Seed-stage
Edutainment company Pluto Media raised $500,000 in seed funding from Rob Hutter of Learn Capital, Jennifer Carolan of NewSchools Venture Fund, and YouWeb’s Peter Relan, among others.
Enterprise app builder Tomfoolery raised $1.7 million in a seed round led by Morado Ventures and Sam Pullara of Sutter Hill Ventures. Other participants in the round include Andreessen Horowitz, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, YouSendIt CEO Brad Garlinghouse, David Tisch of TechStars, and others.
Sift, an iPad app that takes marketing emails and condenses them into a one-stop shopping experience, raised $540K in seed funding from mobile accelerator Tandem, Baidu co-founder Shawn Wang, SVP of Product at LinkedIn Deep Nishar, Bhupen Pah, co-founder of Sling Media, Sand Hill Angels, and others.
Online insurance comparison platform Insurance Zebra announced that it raised a $1.5 million seed round led by Silverton Partners. The investor syndicate also includes Mark Cuban , Mike Maples Jr. , and Birchmere Labs, among others.
Glow Digital Media, a provider of Facebook ad technology solutions to marketers, announced that it received $1.3m in seed funding. Investors Include Project A Ventures and Avonmore Developments.
Ringadoc, a connectivity platform dedicated to giving patients direct access to doctors on demand, announced that it raised $1.2 million in seed funding, led by Founders Fund's FF Angel.
Convercent, a maker of cloud-based culture and compliance software, raised a $10.2 million venture round from Azure Capital Partners and Mantucket Capital. City National Bank also participated.
Early-stage
PagerDuty, an alarm dispatching service for system administrators and support teams, raised $10.7M in Series A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Also participating in the round were Jesse Robbins, founder of Opscode; WIN Funding; and existing investors Baseline, Harrison Metal and Ignition.
Rivet & Sway, the online shopping boutique focused exclusively on women's prescription glasses, raised $2 million in a round of funding led by Mousse Partners, with help from existing investors Baseline Ventures and Harrison Metal.
Digit Game Studios raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Delta Partners, and existing investor ACT Venture Capital.
Late-stage
SMS mobile search company ChaCha raised $14 million from VantagePoint Capital Partners and Rho Ventures.
International mobile communications company Truphone raised £75 million ($118 million) from investors including Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club.
TakeLessons, online service marketplace for music lessons, raised a $4 million round of venture capital financing from Triangle Peak Partners of Palo Alto with participation from Siemer Ventures and existing investors Crosslink Capital and SoftTech VC.
Real estate startup 42Floors raised a $12 million Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital, along with new investor Columbus Nova Technology Partners, also participated.
Linkwell Health, a developer of health and wellness consumer engagement platforms, announced that it raised $11 million in Series C funding led by WellPoint. Existing investorsSpark Capital and HLM Venture Partners also participated in the round.
DB Networks, a provider of database security equipment, announced raised $4.5 million in Series B funding led by Khosla Ventures.
Data storage analytics company DataGravity raised a $30 million series B financing led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Houzz, a platform for home remodeling and design, announced the close of a $35 million Series C round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and GGV Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Comcast Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Yammer founder David Sacks.
NewVoiceMedia, a provider of cloud contact center services, secured $20 million in Series B funding from new investors Highland Capital Partners Europe and MMC Ventures, as well as existing shareholders Notion Capital and Eden Ventures.
Doctor On Demand, Softbank, Namely, Mezaaj, Are You A Human, Framebridge, Spacious, MentAd, GoFundMe
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Steven Loeb
Duolingo, Vinli, Jimdo, Dalia Research, Procore Technologies, Colabo, Menlo Security, Enervee, Tile
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Steven Loeb
DocuSig, Flywheel, Enervee, Notion, VitalFields, jobandtalent, EverCompliant, Tegile Systems, Ubimo
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Steven Loeb
Startup/Business
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Pluto Media is committed to bringing the best educational games to children around the world. We want to integrate brilliant technology with world-class creative talent to develop products that foster children's creativity, curiosity, and knowledge of the world around them.
Pluto Media was founded in YouWeb Incubator, birthplace of wildly successful gaming companies such as OpenFeint (recently acquired for $104M by GREE), CrowdStar, iSwifter and Sibblingz Spaceport. We are very excited about the huge opportunity in kids' edutainment created by tablets and smartphones with intuitive interfaces. We are well-funded, incredibly well-advised, and perfectly positioned to capture this space.
Are you a mobile engineer? We're hiring!
Startup/Business
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Sift instantly captures your e-commerce fingerprint through your email and magically turns the content there into a fun, personalized browsing app on the tablet.
Angel group/VC
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NEA is the entrepreneur’s venture capital firm.
When it is time to take a promising business or business idea to the next level, entrepreneurs want a venture partner who understands and believes in the power of big dreams, bold visions and fresh ideas that have the power to change an industry, a sector, the world.
Moreover, entrepreneurs want a venture partner who knows what it takes—through first-hand experience and carefully nurtured relationships—to make a company succeed, to turn an idea into an action, and to make a plan a reality.
For more than 30 years, NEA has been helping to build great companies. Our committed capital has grown to $13 billion, including a $2.6 billion fourteenth fund closed in 2012. We invest across stage and geography in technology, healthcare and energy.
Remaining nimble as we’ve grown—with more than 65 investment professionals working out of our offices in the US, India, and China and investing across the globe—NEA is the entrepreneur's venture capital firm, consistently ranking among the top firms in portfolio IPOs each year. Since its founding, the firm has backed more than 175 companies that have gone public and invested in more than 290 companies that have been successfully merged or acquired—more liquidity events than any other venture capital firm.
Whether you are seeking investment to get your idea off the ground or looking to propel a proven idea toward greatness, NEA is the venture partner who will be there—because we’ve been there—every step of the way.
Startup/Business
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ChaCha answers who, what, when, where and why, and has emerged as the No. 1 way for advertisers and marketers to engage their audience. Through its unique “ask-a-smart-friend” platform, ChaCha has answered nearly one billion questions since launch from more than 15 million unique users per month via SMS text (242-242™), online (chacha.com), Twitter (@chacha), Facebook app, iPhone app, Android app, and voice (1-800-2-ChaCha™). Working with major brands such as Paramount, AT&T, Palm, Johnson&Johnson, P&G, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Sonic, and presidential political campaigns, ChaCha.com is one of the fastest growing mobile and online publishers according to Nielsen and Quantcast.
ChaCha was co-founded by proven innovator and entrepreneur Scott Jones and is funded by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Rho Ventures, Bezos Expeditions; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS as well as Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; the Simon family; and Jack Gill, Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
Startup/Business
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Truphone is a free piece of software that lets you make free and low cost mobile calls via the internet. We don't do roaming charges, so as long as you have a compatible phone and are connected to Wi-Fi, prices are simple and low from anywhere on the planet.
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David has been involved in the Internet space for over a decade as an entrepreneur, executive and investor.
