Funding roundup - week ending 12/27/13

Plain Vanilla, IQcard, Jaunt and Pushd among those that raised funds in shortened Christmas week

Seed stage

AdEspresso, which offers Facebook ad tools for SMBs, raised a seed round of $500,000 from 500 Startups, Atlantic Capital Partners, and angel investors including Richard Chen and Armando Biondi.

Private recommendations website byUs.com raised $1.5 million in angel funding from 40 individual investors, including Charlie Cheever, Colin Evans, Ariel Poler, Ed Baker, Jeremy Varba and Dixon Doll.

 Jaunt, a company specialising in video capture and display, received a $350,000 equity investment from British Sky Broadcasting Group.

Stealth startup Pushd, the company behind an app called Sense, raised $1.04 million from undisclosed investors.

Elephanti, an app that enables people to follow and interact with their favorite stores, raised $4.5 million in seed funding from LMJ Holdings.

Early stage

Quovo, a firm focusing on analyzing investment data, raised a $1.4 million round, led by Long Light Capital.

Late stage

General Catalyst closed its seventh fund, to the tune of $675 million. The fund will be called General Catalyst VII, and it brings the firm's total capital raised to roughly $3 billion.

Plain Vanilla Games, developer of the social trivia platform QuizUp, raised $22 million in Series B, funding led by Sequoia Capital, with previous investors, including Tencent Holdings, also participating. 

IQcard, a startup offering multifunction bank cards, raised $3.7 million in a Series B round led by Kenges Rakishev. Fastlane Ventures and Direct Group also participated in the round, along with an unnamed prominent Russian IT entrepreneur.

In order to purchase Answers raised over $300 million in a debt financing transaction led by SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and Silicon Valley Bank, along with equity investments from Summit Partners, TA Associates, AFCV founders and management, in order to buy ForeSee.