Mobile website maker DudaMobile has just raised another round, following a busy 2012 which saw the service grow to 4 million mobile sites, the introduction of new partnerships, and a major overhaul of its site builder product. The funding, an extension to its $6 million Series B from last spring, brings in $10.3 million in new funding, led by previous investors Israeli-based Pitango Venture… → Read More
Centzy, a local search startup which is putting prices, store hours, ratings and specials for convenience-oriented businesses online, is today announcing $1.6 million in seed funding from Cowboy Ventures, Founder Collective, Lightbank, ff Venture Capital, and strategic angels found on AngelList. → Read More
ArmorHub is today launching a web security service targeting startups, small-to-medium sized businesses, and most importantly, the layperson who knows that website security is something to be concerned about, but doesn’t know how to monitor their site or what to do if an issue is found. The company is being bootstrapped by Evan Beard, previously the founder and CEO of eTacts, which sold to… → Read More
M.dot, a startup offering small businesses a way to manage their mobile presence, beginning with mobile websites, has launched. The company is backed by $700,000 in seed funding, having recently closed a seed investment round of $600,000 led by Floodgate. The round also saw participation from SV Angel, Sean Jacobsohn, a partner at Emergence Capital, and Harris Barton, the SF 49ers football… → Read More
Google just made it a lot easier for small businesses to track phone calls generated by their AdWords Express ads. For two years now, the full version of AdWords has allowed businesses to track phone calls by using the technology behind Google Voice to create unique phone numbers for every campaign. Starting today, AdWords Express, the somewhat simplified version of AdWords that’s geared… → Read More
When small businesses need to make investments in IT or other operations, it’s often the companies selling them the goods that help with financing solutions. Now it looks like Google is using that model to help drive more dollars to AdWords search advertising. Google says that from Monday it is launching a new service in the UK, AdWords Business Credit, which offers credit to companies… → Read More
When Twitter published its latest thinking on how its API would evolve, and what developers it wanted to leave behind, it noted one of the areas it wanted to emphasize more was enterprise. Today we get more of a clue why: HootSuite, an enterprise-focused Twitter client that actually got a name-check in that blog post, is teaming up with Twitter to sell advertising on the social network.
A… → Read More
Social media dashboard maker MarketMeSuite, which targets SMBs with tools that help them better manage their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn postings in order to target leads, has raised $1.1 million in new funding today, in a round led by Boston-area VC Jeff McCormick of Saturn Venture Partners. The company also recently uprooted from its home base of Norwich, U.K. to set up shop in… → Read More
ThriveHive, a new marketing platform for small businesses, is today announcing it has closed $1.5 million in seed funding in a round which included MIT Professor Ed Roberts, Mitch Roberts and Jean Hammond, as well as seed stage venture capital group Founder Collective, The Birchaven Group, and IBCC, among others. The company, founded by two former small business owners who know the pains of SMB… → Read More
Seattle-based Mobilisafe, a mobile security startup backed by $1.2 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group, Trilogy Equity Partnership and T-Venture, is exiting its private beta program and launching publicly today. The company’s cloud-based Mobile Risk Management (MRM) solution aims to help companies deal with the ever-increasing number of personal devices on corporate networks, but… → Read More
DudaMobile, the DIY mobile website maker, fresh off news of its $6 million Series B, is today announcing a partnership with Google. Going forward, Google’s GoMo service, which launched last November to refer business customers to development shops that could take their website mobile, is now offering a mobile website builder that’s powered by DudaMobile. → Read More
Today, a company called BodeTree is launching a new web-based solution to help small business owners make better sense of their financial data. Like another new startup in the SMB realm (that being InvoiceASAP), BodeTree is also leveraging QuickBooks to help import data into its service, but instead of focusing on online invoicing and payments, BodeTree wants to provide business owners with a… → Read More
DudaMobile, a company which helps convert existing websites into mobile-optimized versions, has just raised $6 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Pitango Venture Capital, an Israeli-based VC firm which has investments in fring, Shaker, VideoSurf, Pageonce, Boxee and others.
The startup, which began life as a white label offering before making its self-serve platform available to… → Read More
Cashier Live, a Chicago-based, bootstrapped startup providing Point of Sale (POS) systems to retailers, has just launched a new iPhone app that moves a bit into Square’s territory – at least that’s the company’s claim. Simply called Cashier, the app is a complete POS system on the iPhone, and aims to compete with Square’s own Register app for iPad.
However, unlike Square, which has a broader… → Read More
Stride, a new CRM system designed to meet the needs of freelancers and small business owners, is launching into private beta today. The product, which was born out of an actual need for a more simplified CRM system, is focused on efficiency, not a complex feature set. It’s not for adding contracts, managing cases, or allocating tasks to a team of salespeople. Instead, Stride is about deal-tracking… → Read More
A new cloud-based service for collecting payments called ZenCash has launched today, with support for integration into popular invoicing applications like QuickBooks, Clio, Freshbooks, Harvest and more. With ZenCash, the goal is to automate a business’s customer relationships surrounding the invoicing process, especially the often uncomfortable part where you have to ask for overdue payments. → Read More
Mobilisafe, the stealthy Seattle-based mobile security startup with $1.2 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group and Trilogy Equity Partnership, is opening up access to its private beta program today (invite link below) for a handful of TechCrunch readers.
In addition, the company is revealing new insights it gained during its private beta period related to the penetration of mobile… → Read More
San Francisco-based 4Mads is a new, angel-funded startup in the adtech space which allows SMB’s and local brands the ability to create both online and mobile rich media ads. The service, which has been in private testing for the past year, just went live this week with the launch of its one-stop shop and easy to use, drag-and-drop tools. → Read More
We just can’t get away from the social recommendations space, can we? Just this past month, we’ve seen new startups like Oink and Wikets arrive, and even a hilarious spoof of the trend via the fake startup Jotly. Well, now you can add another startup to the list, because today, a new social recommendations service for small businesses called BestVendor is opening its doors, too. And it already has… → Read More
Facebook has teamed up with the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an effort it claims will help grow American small businesses and create jobs. Starting in January 2012, Facebook will give businesses up to $10 million in free Facebook advertising in the form of ad credits. The goal is to provide 200,000 businesses in the U.S. with a $50… → Read More
DudaMobile just launched a new, self-serve platform that lets existing website owners create a mobile version of their site just by typing in the website’s URL. The service, targeted towards small business owners and other professionals, includes one-click website conversion, auto sync between the main site and the mobile site, plus mobile-friendly features like a click-to-call widget, a maps and… → Read More
Super Mario Brothers 25th Anniversary All-Stars MSRP: $29.99 Product Page Good For: People who remember when men were men, women were women, and plumbers wore little hats and smashed turtles. Not for: WoW players It’s hard out there for a plumber and for 25 years Mario and his brother have been smashing turtles and taking names. While I’m not a huge fan of the modern games, All-Stars… → Read More
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/222459Live Streaming by Ustream.TV Some dudes in Lafayette, Indiana are going to play 800 levels of Mario, from SMB to Super Mario Sunshine. Last year they spent 96 hours playing and this year should be even more impressive. You can watch them go to it right here and you can Donate to Child’s Play right here as they fight through the magical land of Mario… → Read More
[UK] Brownbook, the business directory, has integrated seed data for nearly 4 million businesses for several countries to fill up their pages and grow the site’s index to 34 million listings. A move that is clearly an investment on their part to reach new countries and increase activity where they already have coverage.
Brownbook’s approach is quite different from many well known local business… → Read More
This man, Jerry Philips, plays a mean SMB theme using only his hands. This will be amazingly useful in the coming depression because he can stand on a street corner with a small monkey in a hat and entertain passers-by and men on the bread line with his jolly renditions of Brother Can You Spare a Dime and Single Ladies. Video after the jump. → Read More
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