Daily funding roundup - October 15, 2015

Quip secured $30M; OpenGov raised $25M; Niantic landed $20M

• OpenGov, which allows local governments to bring their data to the cloud, has an additional $25 million, it announced on Thursday The oversubscribed funding round included existing investors Formation 8 Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and AITV, as well as new investors Glynn Capital, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary's Sound Ventures, and Intuit founder Scott Cook. Andreessen Horowitz led OpenGov’s $15 million Series B round last year. In total, OpenGov has raised $48 million in funding.
  
  
• Korean e-commerce startup Althea announced today that it has raised an undisclosed second round of seed funding from 500 Startups. Althea raised its first round of seed funding in May of this year from BonAngels, a Korean early stage VC company. It is a site that sells Korean makeup and skincare products and was founded in July 2015 by Frank Kang, who previously worked as Head of Global Expansion at Ticket Monster, a ticket and e-commerce startup that Groupon acquired in 2014 for an estimated US$260 million.
  
  
• AskMyGift, a mobile app that allows users to create a personalised wish list for gifts, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from early-stage angel fund Turning Ideas. Futuregifting Eventures Pvt Ltd, the Noida-based company that operates AskMyGift, will use the money to tie up with brick-and-mortar gift stores in the Delhi-NCR region and on marketing, its founder Sumeet Aggarwal said. 
  
  
• Funderbeam, a subscription service for startup and investor research, has raised €655,000 ($745,000) from angel investors and 3TS Capital Partners, taking the company to €1.75 million ($2 million) in total funding. This is the company's final seed round as it builds the world's startup marketplace based on blockchain technology.
  
  
• Toronto, Canada-based Figure 1, which offers a photo sharing app for doctors, raised $5 million in a round led by Union Square Ventures with participation from existing investors Version One Ventures and Rho Canada Ventures. Allen and Company also contributed. The company will use some of the funds to translate the app into other languages and expand into more cities abroad. 
  
  
• Boston-based Third Rock Ventures announced today it had raised $2 5million to launch a company called Decibel Therapeutics to work on hearing loss.  Decibel Therapeutics will be headquartered at 215 First Street in Cambridge, Mass. near Kendall Square. The company has already started to hire, planning on having 50 to 60 scientists working by the end of the year. The initial funding was led by Third Rock and joined by GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK')s venture arm, SR One.
  
  
• Irish-founded tech firm ChannelSight has received a €3.3 million ($3.76 million) investment to scale operations in Europe and the US. The funding round was led by Nauta Capital, with ACT Venture Capital participating and support from Enterprise Ireland. ChannelSight chief executive John Beckett said the funding will allow the Dublin-based ecommerce company to scale at a faster pace in terms of sales and marketing efforts, and to invest in further building the firm’s partner network in Europe and the United States.
  
  
• Smart parenting tech company Hatch Baby announced today it has raised $7 million in its Series A funding round led by True Ventures. Hatch Baby will use the funds to continue building out its suite of wireless-enabled smart parenting devices.  The first device from Hatch Baby is the Smart Changing Pad, a groundbreaking redesign of the traditional diaper-changing pad that features an embedded wireless scale and monitoring technology that tracks a baby's growth. With its baby-friendly design, the Smart Changing Pad allows parents to weigh their baby from the comfort of their home, and offers insights into their child's health. It also tracks and automatically sends a baby's development metrics and daily activities -- including weight, feeding amount, and diaper changes -- to a parent's smartphone.
  
  
• Cymax, a technology focused e-tailer on track to do $140 million in sales this year, has announced it has closed $25 million (USD) in a Series A funding to fuel its analytics-based platform that solves the headache of buying and selling furniture online. The company will launch an end-to-end e-commerce solution for furniture retailers and proprietary technology that streamlines shipping and logistics. Garibaldi Capital Advisors was instrumental in securing the financing that was led by Frind Holdings, BDC Ventures and Salman Partners.
  
  
• Roostify, a San Francisco, Calif.-based provider of automated mortgage transaction technology, closed a Series A round of financing. The round, of undisclose amount, was led by a subsidiary of USAA, a financial services provider to the U.S. military and their families, with participation from two Tier 1 banks and Colchis Capital. The company intends to use the funds to expand the technology and add more lenders and other stakeholders to the platform.
  
  
• Real world games maker Niantic, Inc. has raised its Series A financing round from The Pokémon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. The companies are investing up to $30 million in Niantic, Inc., which includes an initial $20 million upfront and an additional $10 million conditioned upon achieving certain milestones. Niantic, Inc. will leverage the funding and strategic relationships to continue work on Pokémon GO, support its thriving global Ingress community, scale its platform and bring new games to market.
  
  
• Quip is a San Francisco startup that has built a mobile-friendly application for word processing, working on spreadsheets, and chatting with colleagues. Today Quip is announcing a $30 million funding round. Bret Taylor, a cofounder of Quip and its chief executive, simply wants to invest in growth at a time when conditions for raising money are favorable. Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital provided the new funding. Greylock’s John Lilly is joining Quip’s board.
  
  
• Y Combinator has raised $700 million for a later-stage fund that will be run by now full-time partner Ali Rowghani. Originally reported by The Wall Street Journal, this new investment vehicle will be used to fund select companies well after they’ve graduated from Y Combinator’s accelerator program. Basically, the firm has decided it’s time to pick which of its startups will really succeed. The fund will be focused on those specifically in the Y Combinator portfolio, not outside. 

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

Image source: wpjournal.com