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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Cloud
Web/Content
Blekko Closes $30 Million Funding Round; Welcomes Yandex as Strategic Investor
Enterprise/Data Intelligence
Karmasphere Secures Funding to Accelerate Big Data Analytics on Hadoop
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web/Content
Achievers raises $24.5M for employee rewards platform (via VentureBeat)
BetterLesson Grabs $1.6 Million To Let Educators Find And Share The Best Lesson Plans (via TechCrunch)
Social Media
Twitvid Raises $6.5 Million in New Funding from Azure Capital Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Socialbakers Secures $2M Funding from Earlybird Venture Capital to Accelerate Rapid Growth
Advertising/Marketing
Networked Insights Raises $20 Million
Enterprise/Web Development
SweetLabs Raises $13 Million Led by Intel Capital to Re-invent the Desktop With Pokki App Platform
Featured Startup Pitch: Assistly wants to make customer support more social
Editor’s Note: Once in a while, StartUp Beat re-runs Featured Startup Pitches from the past based on relevant news or to revisit a cool startup that has continued to build momentum. Today we’re re-running one from almost a year ago from Assistly founder and CEO Alec Bard. Assistly announced last Wednesday that it had been acquired by Salesforce.com for approximately $50 million. Check out the business and the strategy that successfully led to the company’s acquisition...
Company: Assistly
Website: www.assistly.com
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2009
Founder: Alec Bard, CEO
Investors: True Ventures and Social Leverage
Employees: 10
Company Description: Assistly is an elegant, web-based platform that makes customer support in a social marketing culture smarter, easier, and more affordable.
By Alec Bard, CEO
What Is Assistly?
Assistly is a hosted customer support platform that organizes and manages all of your customer conversations into a system that makes customer support efficient, fast, and effective. Assistly delivers the most current and relevant information about your customer requests to the right people in your organization and gives your teams intuitive and powerful tools to WOW your customers.
We understand that a sustainable competitive advantage is determined by your relationship with your customer. We help our clients embrace the customer-focused model, drive positive customer experiences, and build brand value.
So How Is Assistly Different?
- Listen to Your Customers IN REAL TIME
Assistly's help desk software collects and organizes all of your customer conversations into a single framework. This comprehensive, real-time view captures not only what customers are saying to you but also about you so you can intervene to manage your reputation and capitalize on "good buzz." As your support organization grows, this will keep your customer service agile and efficient.
- Manage All Your Customers in One Place
Assistly integrates traditional support channels (self service, phone, email, chat) with social media channels like Twitter and Facebook (coming soon) to give you a complete overview of all of your customer conversations. In addition, employees can see and manage a customer's account, order history, and more. The system prioritizes inquiries based on business rules you set up, so requests can be directed to and handled by the right people on your team.
- Efficiency through Automation
Assistly is focused on helping you retain and support your existing customers, particularly in high volumes. Today, even small and medium sized businesses might have millions of customers all over the world. Being able to service those customers requires a quantum leap in efficiency through automated tools. Assistly provides this. No matter how big your company gets, a single employee can handle thousands of customer inquiries and have a pleasurable working experience.
The elegant and agile knowledge base, macros, and business rules eliminate wasted motion. Your personnel can handle common questions quickly so they can focus on unique questions and deliver high-quality support where it matters most. When additional expertise is needed, anyone in the company can be pulled forward to participate. Support becomes an integral part of the corporate culture rather than a cost center.
360 Degree View of Your Customer
Assistly gives your support team access to your customer's entire support history at a glance—including data about your customers from your other systems (such as order history and account management)—enabling personalized, knowledgeable service tailored to their exact needs. In seconds, they can create and send tested, thoughtful answers to any question in the knowledge base and move on to wowing the next customer.
Assistly’s Goal is to WOW Our Customers
Our Payment Model Buoys a Customer-Centric Culture
Assistly has created a flexible, innovative pricing model that allows companies to have as many agents as they wish. Users simply pay by the hour of usage (in five-minute increments) for complete flexibility in the support environment. No costly licensing. More employees involved in crucial support and service. With Assistly all employees can participate in a culture of customer centricity.
Business Model
Assistly has an innovative payment system that makes it possible for all employees to participate in a culture of customer service. Monthly service fees are based on actual usage. Full-time agents can use the system for unlimited hours, and other employees participate hourly and pay usage fees only for the time they log.
Assistly offers a 30-day free trial, with no contract or long-term obligation.
Assistly has received funding from True Ventures and Howard Lindzon’s new investment fund, Social Leverage. Advisors include Mark Cuban and David Liu.
Current Job Openings
Assistly currently has openings for several key positions, including: Customer Service Ninja, Ruby-On-Rails Engineer, Product Designer, Marketing Director, and Systems Engineer
Assistly – www.assistly.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:
Mobile
Web/Content
PrivateFly.com Raises GBP 2M Funding
Social Media
$5 Million Investment in Fundly Reflects Broader Trend of Social Media Fundraising for Non-Profits
Gaming
Peak Games raises $11.5M for social gaming deals (via VentureBeat)
Wattpad is a social network for avid readers that enables aspiring and professional writers to publish their novels, short stories or poems and interact with readers and fans. The Toronto–based company was founded in 2006.
SUB: Please explain what Wattpad is, and the value proposition you offer to readers and book lovers.
Lau: Wattpad is a place to share and discover stories. Wattpad encourages anyone to write or read a story and engage in conversation with writers and other readers. Unlike traditional books or ebooks, stories are often written in real time giving readers the opportunity to provide feedback and input. For readers, the opportunity to connect with writers one on one and discover something new and unknown is really unique from our traditional reading experiences.
SUB: How does the technology behind Wattpad work?
Lau: The technology is invisible to users. Our focus is on making Wattpad as easy to access as possible, creating mobile access to Wattpad, and encouraging conversation and social interaction among users wherever they are.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition, and what do you offer that differentiates Wattpad from them?
Lau: We combine social, mobile, ereading and story creation in a really unique way. There are no companies doing exactly what we do. Unlike other eReading services or publishers, we did not start with an existing industry. As such, we do not see these companies as competitors. Instead, we are creating a new market that has the potential to disrupt the existing structure.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Wattpad? How did the idea behind the product come about?
Lau: Wattpad’s origins actually begin in 2002, when I was working at Tira Wireless and created a prototype for reading on mobile phones. Unfortunately, phones at the time could only display a few lines of text at a time, so I shelved the project.
It wasn’t until 2006 when I was revisiting the project that I received a phone call from a former colleague, (Wattpad co-founder) Ivan Yuen, who had also developed a mobile reading application along with a website to make it simple for people to upload their stories.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Wattpad?
Lau: Because Wattpad is a brand new form of reading, building the platform requires a lot of experimentation as this space is not well understood or defined. The majority of the things we’ve tried have caught on, but it has required a lot of zig-zagging to get to where we are.
SUB: You recently raised a $3.5 million Series A funding round—how do you plan to use the funds?
Lau: The additional capital will allow us to move a whole lot quicker. We can hire more great people (link to Wattpad’s jobs page: www.wattpad.com/jobs) to create an even stronger mobile presence and user experience and start working on some amazing new features. We think we’re in a great position to fully take advantage of the growing number of mobile users, social networks, the rise in eReading, the global Internet and cloud services to continue to build Wattpad into the best platform.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
Lau: We are experiencing very strong growth. The opportunity is huge in this new space and we need to scale up our operation in order to capitalize on the opportunity.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Lau: Not at the moment. We are sufficiently capitalized in the near future.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Wattpad in a year from now?
Lau: We have great momentum. Daily signups, new stories and usage growth are very strong and growing exponentially. We expect to see a more vibrant community with broader demographics as well as more stories in diverse categories and more options for discoverability.
Wattpad – www.wattpad.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web/Content
myGengo Secures $5.25 Million Series A Round Of Funding From Atomico, 500 Startups
Social Media
Former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya Leads $17M Round In Enterprise Social Networking Platform Yammer (via TechCrunch)
Wikets Raises $1.5 Million From Andreessen Horowitz, Battery For A Rewarding Social Commerce App (via TechCrunch)
Cloud
Cloud Software Company Joyent Raises $5 Million (via TechCrunch)
Ecommerce
Apsalar is an engagement management solution for mobile apps providers. The San Francisco–based company was founded in 2010 and recently raised $5 million in Series A funding.
SUB: Please explain what Apsalar is, and the value proposition you offer to mobile advertisers.
Oiknine: Apsalar is the leading Mobile Engagement Management, or MEM, solution on the market. Apsalar is a SaaS provider. Approximately one-third of all apps downloaded will be used once. This is the most pressing issue for mobile app publishers, it prevents them from creating relationships with their customers and from any monetization opportunities. So, as mobile is rewriting the customer engagement playbook, Apsalar enables mobile app developers and publishers to fully manage customer engagement.
Our solution consists of 3 components: 1.) Analyze to measure and learn (advanced behavioral analytics). 2.) Optimize—test and personalize the user experience (A/B testing and tailoring of user experiences to behavioral segments). 3.Monetize—turn engagement into revenue (in-app dynamic targeting and cross-app retargeting).
SUB: How does the technology behind Apsalar work?
Oiknine: App publishers install an SDK or use an API to “tag” events (i.e. user actions) and send them to Apsalar’s servers. From there, the service is available over a web interface with a dashboard and detailed reports.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Oiknine: Kontangent, Flurry and other analytics providers try to compete with us on the first capability, but most of them, if not all, fall short on the two others.
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Apsalar from your competitors?
Oiknine: The key differentiation is that we offer a comprehensive Mobile Engagement Management solution. Our vision is that such a solution should offer the three integrated capabilities mentioned earlier. Most of our competitors are just looking at the first capability, overlooking the integrated approach to the single most important problem for mobile app developers and publishers: low customer engagement.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Apsalar? Was there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
Oiknine: The founding team has a long history in BT and conversion optimization on the web. We saw the enormous growth of the mobile app ecosystem and quickly understood that the ratio of apps that provide similar functionality to potential users was heavily skewed against the apps. We have worked with web apps and sites trying to stay above the noise and helped them do so by building intelligence on their users and tailoring experiences to capture their attention from the first click. The aha moment came when we realized that all the lessons and best practices from our web days could be applied to the mobile app world but by thinking “mobile” from the ground up, for instance, engagement is less of an issue on the web.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Oiknine: April 2010. The first step was to quickly release a small but useful free product called ApFeedback—sort of a survey monkey for mobile apps—to establish a dialogue with long tail app developers. From there we built more knowledge about the engagement problem and how to fix it. This approach is now fully integrated in our product development process, where we constantly listen to market needs, prioritize feedback, and release on a frequent schedule.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Apsalar?
Oiknine: Finding the best people for the job.
SUB: You recently raised $5 million in Series A funding—how do you plan to use the funds?
Oiknine: Product development, marketing and sales.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
Oiknine: The mobile market is experiencing tremendous growth and with this growth comes an ever growing engagement problem. Since engagement is directly correlated to monetization there is high value and fast ROI in adopting our MEM solutions.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Oiknine: If needed, yes.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Apsalar in a year from now?
Oiknine: Established leader in the MEM industry.
Apsalar – www.apsalar.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web/Content
Tumblr grabs another $85M in fresh funding (via VentureBeat)
Endomondo Celebrates 5 Million Downloads Of Fitness App With $2.3M In Seed Funding (via TechCrunch)
IT/Mobile
Quantance Raises $11 Million Series C to Expand Ultrafast Power Supply Product Line
By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor
Internet giants dominated tech news this week. Of course, Facebook’s announcements at F8 were the big headlines late in the week. Will the new Facebook be something unprecedented, or will they become the next AOL (the adjective “walled garden” has come up quite a bit over the last day or so). Google was in the news for perhaps a less positive reason—as the subject of an inquiry by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust. It included Chairman Eric Schmidt’s appearance in front of the committee, where he was grilled by Senators that in large part seemed to demonstrate a glancing understanding about how the Interwebs work. Perhaps more alarming for Google, though, were the accusations leveled against the company by Yelp and Nextag, among others, that Google rigs its search results. It’s complicated—stay tuned on this one. Finally, HP made waves by giving the boot to Leo Apotheker and hiring former eBay head and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman as CEO. Good luck, Meg—and you thought running for governor was frustrating.
But tech startups also made a collective splash. If nothing else, the sheer number of funding and acquisitions announcements on a weekly basis continues to be impressive. Highlights included Lookout Mobile Security’s $40 million and JustFabulous’s $33 million Series A.
Other seed and Series A rounds announced this week:
-CrowdTwist – $6 million
-Honestly Now – Undisclosed
-TrustYou – $5 million
-Dropcam – $5.8 million
-Neo Technology – $10.6 million
-Zimride – $6 million
-Yardsellr – $5 million
-Dashlane – $5 million
StartUp Beat this week featured a Q&A with PowerInbox’s founder and CEO. The company offers an app that unifies email and social networking, and recently raised $1.1 million in seed funding. We also featured a pitch from enterprise geolocation apps builder DoubleDutch and a StartUp Narrative from Avi Basu, founder of Connectiva Systems. Found out how he hit it big with his first entrepreneurial venture!
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Enterprise
Sequoia Leads $9M Round In Data-Driven Customer Acquisition Startup Mintigo (via TechCrunch)
PowerInbox offers a service that integrates social networks with email clients. The Cambridge, Massachusetts–based company was founded in 2010 and recently closed a $1.1 million seed funding round.
SUB: Please explain what PowerInbox is, and the value proposition you offer to users of social networks.
Thazhmon: PowerInbox turns each email into an app platform (short intro video: http://vimeo.com/powerinbox/intro). At present, we have apps for Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Google+. The value proposition for users of these services is that when they open emails from these services they can interact with the service right inside the email.
SUB: How does the technology behind PowerInbox work?
Thazhmon: On the server side, developers create apps and specify what emails their apps are compatible with. On the client side, PowerInbox extends your email client to allow you to run apps inside email.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Thazhmon: I guess technically the legacy email systems are our competition because they offer ways to do similar functionality, however it only works inside each email system. So for example, Outlook has had add-in functionality for about 10 years now, but these add-ins only work inside Outlook.
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates PowerInbox from your competitors or from companies with similar offerings?
Thazhmon: Our big differentiation is that as a developer, you write a PowerApp once and it works in Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and (soon) Outlook. As a company, our goal is to get PowerInbox working across all email. Email is universal and we believe that email apps should be universal.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind PowerInbox? Was there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
Thazhmon: When I was in management at my previous company, I was just very frustrated with how much time I spent in email. I am always trying to make things efficient and email was this black hole of time that seemed unoptimizable. I soon realized that it was because when email was created 40 years ago, it was modeled on snail mail. However email hasn’t changed much since then, but the world has. Our (tech) world is more real time, social, collaborative and app platform centric and we want our email to be the same. But it seemed like everyone had abandoned email to work on replacements for email. That’s when I decided that I would work on the future of email because no one else is.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Thazhmon: Founded last year—quite simple, our accountant filed the paperwork to create the company.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building PowerInbox?
Thazhmon: Well, every email client is different, so we have had to do a lot of work to get PowerInbox working on each one. It’s hard, but that is the value we provide to developers and consumers.
SUB: You recently raised $1.1 million in seed funding—how do you plan to use the funds?
Thazhmon: [On our] team. We are actively hiring engineers in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. Experience in any of these areas is a plus—IE/Outlook/Safari/Opera plugins, email security, email clients, email servers, app stores, app platforms, Rest APIs, Html/Javascript/Jquery.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
Thazhmon: For us, we were fortunate to find investors who believed in our vision for the future of email. So not sure if it was timing, but more shared vision.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Thazhmon: No, we are well funded with a good runway.
SUB: Where do you hope to see PowerInbox in a year from now?
Thazhmon: We are a platform company, so we hope to see PowerInbox on many more email platforms and with many apps for our platform.
PowerInbox – www.powerinbox.comToday’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web/Content
IVP Leads $7 Million Investment In Business Insider (via TechCrunch)
Cloud
Salesforce.com Acquires Assistly
Lookout Mobile Security raises $40M for smartphone security (via VentureBeat)
Enterprise
Ecommerce
Product Discovery Service Get.com Launches
Dashlane Secures $5 Million in Series A Round Co-led by Rho Ventures and FirstMark Capital
Advertising/Marketing
Visible Measures Raises $13 Million in Series D Financing
Mobile/Gaming
CrowdStar And Others Bet On HTML5 Mobile Gaming Platform Spaceport (via TechCrunch)
Social Media
Twitter acquires Julpan, makes former Googler director of engineering (via VentureBeat)
Finance/Investment
Twilio Fund Announces Another $250,000 for Startups Using Twilio Connect
Shasta Ventures Closes New $265 Million III Fund (via TechCrunch)
6waves Lolapps launches $10M fund for social and mobile game developers (via VentureBeat)
Company: DoubleDutch
Website: www.doubledutch.me
Founder: Lawrence Coburn
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2010
Investors: Charles River Ventures, Launch Capital, Accelerator Ventures
Twitter: @DoubleDutch
Brief Company Description: DoubleDutch is the creator of HYVE—a suite of social, location-aware mobile apps that help organizations become more transparent, data-driven and productive.
By Lawrence Coburn, founder and CEO
Product Overview
DoubleDutch is the category leader for geo-social productivity apps for the enterprise. DoubleDutch HYVE is a suite of social, location-aware mobile apps designed to help organizations become more transparent, data-driven, and productive. By enabling every team-member, customer and stakeholder to communicate through structured status updates, enterprises can maximize performance and measure productivity like never before.
Customers like Cisco, TED, HP, Adobe, Arizona State University, Amdocs, Vogue, and Vivo Pools are using DoubleDutch’s platform-as-a-service to power their events, teams, and projects.
Simply put, HYVE mobile apps are designed to help groups of people keep track of what they are working on and share it with the people that care. As a company, DoubleDutch uses HYVE Knowledge, which enables every team-member to collaborate, highlight achievements, and communicate through structured status updates.
Our products have been in development for about 20 months and DoubleDutch spun off of its parent company officially in January 2011. For the whole story behind HYVE and how it came to be a reality, read this: http://www.doubledutch.me/the-story-of-doubledutch-hyve-moving-beyond-the-check-in/
Founder’s Story
I am the founder and CEO of DoubleDutch, and the geolocation editor for The Next Web. I am also a mentor at IO Ventures, a San Francisco-based incubator. A three-time entrepreneur, I also founded RateItAll, a top ten consumer review property.
Prior to my Internet career, I worked for Nortel Networks in a variety of roles throughout Latin America.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
Since we sell our products to enterprises, our marketing is focused on delivering value to our buyers (high-level managers) and end users (the employee workforce). In generating leads, it’s important for us to communicate that implementing HYVE app(s) in the workplace can lead to company-wide benefits, superior analytics, and a positive impact on the company bottom line. It’s also important to show employees that the apps result in more cohesive teams, increased transparency, improved efficiency, and a more fun, interactive work environment.
In regards to app promotion, we work directly with our clients to help improve download and usage rates within their target user group. Our customers are consistently happy with the apps, with engagement levels, and their referrals have helped us generate new business.
How We Differentiate from the Competition
Our main differentiator at this time is that we are mobile only, and have a consumer-centric, simple design philosophy. Our mobile, social and simple apps can integrate into existing systems (like Salesforce, etc.), or they can be used on their own.
Our HYVE Events app has a few competitors in the event app space, but we are the only ones to use structured status updates in a social, simple and productive mobile event app. We have the ability to add photos, connect with other users, log activity, check-in to a place to see who is nearby, gather points, and receive offers and badges.
Our other products are trailblazers mostly in their spaces—HYVE Sales is the only mobile-only app that allows sales reps to log their account activity on-the-go. HYVE CSR highlights volunteer work within an organization. We are the only company doing multi-object nested check-ins in the enterprise space.
Business Model
We launched HYVE, our suite of mobile apps for enterprises, in June 2011. Our customers pay per app (HYVE Sales, HYVE Events, etc.) and there is an additional cost per platform (iOS, Android, HTML5, etc.) and there is a per-seat, per-month cost for ongoing apps.
Current Needs
We are hiring and are also looking to raise another round this fall.
Investors
In January of 2011, the company raised seed funding from top investors including Charles River Ventures, Launch Capital, Accelerator Ventures, and more.
Awards/Honors
In April of 2010, DoubleDutch was named Best Mobile Startup at The Next Web/PayPal X Startup Rally, and soon after, was named “The Next Hot Geolocation Platform” by Ogilvy & Mather.
Platforms
HYVE runs natively on Android, iPhone, Blackberry, WP7, and WEB OS. We also run HTML5 versions as well.
DoubleDutch – www.doubledutch.meToday’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Cloud
Dropcam Raises $5.8M in Series A Funding Led by Accel Partners
Enterprise
Krux Digital Raises $11 Million in Funding, Led by Accel Partners and IDG Ventures
DataStax gets $11M, fuses NoSQL and Hadoop (via gigaom)
Web/Content
Stitcher Secures $10 Million in Series C Funding Led by New Enterprise Associates
Zimride Funding Will Change Transportation One Seat at a Time
Market Leader Acquires RealEstate.com
Finance/Investment
TechStars raises $24M, hands out $100k to each start-up (via gigaom)
Ecommerce
JustFabulous Secures $33 Million in Funding
Yardsellr, The eBay For Facebook, Grows To 5 Million Strong, Rebrands; Launches Marketplace For Fashion (via TechCrunch)
Japan’s Rakuten Acquires UK E-commerce Site Play.com For $39.2 Million (via TechCrunch)
Advertising/Marketing
Adchemy Broadens Advertising Technology Partnership With Microsoft
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web/Content
Food Delivery Search Engine GrubHub Raises $50M, Buys Campusfood And Allmenus (via TechCrunch)
Ecommerce
American Express Buys Virtual Currency Monetization Platform Sometrics For $30M (via TechCrunch)
Gaming
Honestly Now Raises Funding For Q&A Social Game (via TechCrunch)
Social Media
Healthcare
Practice Fusion Announces New Investors Helping to Drive Health Tech Innovation
Cloud
Magisto raises $5.5M to magically edit your videos (via gigaom)
Mobile
Klip Debuts Sleek Mobile Video Sharing App For iOS, Raises $2M From Matrix Partners (via TechCrunch)
Bio: Avi Basu is the founder and CEO of Connectiva and has been responsible for creating and executing Connectiva’s strategy since its inception. Under his leadership, Connectiva has transformed itself from an early stage product company into a leading global provider of revenue and risk management solutions. Avi has grown Connectiva’s revenues at more than 100 percent annually over the last four years by securing strategic sources of capital, leading major customer acquisitions and establishing key global alliances. Avi has over 17 years of experience in the communications and software industry and has held senior leadership positions in sales and business development, operations and professional services for global companies including LHS and SEMA. SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?
Basu: My first entrepreneurial venture was actually Connectiva Systems, which I started in 2001. Connectiva Systems is a subscriber data monetization software company. We basically provide analytics solutions that help telecom, media and utility companies in many ways such as reducing revenue leakage, minimizing fraud, lowering churn, improving operational effectiveness and increasing overall profitability.
SUB: What prompted you to start Connectiva?
Basu: I started Connectiva because I really wanted to do something bigger than what I was doing at that point in time. I have always found the telecom industry to be quite exciting and wanted to solve some of the critical problems it was facing, which were not getting developed. Given my personal ambition and the insight into seeing a business problem that needed a solution, I set forth to start this venture.
SUB: Was there a point at which you knew Connectiva would hit it big?
Basu: At every point, I believed that Connectiva would hit it big. However, it was really after four or five instances when we started to get good customers and validation for our product that I knew we would be really successful. Also, when our revenue increased and the recognition in the industry was coming from around the world, I knew that Connectiva had really accomplished itself.
SUB: Was there a “tipping point” when Connectiva really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?
Basu: Yes, approximately four to five years after I started Connectiva, in 2005-2006, we reached our tipping point and really started to grow very rapidly.
SUB: What were the first steps you took to establishing Connectiva?
Basu: The first step was to assemble a world-class team. This was a fundamental step because afterwards, I knew that I could rely on them and we could work together to really build the best solutions. Next, we focused on the technology and the business case for our product. Lastly, we received capital from investors who really have a longer-term view of the industry. Those times especially were not good to raise capital but I made sure to focus on this as I was building Connectiva.
SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing Connectiva have been?
Basu: I would have done the same thing which I did, to build out the best team. Without a great team, nothing else will work.
SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing Connectiva to maturity?
Basu: The most significant obstacles were some of the macroeconomic conditions that still exist around the world today. And this I would say for us has been the biggest obstacle. The next biggest one has been managing the growth of Connectiva.
SUB: What kinds of outside funding did you raise?
Basu: We have raised funding through blue chip, private equity and venture capitals.
SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that Connectiva had moved past startup stage?
Basu: I think that there were a couple of them. The first was when some of the day-to-day activities were happening without my involvement. And the second one was when we were bringing in more cash than when we were burning.
SUB: What were the most important lessons you learned about entrepreneurship while building Connectiva?
Basu: The first three steps to building a successful company are: team, team and team. The team is absolutely the most important because employees will be there during the growth process and also they represent the company to stakeholders. Two other valuable lessons I learned are the importance of access to capital and never running out of cash. Also, when you are building a product or service, whatever you are offering to the marketplace, you need to provide tangible business outcomes to your customers. People are willing to pay good money for something that will have a proven positive impact on their business. And lastly, it is important to believe in yourself and in your team, with enough ambition, you can achieve your goals.
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Ecommerce
Google buys up German daily deal provider (via gigaom)
Mobile
Opera Acquires Mobile App Store Handster (via TechCrunch)
Advertising/Marketing
CrowdTwist Raises $6M in Series A Funding
ActivePath Secures $10 Million Series B Financing
Enterprise
Tapit is a builder of near-field communications (NFC) applications for mobile devices. The Sydney, Austrailia–based company was founded earlier this year and recently closed a seed funding round.
SUB: Please explain what Tapit is, and the value proposition you bring to both advertisers and consumers.
Conyngham: Tapit is the simplest way possible to get content to your mobile phone. Straight out of the box you can tap your NFC enabled phone on a Tapit symbol and get content.
For consumers we take the pain out of getting content on your mobile phone. Tapit makes content available to everyone, it passes the “mother test”—it’s so easy your mother could do it. But more than that, Tapit introduces a new way of interacting with your environment when you are out and about or at home. Suddenly, lots of objects that used to do nothing now give your phone instructions on what content to show you when you tap them.
For advertisers this is a new media network to engage with people whilst they are out and about and also to continue the conversation with them when they are at home or wherever if the consumer chooses to. The beauty of this is that it is not intrusive, the conversation only continues when the consumer chooses to tap something.
Tapit goes beyond these two categories, its usefulness covers all digital content and opens up content to those people who didn’t even know they wanted it. For example, people no longer need to collect information brochures, they can just Tapit and get it with their phone. Tourists could tap a subway Tapit point and get a subway map on their phone or find out the history of a famous tourist spot while they are actually there.
SUB: How does the technology behind Tapit work?
Conyngham: We encode NFC tags with IDs and instructions which tell the phone to go to our servers for further instructions on what content to deliver. This is where the real skill comes into play—our CTO has over four years NFC experience and a lifetime of large system development. Our team has a long history in mobile since mobile content was created. In fact, some of us helped shape the mobile content sector. All of our learnings have come together in the Tapit technology. We know it has to work perfectly for all different phone types.
We use cloud-based scalable systems to deliver content fast to people. Our aim is to have the best NFC enabled content delivery network in the world. Our entire system is bespoke, built around the needs of running an NFC campaign and delivering content to peoples’ phones. It’s a professional media system built to service the needs of media agencies, brands and other large organizations. But stay tuned—we will be releasing a self-service system as well which small businesses will be able to use to create their own local campaigns.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Conyngham: We just formed an alliance with Blue Bite in the USA and Proxama in the UK. These are two of our competitors but they are not startups, rather established players in mobile content delivery for outdoor campaigns using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and QR.
We are under no illusion that there will be a host of competitors as NFC gets more and more ubiquitous. We do however have a pretty strong team and very deep connections so with the right backing we will give any competitor a run for their money.
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Tapit from your competitors?
Conyngham: In Australia we have a strong relationship with the number one Out Of Home (OOH) media owner in the world, JC Decaux. We have enabled a number of the JC Decaux street furniture panels and this is something that our competitors have not done. Also we feel that our systems are pretty robust and we understand mobile and media very well.
I think versus the bigger players like the handset manufacturers we are seen as independent. We are not pushing one type of handset over another, there is no hidden agenda with us. We are not trying to tie people into an overall ecosystem.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Tapit? Was there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
Conyngham: For myself and David Kainer, one of the four co-founders, we were sitting at a coffee shop in Surry Hills called Bang Bang cafe discussing what would be a good idea for a company. We often did this but this time we were focusing on NFC and we wondered if you could do content with NFC. Everyone else was doing payments and we knew payments would be owned by the banks and credit card companies. The idea ballooned until the vision was created. I wanted people to be tapping everything in the urban environment, tags everywhere. Most static items enabled. David then came up with the possible business models. We both were excited about the idea and took it further. It so happened that two of our colleagues from different companies, Andrew Davis and James D’Arcy, the other two co-founders, were also wanting to do something NFC so the stars aligned and the team formed. It was actually very rare as all the personalities in the founding team are quite different and complimentary.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Conyngham: The company was founded March 2011. The first full-time employees started August 2011. The first steps we took happened prior to the founding of the company. Forming the founding team was very key. I have started companies before and I knew that the right team members and balance was essential for the success of this company. Everyone had different skill sets and there wasn’t much overlap.
Once the company was created, the first steps were to get the business plan and strategy into place. Once this one done, we applied to the NSW government for a grant as we had little of our own capital to invest. This was a competitive process and luckily for us we won the process and were awarded the grant (http://www.business.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/14059/rel_stoner_20110531_mobile_tech.pdf).
With Tapit, we have made the right moves but a lot of things have gone our way as well. Something about Tapit appeals to people and in most meetings we have people really like what we are doing. It excites them.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Tapit?
Conyngham: Obstacle one—getting the team to buy into the possibilities of Tapit enough to leave their well-paid full-time jobs. Obstacle two—winning the NSW Government Grant in May, Collaborative Solutions Mobile Concierge (CSMC) with Initiative and Nokia as partners. Obstacle three—completing the seed round successfully. Obstacle four—convincing people that NFC phone penetration will be huge.
SUB: You recently raised seed funding—how do you plan to use the funds?
Conyngham: Basically, the seed money brings the four founders into the business on a full-time basis to allow us to get a foothold and some major deals done as well as taking the product to the next level. We have executed four campaigns with JC Decaux so far and we have some really exciting deals to announce shortly.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funds?
Conyngham: For us the founders were all in full-time positions with other companies. We needed the funding to enable us to move out of these jobs into Tapit full-time. Luckily for us, we raised the funds in record time.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Conyngham: Yes, we are interested in speaking with VCs or strategic investors for a Series A round. What we are doing is a bit of a land grab and we need to be properly capitalized to grab as much as possible in as short a time as feasible.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Tapit in a year from now?
Conyngham: I hope to see us with some major contracts under our belt and the Tapit brand becoming more well known by consumers. We want people to see our brand and know that if they Tapit they will get something on their phone, be it an offer, content or information.
Tapit – www.tapit.com.au
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Mobile
MeLLmo Secures $30M Funding Led by Sequoia Capital as Demand for Roambi Soars Worldwide
Mobile/Advertising
Apprupt Raises More Funding For Mobile In-Content Advertising Technology (via TechCruch)
Company: SmartRecruiters
Website: www.smartrecruiters.com
Founder: Jerome Ternynck
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2010
Investors: Angel
Employees: 10
Twitter: @Smartrecruiters
Brief Company Description: SmartRecruiters’ free recruiting software makes hiring easy for business by leveraging the power of free open software, social networks and job sites.
By Jerome Ternynck
SmartRecruiters provides free online recruiting software that meets the needs of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Our job posting and applicant-tracking Software as a Service (SaaS) platform has over 10,000 companies, with 200,000 job seekers and 25,000 job openings already processed, proving that our approach to recruiting gets results.
Throughout my career, I have been passionate about developing solutions that work to eradicate unemployment globally, through innovation in HR software. I started my first recruiting company at age 22 in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell. I then turned my attention toward the recruiting software industry in 1999 by pioneering one of the first global enterprise SaaS platforms.
Here at SmartRecruiters, we’re committed to changing recruiting through innovation and access. For most businesses, recruiting today is lengthy, painful and expensive. Why are more than 4 million jobs left vacant, while 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed? That needs to change. Recruiting needs to change. We live in a connected world in which hiring should be easy—especially for small-to-medium businesses that are the backbone of our economy.
A recent conversation with Josh Bersin, president and CEO of Bersin & Associates, a leading research and advisory firm in corporate talent acquisition, bears this out. He says that more than 80 percent of the small businesses they survey (those with fewer than 2,500 employees) indicated they are struggling to find great talent. In fact, the slowing economy has actually made this problem more difficult as small companies are flooded with resumes and often understaffed to deal with the deluge of applicants. He believes that by bringing advanced recruitment technology to small businesses at no cost, SmartRecruiters can dramatically help companies better find great talent, leverage social networks, and improve their quality of hire in a highly affordable way.
How it works
Companies can post jobs to leading paid, free and niche job boards with one click. SmartRecruiters’ recommendation engine provides analytics that help hiring managers decide which sites are likely to provide the best results. This allows hiring organizations to substantially improve both the speed and quality of its job posting process.
Managers and HR staff can promote jobs on social media sites and tap into the power of their networks on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Managers can review applicants and take action using robust applicant tracking features. Managers can generate detailed reporting to measure sourcing effectiveness and cost per hire. Managing the applicant tracking process in one place makes hiring more efficient.
The hiring team can share, rate and review candidates throughout the process, enabling cross-departmental input and decision-making. Feedback is collected and consolidated in real time. SmartRecruiters’ unique social collaboration tools promote team-based decision-making.
The company can also use SmartRecruiters to easily display jobs and collect applicants from their own corporate website and Facebook fan page. Hiring organizations get a professional, branded career site that consolidates its applicants in one place.
SmartRecruiter’s approach is different from large enterprise recruiting solutions that charge licensing fees or monthly subscriptions. From the beginning, we were focused on bringing the robust capabilities for recruiting, tracking and hiring that large corporations use to small-and-medium businesses. Our goal has always been to level the playing field and make it easy for small businesses to close the hiring gap. SmartRecruiters makes its revenue from the paid job listings that businesses are already buying—much the way travel sites generate their revenue from the service providers.
The company’s go-to-market strategy includes leveraging social networks and the power of online communities—the very same networks used by their customers—to spread the word about the free service. Currently seeking Series A funding, SmartRecruiters has begun a major public relations push as part of its initial launch. We recently announced the release of our free Facebook careers app, for instance, which now lets companies turn their Facebook fans into hires.
Early market reaction has been very favorable. “SmartRecruiters’ recruiting software has really helped organize, streamline, and effectively manage our busy Internet recruiting process,” said Fred Holt, VP Human Resources at Photobucket. The company, which hosts uploaded images and videos, also leverages SmartRecruiters site architecture to create its own branded Careers page.
SmartRecruiters – www.smartrecruiters.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Mobile/Advertising
Web/Content
Unigo.com Attracts $1.6 Million in Institutional Capital led by McGraw-Hill
Ecommerce
SaveUp Secures $2 Million in Seed Funding from BlueRun Ventures and True Ventures
Cloud
FireHost, Inc. Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding Led by The Stephens Group, LLC
IPOs
4G LTE And WiMAX Chip Maker GCT Semiconductor Seeks Up To $100 Million In IPO (via TechCrunch)
Online marketing and cost-per-action network CPAlead has had a big year, topped off by its inclusion in the prestigious Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies. Co-founder and CEO Robert Reynolds wrote a company pitch in July for StartUp Beat, and we thought we’d follow-up after the big news about the Inc. 500 (check out CPAlead’s StartUp Beat Featured Pitch):
SUB: You did this before for StartUp Beat in the pitch you wrote back in July, but as a refresher, please describe CPAlead and the value proposition you offer to both advertisers and consumers.
Reynolds: CPAlead is a premier online marketing company that specializes in digital content monetization. The company’s flagship solution, the CPAlead Widget, is a web content monetization tool that provides consumers and web publishers with a payment alternative to traditional advertisements and pay walls. Essentially, when a person visits a website, they complete a brief survey, quiz or game, which unlocks the content they wish to view. These incentive-based offerings are sponsored by advertisers who then pay the website publisher for each one that is completed. Advertisers win since they are guaranteed a strong return on their investment given that payment only occurs when they generate revenue. Consumers win because they are able to access the content they seek without being forced to make a payment. In fact, we find that even in the face of websites that require payment, users are able to move through our offers more quickly—so in essence, they save both time and money. Why fill in your payment information when you can complete a quick offer? The result for the website owner which we have observed is that they not only enhanced user experience but experience even greater revenue.
We’re also happy to announce that since our last conversation, CPAlead has taking steps towards delivering the first fully comprehensive platform geared towards allowing website owners of any kind, not only premium content, to monetize their digital content like never before.
SUB: You were just named to Inc.’s annual 500 list as one of America’s fastest-growing companies. What does recognition like this mean for you?
Reynolds: We couldn’t be happier as it is a true validation of the need for a solution like this and all of our hard work. CPAlead was ranked as the #1 fastest growing private online advertising and marketing company, the #6 Internet company and #40 on the overall Inc. 500 list. This is especially poignant as online advertising is predicted to break $40 million in 2014, indicating that it’s an industry that is proving its staying power, even in challenging economic times—and we’re proud to be leading the pack.
SUB: What has your growth been like to this point? How many customers do you currently have? How many have you added, year-over-year?
Reynolds: Since 2009, CPAlead’s client-base has grown to exceed 150,000, adding about 25,000-40,000 website owners and publishers per year. Additionally, our revenue has also grown 4,644 percent from 2009 to 2011.
SUB: What do you think will be the primary drivers for the growth of CPAlead, moving forward?
Reynolds: Thus far our success has been driven by a single solution—the CPAlead widget and our marketing has been word of mouth. Going forward, we’re planning to make significant changes on both fronts. We’ve been working on a solution that would help website owners of all kinds to monetize their digital content instead of just premium content owners. It’s taken quite some time since we decided early on that we didn’t want to simply create a clone of other services as so many advertising and marketing companies do with banner ads and the like—that sort of thing wouldn’t deliver any substantial increase in value to website owners or advertisers, or users. The last time we launched a tool, it revolutionized the way that specific content owners were able to monetize their traffic. Now, we’re priming for an October launch and we’re confident that our new platform, which includes the CPAlead widget, will revolutionize the way website owners everywhere monetize their content.
In terms of marketing, we’re stepping out into the light at this point since we’re finally approaching our ultimate goal of delivering a comprehensive monetization solution. With that, you can expect to see or hear us engaging the media, visiting trade shows, exhibitions and the like.
SUB: What has been the key to your success so far, especially as a startup in a down economy?
Reynolds: We aim to provide a highly-effective online content monetization solution, giving publishers an optimal alternative to traditional methods. But starting out, our company was a fresh face in an online market that was suffering to sell premium services and content—a market that had seen a 32 percent drop in sales. As a result, online publishers were shying away from new forms of content monetization, like ours, in favor of traditional services.
Although we believed our product would have a highly positive impact for online publishers, we needed to first get them to actually use it—gaining the trust of online publishers would be the first step to getting things off the ground.
To do this, we made sure we had proper advertisers on board, whose participation in turn convinced some publishers to give our solution a try. The widget’s performance spoke for itself, and those publishers experienced such success that word of our solution spread like wildfire in the online community. We worked closely with publishers and advertisers to make sure they understood the solution and were getting the most bang for their buck.
We continue to work toward making the CPAlead Widget more widely acknowledged as a revenue source for online publishers. We’re also dedicated to innovating and developing new and exciting tools that will allow CPAlead to provide all website owners with a comprehensive monetization solution for their content.
SUB: Have you increased your employee number since your pitch was published on StartUp Beat (20 at that time—July 22), or have you opened up any new offices? What are your plans for hiring in the short term?
Reynolds: Our employee numbers have remained the same; we’re a strong and efficient crew that’s highly creative and dedicated to our work. We’ll add as needed but hope to hover between the 20-to-30 count. In terms of expanding our office, that may come in the future but for now our home-base of Las Vegas is serving us well.
SUB: Do you plan to seek out any additional outside funding in the near future?
Reynolds: CPAlead has sufficient funds for all our planned endeavors and have no desire to seek any sort of investment or make adjustments to the distribution of our corporate equity profile at all. However, we will always entertain strategic partnerships and joint ventures with organizations that can deliver value.
CPAlead – www.cpalead.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Mobile/Advertising
Walmart acquires OneRiot, search-startup-turned-ad-network (via VentureBeat)
Mobile/Gaming
Red Robot Labs Nabs $8.5 Million in Series A Funding From Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures
Web/Content
IAC's Match takes stake in Chinese dating site (via Reuters)
IT/Enterprise
Big Data Analytics Company Opera Solutions Raises $84M In First-Round Funding (via TechCrunch)
Woozworld is an online social massive multiplayer game for tweens. The Montreal–based company was founded in 2009 and recently raised $6 million in new funding.
SUB: Please explain what Woozworld is, and the value proposition you offer to children and parents.
Brassard: Woozworld is a massive multiplayer user-generated social game for tweens—ages 9-14. Socialization, role-playing and user generated content are at the center of the players experience.
Woozworld has created a unique hybrid between a social network and virtual world that allows tweens to interact and engage with each other and express their social skills. In this universe, which they have built together, kids create, exchange, support each other and have fun. Thus, Woozworld is a true reflection of their dreams and values. We are COPPA compliant and certified by the neutral third-party service provider PRIVO (http://www.privo.com).
An example of the success of the formula: Woozworld created 50 virtual spaces in January 2010 and users have since built 14 million spaces of all types—restaurants, adoption centers, businesses, wedding chapels, etc.
SUB: How does the technology behind Woozworld work?
Brassard: We have an online application and a mobile one. Online application: www.woozworld.com –frontend: Flash, backend: MySQL, PHP, Java.
iOS app: Woozworld’s secrets—frontend: iOS native, backend: same as the online app.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Brassard: It’s hard to say, since there is not a lot of user-generated social game for tweens out there. In fact, we consider WeeWorld, Meez and Mochi Monster as our director competitors. But none are both COPPA compliant and user-generated while serving 9-14 year-olds.
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Woozworld from your competitors?
Brassard: Woozworld’s UGC approach enables tweens to build entire virtual lives as though they were young adults all the while being in a secure environment.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Woozworld? What there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
Brassard: Three years ago, after years of testing new online games and analyzing the market, it was clear that there was a hole in the web 2.0 offer for the tweens and that the growth in revenue and users in this particular target would increase for the upcoming years. We then decided to pivot one of our existing products (named KidStudio at the time) and to create a spin-off company out of the mother company (Tribal Nova Inc.). The study showed that kid’s definition of tweens didn’t match the adult view of 7-12 year olds. Instead, users’ desires and behaviors are best regrouped by serving the 9-14 segment.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Woozworld?
Brassard: Developing business intelligence into the center piece of decision-making took a lot of focus, skills and energy, but is now paying off.
SUB: You recently raised $6 million in new funding—how do you plan to use the funds?
Brassard: Develop subsequent phases of the product—including mobile—and accelerate market traction.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
Brassard: We have to admit that timing was not easy and required to show solid traction to secure.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Brassard: Unsure yet, will depend on the acceleration we choose to invest in.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Woozworld in a year from now?
Brassard: To have consolidated our place among category leaders by becoming a hub of interests from a social, gaming and entertainment perspective.
Woozworld – www.woozworld.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Mobile
Apsalar Secures $5M in Series A Round of Funding
IT/Enterprise
BonitaSoft Closes $11 Million Series B Funding to Fuel Continued Worldwide Growth and Momentum
Cloud
Songza Raises Seven Figure Round; Launches Mobile, Sharable Music Collections In The Cloud (via TechCrunch)
Content
Wattpad Announces New Funding Round led by Union Square Ventures
Motorola Mobility Invests in Ooyala
Druva offers fast, reliable backups and data protection for mid-to-large size enterprises. The Mountain View, California–based company was founded in 2007.
SUB: Please explain what Druva is, and the value proposition you bring to the enterprise.
Singh: Druva provides advanced enterprise data-protection solutions for data at the edge of corporate networks. Its unique application-aware deduplication technology delivers 10-times-faster backups and 90 percent savings in storage and bandwidth. The company’s flagship product, inSync, is a highly scalable, WAN-optimized solution designed from the ground up for laptop backup.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competitors?
Singh: Crashplan, Symantec and Iron Mountain (now Autonomy/HP).
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Druva from the competition?
Singh: Druva inSync is an industry-first application that delivers near-instantaneous automated backups of laptop computers—with ten times the backup speed of competitive offerings—while enabling simple one-click restores of any file or backup volume from a web browser or iPhone, iPad or Android device. The product offers unobtrusive backups over any network—LAN, WAN or VPN—and is WAN-optimized for the mobile user. InSync’s global, source-based deduplication reduces bandwidth requirements and storage by 90 percent while providing 100-percent deduplication accuracy for Outlook and Office applications.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Druva? What there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
Singh: Druva was founded by Ramani Kothandaraman, Milind Borate and I, veterans of Veritas, who saw a vast need for an effective laptop backup solution. As workforces are becoming more mobile, valuable data is making its way from the data center to end point devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. Current systems have traditionally been focused on the data center which have inherent flaws because they were not purpose built for end point data backup, but instead were created as a result of making continuous modifications to server solutions to force fit them to end point device backups. We saw a huge hole in the market and decided to develop a solution designed from the ground up for end point devices.
The name Druva comes from Sanskrit which means “North Star.” For centuries, people around the world have used this star to help them find their way, relying on it as a simple, dependable resource that is always there. Druva is committed to ensuring that data on laptops and mobile devices is always there and available.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Singh: Druva was founded in October of 2007. Our first steps were to build a product prototype and get some seed investment. Druva just had three of us until March 2008.
Druva had a false start with a disaster recovery product called Replicator, and after spending about 8-to-9 months, we very soon realized that selling data center solution is tough, and we changed our focus on end-points which looked like a less crowded space which clearly lacked focus and innovation.
SUB: What sizes/types of enterprises are you targeting?
Singh: Mid-to-large size enterprises.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Druva?
Singh: As a competitor with large legacy players, the sales bottleneck is brand awareness. We’ve had early success with our technology and responding to customer challenges and requirements. We’re focused on investing in market awareness, brand and differentiation. Our product roadmap and vision is instrumental in competing in today’s marketplace. We’ll continue to leverage industry press and analysts to “condition” the market and lay the groundwork for our marketing and sales outreach and customer acquisition strategy.
SUB: You recently raised $12 million in Series B funding. How do you plan to use the funds?
Singh: The funding will be used to expand our product portfolio and footprint in existing markets and penetrate new markets in North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. In order to meet these goals, Druva will be aggressively expanding its engineering and sales teams.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
Singh: The market demand makes this an excellent time for us to raise new funding. Data storage and protection is a very hot space. There’s a paradigm happening, the “consumerization of IT”. With the rapid expansion and adoption of cloud and mobility this funding will enable us to stay at the forefront of the industry with solutions that address the market needs.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
Singh: Not in the near future.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Druva in about a year from now?
Singh: We see Druva as a lead player in end-point protection and backup to cloud space. We have a very ambitious plan to roll out key disruptive products and add-ons. We see ourselves as a much larger brand, with an even better sales track record.
Druva – www.druva.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:
Content/Peer-to-Peer
Getaround Announces $3.4 Million Seed Funding
Semiconductors
Broadcom to Acquire NetLogic Microsystems, Inc., a Leader in Network Communications Processors
Mobile
Mobile Interactive Group acquires global micropayments business Zaypay
Software/Web Content
StatSheet Changes Name To Automated Insights, Scores $4 Million (via TechCrunch)
Advertising/Marketing
Ecommerce
Assets Of Struggling CityDeals.com Acquired By Water Parks Owner. Wait, What? (via TechCrunch)
IT/Database Management
10gen, Sponsor of MongoDB, Announces $20M in Funding
Finance/Investment
Freestyle Capital Now More Formal With $27 Million Fund (via TechCrunch)
By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor
It’s the day after President Obama’s big jobs speech, and if anyone needed encouragement on the prospects for the U.S. economy, they need not look any further than the tech startup sector. If the flood of funding and acquisitions announcements is any indication, there is no trace of further slowdown in tech. And you know what they say, “what’s good for tech is good for America” (I have no idea if anyone has ever said it, but we all know it’s true).
The most significant news of the week was Google’s acquisition of restaurant review guide Zagat. Once again, Google makes an unexpected, bold and innovative move (reference its YouTube acquisition for the best example of this). Google is a strong player in local for sure. Look out Yelp and other local reviews sites. GE made GreenTech news this week, investing $22 million in energy efficient building maker Project Frog. Other notable funding announcements included an eye-popping $200 million for vehicle transaction data publisher TrueCar and an additional $20 million for medical office innovator One Medical Group.
Series A funding announcements this week:
Lanyrd – $1.4 million
Shoes4You – Undisclosed
Mashape – $1.5 million
FullContact – $1.5 million
Trunk Club – $11 million
SOS Online Backup – $3 million
Fingerprint – $1.4 million
FastCustomer – $750,000
Striiv – $6 million
On StartUp Beat this week, we featured Q&As with the CEO of enterprise mobile apps builder Taptera and enterprise open source software solutions provider OpenLogic. Finally, check out the Featured Startup Pitch by the CEO of hosted IT infrastructure monitoring firm Logic Monitor.
And finally, we enter the weekend with rumors of merger discussions between AOL and Yahoo!. My first and only thought so far about it is what the heck would that mashup look like?
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web Content
Twitter closing another massive $400M round (via VentureBeat)
Ecommerce
Ebates Announces Creation of Performance Marketing Brands & Acquisition of FatWallet and AnyCoupons
Gaming
Swrve raises $2.7M for real-time gamer feedback (via VentureBeat)
Mobile
Google Ventures Finds a Friend in Echoecho
Finance/Investment
Intel Capital invests $24 million in seven new companies (via VentureBeat)
OpenLogic is a solutions provider that helps enterprises access and make the most of enterprise software. The Broomfield, Colorado–based company was founded in 1998 and recently raised $2 million in Series B funding.
SUB: Please briefly describe what OpenLogic is, and the value proposition you offer companies.
Grandchamp: OpenLogic provides solutions that help enterprises safely and successfully deploy open source solutions, thereby getting leading-edge functionality at a lower cost.
Free and open source software is used in virtually every large enterprise, website and web application. Almost every consumer product you use—mobile phones, tablets TVs, washers, DVRS, cars—contains open source software. In addition, the exploding area of cloud computing is largely built on open source technologies. Even software purchased from large vendors like IBM, HP and Oracle likely contains open source software.
OpenLogic’s offering includes enterprise-grade technical support on over 650 open source packages as well as open source compliance and management solutions that reduce legal and business risks. OpenLogic’s new platform-as-a-service offering, CloudSwing, leverages our open source expertise by enabling corporations to accelerate the deployment of applications using open source technology in the cloud.
OpenLogic saw significant growth in past few years as enterprise IT looked for ways to deliver on business needs while operating under reduced budgets. OpenLogic has over 250 enterprise customers, including many of the largest companies in the Fortune 500 across a wide variety of industries.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Grandchamp: Few competitors can match the breadth of our offering and the depth of our open source expertise. We see our biggest competition coming from organizations who try to manage the governance and open source support internally or with a patchwork of tools. For example, for our open source compliance offering, we often compete with companies such as Black Duck. For our open source support offerings, the alternative is for organizations to buy technical support one open source package at a time from a variety of vendors.
SUB: What differentiates OpenLogic from your competitors (or from those offering similar services)?
Grandchamp: OpenLogic is a one stop shop for managing everything related to open source use in the enterprise. That is the differentiator that is driving our growth.
SUB: Please describe CloudSwing, the product you just launched. In what ways does it compliment/enhance your other products?
Grandchamp: We looked closely at other PaaS platforms (the OpenLogic score card of other PaaS solutions can be seen here: http://www.openlogic.com/blogs/2011/07/how-open-is-open-a-paas-scorecard/). As we talked to vendors and prospects for the past 12 months, it became apparent that many of the PaaS solutions on the market didn’t offer the flexibility that application developers expect and require. That’s why we created OpenLogic CloudSwing.
OpenLogic CloudSwing allows application developers to quickly customize, deploy and operate stacks in the cloud using any open source or proprietary components. We are also unique in that we offer enterprise-grade technical support on all of the open source stacks deployed in the cloud. The end result is a “customize-to-order” PaaS solution.
CloudSwing won the Cloud Connect LaunchPad event in March 2011—beating three other finalists in a head-to-head live demo competition.
SUB: How are you getting the word out and marketing your services?
Grandchamp: The primary source for new customers is inbound leads generated by our inbound marketing efforts and our awareness activities. We are leveraging scalable, low cost marketing activities, including search engine optimization and content marketing to draw in prospects that have a need for our solutions.
SUB: How did the original idea behind OpenLogic come about? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea longer in developing?
Grandchamp: OpenLogic has a unique solution set and business model that has evolved over the years, but the company was founded with expertise in open source software expertise at its foundation.
There have been several “aha” moments along the way: figuring out how to deliver support on over 650+ open source projects, choosing a SaaS approach for our software solutions and realizing how our deep open source expertise would help enterprises in cloud computing.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?
Grandchamp: OpenLogic was founded in 1998 as a consulting company that helped enterprises leverage emerging open source technologies around Java and Apache. Originally bootstrapped, OpenLogic received venture capital funding in 2005 to grow our initial product and open source expertise into a suite of enterprise products and services.
SUB: You just closed a $2 million Series B funding round. How do you plan to use the new funding?
Grandchamp: We will use the additional capital to accelerate investment in our cloud solutions and partnerships with leading cloud infrastructure providers and others in the cloud ecosystem.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise additional outside funding?
Grandchamp: We didn’t find fund raising to be too difficult. The interest in helping to bring our open source expertise into the cloud was high. In addition, due to revenue streams from our existing lines of business we didn’t need a lot of capital.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more funding in the near future?
Grandchamp: We have no plans currently.
SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building OpenLogic?
Grandchamp: OpenLogic has pioneered a new business model to creating a revenue stream based around open source software. Unlike other open source vendors, we have not focused on a single open source software package, but instead have focused on solving enterprise pain points around all of the open source software they use.
SUB: Where do you see OpenLogic in about a year from now?
Grandchamp: We plan to accelerate our investment in our CloudSwing solution, and expect to see that area of our business grow over the next year. In addition, our established revenue stream continues to grow at a strong rate. We continue to maintain our focus on serving enterprise needs around open source software.
SUB: Finally, as an entrepreneur who has successfully navigated a startup through a bad economy, what advice do you have for those just starting out?
Grandchamp: In our case, the bad economy was a boon for our business. However, it was still important to carefully monitor our business and react quickly when there were issues.
OpenLogic – www.openlogic.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Web Content
Google acquires restaurant review and ratings service Zagat
Mashape Turns Down Acquisition Offers; Raises Seed Round From Big Name Investors (via TechCrunch)
TechStars Graduate FullContact Lands $1.5 Million, Helps Keep Contact Records Updated (via TechCrunch)
Trunk Club Secures $11 Million to Transform the Way Men Shop for Clothing
Cloud
SOS Online Backup Secures $3 Million Series A Round (via TechCrunch)
Platfora gets $5.7M to make Hadoop mainstream (via gigaom)
Cloud service Morphlabs grabs $5M to serve international companies (via VentureBeat)
GreenTech
Mobile
Fingerprint to Launch Mobile Learning and Play Network for Kids and Their Grown Ups
Taptu Receives $3.5 Million in Series B, Will Launch White Label Social News Aggregator Tapform (via TechCrunch)
FastCustomer Raises $750K So You Don’t Have To Wait On Hold (via TechCrunch)
IT/Network Management
French Software Company Qosmos Raises €20 Million (via TechCrunch)
Fitness/Health
Striiv Raises $6 Million in Funding to Make Fitness Fun
IPOs
Guidewire insurance software files $100M IPO (via VentureBeat)
Company: LogicMonitor
Website: www.logicmonitor.com
Founder: Steve Francis
Headquarters: Santa Barbara, California
Year Founded: 2008
Twitter: @LogicMonitor
Brief Company Description: Hosted monitoring of networks, servers, applications, storage, cloud and virtualization. Monitoring, alerting, graphs, reports—out of the box.
By Steve Francis, founder and Chief Product Officer
Product Overview
LogicMonitor is a hosted monitoring solution that monitors all elements of an IT Infrastructure—network, servers, applications, storage, cloud and virtualization—from a single pane. With embedded knowledge of most data center vendor’s equipment, LogicMonitor will tell you everything you need to know about the health and performance of your systems, and proactively alert you to any issues without you having to spend months becoming a monitoring expert, or purchase any costly hardware.
The all-in-one SaaS-based solution provides monitoring, alerting, graphing, and reporting right out of the box. So you can have robust monitoring not in weeks, or months, but today.
Founder’s Story
I ran network and data center operations for many different organizations—from the University of California system, the National Geographic Society, Fastclick (now part of ValueClick) and ExpertCity (now Citrix Online.) I also consulted for a variety of organizations. Nowhere that I worked had solved the monitoring issue well, and I never found a solution that was well suited to the needs of web-based companies. Monitoring was always a pain point—there was too much reliance on manual processes to add things to monitoring; too much expectation that the end user of the equipment would know what to monitor.
Have you ever looked at the MIB for a Cisco router? Or a Citrix netscaler? There are literally thousands of possible objects to monitor—some of which should be monitored, some of which should not. Same for the objects exposed by Tomcat via JMX—there’s lots of data, some of which is really important. But to tell an IT sysadmin that you can monitor Cisco routers, or Tomcat, because the software can talk SNMP or JMX—it’s like saying you sell fine paintings, and then giving someone a canvas and set of paints and telling them to do it yourself. The sysadmin, who already has way too much to do, doesn’t want to figure out what matters on his new device or software. And he often won’t have the operational experience with it to know, as it’s new to him.
The other pain I had was that people, even good sysadmins, are imperfect. If they make changes in the heat of a technical issue, such as creating a new storage volume, or virtual IP on a load balancer—they will intend to add this into monitoring later—and often forget. Then six months later there’ll be another issue that should have been caught by monitoring, but wasn’t, as the new object was never added to monitoring.
When I was consulting, many of the problems I was diagnosing and solving required good monitoring and trending—and just getting the data was consuming a fair bit of time. I realized that if I could address these common needs in a way that let people get best of breed monitoring, without having to be monitoring experts, they’d save a lot of time, and improve infrastructure availability. A few months of market validation later, and LogicMonitor was born.
LogicMonitor addresses the needs I had when I was in charge of complex infrastructure. We actually do go through the MIBs, Mbeans, database data, etc., and figure out what should be monitored, for all sorts of hardware and software.
We also automate the discovery and configuration of the monitoring—when you add a NetApp to LogicMonitor, because we have knowledge of what should be monitored (volumes, CPUs, snapshots, snapmirrors, etc.), we can go and automatically discover those objects—and we periodically check for changes, so if you add or change volumes, or snapvaults, or whatever—the monitoring knows, automatically.
LogicMonitor deals with the case where there may be 100 web servers, some production, some staging, some QA, so different credentials and alert policies should be applied to each group. It gives you expert monitoring, without requiring you to be a monitoring expert.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
We’re mostly based on inbound marketing. IT people generally aren’t receptive (or even reachable) by outbound techniques—but if you have a real solution to the problem they are looking for, they’ll happily reach out. So we’ve tried to make it clear from our web content and other campaigns that we really do solve their problems. Because we solve a major pain point, customer referrals are becoming a significant source of new customers for us.
We also have a channel program consisting of strategic partners and service providers that resell our service.
How we differentiate from the competition
Most monitoring tools are extremely difficult to configure and take months of costly staff time to get working. LogicMonitor, with its automation and pre-defined templates, can be up and running in just minutes.
LogicMonitor also monitors many more devices than other monitoring tools, eliminating the need to buy and maintain a bunch of point solutions. It provides an end-to-end view of all your infrastructure and applications from a single, affordable solution.
Then there are the SaaS advantages.
1. Faster implementation
We can realistically get people monitoring their first devices within 5 minutes of a call, and multiple data centers, with appropriate alert routing and escalations, within 2 days),
2. Higher levels of support
Customers can choose to allow us access to their portal, and if they do, we can create custom graphs for them, or help them audit and review their alerts. It also lets us roll out improvements we find in one case to all our customers.
Our customers don’t just get our operational experience (which, with our team, is quite substantial)—they also get the operational experience of all the thousands of hosts we are monitoring.
3. Greater reliability
With premise-based monitoring systems, if your network goes down, so does your monitoring. With LogicMonitor, alerts come from our servers. So even if your network goes down, your monitoring remains in-tact, and you’ll still receive alerts.
4. Less risk
No upfront costs. No hardware to buy. No systems to maintain. Free upgrades. Month-to-month. Cancel if your needs change.
Business Model
We charge based on the number of hosts being monitored—it doesn’t matter what kind of device or how many metrics are collected. Pricing starts at $99/month for five hosts, and the per host price drops rapidly with scale.
Current Needs
We’re always looking for excellent systems engineers with operational experience, and new customers to relieve from monitoring woes!
LogicMonitor – www.logicmonitor.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:
Social Media
Lanyrd Secures $1.4 million In Seed Funding To Make Conferences More Social (via TechCrunch)
Mobile
Adfonic Raises $7.5 Million (EUR 5.2m) to Drive Global Expansion
eCommerce
Redpoint And Accel Back Brazil’s Online Subscription E-Commerce Site Shoes4You (via TechCrunch)
Web Content
SharesPost Helps Facilitate $200 Million Financing for TrueCar
API market Mashape raises $1.5M seed from mega investors (via gigaom)
BountyJobs Lands $5M From Greylock, Accel Partners And RPM Ventures (via TechCrunch)
Taptera builds mobile apps for large enterprises. Inspired by an experience building apps for employees at a previous job, the founders established the San Francisco–based company earlier this year.
SUB: Please explain what Taptera is, and the value proposition you bring to the enterprise.
O’Connor: Taptera builds fast, beautiful, secure, on-demand Apple mobile apps for the enterprise. We extend this with a deep customization engine that allows large companies to brand and skin the apps as if they’re developed in-house.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competitors?
O’Connor: Simply put, we don’t have any competitors. We are attacking the mobile enterprise market by delivering a suite of essential mobile applications that every large company needs. No other company has the unique blend of enterprise expertise married with gorgeous design. It’s just not in their DNA.
SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Taptera from the competition?
O’Connor: What differentiates us is our team. Taptera has a rare combination of consumer brand and big enterprise pedigree. Our mantra at Taptera is that ‘great employees deserve great apps.’ We want to create high quality enterprise apps that delight and amaze employees the same way they are by the apps they have come to cherish in their personal lives.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind Taptera? Was there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?
O’Connor: While at Genentech, my co-founder Dan McCall and I were part of the team that built 30 enterprise apps that helped empower mobility for Genentech employees to increase productivity and enhance collaboration. We wanted to create the same quality and user experience found in consumer apps for the enterprise. People loved our apps and the platform was a phenomenal success. We were constantly approached by other businesses to sell them our apps. We realized that there was a real need in the enterprise market for what we were doing and set out to create it.
SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
O’Connor: Taptera was founded on April 25, 2011. Our first step was to put together a solid team. First, we tapped Mike Janson as CTO, who played a critical role in developing Salesforce Chatter. Shortly after we were able to bring on John Ellenich as Chief Design Officer who has several apps in the Apple App Store Hall of Fame.
SUB: What sizes/types of enterprises are you targeting?
O’Connor: Taptera targets Fortune 500 companies across a diverse range of industries including telecommunications, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, consumer technology, packaged goods and others.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building Taptera?
O’Connor: The response has been overwhelmingly positive so far and we have been inundated with inquiries about when we will ship—but this is a terrific problem to have.
SUB: You recently raised $2 million in Series A funding. How do you plan to use the funds?
O’Connor: We will use the funding to develop a revolutionary portfolio of Apple iPad and iPhone apps that will profoundly advance processes for sales, operations, collaboration and creativity. Taptera’s first app, called Colleagues, is a powerful mobile employee directory that will be unveiled this fall.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?
O’Connor: Apple’s recent launch of the App Store Volume Purchasing for Business is a tremendous market opportunity for enterprise apps.
SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?
O’Connor: Right now we’re focused on our Colleagues product release.
SUB: Where do you hope to see Taptera in a year from now?
O’Connor: We hope Taptera is a recognized catalyst for revolutionizing the enterprise.
Taptera – www.taptera.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:
Healthcare
One Medical Raises $20 Million For The Modern Doctor’s Office (via TechCrunch)
Gaming
Chinese Online Gaming Giant ‘Perfect World’ To Invest $100M In A VC Fund (via TechCrunch)
By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor
It was a week that began with the east coast of the U.S. picking up and drying out from Hurricane Irene, and it ended with the dour economic news that zero net jobs were added to the economy last quarter. But the tech startup sector continued to churn out new funding and acquisitions news, albeit at a slower pace than previous weeks (chalk that up to a busy news cycle, Irene and the winding down of summer). IBM was particularly active, with two acquisitions in two days. On Wednesday big blue announced that it had picked up intelligence and investigation management software firm i2, and followed it up with the acquisition of risk management analytics company Algorithmics for a whopping $387 million. It may not be that sexy, and it may have different owners and a different form than the past, but IBM continues to be relevant.
Other companies of note the announced new funding included cloud-based employee scheduling service ShiftPlanning’s seed round, $25 million into European social media “platform” Ebuzzing, and Sequoia’s latest bet—on video advertising startup Innovid.
On StartUp Beat this week, we featured three very different and innovative startups: NanoRep, which offers an automated help desk service, Small Bizeo, a new research service for small businesses, and eDrinkIt, offering a local deals service for bars and clubs. Finally, we featured a Q&A with the founder and CEO of PolitiPick, an interesting political “matchmaking” site, ramping up in preparation for the big 2012 election season.
Check back next week for more featured tech startups, funding and acquisitions news, and the results of the first StartUp Beat startup test drive. To all the U.S. readers, have a great Labor Day weekend!
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:
Cloud
ShiftPlanning Secures Seed To Move Work Schedules To The Cloud (via TechCrunch)
Enterprise Software
Business Objects Vets Raise $6 Million For Business Analytics Software Startup Visier (via TechCrunch)
Company: eDrinkit.com
Website: www.eDrinkit.com
Founders: Omid Sabet and Alex Roizen
Headquarters: San Diego, California
Year Founded: 2011
Facebook: www.facebook.com/edrinkit
Brief Company Description: “eDrinkit.com features deals specifically focused on nightlife and entertainment. Our customers enjoy discounts of 50-90 percent off drinks, VIP bottle service, cover charge, private transportation, wine/brewery tours and fun vacations to places like Cabo San Lucas.”
By Omid Sabet and Alex Roize, co-founders
Product Overview
Founded in 2011, eDrinkit.com was created to assist venues in promoting their business, while providing customers with deals to popular nightclubs, bars and restaurants. The company offers customers discounts of 50-90 percent off drinks, VIP bottle service, cover charge, as well as other deals for social activities, including private transportation, wine tours and vacations. The company is located in San Diego and will soon be expanding to additional cities in California, as well as Nevada and Arizona.
Founders’ Story
We founded eDrinkit was in January 2011. We are longtime friends and classmates (UCSD class of 2003- Go Tritons!) who also have nine years of work experience together, owning and operating our first venture, SFiNX Entertainment (www.sfinx.com). Founded in 2002, SFiNX quickly established itself as a prominent source of entertainment and events for the San Diego bar and club scene. Nine years of database and relationship building in the San Diego nightlife realm spawned into the creation of eDrinkit in early 2010. Companies such as Groupon and Living Social were growing at unprecedented rates in an economic environment that couldn’t even pay its bills, literally! We saw this as an opportune time to leverage the hard-earned SFiNX connections to give the slow and dismal Southern California market what they needed most—a drink at 50 percent off! With the other members of the management team, eDrinkit.com is comprised of more than 40 years of hospitality experience in the bar and nightclub business out of San Diego and Las Vegas.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
Our promotional strategy is our ‘secret sauce’ and if we told you, well, we’d have to make you an owner. But we assure you, our combined two decades experience in the entertainment and nightlife space has given us a pretty good idea of how to get the right deals to the right people in the right amount of time.
Our Technology
eDrinkit encourages our patrons to check the site often, as new deals are released constantly in each of our six categories (Drinks, VIP Bottles, Excursions, Tours, Restaurants and Other). Our user interface is extremely simple and you don’t have to sign up to see our deals. We are currently working on releasing our iPhone app, which will make it even easier for customers to buy our deals and have other surprises in the works to make redemption easy and discrete for your next date!
Social Networking
Whether you’re a Facebookaholic (I might have just made this up) or a tweeter, you can share our deals with your network and get rewarded for it! Friends are always sharing music, pictures and funny videos and other stuff they think their friends will find relevant on Facebook, but nothing is more relevant to 20 somethings then enjoying cheap drinks and partying with their friends, which make our social promotions a natural fit for every user. You probably won’t share that Brazilian wax deal you bought from that other site on your page, but you most definitely will share the deal from the hottest nightclub you know your friends will also enjoy!
How We Differentiate from the Competition
We focus specifically on the liquor and entertainment space. By concentrating on this niche and partnering with the right affiliates, we attract an exclusive demographic of clientele that is very appealing to bars, clubs and restaurants. Our desirable database, unique marketing strategy and very demographic specific deal specials separate us from the pack.
Business Model
Very simple. We take a percentage of every ‘deal’ we sell to our clients; the rest goes to the merchant. In addition, we receive payment for advertisement and other event related deals we help promote concurrently.
Current Needs
We are currently in the process of raising our first round of capital, which will allow us to expand to new cities, optimize our site and sleep, maybe.
eDrinkIt – www.edrinkit.com
Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:
Enterprise Software
IBM Buys Risk Management Analytics Company Algorithmics For $387 million (via TechCrunch)
Finance/Incubators
Impressive List Of U.S. Investors Drops $180 Million Into Chinese Startup Incubator (via TechCrunch)
