Big Switch Networks, building a platform to bring the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks, secured $13.75 million in a Series A financing led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
BO.LT debuted to allow brands and marketers to share pages via Facebook and Twitter, but with an interesting twist: they can change the content.
BUMP.com, a social network for your car (and so much more), completed a $1.2 million Series B-1 round from Wilson Sonsini Investment Co., DLA Piper Venture Fund, Hany & Summer Girgis and others. The company also announced the launch of its first Android app.
Venture capital firm DCM launched A-Fund, a $100 million investment fund to be focused entirely on startups developing for the Android platform.
Consumer information service companies, those in the exploding social media, gaming and e-commerce markets, raised $875 million for 81 deals in the first quarter of 2011, according to data released by Dow Jones VentureSource on Thursday. That’s triple the amount raised during the same period last year.
Groupon has has officially hired Margo Georgiadis, who will step in as COO and oversee the company’s global sales, marketing, and operations. Georgiadis replaces Rob Solomon.
In other daily deal news: It turns out that some 23 million Americans—or 10% of the adult population—purchased deals from daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial in 2010.
Microlending champion Kiva announced Friday that it has added a new category to its wildly popular microfinance network: Green Loans
AOL subsidiary MapQuest announced Friday that it has a new VP of Product Management: former Googler Vijay R. Bangaru, who is the third executive hire in the last three months.
Sequoia Capital made a multi-million dollar investment in China-based retailer and wholesaler Milanoo.com's business operations fund.
GREE Inc., operator of Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network, paid $104 million for all shares in OpenFeint, a social gaming developer for Android and iOS devices. The acquisition signals GREE’s “entrance into the global market."
Pixable, the destination to discover and enjoy social photos, closed $3.6 million in Series B financing led by Menlo Ventures.
Social mobile gaming startup Playmatics raised a $1 million round backed by several prominent Swiss-based business angels.
MMJK, parent company of online poker site PurePlay, has raised $2.8 million of a $4.8 million round, according to an SEC filing published this week.
Discount ticketing service ScoreBig raised $14 million in Series B financing led by U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from Bain Capital.
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Steven Loeb
Startup/Business
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Named as one of the top ideas in 2006 by the New York Times Magazine, Kiva (www.kiva.org) is the world’s first person-to-person lending marketplace for the poor. Kiva's mission is to reduce global poverty by letting consumers lend to specific developing world entrepreneurs online. These loans help low income entrepreneurs create their own path towards economic self sufficiency. In a little over a year, Kiva has rapidly grown to become the most trafficked site in microfinance with over 70,000 internet lenders supporting thousands of entrepreneurs in 30 developing countries. Kiva has also received wide acclaim from the blogosphere (+10,000 blogs), mainstream media (NPR, BBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc) and development experts (featured at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative and 2006 Global Microcredit Summit). Headquartered in San Francisco, Kiva is a 501(c)3 non-profit and aspires to be a major internet public good (like Wikipedia).Startup/Business
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The PurePlay Story PurePlay was founded by two entrepreneurs who were frustrated with the unrealistic game play at multi-player online games sites. At most of these sites, players don't play competitively because there's no incentive to win and there's nothing at stake. At sites where there is an incentive to win, such as gambling sites, players can lose a lot of money. PurePlay's patented business model was developed to encourage people to play competitively to win prizes without requiring them to risk losing money. PurePlay plans to apply its unique approach to many types of online multi-player games, enabling players to "Win Big without the Risk". PurePlay's launch in 2005 was kicked off with the rollout of one of the largest poker sites on the web. With the incredible rise in the popularity of poker, and PurePlay's unique approach, PurePlay has already attracted hundreds of thousands of customers. The company is funded by several prominent Silicon Valley angel investors and venture capitalists, and is located in San Francisco. The Anti-Gambling Site PurePlay is committed to responsible game-play and is not a gambling site. Because we do not offer gambling, we make it impossible for players to lose money, but still provide an exciting and entertaining experience. Our goal is to maintain the thrill of online games while keeping it safe for everyone. We are partnering with agencies, groups and associations to help promote safe and responsible game play and to provide a conduit to assistance for those with gambling addictions. We look forward to bringing you more PurePlay products that allow you to "win big without the risk".Startup/Business
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BO.LT is a page sharing service that lets marketing professionals (and amateurs) instantly curate and spread content by copying, editing, and sharing. With BO.LT, you paste the address of a page on your site or blog, or any page on the web, embellish the page, and we will give you a new link to your page that is instantly shareable and available. Your pages become more engaging and compelling through the participation of the consumers of the content. Based in San Francisco and founded in 2010, BO.LT is backed by Benchmark Capital. For more information and to start bolting pages today, visit http://bo.lt/.
