Daily funding roundup - September 30, 2015

Mitos Suson · September 30, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/406e

Avant scored $325M; NewStore raised $38M; PerfectServe landed $21M

  • Molio, Inc., a Salt Lake City-based creative and media agency focused on building brands through YouTube, raised a $1 million credit facilitySquare 1 Bank provided the financing. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expansion. A 2015 spin-off of oral care company, Orabrush, Molio combines intelligent ad placement software and advertising services such as content creation, video optimization and media placement to generate hyper-targeted marketing campaigns to increase awareness, engagement and conversions.

  • Encycle Therapeutics announced today the close of $2.85 million (CAD) in financing, led by Takeda Ventures, the VC division of Takeda Pharmaceutical, with additional support from BDC Capital, Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator, and MaRS IAFThe Toronto-based company, spun off from University of Toronto in partnership with MaRS Innovation, is a drug discovery startup seeking to generate “nacellins,” more drug-like cyclic peptides. Encycle says it will use the funding to advance its pipeline of novel therapeutics using its nacellin platform chemistry.

  • AboutLife, a financial planning company, raised $3 million for its Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company says it’ll use the new capital to expand its suite of tools to help people figure out how to plan for college, take care of their parents, buy a home, manage debt, and more.

  • French startup accelerator Numa started as a non-profit organization fifteen years ago. Since then, everything has changed in the French tech ecosystem. Numa doesn’t have the same name, office, business model and now shareholders. After successfully raising $1.1 million (€1 million) in a crowdfunding campaign, the organization has sold more equity to third-party investors — this time, MAIF is investing $3.4 million (€3 million)In other words, over the past few months, Numa has raised $4.5 million (€4 million). Before that, Numa relied heavily on sponsorships. 

  • Today marks the launch of Curology, a first-of-its-kind online service that offers customized prescription creams for acne and anti-aging. Founded by dermatologist Dr. David Lortscher, Curology partners patients with licensed healthcare professionals and custom-formulates medications at its laboratory in San Diego, California. Curology also announced $4.2 million in funding from Sherpa Capital, known for investments in Munchery, Uber and Ipsy, and from Forerunner Ventures, whose portfolio includes Warby Parker, Birchbox and Glossier. This first institutional round of funding will allow Curology to scale its medical team and continue investing in research and development of customized prescription skincare. 

  • People Power Co. announced a $4.4 million Series B funding led by MediaTek, Inc., a company that specializes in Internet of Things chipsets and technologies. People Power is a user engagement company that provides apps, cloud and mobile service for IoT, and this round of funding will be used to accelerate its penetration in the IoT market in the U.S. and China. The funding will also be used to develop new IoT products that are based on the company’s Fabrux and Influx software architecture, as well as increase its manpower by hiring additional people in its sales, marketing and engineering teams.

  • Cloud Lending Solutions, an end-to-end lending solution built natively on salesforce.com, announced today that it has raised $8 million in series A venture funding. This funding will be used to support market expansion and further develop the company’s engineering and innovation capabilities. The funding round was led by investor SF Capital Group, with additional investments from Cota Capital and Long Light Capital, along with current seed investors Green Visor and Epic Ventures. Neil Wolfson, president at SF Capital Group, will also join Cloud Lending Solutions’ board of directors.

  • Credible has just closed a $10 million Series A funding round. Based in San Francisco, Credible offers a platform where students can compare loan offers from different providers and finance or refinance those loans. Soul Htite, founder & CEO of Dianrong.com and co-founder of LendingClub, led the round. Ron Suber, President of Prosper, and online lending entrepreneur Scott Langmack also participated. The company claims to have helped nearly 73,000 people with their loans and boasts average savings of $11,668 for each person refinancing student loans.

  • Italy headquartered startup ShopFully, which helps drive customers to physical retail stores with a digital alternative to the humble paper flyer, has raised a further €10 million ($11.20 million). Backing comes from Highland Capital Partners Europe and brings total raised over the last three years to €20 million. Previous backers include Principia SGR, 360 Capital Partners and Merifin. Founded in 2010, ShopFully claims its service/app is used by over 13 million shoppers worldwide — the startup trades under the brand DoveConviene in Italy and ShopFully in the U.S., as well as various other names in Spain, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia — to help them prepare and plan their purchases in physical stores. 

  • KPMG Capital announced today it has taken an equity stake in Norse Corp., a leader in live attack intelligence solutions which help companies pre-emptively block cyber-attacks, track emerging threats and detect compromises. Norse is the latest investment from KPMG Capital's first global fund focused on accelerating innovation in data and analytics. KPMG Capital was the lead investor in California-based Norse's latest Series A1 round of funding. The $11.4 million total raised in the round will be used by Norse to bolster the company's product development efforts and accelerate expansion in high-growth markets.

  • San Francisco-based Teridion announced it has raised a $15 million Series B round of financing led by JVP, Magma and Singtel Innov8. The company, which provides cloud-based networking services, has now raised $20 million in total funding. Jeff Karras, managing director at Singtel Innov8, has joined the board.

  • Stormpath, a Customer Identity API, announced today that it has raised $15 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from prior investors, including New Enterprise Associates and Pelion Venture Partners. The investment allows Stormpath to scale its business to support the fast-growing demand for its powerful Identity API for web applications and services. Andy Vitus, Partner at Scale Venture Partners, will be joining the company’s board.

  • The Gowanus, Brooklyn-based online farmer’s market Farmigo, which shifted its business model from software for farmers to selling farm-fresh groceries to consumers, has raised $16 million in series B funding, the company announced today. It will be used to accelerate the company's rapid growth and expansion in new markets, a press release said. Farmigo currently operates in New York, New Jersey and Northern California, and is launching in Seattle-Tacoma on Oct. 14, 2015, and says the expansion will make it the largest farm-to-fridge service with the largest footprint in the U.S. to date.

  • UK-based retail data analytics service more2 has received a $17 million (€15 million) minority investment from Eight Roads Ventures. More2, founded in 2002, is a bootstrapped company and had previously avoided raising any outside funds. However the company is now looking to expand into new markets and industries and accelerate its growth with the support of Eight Roads. The investment is the latest European move from Eight Roads Ventures, formerly Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, following investments in startups like Spain's Packlink, Brussels-based food delivery service Take Eat Easy and London online furniture retailer Made.com.

  • PerfectServe – healthcare’s only comprehensive and secure communication and collaboration platform – closed a $21 million financing round led by MemorialCare Innovation Fund (MCIF), a strategic investment fund associated with MemorialCare Health System. Additional investors include incumbent investors CHV Capital, the strategic investment arm of the Indiana University Health System, Piper Jaffray and River Cities Capital Funds, along with new investor Ares Capital Corporation. The capital will support the company’s growth and innovation by advancing research and development of PerfectServe Synchrony™, the company’s flagship solution, and helping bring the product’s full set of capabilities to market.

  • PeopleDoc has raised a $28 Million Series C round of investment led by Eurazeo. PeopleDoc, which has seen explosive growth in the last 18 months, during which they brought on 150 of their 400 clients, which include Yves Rocher & Auchan in France, but also American Express & Match.com in the US. The company also has concluded partnerships with major HR players like WorkDay, SAP SuccessFactors & ADP, which has enabled them to be compatible with large enterprises’ existing solution, smoothing the digital transition. The fundraising will allow PeopleDoc to expand globally, with a London office set to open before the end of the year.

  • NewStore, Inc., a Boston, MA-based provider of a mobile retail platform, raised $38 million in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst Partners with participation from Stephan Schambach and NewStore’s management team. The company will use the funds to expand operations. Founded by Schambach, who is an early ecommerce pioneer and founder of Demandware and Intershop, NewStore provides a mobile commerce solution that unifies offline and online buying experiences.

  • Adyen, an Amsterdam-based payment processing company, announced today that its valuation had jumped to $2.3 billion after a new investment from its first Silicon Valley investor. Adyen said it couldn’t reveal the amount it received from Iconiq Capital, however, the latest funding comes less than a year after the company raised a round of $250 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. Adyen’s previous investors include General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Temasek, and Felicis. But Iconiq is known for, among other things, its role in managing finances for big shots like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Reid Hoffman.

  • Avant Inc., a startup lender for borrowers with less-than-stellar credit, raised $325 million of equity in a funding round led by private-equity firm General Atlantic that also included JPMorgan Chase & Co. Balyasny Asset Management and Tiger Global Management LLC also are investing in the round, which brings the company’s total equity raised to $659 million, according to Carolyn Blackman, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Avant. She declined to discuss the venture’s valuation, which Fortune reported is more than $1 billion.

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. 

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Mitos Suson

I produce Vator Events and enjoy the challenge. I am learning and growing a lot, being involved with Vator and loving every moment of it!

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