Freemium wireless service provider FreedomPop has been pumping out its fair share of hardware lately, and its momentum seems to have been received favorably by its backers. The company, which aims to dole out 500MB of free WiMAX data to the masses, has raised $4.3 million in funding from current investors DCM and Mangrove Capital and finally rolled out its oft-touted social data sharing feature. → Read More
As my colleague Sarah Lacy reported in April, investment firm DCM launched a $100 million Asian A-Fund to support early-stage Android entrepreneurs. DCM partnered a number of notable Asian tech players including gaming giant Tencent, Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network GREE and Japan’s second largest mobile operator KDDI, to fund startups that are leveraging the Android ecosystem. → Read More
A lot of Americans desperately want to believe that China is full of poor people who can’t innovate, and the only goods they make are cheap, toxic rip-offs our Western brands. They want to believe the only reason the Chinese economy is surging is because the West wants cheap goods and China knows how to make them that way.
These people will hate this post because it’s about a company called … → Read More
We’ve all got iPhone mania in the Valley, never mind that Apple tracks our every move and won’t explain why or that AT&T users can’t actually make calls.
But in Asia– and much of the rest of the developing world– the anticipated mobile giant is Android. Android phones are just starting to hit Japan and China, and a flood of cheap new models are expected to come on the market within the next… → Read More
Colorado-based Abound Solar— the makers of cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film solar modules designed for use in large solar power installations, versus residential or small commercial systems— raised a $110 million equity round, and secured a $400 million loan guarantee from the United States Department of Energy the company announced today.
Federal and equity financing of this magnitude… → Read More
The biggest difference between the Internet scenes in Silicon Valley and China this year? We’re all still asking when Facebook will go public, while Chinese companies are filing left and right. Part of this is an investor demand to get a chunk of that 400 million person strong and growing Chinese Internet market.
But part of this is cultural. American Internet entrepreneurs are more likely to… → Read More
A few weeks ago we flagged a growing trend of Chinese Internet companies going public on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange and getting pretty good valuations. At the time I was surprised more people weren’t paying attention– especially given how few Internet IPOs we’re having in the US and how much of the returns from those Chinese deals were flowing back to Silicon Valley. (At least on… → Read More
Branders.com, an online-only promotional items store operator, raised another $5 million in venture funding, bringing the total invested in the company to $46 million. Participating in this round were Menlo Ventures, DCM, Venture Strategy Partners and Altos Ventures. → Read More
Vindicia, a Redwood City, California-based provider of on-demand payment management software has raised $7.5 in Series D funding. New investor ONSET Ventures led the round and was joined by existing investors Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, DCM and Leader Ventures.
The fourth round of funding brings the total amount of financing invested in the company to $21 million. ONSET Ventures GP… → Read More
The hardest thing about being an American journalist in China is discovering local entrepreneurs. Part of the reason is that there is just so much going on. There are so many intriguing expats and returning Chinese nationals in Beijing’s start-up scene, you could spend months just meeting with them. But the bigger challenges are the language and cultural barriers. China has no shortage of… → Read More
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