What you need to know - 07/27/11

Amazon market cap surpasses $100 billion; Jumio jump-starts credit card purchasing via webcam

AHAlife.com, an editorialized commerce platform for curated lifestyle products, raised $6 million in new funding led by DCM with existing investor FirstMark Capital contributing.

Shares of Amazon jumped 10% to $224, bringing its market valuation to more than $100 billion, a day after the retailer posted quarterly results that reflected the fastest revenue growth in a decade.

Human authentication service Are You a Human raised $750,000 in Series A funding led by Detroit Venture Partners with participation from the First Step Fund, itself a partnership of the Invest Detroit Foundation, TechTown, Ann Arbor SPARK and Automation Alley. This also marks the sixth investment by the Ross School of Business’ Frankel Commercialization Fund.

A full 71% of American Internet users use video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, representing an increase of five percentage points over last year.

Fab.com, a website featuring daily design inspirations and flash sales at up to 70 percent off retail, secured $8 million in Series A financing led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures, The Washington Post Company, Fab.com's founder and CEO Jason Goldberg and more.

Jumio launched a new technology solution for businesses to make easier and more secure online and mobile credit card payments. And your webcam is involved.

LearnVest.com, a personal finance website created exclusively for women, unveiled a suite of new tools and features to help women take control of their finances.

LucidChart, a Web-based diagramming application with real-time collaboration features, raised $1 million in seed financing from 500 Startups and others.

Pixazza is now Luminate, and it’s expanding its platform to make images interactive on a whole new level—no longer just for e-commerce.

Nodeable, provider of a cloud-based social platform for systems data, closed its $2 million Series A funding led by True Ventures.

Read It Later raised $2.5 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Baseline Ventures, Founder Collective, Google Ventures, and others.

SecondMarket released its online secondary trading data, revealing that it handled $268 million in private company stock transactions in the first half of 2011, a 75 percent year-over-year increase.

Taulia, a cloud-based dynamic discounting solution provider in the SAP space, closed its Series B round of funding totaling $8.5 million. Existing investors Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures invested above their pro-rata to increase ownership and were joined by new investor DAG Ventures, who led the round.

TribeHR, a startup that develops human resources software for SMBs, closed a $1 million round of seed funding from Matrix Partners.

Today's featured entrepreneur is Vitaly Vlasov, founder of Playcer, a location-based game platform, where you can discover new places, meet new people, get rewards.