Funding Archives - Page 14 of 14

St.Louis: New Venture Capital Group Cultivation Capital Announces First Three Investments

Yesterday we brought you the story of the exciting St.Louis startup LockerDome. LockerDome, the first social network for athletes (that’s been done right) has attracted the investment of Jim McKelvey, one of the co-founders of Square. LockerDome has so much going for it right now, that yesterday we asked is LockerDome the Groupon of St.Louis. Many folks from St.Louis chimed in on Twitter suggesting that LockerDome was even better than that.

Today we’re reporting on a new St. Louis venture capital group. Cultivation Capital has announced it’s first three investments. Not surprising, LockerDome is one of those investments.

Cultivation Capital announced a $250,000 investment into LockerDome, which co-founder Gabe Lozano told us was a new investment for the company, complimenting the $750,000 they raised at the end of last year.

“Cultivation Capital brings much needed financial resources to the rapidly growing number of early stage tech startups in the St. Louis area. We decided to work with Cultivation Capital because they’re run by a solid team of local entrepreneurs that have collectively built some of the area’s most successful startups. I have a lot of respect for the individuals behind the fund and look forward to seeing these guys positively contribute to evolving the local landscape.” Lozano told nibletz.com

Cultivation Capital’s second investment was also $250,000 which went to JBara Software. JBara Software provides deep customer intelligence analysis for enterprises to manage customer success and minimize churn. JBara is a leader in supporting the executive in charge of customer satisfaction by providing actionable insights into the customer experience and key customer metrics.

They also made a strategic investment into Capital Innovators. Capital Innovators is a St.Louis based technology accelerator which provides mentorship and seed funding into select companies.

“These three companies mark an exciting entrance for Cultivation Capital into the Missouri startup market,” says Peter Esparrago. “Their innovative approaches to business set a strong precedent for future investments in the Midwest.”

The Cultivation Capital team is led by General Partners and experienced entrepreneurs Brian Matthews, Peter Esparrago, Jim McKelvey and Rick Holton, Jr., who have a combined track record of more than 25 companies started, over $200 million raised and multiple exits. The team includes Associate Partners Kyle Welborn and Israel Vicars.

Linkage:

If you’re a St.Louis area entrepreneur you can apply to Cultivation Capital here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “Everywhere Else” here are some current stories

We’re sneaker strapping a nationwide startup roadtrip, please consider supporting us getting on the bus

Nibletz “They’re All Over The Place” The Best Compliment Ever

Word got back to the Nibletz headquarters that a colleague of ours based in Silicon Valley told another colleague of ours “Nibletz, They’re all over the place”. That has to be the best compliment about nibletz.com

If this is one of your first trips here, here’s a little bit about is. This is our second new media startup. We soft launched it in June of 2011 basically at Disrupt. Our mobile focused site was doing very well and two of our writers Brent Fishman and Cameron Wright, and I wanted to write about other things outside of mobile operating systems. When Cameron and I went to Disrut in NY we soft launched Nibletz with a lot of that content.

We’ve actually pivoted twice and at South By Southwest our mission became very clear. We were becoming the Voice of startups everywhere else. Our traffic grew over 500% and continues to grow every day/week. After South By Southwest we decided we immediately needed to get in the trenches and live and breathe this thing like a startup, and we are.

We piled into Wright’s Toyota prius with 5 kilos of Mate, peanut butter and jelly, Ramen for the hotels and stay between the car, the rest stops and Red Roof Inns (you know they’ve upgraded a lot of their hotels). We’ve made some awesome friends in our travels and will continue to do so. We plan on staying pretty much on the road through the summer of 2013 (taking 4 or 5 days every 3 weeks to see our families).

We’ve discovered some truly awesome startup clusters in Washington DC, Philly, Richmond, Chattanooga, Birmingham Alabama and many more places. We’ve covered startups all over the place. One thing about this great country, and the world is that there are great ideas EVERYWHERE. Maybe next year we’ll go overseas too.

Now we’ve got the opportunity of a lifetime. A friend of ours, from our first site, has agreed to donate to us, the use of his 37′ bus for the rest of the trip. This means we can stop sleeping in the car and at Red Roofs. We can write more often and stay at stops longer to get even more of the great stories. We plan on going back and forth across the country and into Canada.

We’re turning to our fellow startups, incubators, accelerators, VC’s, angels and everyone in the startup community to help support our efforts. The downside to the bus is that it has a 75 gallon gas tank and goes about 8 miles per gallon. That’s roughly $400 per tank.

We’ve set up an indiegogo page at http://indiegogo.com/nibletz we’ve got some awesome sponsorship packages out there for what well be a legendary trek through America highlighting the best startups in little towns, medium cities and “Everywhere Else”

Our good friend Caleb who has co-woring spaces throughout the country kicked us off last week. Our new friends at LockerDome in St.Louis have also contributed.

Please take a look and support us if you can. We even give hugs and share Mate.

Here’s that link again at Indiegogo

Ben Horowitz Sets The Records Straight On Instagram And PicPlz With A Few Words From Mase

The lyrics to Mase’s 1998 hit “Lookin At Me” graced the page of Ben Horowitz, of Andreessen Horowitz, personal blog on Sunday afternoon. Horowitz needed to set the record straight. There’s a lot of haters out there (I know this personally) and people were asking questions. Ridiculous questions if you ask me, but still they were asking.

Andreessen Horowitz invested $250,000 in Kevin Systrom’s first company Burbn, and with the $1 billion dollar purchase of Instagram by Facebook the venture capital firm stands to make $78,000,000 thats 78 million dollars for those of you that aren’t good with numbers. That’s a return of 312 times their money. Yet people have been asking why Andreessen Horowitz didn’t make more.

Horowitz took to his blog to explain why they didn’t make more. But first he said:

Ordinarily, when someone criticizes me for only making 312 times my money, I let the logic of their statement speak for itself. However, in this case, the narrative that some critics put forth has the nasty side effect of casting two outstanding entrepreneurs—Kevin and Dalton Caldwell—in an unfair light and glosses over an important ethical issue that we faced. As a result, I will clarify what happened and why we didn’t make even more money.

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VC Investment In Austin Texas Jumps 47% In Q1 While Many Cities In U.S. See A Decline

Austin Texas is the place to be for startups every March during the annual South By Southwest Interactive festival. Startups from across the country, and the globe spend anywhere from $10,000 to several hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the biggest pop during the festival. Well what about the Austin startup scene the rest of the year?

We all know about Austin success stories like that of GoWalla who sold their company in an acquihire to Facebook. They shut the service down this year during SXSW before relocating to Paolo Alto. However there are a lot more startups in Austin, how many? Well there’s an Austin startup list website that lists over 1400 startups, ranging from easly stage companies to those that are funded or on the brink of acquisition.

While the rest of the country saw an 18% decline in venture capital investments and deal volume fell 9% over the same period last year, Austin saw a 47% increase in venture capital funding during the first quarter.

Austin venture backed businesses tallied up $250 million dollars in 32 financings in the first quarter, reports the Austin Business Journal.

That number was fueled by three huge deals. Apollo Endosurgery got a $47.6 million dollar investment. In February Kinner Software received a $40 million dollar investment and in March Pivot3 Inc saw an investment of $23.3 million dollars.

source: Austin Business Journal

St. Louis Arch Angels Invest $3 Million In 2011

We love angel funds with great names like Arch Angels (get it St.Louis, Arch, Arch Angels?). The group of investors that has been around since 2005 announced their biggest year in funding was 2011 with $3 million in investments in a variety of early stage sectors. Their investments range from health technology, to beverages and even backing a downtown St. Louis accelerator fund.

The angel group has 47 members and have invested $26 million in 28 companies since their founding in 2005.

Their leading investments in 2011 were $500,000 to Pulse Technologies. The health care company is working on developing a medical device to boost the effectiveness in clot dissolving drugs.

The groups second largest investment was $173,000 in a beverage company developed by Robert Paul, a neuropsychologist who after hearing about brain drinks decided if it was going to be done right he would do it himself. Arch Angels investment was part of a $900,000 round that also included former executives of Anheiser Busch.

Arch Angels other investments were in two more medical companies, Katalyst Surgical which received $123,000 for opthalmic instruments and $220,000 in Venti a medical device company focused on diseases of the veins.

They also contributed $375,000 to Capital Innovators the downtown accelerator fund. Capital Innovators has backed 12 startups that showed off their projects at a demo day held in the beginning of the month.

source: Stltoday.com

Startup in Space: Skybox Imaging Raises $70M to revolutionize Satellite Imagery

San Francisco: Skybox Imaging announced they had raised $70 million (US) in Series C financing. Led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, including Bessemer Venture Partners and CrunchFund. Khosla Ventures was involved in this round after financing Skybox in their Series A $3 million (US) and Series B $18 million (US) – Bessemer Venture Partners was involved in Series B as well.

What is Skybox Imaging? From their website:

Skybox Imaging is a commercial remote sensing startup seeking to revolutionize access to information that describes the daily activity on our planet. Founded in 2009, Skybox is designing, manufacturing, and operating the world’s first coordinated constellation of high-resolution microsatellites in order to deliver timely imagery and video of any spot in the world. Skybox headquarters is in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visitwww.skyboximaging.com and follow Skybox Imaging on Twitter.

Basically they seem to have come up with “micro-satellites” which they will use in an extraterrestrial network of many micro-satellites. They have found a way to cut the costs involved in satellite production and operation by very significant margin and thus have likely been able to gain a number of significant clients from Big Government, Relief Organizations, perhaps Google*. As Michael Arrington said over on his site

If a company was able to do that, and put a satellite into space at a small fraction of the current cost, they’d likely be able to lock down a number of high profile customers for a variety of previously cost-prohibitive applications. Confidentiality agreements and U.S. export regulations might prohibit that company from disclosing much, or any, of that information.

But investors would obviously have access to that information. You can draw your own conclusions as to why the company is hiring big data engineers in droves…”

MA Startup: Copiun Closes $5M Series A Round For Entreprise Alternative To DropBox

Cloud based storage is a hot topic these days. We’re all anxiously awaiting for Google’s product in the space, said to be called Google Drive. The top contenders in the space already are the popular Dropbox and equally as popular Box.com. Both services offer user the ability to store any kind of file they’d like in their own personal space on the cloud. Both are also using promotions with vast amounts of free storage to attract personal users. However some IT departments don’t feel that traditional cloud based storage offerings are adequate for enterprise.

That’s where Massachusetts based Copiun comes in. Founded by CEO Puneesh Chaudhry and plans to tackle cloud based storage secure enough for corporate IT departments. Chaudhry has found that many people like DropBox however they want it more secure.

“They are saying, can you make my corporate data accessible on these devices, in a secure way,” he told the Boston Business Journal.

While making cloud based data services more secure for enterprise they are also tackling the BYOD market of prosumers as well. More and more people are choosing to bring their personal device to work. There are a variety of software solutions that allow IT departments to securely allow those employees to use a separate “area’ of their phone for business and another for personal.

“You could be sitting in a Starbucks and not connected to the corporate network, and whatever data your company has authorized to be accessible on a device, you can access it, edit it and sync it back. And it only goes to the corporate repository,” Chaudhry said in the same interview.

Copiun’s current $5 million dollar series A round was led by Maryland Venture Capital Firm Novak Biddle Venture Partners. They previously received $1.86 million dollars in a 2010 round led by Boston venture groups; Hub Angels, Launchpad Ventures and Beacon Angels.

Source: Boston Business Journal

Chicago Startups Yield $160M In Q1 From Funding To Acquisition: What’s This Midwest Mentality?

Whoever said Chicago didn’t have a thriving tech scene may need to crawl out from under their own angels and actually look at the facts. Builtinchicago.com has just released the Q1 numbers and they are mighty impressive for a town with no startup culture and entrepreneurs who are at home by 5:00pm.

According to the latest data from builtinchicago, 32 new startups were launched in Q1 2012. 17 startups saw funding to the beat of $33 million dollars and there were 12 acquisitions for a total of $127 million dollars. If you put your basic arithmetic hats on you’ll see that Chicago startups (and just the ones builtinchicago.com reports on) yielded $160 million dollars in funding and acquisitions.

Ageology, gtrot, Band Digital, Hireology, BodyShopBids, Kauzu, Buzz Referrals, Lab 42, CareShare, MediaFly, Channel IQ, Retrofit, Eved, Tap.me, Fippex, Univa and Vmock all saw some kind of funding in the first quarter of 2012.

Cellit, ClearTrial, Pointbridge, PrepMe, FeeFighters, RegistryPro, Intelli, RoundArch, ki edit + design, Savid Tech, MobManager, and Quiet FDN all saw exits through acquisition.

data from builtinchicago.com

Utah High School Teacher Organizes Entrepreneurship/Startup Google+ Hangout With Shark Tank’s Daymond John

Daymond John the entrepreneur and brains behind the worldwide brand FuBu has been speaking to folks about the trials and tribulations of startups and entrepreneurship for years. Since he took his business from the trunk of the car and made it a recognized brand on every street corner in America and around the world John has been passionate about business. It also helps that he has been one of the panelists on ABC’s Shark Tank for all three seasons.

That’s why Utah High School Business teacher Jeff McCauley was resilient in trying to contact John for some kind of entrepreneurship event with his students. Originally McCauley had wanted to Skype with John and his class however that idea took a pivot in the year it took to nail a date down. What ended up happening was nothing short of phenomenal for the over 100 high school kids around the country that attended the hangout on Google’s Google+ Hangout platform.

McCauley is no stranger to Shark Tank either. He admits to showing the program to his students to show real life examples of the lessons that he teaches everyday.

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Phoenix Arizona Has New Angels

Phoenix, Scottsdale and surrounding areas have a new group of angels in town ready to invest in the latest and greatest tech startups in the region. The Biltmore Angels was founded by a local group of Arizona State University Alumni. The group plans on investing in high potential startups and early stage companies in the immediate Phoenix area as well as the rest of the state. The Biltmore Angels will also work closely with ASU to provide investment opportunities to ASU spinouts and select companies for the Venture Catalyst program.

“Lack of access to early stage capital has been an age-old problem in Arizona for most of our home-grown start-ups”, said Charlie Lewis, founding principal of Biltmore Angels. “We look forward to providing a new venue for our State’s most promising companies to showcase their wares in front of active Arizona investors”.

The partners in The Biltmore Angels have a wide range of business experience in the areas of investment, finance, business development and law. Tom Connelly is President and Chief Investment Officer for Versant Capital Management. Charlie Lewis is Vice President of Venture Development for Arizona Technology Enterprises. The third member, Michael Hool is the Managing Partner at the Hool Law Group.

Nibletz spoke with Biltmore Angel Michael Hool who told us that they are offering mentorship through their partnership with TiE Arizona and Venture Catalyst and that they are looking to offer mentorship as part of the Biltmore Angels in the coming months.

“We look forward to engaging investors who have not previously been involved in organized angel investing processes.” said Hool in a release. “The idea of the Biltmore Angels is to provide another forum to connect not-previously engaged investors with each other and to the other state and regional angel groups for collaborative investments”.

“The formation of the Biltmore Angels is an incredible opportunity for startups in Arizona,” said Gordon McConnell, Executive Director of ASU Venture Catalyst, an early partner of the Biltmore Angels group. “Every client that the Venture Catalyst team works with needs assistance with finding and accessing funding and by partnering with the Biltmore Angels we will be able to provide those needed angel investment opportunities for our startups. That is an incredible value-add to the startup scene in Arizona.”

Arizona was recently named one of the fastest growing states in the country for startups.

Philadelphia’s appRenaissance Raises $1.5 Million In Seed Funding

appRenaissance a Philadelphia based mobile app developer and mobile infrastructure company has received $1.5 million in seed funding from Firstmark Capital and other Philadelphia angel investors.

The company private labels apps for other businesses. Some of their clients include; Ticketfly, BizEquity, AllFranz, Radian and Interact a Geo-social startup. appRenaissance also has a mobile application development platform called “Unifeed” that speeds up and simplifies development time and integration with enterprise services.

appRenaissance was founded by Scott Wasserman and CEO Bob Maul. The company has announced that they plan on using the funding to make a number of key hires and accelerate development of their Unifeed platform.

This isn’t the first time that Firstmark has teamed up with Maul. Firstmark was also in an investor in Maul’s company called Boomi a company that specializes in on demand integration technology. Like appRenaissance Boomi also has a proprietary platform. Theirs is called AtomSphere and connects providers and consumers of SaaS (Software as a service) applications via a pure SaaS integration platform.

“Backing a successful repeat entrepreneur like Bob is an easy decision,” said Amish Jani, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital. “Mobile computing is the next great wave of technology innovation and we look forward to working with Bob and founder Scott Wasserman to build a major player in the mobile apps and infrastructure space.”

“It’s great to be working with Amish and the guys from FirstMark Capital again as they were a major factor in our success with Boomi,” said Moul. “The mobile space is massive, it is still early, and ripe for innovation. And Philadelphia is the perfect home for the venture given the extensive mobile talent and thought leadership in the region.”

appRenaissance is located in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood and was founded in 2010.

Cincinnati Based Startup: SimpleRegistry Raises $150k To Ramp Up Registry For Everything

With Spring in full swing and May and June just ahead of us, wedding season is also in full bloom. We’re sure that means that while many of you are perusing tech sites like nibletz.com you’re also checking out gift registries, signing up for wedding sites and taking the telxon to Target’s aisles. Well STOP!

SimpleRegistry, a Cincinnati based startup has a solution for registries for everything. Whether you need a wedding registry, baby registry, honeymoon registry or heck you just want a bunch of gifts, you can use SimpleRegistry’s tool to create your registry and than take monetary gifts to get the things that you want.

The startup was founded by Brandon Warner, Chris Kolik and Tony Alexander. Alexander got the idea for SimpleRegistry after he launched his first registry related startup called “Traveler’s Joy” with a focus on creating honeymoon registries.

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Seattle Based Beamit Receives Funding From Schmidt And Bezos

Seattle-based Beamit, specializes in international money transfers for ordinary people. For the most part, when people wanted to send money to relatives in other countries it often meant spending time in long lines at Wal-Mart or other retail establishments, filling out long forms and waiting for Western Union or Moneygram to take in all the information and then finally the recipient would receive the funds. This was of course, after paying outrageous fees to the service provider.

Beamit’s founder Matt Oppenheimer discovered this pain first hand while overseeing mobile and internet banking at Barclays Bank Kenya.

“Many Kenyans received money in an old and antiquated way using a cash-based system on both ends but it was an expensive and a painful customer experience,” Oppenheimer told Seattle based tech site Geekwire. “I knew that there was the opportunity to leverage digital channels, including mobile phones, to improve the lives of our customers.”

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Minnesota Tech Startups Gopher Angels Is Looking For You (Real Soon)

A new group of Angels is putting the finishing touches on their website, business and an event to kick off their new fund. Gopher Angels is holding an invite only event for seed stage tech startups on May 3, 2012 at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Gopher Angels is currently pre-screening startups to see if they have what it takes to get funding from the group. Interested startups should visit this link to check out Gopher Angels and submit their best idea.

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