Earlier this month, we wrote that High Fidelity, the virtual world startup led by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, had raised $2.4 million of a $3.4 million round, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, we didn’t know who had actually made the investment — until today.
Tony Conrad of True Ventures just announced that his firm led High Fidelity’s Series… → Read More
“Smart parking” platform Streetline just announced that it has raised $25 million in Series C funding.
The round was led by True Ventures, with participation from new investors Qualcomm Ventures and Citi, as well as past backers Sutter Hill Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners, and Fontinalis Partners. The company has now raised a total of $40 million, and it says it recently obtained a $25… → Read More
True Ventures’ partners Tony Conrad and Puneet Agarwal joined me for Ask A VC in the studio this week, where we talked about a renaissance in the hardware industry (True has investments in a number of hardware startups including Fitbit and Makerbot). → Read More
In what is the most-watched TED Talk to date, Sir Ken Robinson makes a convincing case for why the educational system in the U.S. needs to be torn down and rebuilt: It stifles creativity. Robinson is not alone in his belief that the current system revolves around inflexible curricula and churning out standardized test-taking drones, rather than free-thinking individuals. It’s for this reason that… → Read More
When Instagram was bought by Facebook earlier this spring for $1 billion, one question lingering on everyone’s minds was how much VC firm Andreessen Horowitz made on the deal. The firm had made an early investment in the photo sharing startup but then bet against it after Instagram’s pivot by later by supporting a rival.
A few days after the Facebook-Instagram acquisition was announced, the… → Read More
SocialPandas has raised $1.5 Million in a seed round from True Ventures to develop its social tools for sales people — the ones left behind at the front lines of the business world.
The oversubscribed round also includes angel investments from
former Salesforce.com, VMware, and Apple executives as well as the Alchemist Accelerator. The company will use the funds to develop the service for a… → Read More
As we spend more and more time online, as our virtual interactions increase, so too does our appreciation for tangible, real-world experiences — especially those that arrive via the mailbox. Remember how good it feels to receive a letter from a friend in the mail? Now imagine that friend is someone you admire and that letter is an awesome gift, and you have the basis for Quarterly, a… → Read More
A few weeks ago, we heard that the San Francisco Port Authority had red-tagged Pier 38 — putting up warnings that the space was unsafe. This is a big deal because Pier 38 is something of a tech hub. It’s home to tenants including Dogpatch Labs, Polaris Ventures, Automattic, True Ventures, 99 Designs, EGG HAUS, and more.
While Robert Scoble grabbed some pictures showing just how serious… → Read More
Nodeable, a startup building a cloud-based social platform for systems data, announced today that it has raised $2 million in series A financing, led by True Ventures. The startup will use this infusion of capital to ramp up hiring efforts and continue building its platform, as it moves into private beta. → Read More
There’s an age-old debate in Silicon Valley over whether or not you have to have started a company before to be a great VC. While many of the best VCs in Valley history weren’t entrepreneurs, the bias is heavily on investors who know firsthand what entrepreneurs are going through. But what about VCs who are building companies at the same time they are backing them?
It’s a growing trend as serial… → Read More
Now here’s a funding deal you don’t get to write about everyday. True Ventures has invested $2.5 million in a tongue scraper. That’s not high-tech jargon for, say, a scummy site that steals private data off of your social networks and sells it to marketers. True Ventures newest portfolio company is a small consumer package good company out of Provo, Utah that sold a million tongue brushes last… → Read More
In the midst of the implosion of the financial markets in 2008, True Ventures raised its second fund. Founder and partner Phil Black tells us that shortly after this raise in early 2009 (which he calls the “dark days in the financial world”), the fund’s partners were sitting at a meeting looking for innovative ways they could help jump start the tech economy. Inspired by President Obama’s 2009… → Read More
Looks like Jaiku founder and former Googler Jyri Engeström is up to something new. According to an SEC filing, a startup listing Engeström as chief executive officer called Pingpin has just raised $775,000 in financing.
Backers are BetaWorks (the startup’s address matches that of the early-stage investment firm) and True Ventures, as founder and managing partner Jon Callaghan is listed as a… → Read More
A new seed fund called Resonant Venture Partners opened its office doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan today.
Founded by Michael Godwin and Jason Townsend, Resonant aims to raise $10 million within the next 18 months, and to invest up to $500,000 per seed round in regional firms across a variety of high-tech sectors: IT, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, alternative energy and defense.
Though… → Read More
Data center automation company Puppet Labs this morning announced that it has raised $5 million in funding, bringing the total amount of capital invested in the fledging startup to $7 million.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the Series B round, while existing investors True Ventures and Radar Partners – which participated in the Series A round back in June 2009 – also contributed to the… → Read More
Socialcast, a social communication SaaS provider for enterprises, has secured $1.4 million in Series A funding from True Ventures and angel investors. True Ventures led the round with $1 million and angel investors contributed $400,000. Socialcast was a finalist for the 2009 Crunchies Award for “Best Bootstrapped Startup.”
Om Malik, the founder of tech blogging network GigaOm and venture partner… → Read More
BackType, one of the better conversation tracking tools we’ve come across so far, is releasing a couple of new features today that arguably make it a top gun in the space. The startup, launched in August 2008 on $15k thanks to Y Combinator’s summer program, has also closed a round of seed funding to the tune of $300,000 from True Ventures, led by the firm’s founder and partner Toni Schneider… → Read More
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