Funding roundup - week ending 6/20/15
Doctor On Demand, Softbank, Namely, Mezaaj, Are You A Human, Framebridge, Spacious, MentAd, GoFundMe
Read more...Seed Stage
Intuitive site search engine Swiftype raised $1.7 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz Seed, NEA, Kleiner Perkins, and Ignition, along with angel investors Sam Altman, SV Angel, CrunchFund, Alexis Ohanian, Paul Buchheit, DST/StartFund, Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Jared Kopf, William Morris Endeavor, Data Collective, Scribd founders Jared Friedman and Trip Adler, and Tikhon Bernstam.
Younity, which allows users to access their content from one device to another, received $3.5 million in seed funding from Crosslink Capital, Draper Associates, PROfounders Capital, Lowercase Capital, Michael Birch, Tekton Ventures and Knight & Bishop.
Marketing startup 4th Aspect closed a new investment of £400,000 in seed funding from Angel CoFund, Rivers Capital Partners & Tweed Renaissance Investors Capital.
Indian Big Data Biology company InterpretOmics raised $1.7 million from unnamed investors.
Drync, a wine app developer, raised $900,000 from angel investors, including Mark Hastings, Jack Remondi and Andrew Moss.
Tapastic, a portal for comic books and visual stories, raised an additional $650,000 in seed funding from Adam D’Angelo, 500 Startups, and Strong Ventures.
ThirdLove, a vertically integrated fashion brand, raised a $5.6 million funding round from investors including NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Novel TMT, Yuri Milner, Keith Rabois, Nasir Jones (NAS) & Emagen Entertainment, and others.
eShares, which electronically issues and manages equity shares and options for private companies, raised $1.8 million from a group of investors that include Draper VC, Expansion VC, k9 Ventures, Elefund, Subtraction Capital, Scott Banister, XG Ventures, Kima Ventures, Andy Palmer and Structure Capital.
E-commerce recommendations service StyleSeek has raised $750,000 from investors that included Cedar St Capital, Jumpstart Ventures, Padova Investments, Trebuchet Fund, and angels Jeff Cantalupo, Dave Hoover, Hunter Hillenmeyer, Sam Guren, Owen Shapiro and others.
Roombeats, which turns every image into an interactive display window, raised a €500,000 ($666,000) seed round from Creathor Venture and High Tech Gruenderfonds.
Speek, a conference call solution, secured $1.1 million in financing in advance of its Series A. The round was oversubscribed and led by existing investors.
Fashioholic, which develops and deploys Fashion Serious Games, raised $1 million in seed funding. The funding came from private investors and micro funds.
Mobile social gaming and entertainment network Gramble World closed $2 million in seed funding from undisclosed investors.
Punchh, a provider of mobile solutions for the restaurant industry, raised $3 million in venture capital funding from Cervin Ventures, Green Span Ventures, VKRM, Sandhill Group, Garnett Ventures, and multiple other leading Silicon Valley angel investors.
Sportsmanias, a real-time team news aggregator, raised $1 million from Mas Equity Partners.
Early Stage
Syntellia, the maker of the virtual keyboard app Fleksy, raised a $3 million Series A round from Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Middleland Capital and other institutional and angel investors.
Online diet and fitness community MyFitnessPal raised $18 million in Series A funding, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with help from Accel Partners.
App.net, a subscription-based social feed and API, raised $2.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz.
InstaEDU, an online service for on-demand tutoring, closed a $4 million Series A financing led by Battery Ventures, along with The Social+Capital Partnership.
Fashion startup StyleSaint raised $4.3 million in Series A financing from General Catalyst Partners and e.Ventures.
Woofound, developer of an image-based personality platform, raised $2 million from the Propel Baltimore Fund, Heritage Capital, Vince Talbert and Charles Morris.
Looker, a Business Intelligence software company, raised $16 million Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures, with contributions from First Round Capital and previous seed-round investors.
AnsibleWorks, the company behind Open Source IT automation solution Ansible, raised a $6 million Series A round of funding led by Menlo Ventures.
Wearable tech company InteraXon raised $6 million in a Series A round of funding from OMERS and FFEC.
Arkami, creator of myIDkey, raised a $1.8 Million Series A round of financing from Gordon Clemons, McNeel Capital and Mark Swanson as well as a number of other veteran angel investors.
Travel startup Wanderu raised a $2.45 million Series A round from Alta Ventures Mexico, along with Jeff Clarke, Bill Kaplan and Semyon Dukach, amongst others.
In-app video ad platform Vungle raised a $6.5 million Series A round of funding led by Crosslink Capital with participation from Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, 500 Startups, SV Angel, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy, Tim Draper, and others.
Late Stage
Tastemade, whose mission is to connect the world through food, raised $10 million in a Series B round led Raine Ventures, with help from Redpoint Ventures.
Fitbit, the creator of a line of mobile health devices, raised $43 in Series D funding from Qualcomm Ventures, SAP Ventures, SoftBank Capital, Foundry Group and True Ventures.
CRM software provider InsideView raised $19 million in a round led by Split Rock Partners, with participation from Emergence Capital, Foundation Capital, and Rembrandt Venture Partners.
Fresh meal kit provider Blue Apron raised $5 Million in a round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. First Round Capital, along with other previous investors, also participated.
AvantCredit, an analytics-based online personal lender, raised a $20 million equity round led by August Capital and Victory Park Capital.
Digital media company Glam Media raised $25 million from Keating Capital, along with Hubert Burda Media.
CloudPhysics, provider o intelligent operations management for virtualized workloads, closed $10 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The Mayfield Fund, Mark Leslie, Peter Wagner, Carl Waldspurger, Nigel Stokes, Matt Ocko and VMware co-founders also participated.
Activity concierge Sosh raised $10.1 million in Series B financing. Khosla Ventures led the round, along with Battery Ventures.
Mobile ad/reward network Kiip, which provides rewards to casual mobile gamers for in-game achievements, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from American Express Ventures
CareCloud, provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health records, and medical billing software and services, secured $9 million in Series B funding from Adams Street Partners.
Apsalar, a mobile advertising and analytics company, closed a $9 million Series B round of financing. The round was led by DCM, with participation from Correlation Ventures, Thomvest Ventures and DN Capital.
Cyvera, which provides cyber defense solutions to stop zero-day attacks, raised $11 million in venture capital funding led by Battery Ventures. Serial entrepreneurs Prof. Ehud Weinstein and Dr. Ofir Shalvi joined the round as well.
Design website Fab raised an additional $5M investment in its Series D financing round today. The latest investment comes from ITOCHU Corporation of Japan.
Change Healthcare, which provides consumer engagement and cost transparency in healthcare, closed a $15 million funding round, led by HLM Venture Partners, along with Noro-Moseley Partners, and includes all existing investors.
Tegile Systems, a provider of hybrid storage arrays for virtualized server and virtual desktop environments, raised a $35 million Round C funding led by Meritech Capital Partners with additional investment by August Capital and Western Digital.
SilkRoad, a global provider of cloud-based talent management solutions, raised $16 million. Investors include Foundation Capital, Intel Capital, Azure Capital Partners, Keating Capital and Crosslink Ventures.
VeliQ, the creator of the mobility Platform as a Service, closed a $9 million Series B round of financing. The round was led by Northcap, with T-venture participating.
Restorando, provider of online restaurant reservations in Latin America, closed $13.3 million in Series B funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners. Emergence Capital Partners, Kaszek Ventures, Atomico, Storm Ventures and The Endeavor Catalyst Fund also participated.
Doctor On Demand, Softbank, Namely, Mezaaj, Are You A Human, Framebridge, Spacious, MentAd, GoFundMe
Read more...Duolingo, Vinli, Jimdo, Dalia Research, Procore Technologies, Colabo, Menlo Security, Enervee, Tile
Read more...DocuSig, Flywheel, Enervee, Notion, VitalFields, jobandtalent, EverCompliant, Tegile Systems, Ubimo
Read more...Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good quality sleep? How many steps and miles did I walk today? The Fitbit Tracker helps you answer these questions.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
eShares eliminates paper stock certificates and options by replacing them with a fully electronic workflow for the issuance, signing, and acceptance of shares and options. We also will provide sophisticated cap table management tools and other financial services.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
CareCloud's mission is to eliminate the waste in the health careindustry, which is attributed to administrative bureaucracy andredundant care, by connecting its fragmented constituents and supplyinghighly effective information technology and other services. Our proprietary software is based on a revolutionary systems architecture that treats healthcare and its participants as an ecosystem - an integrated environment where all participants share a common commitment of reducing inefficiencies and providing excellence in healthcare.
Startup/Business
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Fab is on a mission to help people better their lives with design.
Fab was founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg in February 2011 and launched on June 9, 2011. Fab’s founders are Bradford Shellhammer, Nishith Shah and Deepa Shah. Fab’s headquarters are in New York. The company also has offices in Berlin, London and Pune.
Over 6 million people around the world use Fab todiscover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and toshare their favorite design inspirations.
Startup/Business
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younity creates a personal cloud for all your files, built from your devices and your online services, so that all your devices work as if they were a single device. With younity, you can grab whichever device is most convenient without ever thinking about where a file is.
younity is a ubiquitous data protocol that integrates into device OSes, making them inherently multi-device aware. With younity, users can use any device they own and have access to any file as if it was stored locally on that device, regardless of available storage. With younity, devices simply become screens. Customer Problem: Consumers today are overwhelmingly multi-device users, yet OSes are still designed around single device usage. Consumers have lots of data stuck on their devices. They are unable to put it all in the cloud and/or it costs too much; existing solutions are also management intensive, requiring constant user interaction.
Solution / Product: younity makes all a consumer’s devices work as if they were a single device. By extracting the file system from an OS and putting it into the cloud, younity establishes a singular file system from multiple devices that is pushed back into the native OS. Thus, the OS does not know where files are stored – on the local hard drive, on another device or some online service or all of those places. This eliminates a file’s stored address from a device to an identity. Any device registered to a user has all that person’s files and all devices look the exact same. The only difference between devices is whether there is enough storage to store local or virtual copies.
Competitors: younity is most similar to iCloud. However, unlike iCloud, younity is OS agnostic, application agnostic, file-type agnostic, vastly easier to use and cheap or free for any amount of data.
Target Market: Consumers with 3 or more Internet-enabled devices (over 220M people in the US alone). Research shows: the average household will have 2.2TB of data by 2013; consumers will have an average of 5.8 devices/person by 2015; and 51% of households have both MS and Apple products (as of late 2011). Data synchronization products that accommodate partial data start at about $450/year for 250GB of online storage, with utility online storage costing vastly more. There are currently no cross-platform solutions for users that can accommodate all their data, let alone deliver it into their native device functionality.
Q. You've been around since 2010, What's the traction been like?
A. The idea for younity was born in 2010, but the company was angel funded and started hiring in summer of 2011. Our product is not a strong fit for "lean methodology"- it is enormously complicated and simply requires a lot of hands working the keyboard to make it work (typical for heavy duty, client-server software).
The additional challenge was making it simple for consumers. After hiring our team late in 2011, we were able to take our prototype and get a private beta done by July, then launch into public beta in December 2012. Traction has been good since launching in December 2012, we've been adding thousands of users/month and engagement is high.
Q. How are you marketing this? Is there a viral component?
A. Our product is inherently personal (it's a "personal cloud"), which makes the viral coefficient low. However, we've been developing a unique way for people to share any file that is stored on any device making them sharable directly to another person via a private Facebook post. This will be launched the week of Vator Splash.
Q. What's the distribution model? What's the business model? How much will you be charging for this service?
A. younity has a direct to consumer strategy and will be offered as a freemium service that is free for up to 3 devices. For 4 or more, there is a flat annual fee that we anticipate will be around $24/year (although we have not finalized this yet). Other than the limit on devices, the free version of younity is not limited in any way- it is the same as the premium version.
Q. Where do you go from here? What other services could you offer?
A. Currently we are working with a variety of app vendors to enable offline data in their apps via our API. As a ubiquitous data protocol, younity is really about unifying data around a user's identity. This has a variety of applications, with younity being the first.
Q. Is this a consumer-only product? Are you making something for the enterprise?
A. For now, we are focused on leading in the consumer market. However, we are well aware of a variety of enterprise applications to enable an on-premise younity server with a policy engine attached to it. In fact, we regularly are asked if this would be available now (it isn't).
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Apsalar provides Mobile Engagement Management solutions for mobile apps. Mobile app marketers can acquire, analyze, and re-market to engaged users through audience targeting, behavioral retargeting, and best-in-class analytics in order to take control of the complete user lifecycle and increase customer LTV. Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, Apsalar is backed by leading venture investors, Thomvest Ventures, Battery Ventures, and DN Capital. Apsalar has won numerous awards, including eWeek’s Top Ten Promising Mobile IT Startups in 2011.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Kiip lets premium brands provide rewards to casual mobile gamers for in-game achievements. Their platform is designed for in-game engagement via a universal game moment: the achievement moment. Catch the user while they are the most engaged, happy, and attentive. They're the first solution to help premium brands reach the exploding casual mobile gaming market using real estate in meaningful moments. Currently the network reaches just over 20 million smartphone players worldwide.
A bit more here: http://bit.ly/kiipwelcome
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
The founders of Glam Media created a new media model to bring brand advertisers to vertical audiences online: vertical content networks. Today, Glam Media—with its Glam.com (women) and Brash.com (men) networks—is the fastest growing Top 10 media Web property in the U.S. with a total reach of 52.3 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. and approximately 90 million uniques globally. Glam Media recently entered the comScore Top 10 Web properties list and is also a Top 10 Display Ad Publisher. With 700 sites total, Glam Media is composed of: Glam.com—a carefully curated network of popular and influential lifestyle women’s Web sites, blogs and magazines; and Brash.com—the newly launched all men’s network. Glam Media is backed by Hubert Burda Media, GLG Partners, Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Walden Venture Capital and Information Capital. Glam Media is headquartered in New York City and Silicon Valley, California, with international offices in London, Munich, Berlin, and Tokyo.