VatorNews - Vator contributor stories

Self-service social video platform Virool raises $6M

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 14, 2013 | Comments

YC-backed startups attracts Thomvest Ventures, Menlo Ventures, DFJ, Digital Sky and more

If you ever wanted to get your video viral (or at least have a better chance of going viral), you now can do that by spending as little $10 a month. Virool, a self-serve social video advertising platform, announced Thursday that it's raised $6 million in funding from Thomvest Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Yuri Milner, Phenomenon Ventures, TMT Investments, ...

RepairPal raises $13M from Cars.com, Castrol

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 11, 2013 | Comments

Startup wants to aggregate repair shops into a 'trusted' membership network

I've been looking for a new car, and recently I was offered a Chevy Tahoe with 70,000-plus miles. Now heretofore I'd never look at a vehicle with that many miles, but I'm told by Art Shaw, CEO of RepairPal, that 200,000 miles is the new 100,000. To that end, I'm considering the truck. Given that cars and trucks are built ...

Ping4 raises $4M for public safety alerts app

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 11, 2013 | Comments

Startup is working with government agencies and news outlets to drive app downloads

If you want to drive app downloads, sometimes the best way to do it is to make it less of a commercial option but rather a required, public-safety one. That's the case with Ping4, which was conceived as an app for retailers to alert potential customers, but then pivoted to become an app for authorities to send out warnings and ...

Marketplaces, mobile are big VC themes in 2013

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 10, 2013 | Comments

Rick Heitzmann leads VC panel and shares why he invested in Pinterest (before it was hot)

If you want to know what venture capitalists want to invest in this year, check out this panel moderated by Rick Heitzmann, founding Managing Partner of FirstMark Capital. The panel was held in NYC during Splash NY. If you missed it, here's the video. On the panel at Vator Splash NY were Chris Fralic from First Round Capital, which has ...

Upstream Commerce gets $3M for retail business intel

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 5, 2013 | Comments

YL Ventures and Bright Capital invest in the round

If you could buy a product at the lowest possible cost, assuming everyone creating the product was fairly compensated, you'd take the lowest possible cost. Regardless if consumers sought information about a product from a Google search or a Yelp or Amazon review, all else being equal, if they could buy at the lowest cost they would. Hence, in this ...

Ravello Systems launches with $26M in funding

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, February 4, 2013 | Comments

Startup helps companies - large and small - tap the public cloud

Ravello Systems came out of stealth mode Monday night, while at the same time announcing that it's raised $26 million in total funding from Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. The Palo Alto, Calif-based company was founded by Rami Tamir and Benny Schnaider, serial entrepreneurs who had previously founded Qumranet, which was sold to Red Hat in ...

VC investing sinks; snaps 3 years of annual growth

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 18, 2013 | Comments

But ratio of seed-stage deals to total deals is highest in at least 12 years

At the end of 2011, there were rumblings about a startup bubble ready to burst. While no one really heard a big pop, it's been more like a hissing sound of a balloon deflating. Investment in US venture-backed companies fell in the fourth quarter of last year as startups raised $6.6 billion from 733 companies, down 20% in capital and ...

Ayasdi raises $10.25M Series A from Khosla, Floodgate

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 16, 2013 | Comments

Stanford incubated big data analytics company launches knowledge-discovery platform

Big data is a big deal. Did you know Walmart handles one million customer transactions per hour that is imported into a database that is 167 times more than the information contained in all the books in the US Library of Congress? So staggering is the amount of data we produce, that new software to handle the explosion continues to ...

YouSendIt buys Found to expand cloud-based services

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 15, 2013 | Comments

Cash-and-stock deal brings five-person team into YouSendIt fold

YouSendIt, known for enabling the sharing of large files, has increasingly expanded its service offerings to include storage, e-signature capabilities, and collaboration tools. It’ll soon be offering another service to its platform through the acquisition of Found. YouSendIt announced Tuesday morning that it’s acquired Found Software, which has made a Mac application that allows users to find their files and ...

Rocket Lawyer acquires legal Q&A site Law Pivot

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 14, 2013 | Comments

Legal service in the cloud makes first acquisition, brings in new attorneys and talent

Rocket Lawyer, a fast-growing site for legal services in the cloud, announced Monday morning that it just acquired Law Pivot, the question and answer site for legal advice, in an all-stock deal. The financials were not disclosed. Google Ventures was an investor in both companies, which created the path for both companies to make the connection. The VC firm was ...

Guavus raises $30M for big data analytics

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 10, 2013 | Comments

Investor Growth Capital leads round, with participation from QuestMark Partners

If one person (like myself) can produce 1000 photos in a year, imagine what big corporations are capable of producing in the form of digital data - forms, reports, blog posts, videos, images, etc. We live in a data-rich global economy. That means we need software platforms that can help us make sense of the data without taking days ...

Norwest leads $33M Series B in Health Catalyst

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, January 7, 2013 | Comments

Healthcare data warehousing startup looks to overhaul the electronic health records market

(Updated to reflect comments from Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton) Do you know a doctor whose office looks like a throwback to some long-gone era, with file folders everywhere, and a computer that's from the 90's? I know one. And, I'm sure some of you do. Imagine having to access records and handling the data there. This kind of office, ...

Evernote, Lending Club CEOs to speak at Splash SF

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, December 19, 2012 | Comments

Join us for Vator Splash SF on February 13, 2013 in San Francisco

We just finished up Splash NY and we're gearing up to bring Splash back to San Francisco. And, already we're lining up a star-studded group of speakers that will be on stage on the evening of February 13. Besides the startup competition (apply here), Splash brings together two keynote speakers to share their lessons learned about building a startup from ...

Arrayent lands Whirlpool, Pentair, First Alert