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Splash LA Video: How TrueCar went into a tailspin

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, December 3, 2012 | Comments

Scott Painter, founder and CEO of TrueCar, on hard choices in the face of adversity

It's not often the case that founders and CEOs of high-profile companies make appearances when things aren't going so well. But fortunately for the attendees at Vator Splash LA, the audience was in for a rare treat: A CEO who would humble himself by admitting his failures and struggles, even as he was navigating through some challenging times. Here's the ...

AngelPad's 5th Demo Day presents 12 promising startups

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 29, 2012 | Comments

Meet the dozen startups chosen out of 2,000 applicants

AngelPad held its fifth Demo Day in San Francisco, with 12 startups giving their presentations to angels and investors. To date, AngelPad has seen 62 companies go through its 10-week mentorship program. Since San Francisco-based AngelPad opened its doors in 2010, it's been able to attract a number of startups eager to enter its program. In fact, for this ...

Stray Boots gets $2M for self-guided scavenger hunts

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 27, 2012 | Comments

Milestone Venture Partners leads round; joined by Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks and angels

New York-based Stray Boots announced Tuesday morning that it's raised $2 million in a Series A round of funding, led by Milestone Venture Partners, with participation from Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks and a number of angel investors. Stray Boots is a creator of scavenger-hunt games across 14 cities, including Manhattan, London, LA, Seattle, Boston, to name a few. With the ...

There is a Series A crunch and a YC bubble

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 26, 2012 | Comments

Stewart Alsop, Jeff Clavier, Chris Hulls, Renata Quintini, Craig Sherman, Duncan Davidson

If you don't think that there is a Series A crunch, you'll change your mind after watching this panel. Four out of five panelists who were asked whether startups were having a difficult time raising their Series A round of funding responded with a resounding "yes." The panel at Bullpen Capital and Vator's Venture Shift event was titled "Is there ...

San Francisco has a 'Bullpen' ... for startups

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 13, 2012 | Comments

If you don't know how Bullpen got its name, here's a good explainer

In baseball parlance, a bullpen is where relief pitchers warm up before going into the game. A team's relief pitchers are also referred to as the bullpen. Bullpen Capital is named after the baseball term to indicate its place where startups can "pitch" themselves to the Bullpen VCs, after the seed round, and with enough practice and funds to go into ...

Platfora gets $20M for a business intelligence platform

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 13, 2012 | Comments

Battery Ventures leads round, with Andreessen Horowitz, Sutter Hill Ventures participating

As more information gets digitized, the more information can be analyzed and spliced and diced to derive knowledge. But in this day and age, months can be too long a wait to get answers. To this end, the typical databases to hold the data and the typical software to extract that data out to make sense of it, is becoming ...

BUMP Network raises $2.3M for SaaS membership network

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 6, 2012 | Comments

	Eric Schmidt's Tomorrow Ventures, Zig Capital, and more invest If you have a Triple A card, Costco or AARP card, you know what a benefit card is all about. And, it's a big business. About 90 million people pay $75 a year on average for a Triple A card. One company that wants to power benefit cards for large companies that heretofore haven't really offered membership discounts (that ...
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OrderGroove lands $6.7M to help brands retain customers

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 5, 2012 | Comments

Fung Capital, Lerer Ventures, and others invest in NY-based startup powering subscription commerce

Even though, we live in a world where millions of items are at our fingertips, there's nothing like sticking with the same brand for all sorts of items, from cosmetics to socks to underwear. When you find something you like, stick with it. And, if retailers were to provide a way in which their customers could subscribe to buy items on ...

Invested.in gets $830K to white label crowdfunding

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, November 1, 2012 | Comments

LA-based startup looks to be the builder of crowdfunding campaigns for brands, philanthropies

Crowdfunding is a hot market right now. Every other day it seems that a new crowdfunding portal appears. But when a company emerges that wants to do the backend plumbing so that everyone can have their own social fundraising platform, one might think that this space has reached a fever-pitched level. Invested.in announced Thursday that it's raised $830,000 from ...

Mobiplex scores $3.1M for mobile sports analyzers

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 30, 2012 | Comments

	Serial entrepreneur Vijay Nadkarni rounds up 30-plus investors to improve sports performance Everyone who plays golf - and apparently there are about 30 million who play at least once a month - knows that the swing is everything. When I was an avid player, I recall turning away from watching someone with a lousy swing for fear I'd pick up bad habits. My favorite time at a golf event was to go ...
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Helpshift gets $3.2M to be mobile customer support

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 30, 2012 | Comments

True Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners invest to help build the CRM for mobile

Helpshift, an in-app customer support service on mobile, announced Tuesday that it's raised a seed round of $3.2 million from True Ventures and Nexus Venture Partnesr to provide customer support for the tens of thousands of mobile app developers who don't offer such help-desk services. "Mobile is where the Internet was in the late '90s," said Abinash Tripathy, co-founder ...

Dhingana raises $7M to spread Bollywood love

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 25, 2012 | Comments

Mobile music service wants to service the India population

Dhingana, a five-year-old mobile music service, announced Thursday that it's raised $7 million in a Series B round of funding, led by Lightspeed Vetnure Partners, with the participation from its Series A investors, Inventus Captial Partners and Helion Venture Partners. The company boasts having 15 million monthly active visitors around the world, with 60% in India, making it the largest ...

InfoArmy lands $17.3M for crowdsourced intelligence

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 23, 2012 | Comments

Founder and CEO of Jigsaw now attracts a war chest to build up his army of researchers

InfoArmy, founded by Jim Fowler, announced Tuesday that it's raised a hefty $17.3 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. Norwest had backed Fowler when he founded Jigsaw, which was sold to Salesforce for $175 million in 2010. Fowler had originally targeted $10 million, but clearly was oversubscribed. The new round, which also brings Jeff Crowe of ...

Smule's 'Gangnam Style' startup mashup

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 20, 2012 | Comments

Badgeville, BloomReach, Chartboost, WatchDox, Little Dress Book, Mass Relevance in 'Startup Style'

Sure everyone's got their version of Gangnam Style. But they're all fun to watch. Jeff Smith, CEO and founder of Smule, just sent me an email with his company's version of "Gangnam Style" or "Startup Style," starring Smule and a host of other startups, including Badgeville, BloomReach, Chartboost, WatchDox, Little Dress Book, and Mass Relevance. Each company filmed their own version ...

Message Bus raises $11M to manage email delivery

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, October 15, 2012 | Comments

Northbridge Venture Partners leads; True Ventures, Ignition participate

As a social network for entrepreneurs, Vator understands how critical email messages can be. After all, emails alert the community about what's happening on the network. It's one of the biggest viral components for any network, and hence any service that can improve the delivery of emails is worth taking a look at. Message Bus appears to be one ...

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