Mobile development platform Trigger is announcing one million dollars in funding today, from way legit investors SV Angel, Paul Graham, Ron Conway, 500 Startups, Russ Siegelman, Steve Walske, RightVentures, Venture51 and John Taysom. → Read More
We first covered Game Closure this spring when it opened its private beta to the world to test out its new cross-platform HTML5 game engine and SDK. The startup has since gone on to work with multiple private and public partners to bring cross-platform, multiplayer HTML5 games to the App Store, Android Marketplace, Facebook, and beyond. According to Game Closure Co-founder and CEO Michael Carter, the startup has also attracted interest in its technology from game studios involved in the Project Spartan launch and expects activity to ramp up after project details are (expected to be) announced at F8 next month. → Read More
Quantitative analysis startup Quid is getting a major vote of confidence and $10 million in a seed round from a raft of serious investors. Niklas Zennstrom’s Atomico Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Endeavour Vision, Infocomm Investments, and Korean investor Charles Lho all invested in the series C financing. (Founders Fund and Lho were already investors. Max Levchin has joined the board.
→ Read More
AppRedeem, a Mountain View-based startup that aims to offer mobile app developers innovative, effective solutions to driving app installs and engagement, announced today that it has raised $700K in seed funding from SV Angel and Blue Run Ventures. The startup plans to use its infusion of capital to expand its engineering resources and to accelerate its development onto other mobile platforms.
In conjunction with its funding announcement, AppRedeem is also launching a free mobile app that allows users to earn real world, offline rewards and merchandise for using and reviewing mobile apps promoted in its AppRedeem app. The app is available on iOS and Android. → Read More
According to several sources Airbnb is in the process of closing a whopper of a funding round: $100 million or more at a $1 billion-plus valuation. The round is being lead by Andreessen Horowitz, and includes participation from DST, say our sources.
That’s a big increase from the company’s last funding round of $7.2 million, which included Sequoia Capital, Greylock, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher and Youniversity Ventures (Kutcher broke the news that he’s an investor in AirBnB at TechCrunch Disrupt last week). The company, which launched via Y Combinator, has raised just $7.8 million to date.
No surprise, it was a hotly contested deal. The service has exploded, growing more than 800% last year and booking 1.6 million night stays in other people’s homes to date. On any given night in New York there are more people staying in homes via Airbnb than there are rooms in the biggest hotel in Manhattan. → Read More
Yesterday, Mike broke the news on stage at Disrupt that SV Angel is doubling down with Yuri Milner once again to invest in all willing Y Combinator grads. Today, SV Angel is announcing another partnership, this time Ron Conway & crew are looking east. SV Angel and Lerer Ventures– which also announced a new fund yesterday– will announce today that the two are entering a formal partnership to invest in one another’s deals.
There are limits to how cozy they are getting. The funds are still distinct, with no direct financial stake in one another. And there’s no requirement or quid pro quo. Indeed, SV Angel’s fund is much larger, so there will likely be more West Coast deals being closed between the two. Like the Y Combinator deal, this is just an offer on the table for all new SV Angel and Lerer Venture portfolio companies. “It will always be at the discretion of the entrepreneur,” said SV Angel’s Ron Conway backstage at Disrupt. → Read More
Remember Start Fund, the investment vehicle established by DST’s Yuri Milner (as an individual) and Ron Conway’s angel fund, SV Angel?
A couple of weeks ago, we broke the news that the fund, which is managed by SV Angel partner David Lee, made a gutsy blanket investment offer to every single one of the 40 or so Y Combinator startups in the most recent batch. → Read More
Unvarnished is all grown up.
The self-described reputation management site, which allows professionals to anonymously submit reviews on their peers, has just renamed its site to “Honestly.com” and raised $1.2 million from several high-profile firms including First Round Capital, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Charles River Ventures.
Significantly, for the nature of the Honestly community, founder Peter Kazanjy is officially opening the site to any professional. → Read More
An SEC Form D filed today revealed a few new things about “Godfather of Silicon Valley” and much lauded angel investor Ron Conway‘s SV Angel fund, namely that it is going after more; The forms show that what the fund is seeking has been raised from $20 million to about $30 million, and that it is also closing in on an almost $9 million update today.
This latest Form D filing is an amendment from the first time SV Angel filed this Spring and it refers to a $22,805,000 in total new funding vs. in $13,865,000 in April. A little handy subtraction reveals that SV Angel just wrastled up another $8,940,000 to be specific. → Read More
New York City startup BankSimple today disclosed that it raised its first venture funding in a round led by First Round Capital, Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures, and Village Ventures, along with seed investors SV Angel (Ron Conway) and Nauiokas Park, and Jerry Neumann. But it did not disclose how much it raised. I’ve confirmed that the round was $2.9 million, with an additional $190,000 raised last year in convertible debt (which converted to shares with this round), for a total of $3.1 million raised. Not exactly “a big round,” but more than enough for what BankSimple is trying to do. → Read More
Today, during our Social Currency CrunchUp, angel investor Ron Conway had some interesting data to share for the first time. Conway says that his company, SV Angel, has recently done an audit on the over 500 companies they’ve invested in over the past 12 years. And he was surprised with the results.
Conway expected it would show that about one-third of companies fail, one-third get investors their money back, and one-third bring a 2x to Google-x return (Conway invested in Google early on). But that’s not the case. Conway noticed that during the Internet Bubble in 1997 to 2001 — the failure rate (startups that go out of business and the investors get nothing) was a staggering 77 percent. “It was catastrophic,” he said. → Read More
Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, Michael Arrington sat down with investors Ron Conway and Paul Graham. Obviously, these are two of the biggest names in early-stage investing (with SV Angel and Y Combinator, respectively).
Both Conway and Graham had some interesting data to share. Conway, in particular, was able to give some great numbers because he’s recently done an audit on the over 500 companies he’s invested in over the past 12 years. → Read More
BillFloat, a San Francisco-based startup incubated by PayPal and Venrock, has raised $4.5 million in a Series A round led by First Round Capital, with renewed participation of PayPal and Venrock and joined by early-stage funds and angel investors such as Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Mint.com board member Mark Goines.
The company soft-launched last week with a proper website and is today for the first time presenting its value proposition to the world. In a nutshell, the company aims to help people get their bills paid in time. → Read More
It doesn’t always have to be the venture capitalists grilling the entrepreneurs – at TechCrunch Disrupt, we’ve disrupted that notion (see what I did there?) and hosted an open-mic session for entrepreneurs to challenge VCs, live and uncensored.
The investors in question were Mark Davis (Associate at DFJ Gotham Ventures), Rick Heitzmann (Managing Director, FirstMark Capital), David Lee (General Partner of SV Angel), Mike Brown (AOL Ventures) and Eric Wiesen (General Partner, RRE Ventures). → Read More
Super-angel Ron Conway, who is one of the most prolific and successful investors in Silicon Valley, is expanding his SV Angel fund to include outside investors (recently he has invested only his own capital in startups). He is raising a new fund of around $10 million, we’ve confirmed.
Conway, who was called the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” in a book by Gary Rivlin, is considered by many to be the most important angel investor in technology. He sees most new startups before anyone else, and an investment by his firm is a serious milestone. His deep ties to most top tier venture capital firms also ensure quick introductions and a long look when the time comes to raise a second and larger round of capital.
He was one of the first investors in Google, and has, he says, invested in hundreds of startups over the last twenty years. His current investments include Facebook Twitter, Digg and just about every other startup of note you’ve heard about.
In other words, he isn’t going to have any trouble finding takers for this $10 million fund. → Read More
When we first covered real-time photo-blogging service DailyBooth last August, we had noticed how remarkably vibrant the community already was, and how quickly the site was amassing tons of traffic.
The startup was launched in February 2009, received some initial seed funding from Y Combinator over the summer and has now raised an additional $1 million from an all-star team of institutional and individual investors. → Read More
