As CES 2013 gets underway, it finds the Quantified Self movement to be a far more crowded market than a year ago, but as Matt Burns pointed out recently, the market is still hungry for smarter devices and “plenty of room” remains for startups for startups to push the envelope with innovation and press beyond movement and weight.
With digital health data proliferating, wearable health-tracking… → Read More
A new report from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association released today finds that U.S. VC firms raised $20.6 billion from 182 funds in 2012, representing a 10 percent increase in dollar commitments when compared with 2011, which saw 18.7 billion raised from 187 funds. This is the most capital that VC firms have raised since 2008, which saw $25.6 billion raised, but from a… → Read More
Clipboard – the web clipping service that is a little like a cross between Evernote and Pinterest, racking up 1.7 million clips since opening for private beta in October 2011 – has taken a strategic investment from ed-tech company Scientia — backing that will result in joint product development between the two to target the education market with online collaboration tools. → Read More
When you’re a rookie, you’ve got to hustle, and Mike Rothenberg is ready to bring some sweat to venture. Today he unveils his seed fund Rothenberg Ventures. With up to $5 million to invest, it’s already backed eight startups and just led Chat Sports’ $1 million seed round. Rothenberg’s lean firm hopes to add big value with intros and advice for a chance to make small investments. → Read More
There are many misconceptions about technology-focused venture capital out there. One timeless misconception is that venture capital is monolithic. By now, given the attention driving the tech scene and the age of celebrity investors, we all have a better understanding of how an investor’s tastes can range between sectors and stages. And, when it comes to consumer-facing products and services… → Read More
Graphicly is about to close a $1 million bridge round of funding, as first revealed in a regulatory filing.
The company started out as a marketplace for digital comics, but last year it launched a new set of tools aimed helping publishers distribute their content onto a wide range of platforms, including iOS, Android, and Kindle. CEO Micah Baldwin told me today that things have been taking off… → Read More
Poverty is a huge problem in India. But just because there’s social good to be done doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. So a year after its launch, Unitus Seed Fund has raised $8 million to invest in for-profit startups that help people in India at the bottom of the economic pyramid. 500 Startups, Vinod Khosla, and other angels contributed to the fund that is already having an impact. → Read More
Leap Motion is announcing today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald told me that the company is still planning to ship its gesture-based controller sometime during the first quarter of this year, and he’s also announcing a partnership with Asus that should help get Leap Motion into the hands of consumers.
This is just one of the first in a… → Read More
It’s that time of year again.
Santa spottings are going down in malls across the country, Christmas lights are hung, and Eggnog and Gingerbread are all over the menu at Starbucks. But it wouldn’t be complete with First Round Capital’s fifth annual Seasons Greetings video card.
This year, the early stage firm with a portfolio including Path, Birchbox and TaskRabbit, is paying homage to the… → Read More
Daniel Burka, who co-founded mobile incubator Milk, has joined Google Ventures as a design partner.
In a tweet earlier this morning, Burka noted that this is another chance for him to work with his Milk co-founder Kevin Rose. Before Milk, Burka was a designer at Digg and a co-founder at Pownce (Rose co-founded both). → Read More
“In the Studio” approaches the end of 2012 by welcoming the type of entrepreneur that doesn’t end up in the tech blogs very often, if ever, as they’re generally working on technologies that most of us would never fully understand and, given the stakes, spend the first few years of initial development in stealth mode for fear of being scooped by the competition.
Kieran Harty, CEO and co-founder… → Read More
Canopy Labs, a Y Combinator-incubated startup promising to help mid-sized businesses identify their most valuable customers, has raised $1.5 million in its first round of venture funding.
Co-founder and CEO Wojciech Gryc told me that following the completion of YC in August, the team decided to return to Toronto, and it raised money from “Canada-friendly” investors. The round was led by BDC… → Read More
Whether they’re .com, .org, .biz or .awesome, domain names can be significant — and some would likely argue that a memorable, premium domain is worth a pretty penny, maybe even priceless. Picking up a name that’s easy to remember can be a boon for traffic and can add a little brand protection to a company’s arsenal. While big purchases often go unreported, top domain names have been known to… → Read More
Back in September 2011, Farmigo took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt and launched its site for discovering and enrolling in Community Supported Agriculture programs (where you can sign up to receive boxes of fresh produce from local farms). Ultimately, however, founder and CEO Benzi Ronen told me the CSA model only works for “1 percent of the population” while the company’s mission is to make… → Read More
Watchup, a StartX-incubated video iPad app that allows users to build their own news playlists, has raised a $500,000 angel round of funding.
It’s an impressive list of investors, including Digital News Ventures, The Knight Foundation (co-founder Adriano Farano was a Knight Fellow at Stanford and Watchup was one of the winners of the Knight News Challenge), former Wall Street Journal publisher… → Read More
Nike has just announced its first Nike+ Accelerator program, powered by TechStars, aimed at cultivating companies interested in leveraging Nike+ technology.
TechStars will provide the accelerator model, which has managed to raise $275 million in venture capital for its graduates over the past six years of operation. The program begins in March. → Read More
MoMinis, an Android game publisher headquartered in Tel Aviv, has raised $6 million in new funding.
In addition to providing free development tools and financing development for some premium partners, MoMinis also runs PlayScape, a virtual environment where gamers can check out different titles and developers can promote their games. The company says it currently reaches 35 million users… → Read More
“In the Studio” begins to wind down the year by hosting someone who can lay claim to the following roles — developer, engineer, CTO, VP of Engineering, and founder — and now, after a few years of angel and seed investing, has moved down to Sand Hill Road as a partner at a large venture firm.
You may not notice on first glance, but Ross Fubini has racked up a diverse set of experiences in his… → Read More
Leaky, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that helps customers compare the price they’d pay with car insurance companies, is expanding to full nationwide coverage today.
The startup first launched more than a year ago, but the site quickly attracted attention (as well as cease-and-desist letters) from insurance companies, so it was taken down and reemerged in March with a new approach. → Read More
While accelerators may be in a bubble, they’re also beginning to have a measurable, positive impact on the ecosystem. The real opportunity, though, is not in creating another Y Combinator, but in building vertical-specific accelerators that bring together industry partnerships to create learning and business opportunities for their startups. In healthtech, there’s Rock Health, Blueprint, … → Read More
Marketing startup TrueLens announced that it has raised a $1.2 million round of funding. The company is also unveiling its core customer intelligence product, which it calls Socialgraphics.
Co-founder and CEO Roy Rodenstein admitted that social marketing and advertising is “a noisy space,” but he argued that TrueLens fits into a different bucket than most of the bigger names in the industry. → Read More
Piggy-backing on the recent launch (and massive funding) of SoFi, a new startup is launching today that wants to breathe some fresh air into the broken, complex and mollasses-slow student loan system.
New York City-based CommonBond aims to bring the power of crowdsourcing to bear on student debt by connecting student borrowers and alumni investors and offering loans at a lower fixed rate than… → Read More
“In the Studio” turns the corner into the winter months by welcoming a career finance journalist with a widely-read and often-cited daily email newsletter and, in my opinion, is the single best writer covering venture capital and private equity today.
Fortune’s Dan Primack has been covering the world of private equity and venture capital for over a decade. His work speaks for itself, with his… → Read More
CapLinked, a startup offering online workspaces for managing business deals, says that it has raised $1.6 million in Series A funding.
The funding comes from FF Angel (the seed-stage fund operated by Founders Fund), Siemer Ventures, 500 Startups, PayPal co-founder and Founders Fund managing partner Peter Thiel, former Bertelsmann executive Andrej Henkler, and Alexsis de Raadt-St. James… → Read More
Behavioral health analytics startup Ginger.io just announced that it has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from seed investors True Ventures and Romulus Capital. In the funding press release, Vinod Khosla says the company is “at the forefront of data-driven technology and healthcare.” CEO Amnol Madan also noted that Khosla actually… → Read More
When push-comes-to-shove, people love to donate, especially when they believe that their donation (be it money, time, food or possessions) will make a real difference. While online charity and fundraising platforms have made it easier than ever before to donate to causes, charities and non-profits, web-based philanthropy still has plenty of room for improvement.
Today, donors, especially those… → Read More
Veenome, a startup that analyzes video content to improve ad targeting (as well as analytics and SEO), just announced that it has raised $600,000 in new funding.
The company is also announcing a partnership with video ad network BrightRoll. Veenome CEO Kevin Lenane said this is part of a larger shift in strategy — the startup originally focused on providing its services to publishers, but is… → Read More
Swoop, a company that works with food websites to automatically inject relevant deals, coupons, and ads, has raised $3 million of a $5 million Series B, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing was first spotted by Mass High Tech. → Read More
“In the Studio” kicks off some special holiday episodes this weekend by hosting a repeat entrepreneur, a product maker and marketer, a technology operator, a venture capitalist, an innovator in the venture model space, and a longtime friend of TechCrunch.
Ron Palmeri, founder of MkII Ventures (pronounced “Mark 2″ Ventures) is one of my favorite kind of entrepreneurs, the type who has throughout… → Read More
Earlier this month, angel investor Chris Sacca announced that his firm Lowercase Capital was going to be launching a new Los Angeles-focused fund through, and that he’d hired someone to run it. Now we know who that someone is — Matt Mazzeo, a business development executive at Creative Artists Agency.
It might seem odd for Lowercase to bring on someone from a talent agency, but his job at CAA… → Read More
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