What you need to know - 06/09/11

Ronny Kerr · June 9, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1b5e

Coupons.com raises $200 million at $1 billion valuation; Visa acquires Fundamo

Is Patch in a tailspin? One of the company's executives, who described herself as a “disgruntled employee,” revealed that Patch sales are miserably low. Meanwhile, the editorial staff is overworked and has already gone through one full changeover. As a result, employee morale is low.

Coupons.com, provider of digital coupons, received an investment of $200 million from institutional investors, said to value the company at $1 billion.

 

Google announced that Google Maps for mobile and desktop will provide live transit updates for users in major cities around the world.

 

Custom men’s clothing company J. Hilburn raised a $5 million Series C round.

Pusher raised $1 million in seed funding led by Passion Capital, with participation from the Heroku founders, angel investor Bill Lee, MI Ventures and Greg Marsh (formerly of Index Ventures).

Room 77, a search engine for personalized hotel room recommendations, raised $10.5 million in a Series B round led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from existing institutional and angel investors PAR Capital Managment, Sutter Hill Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Rich Barton (founder of Expedia and Zillow) and Erik Blachford (former president of IAC travel).

 

Sapato.ru, a Russia-based online shoe retailer, raised $12 million led by Intel Capital, with participation from existing investors Direct Group, eVenture Capital Partners and Kinnevik.

RIM acquired social gaming company Scoreloop. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Songkick, a website to discover upcoming concerts, launched its iPhone app. Songkick Concerts is available for download from the App Store right now and it’s completely free.

Just-launched online advertising platform Taykey closed $9 million in Series B Funding from Sequoia Capital, Softbank Capital and Crescent Point.

 

Here are a few new updates and news bits rolled out for the Twittersphere this week: automatic link shortening, support for Portuguese and hiring of Lynn Fox as director of communications.

VideoGenie, a startup that curates customer-generated video, raised a $2 million Series A of venture financing led by Blumberg Capital. Previous investors, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, also participated.

Payments company Visa paid approximately $110 million in cash to acquire Fundamo, provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies.

Support VatorNews by Donating

Read more from our "Trends and news" series

More episodes

Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Songkick

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on

Launched October 2007 by co-founders Ian Hogarth, Michelle You and Pete Smith, Songkick is dedicated to providing the single best concert resource online for music enthusiasts. Using web indexing technology, the company is building the world’s most comprehensive directory of live music events, aggregating ticketing information from over 25 global ticket vendors such as Ticketmaster and Tickets.com. Songkick also powers concert listings on Qloud and Songbird. The site has received funding from Index Ventures, and a select group of angels including Saul Klein, (The Accelerator Group), Alex Zubillaga (former EVP of Digital Strategy and Business Development at Warner Music Group), Jeff Clavier (Softech VC), Dan Porter (co-founder of Ticketweb), Peter Read (Music Nation), Andrew Weissman and John Borthwick (Betaworks), Stefan Glaenzer (ex-Chairman Last.fm), Daniel Miller (founder of Mute Records), Mike Heneghan (former MD Mute Records), and Y Combinator.