Forrester recently predicted that the online retail market will grow to $370 billion over the next four years, up from $231 billion this year — a 10 percent compound annual growth rate. In other words, the message is clear: The eCommerce juggernaut ain’t slowing down any time soon. In 2013, every business needs some kind of online presence; the problem, of course, is that many small business… → Read More
Pittsburgh-based startup AutoRef.com, which is something like a CarWoo for used vehicles, has raised $850,000 in seed funding. The round was led by an interesting, strategic investor: the large European online car marketplace, AutoScout24, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom.
T-Venture, the venture arm of Deutsche Telekom, also participated in the round alongside Innovation Works, plus local… → Read More
Ooomf, a startup which raised half a million in seed funding last fall for an app discovery platform, is already closing that service down and pivoting to become a marketplace to connect developers, designers and copywriters with web and mobile projects. The new service will operate under the same name, and founder Mikael Cho tells us that during its private beta last month, ooomf has already… → Read More
AlumniFunder launched in beta this week with a simple mission: Help create a deeper relationship between current students and alumni, while supporting collegiate entrepreneurship and creativity. To do that, AlumniFunder wants to give alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater. Whether it be for a new science lab, natural language… → Read More
Rev.com, a freelancer marketplace founded by early oDesk employees, is today announcing $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Venky Ganesan of Globespan Capital Partners. Also participating in the round were Craig Sherman (former COO of Ancestry.com) and Austin Ligon (founder of CarMax). All three are now members of Rev.com’s board of directors, following the round which closed back in… → Read More
Editor’s note: Sunil Rajaraman is the co-founder and CEO of Scripted.com, a marketplace for businesses to create content at scale; Scripted has a pool of 80,000 freelance writers and 1,000 customers. Follow Sunil on Twitter @subes01. Like many others, I read the news about Zaarly, reported by TechCrunch’s Rip Empson last weekend, with some degree of shock. Zaarly is a well-funded… → Read More
After winning LA Startup Weekend, Zaarly almost immediately raised $1 million from a long list of notable investors (even “Steve jOBS”), and then raised $14 million more before the end of the year in a round led by Kleiner, while adding Meg Whitman to its board.
Fast forward to today and you’ll no longer find Zaarly’s marketplace on the Web. And, with the next update to its mobile app… → Read More
After spending years working as technicians at public schools, Jeff O’Hara and Nicolas Borg launched Edmodo in 2008 to address what they had come to see as a huge gap in the teacher-student relationship: The need for a better, safer way for teachers to connect and communicate with their students. However, with the launch of its APIs early last year to allow developers to build apps on top of its… → Read More
Airpair, a newly launched service which connects entrepreneurs and expert developers over remote online sessions, aims to help startups build better software and speed their time to launch. The idea’s name, which brings to mind “pair programming” techniques, offers its users one-hour screensharing sessions where developers will help review your code, brainstorm architecture, assist with problems… → Read More
Following Amazon’s end-of-the-year announcement touting its record-breaking holiday sales, the company today released figures for its third-party sellers marketplace, which also saw record sales growth. Although Amazon declined to provide hard figures, it says that sellers’ sales were up 40 percent year-over-year from 2011, and that sellers on Amazon sold “hundreds of millions of units worth tens… → Read More
LiveNinja, a video chat marketplace we spotted in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley in May, is today announcing having closed a seed round of $500,000 in funding as it goes to publicly launch its platform. The round included angels from the Miami area, where LiveNinja is based, as well as a few from New York and South America. → Read More
Munchery, the Bay Area startup that lets customers order healthy, high-quality meals from professional chefs, said it raised $3.3 million of an ongoing $4 million in Series A funding in a round led by E.Ventures. Also participating were angel investors (and die-hard users), Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress; Randi Zuckerberg; and El Dorado Ventures’ Tom Peterson. To date, Munchery has raised… → Read More
EggDrop, a mobile marketplace application with over half a million downloads, is shutting down. The company will inform its current user base via email on Friday. According to CEO Dan Zheng, EggDrop was the recipient of a Cease & Desist letter from Craigslist a few months ago, but that’s not the primary factor in his decision to close up shop – instead, it was slower than expected growth… → Read More
Editor’s note: Matt Cohler is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He’s responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Internet-related companies in addition to working closely with companies across the firm’s portfolio. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Building and controlling a marketplace is hard. Marketplaces consist of two sides: supply (sellers) and demand… → Read More
Love Etsy, but looking for something even more unique? Makeably, a new marketplace for custom-made goods, can help. The site, founded by two ex-Googlers and longtime friends, Ryan Hayward and Anastasia Leng, has just launched into beta, offering makers a new way to manage their custom work requests online – a process which, today, is largely handled via email.
On the site, buyers can search… → Read More
99designs, the polarizing crowdsourced design marketplace, announced its first acquisition tonight, as the Accel-backed startup scooped up its European rival, 12designer, for an undisclosed amount. In the near-term, 12designer will continue to operate as a standalone site.
Since raising $35 million from Accel, 99designs has been focused on international growth, said Patrick Llewellyn, the… → Read More
A changing of the guard at Buy.com, which was bought by Japan’s Rakuten in May 2010. Long-serving executives CEO/president Neel Grover and COO Greg Giraudi are stepping down from their roles, effective September 1. Grover had been instrumental behind the sale of the e-commerce site to the Japanese giant for $250 million.
The memo does not make clear why the pair are leaving, but it coincides… → Read More
EggDrop, essentially a mobile app alternative to Craigslist, is starting to pick up steam. The company now boasts half a million downloads of its app on iOS and Android, with $8 million in listings from across the 50 U.S. states and the U.K. (EggDrop’s top two markets).
The app originally launched last June, backed by $1 million in funding in a round led by BlueRun Ventures and SV Angel. But… → Read More
LifeCrowd, the first startup to emerge from the newly-formed TechStars Network member MuckerLab based in L.A., is today launching its marketplace for social activities into public beta. The company, which aims to provide a curated selection of quality events, happenings, classes and outings, is available now for users in San Francisco, San Diego, and all of Orange County, Calif., as well as in its… → Read More
Ethical Community, an online, eco-friendly marketplace (which has plans for a snazzier name in the works!), has secured a £200,000 ($316,640 USD) round of seed funding from a syndicate of angel investors, the company is announcing today. Founded in 2009, the marketplace has signed up over 850 sellers from around the world, who have now listed over 7,000 eco-friendly, organic and natural products… → Read More
Remember the news from earlier this week about a mobile app developer who turned to eBay to unload his underperforming iOS app? (Update: the app is now up to $15,100+!) Well, there will soon be an alternative to eBay auctions for other developers looking to do the same. A new marketplace called Apptopia will launch in February, allowing developers to sell their mobile apps, source code and… → Read More
Mashape has a somewhat unusual backstory: The Italian startup spent two years looking for funding in its home country, only to be rebuffed at every turn. So, in 2009, it moved operations to Silicon Valley. The team found funding in less than three weeks. Granted, it was $100K, but it was enough to begin building a real service. Persistence, it seems, is key. (It also helps to have a great idea and… → Read More
Oh no, Microsoft! This is not a good move. It appears that developers selling apps in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace won’t get paid for peddling their wares until February 2011. Now, given that the smartphone wars are largely decided by the available apps on any one platform, it isn’t a great move to defer payments to those developers that will define your platform — especially… → Read More
Google trickled out some screenshots from the upcoming refresh to the Android marketplace today. They are responding to complaints that the experience is unwieldy to users, and adding subcategories and regional options. While we know that this will be version 1.6 of the marketplace, there’s no word on exactly when it’s going to be released. See the video after the jump. → Read More
Microsoft still has plans for the Zune brand and the marketplace is probably a big part of it. Details are still light but at least we now have what is suppose to be a screenshot of the service. Who knows if it’s legit, but it at least seems to have all the same visual aspects of the Zune. It wouldn’t be surprising if it is the real thing. Now, our main question is will Microsoft… → Read More
Computerworld calls this market changing but I’m not so sure. Here’s the skinny: when you buy an app from the Windows Marketplace for WinMo you can share that app with four people you know. You can also get a full refund within 24 hours of purchase. You can also run the apps on up to five of your own devices if you don’t want to share. → Read More
From blogs.adobe.com
Adobe AIR Marketplace is a central resource that allows developers to make their applications available to millions of potential users and makes it easy for consumers to find them. → Read More
Microsoft just took the wraps off of the latest WinMo release. Just like the dozens of leaked screenshots indicated, the OS has a totally revamped feel with a Zune-inspired user interface. The Marketplace and MyPhone are included too although details are a bit light at the moment. There isn’t any word about about paid apps or who will host the contents, although we expect those details shortly. → Read More
Microsoft just took the wraps off of the latest WinMo release. Just like the dozens of leaked screenshots indicated, the OS has a totally revamped feel with a Zune-inspired user interface. The Marketplace and MyPhone are included too although details are a bit light at the moment. There isn’t any word about about paid apps or who will host the contents, although we expect those details shortly. → Read More
Devin already gave us most of the details of Microsoft’s new Zune Marketplace yesterday, but with today’s official announcement comes additional information. First, lots of folks, including the AP, are making a big deal about the presence of NBC content on the new Marketplace. You may remember that NBC and Apple went their separate ways last year when Apple refused to cede to… → Read More
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