Daily funding roundup - January 28, 2016

Pindrop secured $75M; Farmers Edge received $41.2M; NewVoiceMedia landed $30M new round of funding

• Finova Financial, a West Palm Beach, Florida- and San Francisco, CA-based self-proclaimed socially responsible online lender, raised a seed funding round of undisclosed amount. Backers included Silicon Valley-based investment fund 500 Startups and other angels and entrepreneurs. Finova leverages technology, analytics and a fee structure to provide consumers with a socially responsible online lending platform.
  
  
• Insurify, a startup that makes recommendations for auto insurance coverage, announced a $2 million seed round today and launched Evia, a personal digital assistant people communicate with via text message when they need quotes on car insurance. Rationalwave Capital Partners led the funding round. Kayak chief technology officer Giorgos Zacharia also participated.
  
  
• Based in Palo Alto, Civic has received $2.75 million in funding from Social Leverage, along with a number of VC firms active in the bitcoin and blockchain space. These include Pantera Capital, Blockchain Capital and Digital Currency Group. The digital identity protection startup, which focuses on online solutions for US Social Security numbers, is expected to launch this spring.
  
  
• Marketing company Naritiv announced Thursday a $3 million investment from venture capitalists to grow a team that helps advertisers turn popular Snapchat users into temporary salespeople. Investors include Third Wave Digital, led by YouTube marketing pioneer Allen DeBevoise; Walt Disney Co., whose start-up mentorship program helped Naritiv in 2014; and Luminari Capital. Naritiv previously raised $1.2 million.
  
  
• Vestorly, Inc., a New York City-based content marketing platform for the financial services industry, closed a $4.1 million Series A funding. Backers included Sigma Prime Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Jere Doyle, Managing Director at Sigma Prime, joined Vestorly’s board member. The company, which has raised $6.1 million in total funding to date, intends to use the funds to expand enterprise sales and marketing efforts for the Vestorly product in financial services, as well as grow the new Torii platform into more verticals.
  
  
• Wercker, a startup with tools for automating the process of testing and deploying code, announced today a $4.5 million funding round. The startup is also announcing that it’s releasing its command line interface (CLI) tool under an open-source license on GitHub. With the new funding, Wercker can build out a full commercial product with features that big companies would like, founder and CEO Micha Hernandez van Leuffen told VentureBeat in an interview. Inkef Capital led the new funding round, with participation from Notion Capital. To date, Wercker has raised $7.5 million.
  
  
• Booster Fuels, a startup that provides on-demand fuel delivery for vehicles, today announced it has raised $9 million in a Series A financing round as the company expands into the San Francisco Bay Area. Maveron led the investment round with participation from existing and new investors, including Madrona Venture Group, Version One Ventures, and RRE Ventures. The investment brings Booster's total funding to $12.5 million. The increase in capital comes on the heels of Booster's rapid growth in North Texas and expansion into the San Francisco Bay Area. Booster will use the funding to fuel expansion and augment the team with additional world-class talent.
  
  
• Next Games has raised $10 million from existing investors to fuel its existing titles and future games. The Finnish company also said that The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land, the official mobile game based on AMC’s hit TV series, has been downloaded more than 10 million times. That latter fact is one reason why the company has been able to keep raising money. IDG Ventures and Jari Ovaskainen led the newest funding round. Other backers include AMC Networks, Lionsgate, Lowercase and IDG Capital.
  
  
• Gridstore a hyper-converged all flash infrastructure today announced that it has closed its growth capital funding round and elected both a new Chairman of the Board and a new member to the Board of Directors. The company raised $19 million in an oversubscribed round that included participation from its current investors, Acero Capital, GGV Capital, and ONSET Ventures. Leading the new round is Atlantic Bridge Capital, a Global Growth Equity Technology Fund with over $450 million of assets under management. Gridstore will use this infusion of capital to expand its international geographic coverage, partner recruitment programs, domestic and international sales teams as well as increasing engineering and product development initiatives.
  
  
• NewVoiceMedia, a provider of cloud technology which helps businesses sell more, serve better and grow faster, has secured $30 million in a new round of funding. New investor BGF Ventures joined existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), Eden Ventures, Highland Capital Partners Europe, Salesforce Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). The new investment will accelerate NewVoiceMedia's international growth plans, with particular emphasis on the North American market, driven by further expansion of its US-based sales, marketing and professional services delivery teams and alongside its ongoing commitment to enriching its product and platform capabilities.
  
  
• Farmers Edge, a precision agriculture and independent data management solutions, announced today it has received a $58 million CAD (approximately $41.2 million) raise led by existing investors, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ Green Growth Fund and Osmington Inc. The investment will go towards the expansion of the data science team, new product development and global growth into South America, Australia and Eastern Europe.
  
  
• Pindrop, an Atlanta-based startup specializing in preventing identify theft and voice fraud, has secured $75 million in funding in a round led by Google Capital. Founded in 2011, Pindrop has built a solid reputation on its so-called “acoustic fingerprinting” technology that integrates with companies’ internal systems and identifies people’s voices, locations, and devices. Pindrop had raised $45 million before today’s announcement, including a hefty $35 million round last February. Though this is Google Capital’s first cash injection into Pindrop, existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Institutional Venture Partners also participated, alongside Google Ventures (GV).

VC's Raising Funds


• Laconia Capital Group L.P. announced the launch of a new Business-to-Business Venture Capital Fund. The newly capitalized fund utilizes an investment approach described as "Inflection Capital Investing," through which Laconia will invest in late seed-stage companies that have reached an inflection point in their business development that strongly suggests continued growth, attractive future funding rounds, and current tangible value. Entrepreneurs and independent investors David Arcara and Jeffrey Silverman founded Laconia. Amongst their past investments are Localytics, LeagueApps, TripleLift, LocalVox, Alice, and Wymsee. Laconia plans to complete 8-10 investments over the next 18 months with an average investment size between $250,000-$750,000.

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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