallwood Venture Capital, Vulcan Capital and VentureTech Alliance. This brings total funding to date to $75 million and supports continued product development and rollout of the company's industry-leading noise suppression technology for mobile phones across global markets

"This latest round of funding provides a strong endorsement of our business achievements which include expansion of our portfolio of advanced voice processors and rapid market growth through partnerships with leading handset manufacturers and mobile service providers," said Peter Santos, president and chief executive officer, Audience. "Audience dynamic noise suppression technology is redefining the mobile customer experience by providing unsurpassed call clarity even in noisy environments, enabling successful communications nearly anywhere. We see exciting opportunities to continue advancing voice quality, and to enable speech as the next generation interface for mobile phone applications."

Audience voice processor chips for the mobile and telecom marketplace are based on reverse-engineering the human hearing system to optimize voice communication and speech-based applications in noisy environments. Designed to mimic the functions of the human auditory pathway, the Audience voice processor can distinguish and identify sounds, isolate the primary voice in conversation and cancel out background noise, intermittent sounds (siren, nearby conversation) and echoes, to improve mobile call quality. It also automatically equalizes and adjusts voice volume to optimize the calling experience, so the user can hear clearly without the need to speak over surrounding noise. In addition, the technology enhances performance for speech-based mobile applications such as voice search and user verification and is applicable across a broad range of consumer products where voice needs to be intelligible in noisy environments.

February 5, 2010

UStream Secures $75 Million Series B

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Ustream, the leader in live streaming to Internet and mobile devices, announced a $75 million Series B funding round lead by SOFTBANK of Japan, one of Asia's largest internet and telecom companies with a large mobile presence. Additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia. The funding will help fuel Ustream's growth in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, specifically to pursue opportunities in Asia in Japan, China, Korea and India.

"Asia offers a significant, untapped market opportunity for streaming video," said John Ham, Ustream founder and CEO. "SOFTBANK will enable us to develop this opportunity and deliver on our vision of live streaming video everywhere. We look forward to deploying these resources to accelerate our growth in the United States and Asia Pacific."

Ustream has gotten some big audiences for videos streamed on the site. More than 3.4 million viewers watched the live red carpet pre-show of the American Music Awards in 2009 and more than 3.8 million watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama via Ustream in January 2009.

Glam Media Raises $50 Million

BRISBANE -- Glam Media, Inc., a leading site for women online, has raised approximately $50 million in a private equity mezzanine funding. Proceeds of the funds will be used to build a Digital Media Technology Center, expand internationally and for strategic acquisitions. The Series E round is led by Aeris CAPITAL with existing Glam Media Series D Investors Burda Digital Holding--the digital arm of Hubert Burda Media--and Mizuho Capital participating.

Glam Media has raised private equity mezzanine financing to continue to fund the company's hyper growth as a leading innovator of brand display advertising as the online consumer -- driven by Google Search, Blogs and Twitter -- moves away from portals and large destination sites to vertical niche content and social media. Glam also announced that North America Region business reached EBITDA profitability and the Global business was EBITDA break-even in Q4, 2009. This round brings the net total cash raised by the company directly to approximately $130 million.

"In a short 5 years since launch, Glam Media has become a 'must-buy' for the world's leading brand advertisers," said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of Glam Media. "I am incredibly proud of our employees and the Glam family of publishers and partners that have all worked incredibly hard in the downturn, helping to buck the trends to create the Number 1 Women's Lifestyle Media Company today."

Glam has headquarters in Brisbane and New York City.

January 28, 2010

Yelp Getting Up to $100 Million

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yelp, a leading local review site, announced that private equity firm Elevation Partners has agreed to make a $25 million investment in Yelp through the purchase of Series E preferred stock. Elevation Partners will also seek to increase its total investment in Yelp to $100 million through a planned purchase of shares from vested employees and other eligible shareholders. The details of the offer to purchase are expected to be announced to qualified participants in the near future.

"We have been able to grow and scale our business quickly, even in the tough economic environment of the last year -- a clear indicator that we've only begun to realize the potential of local search," said Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp chief executive officer and co-founder. "This investment in Yelp provides us with even more capital to focus on scaling our already proven business model and we are thrilled to have Elevation as a new partner." "We believe Yelp is revolutionizing how consumers discover local businesses," said Marc Bodnick, Elevation Partners Managing Director and co-founder. "Yelp has visionary leadership and a massive business opportunity ahead and we are excited about participating in Yelp's growth."

Yelp plans to use the additional funding to deepen its market leadership position throughout the US, accelerate growth in Canada and throughout Western Europe, and continue the development of innovative mobile applications.

The company said it experienced rapid growth in 2009 with the addition of eight new US markets, launches in the UK and Ireland, and the introduction of four new mobile applications (iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre and Android). Traffic on the site increased to more than 26 million unique visitors in the month of December 2009 and review content doubled in the last year to more than 9 million reviews. Yelp earns revenues from search and display advertising and also offers free tools for local businesses to market to the Yelp consumer community.

January 19, 2010

Flurry Closes $7 Million Series B

SAN FRANCISCO -- Flurry, Inc., a leading mobile application analytics provider, announced it has closed a Series B financing round of $7 million. Led by venture capital firm InterWest Partners, the round included existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Draper Richards.

Since launching its service in January 2009, Flurry has quickly emerged as one of the world's largest mobile application analytics and monetization platforms. The company now tracks over one billion end user application sessions per month across iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. Over 15,000 developers have chosen to integrate Flurry Analytics within their applications, which have been downloaded to more than 80% of all iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices.

"Smartphone application download growth is skyrocketing like nothing in recent consumer tech history, dwarfing even early Internet adoption," said Flurry chief executive officer, Simon Khalaf. "With its significant reach, Flurry is positioned to play a significant role in leveraging the measurement of consumer behavior to accelerate the sale of applications and virtual goods."

The financing will be used to aggressively build out new services that increase application developer revenue, hire new employees and scale its infrastructure. Flurry AppCircle, currently in private beta, is the first of a series of revenue generating services designed to use data to intelligently target consumers and increase sales in the App Store.