Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch.
She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.
CRM giant Salesforce just released earnings this afternoon, beating Wall Street expectations. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.43 for the quarter. Total Q4 revenue was $632 million, an increase of 38% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts expected earnings of $0.40 cents per share on revenue of $624 million.
“Salesforce.com’s 38% revenue growth in the fourth quarter was a spectacular finish to our fiscal year, a year in which we delivered 37% revenue growth and added nearly 2,500 employees, including nearly 2,000 in the U.S.,” said Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff in a release. “Given the strong customer response to the social enterprise, we’re excited to raise our guidance today, which puts us on pace to exceed the $3 billion revenue run rate during FY13.” → Read More
Freshdesk, which has raised $1 million in funding from Accel Partners, is debuting a new version of its cloud-based customer support platform today. Similar to the leader in the space, Zendesk, the India-based startup aims to bring customer service to the cloud by offering a simple, online help desk and support ticketing application.
With the new version of Freshdesk, customer service agents can support, update and assign projects directly from an email client, without needing to login or use a mobile app. Agents simply email or forward a request to a Freshdesk unique email address and the request will be added to Freshdesk’s interface. Freshdesk automatically processes the command, makes the update, and sends the rest of the email to the appropriate customer. Agents can also directly send an email to a specific address, automatically converting the ticket to a knowledge base article that can be accessed by any agent. → Read More
Cloud storage and collaboration platform Box is debuting a updated Android app today, which has been upgraded with a number of new collaboration features as well as support for several European languages. Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie tells us this is the biggest update to the company’s Android app since launch in 2010.
Besides a completely new UI, the app has been overhauled to support commenting on individual Box files from the app, and now includes the ability to invite others to view documents and files. The new app also supports multiple file downloads at once and features in-app progress notifications Box says they worked with Google directly to develop the new version of the Android app, which has now been localized in four new languages including Spanish, German, Italian and French.
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Ever wonder what ad networks your mobile apps are running? Today, Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is releasing a new, free Android app that aims to provide transparency into ad networks to help you understand what’s happening on your phone – from knowing what networks are on your device to understanding their capabilities.
As Lookout says, sometimes apps access info for reasons that are not so obvious. As a way to further ensure users’ privacy, Lookout’s Ad Network Detector app will show you what information the ad networks within the apps on your phone can access. For example, some ad networks will collect information from your phone for use in more targeted advertising marketing campaigns. This app just gives you insight into what information is being used.
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QVC, a home shopping network and e-commerce site, has acquired Send the Trend, a recently launched e-commerce site that brings personalization to the world of fashion accessories. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Send the Trend had previously raised $3 million from Battery Ventures and Founder Collective.
Send the Trend offers its customers personalized, affordable accessories such as fashion jewelry, sunglasses, scarves and more. The site takes you through a very short survey of what kind of accessories you may want, and it then provides stylist-curated customized recommendations for five different accessories for you. You can then buy any of the items for $30, with free shipping included for U.S. customers.
George Kurtz, who was formerly the CTO of McAfee, has launched a new security technology company called CrowdStrike. The company is still in stealth mode, but has revealed a $26 million Series A investment from Warburg Pincus (Kurtz was previously an EIR at the private equity firm).
Details are still minimal, but as Kurtz explains in a blog post announcing the launch, CrowdStrike is a security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their most sensitive intellectual property and national security information. CrowdStrike, which was co-founded with Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston, is trying to use big data mining to help companies and organizations battle cyber-security challenges. → Read More
Last year, Yammer debuted an integration with Salesforce to bring sales data from the CRM product into Yammer’s social collaboration feed. Today, Yammer is debuting a similar product enhancement with SAP, the first real data integration with an on-premise enterprise giant. Via a Yammer SAP connecter, updated from SAP ERP Central Component will appear as activity stories in Yammer’s Ticker. SAP customers who have installed the Yammer SAP Connector will see updates from all business suite applications including HR, ERP and CRM.
Yammer CEO David Sacks tells us that the connector was a built-in partnership with Freeborders, a certified SAP developer with deep expertise in SAP integration, and SAP actually wasn’t a part of this product. Here’s how it works. The Yammer SAP Connector is a plug-in installed on the customer’s SAP instance by Freeborders on-premise. The Connector will add the capability for users to follow data objects in SAP so when changes to those objects occur, an activity story describing the event will appear in Yammer’s Ticker. The activity story links back to the original record in SAP. → Read More
Luminate, a photo tagging service that has been called an “AdSense for Images,” has raised $10.7 million in Series C funding led by Nokia Growth Partners with participation from existing investors August Capital, CMEA Capital, Google Ventures and Shasta Ventures. With this new round of financing, Nokia Growth Partners, Managing Partner Paul Asel will join Luminate’s Board of Directors.
Luminate, which rebranded from Pixazza last year, allows publishers to identify, tag and match products found within online images on their sites and then link them back to the inventories of Luminate’s network of advertisers. The service, which can be integrated in a site by adding a single line of code, allows consumers to browse the photos featured on a site and mouse over it to reveal information and pricing about similar products, and if desired, click to purchase.
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CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce for private investing, is launching new pro subscription accounts to help users raise capital and network with investors, companies. And the startup is announcing that it has topped $20 billion in total deals hosted on the site.
As we’ve written in the past, CapLinked launched to allow entrepreneurs to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. → Read More
After filing its S-1 for an IPO, the largest independent ad network Millennial Media is releasing a yearly report on performance of smartphone operating systems on its network in 2011. Continuing its growth as a platform on Millennial’s network, Android impressions grew 504 percent year-over-year.
In 2011, Android had a 47 percent share of device OS impressions, while iOS had a 33 percent share. For basis of comparison, in 2010, iOS had the top spot with a 41 percent share, while Android made up 30 percent. iPhone impression share declined 7 percent year-over-year but maintained its position as the number one device on the Top 20 Mobile Phones ranking, with 15 percent of the impression share. Millennial says no other device has been able to achieve the same level of market share of the iPhone.
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Boku is debuting a brand new mobile payments platform today, that aims to disrupt the current way that consumers pay for goods via their mobile phones or credit cards. As you may remember, Boku offers an online payments platform that allowed users to pay for online goods by charging the transaction to their mobile phone bill. When a user wants to purchase a virtual item, he can enter his cell phone number on a site, the site sends a text message to the phone, the user confirms the transaction with a short reply, and all the charges show up on his phone bill.
With Boku’s new product, called Boku Accounts, the startup is expanding online mobile payments technology to cover e-commerce and retail point-of-sale payments. The payments platform, which will be licensed to carriers, will be embedded on users mobile phones as well as via a pre-paid Mastercard credit-card.
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HP just reported mixed first quarter earnings. The company posted non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.92, down 32 percent from the prior-year period (GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.73, down 38 percent from the prior-year period). First quarter net revenue came in at $30.0 billion, down 7 percent from the previous year. Analysts expected earnings of $0.87 cents a share on revenue of $30.7 billion. GAAP Net Income was down 44 percent to $1.5 billion.
“In the first quarter, we delivered on our Q1 outlook and remained focused on the fundamentals to drive long-term sustainable returns,” Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We are taking the necessary steps to improve execution, increase effectiveness and capitalize on emerging opportunities to reassert HP’s technology leadership.” → Read More
Job boards and company profiles on job sites can be fairly uninspiring, and bland. Usually there’s a boring description of a job, followed by a list of skills needed followed by a boring description of the company.
Enter Y Combinator-backed The Daily Muse, which is a community for professional women. Today the site is launching company profiles: a new job board that not only presents company backgrounds in a compelling way, but also aims to make job listings more interesting. → Read More
SAP dropped a whopping $3.4 billion on human capital management software company SuccessFactors back in December. Two months later, the deal has finally closed and SAP isn’t wasting any time in releasing a product roadmap for SuccessFactors now that the company is part of the SAP family.
As the New York Times reported back in December, SAP saw SuccessFactors as one entry point into the cloud. Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman told the publication at the time that “The cloud has been a small part of SAP’s revenue stream, about 2 percent; the deal adds to the revenue base and shows SAP’s strong commitment to the software-as-a-service business model.”
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Atlassian, which makes product management software for software development, is debuting a new version of its collaboration software for product teams, JIRA. As you may know, JIRA is a product and issue management tool that connects people, applications and activity to accelerate the software development process.
JIRA 5 is debuting today with a number of new social features such as mentions, sharing and live activity streams. JIRA 5’s new sharing and mention features make it easier to pull team members or co-workers into the conversation. Live activity streams update team members on all related activities and information, much like Facebook and Twitter activity streams. → Read More
The addition of the iPad into the point of sale system or cash register isn’t a new trend. Many small businesses are swapping out traditional cash registers for iPads and credit card processors like Square. But large restaurant chains and other establishments still need a complete front-to-back-of-house (i.e. a system that can send receipts to the kitchen) solution. Revel Systems hopes to be the go-to iPad-powered, comprehensive POS platform for restaurants.
Launched in August 2011, Revel Systems’ iPad software, cash register, weighing machine, and receipt printer are all optimized for restaurant and retail establishments. Along with the iPad friendly cash register, Revel Systems can be completely customized for payroll, inventory tracking, web ordering, email receipts and more. → Read More
Sugar Inc., a media company that caters exclusively to women, is acquiring San Francisco-based Circle of Moms, a social network and online communityfor moms and moms-to-be. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Originally launched on Facebook in 2008, Circle Of Moms has a community of around 6 million moms connected around news and advice on parenting/mom topics. The platform also offers Child Pages, which are centralized online spaces within the network where moms can share child’s special moments, photos and memories with close friends and family online.
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Kleiner Perkins-backed comparison shopping platform FindTheBest has been focused on solving a specific problem for the past year: how to help people compare different products and services so that they can quickly figure out which is the best one. And today, the platform is adding data-driven personalization as part of the solution with the launch of a new data-driven feature called AssistMe.
Co-founded by DoubleClick founder and former CEO Kevin O’Connor, FindTheBest performs in-depth comparison searches that crawl large amounts of data. For example, the engine can compare colleges and break down comparisons by acceptance rates, SAT scores, tuition, and more. As we’re written in the past, the quality of the data they’ve gathered from government and other trusted sources, the transparency into how the data is sourced, and the tools available to slice, dice and manipulate it make FindTheBest a compelling destination. → Read More
Braintree, an online payments provider, is debuting a set of new tools for mobile app developers that allow merchants to accept payments within a mobile app, rather than through a web browser. For background, Braintree powers and automates online payments for merchants and companies online. The company provides a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing, credit card storage, support for mobile and international payments, and PCI Compliance solutions.
The new offering from Braintree helps developers avoid PCI compliance issues by encrypting sensitive credit card data when it is entered by the user on their mobile device. The encrypted data is passed from the merchant’s server to Braintree for processing, and only Braintree can decrypt the information using a private key, preventing the merchant from being exposed to sensitive credit card data. The libraries support both mobile phones as well as tablet devices running Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 operating systems. → Read More
Barnes and Noble reported earnings this morning, with total sales increasing 5% compared to the prior year, from $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion, falling short of analyst expectations. Net income was $52 million, which is flat with the previous year’s earnings. Third quarter earnings per share was $0.71; missing analyst expectations of $1.01 per share.
The company said retail sales in general increased 2% from $1.46 billion to $1.49 billion. BN.com sales increased 32% over the prior year, from $319 million to $420 million. Comparable sales increased 42%, on top of a 64% increase a year ago. This increase was driven by continued growth of NOOK device and digital content sales, offset by a decline in online physical product sales.
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