StartUp Beat

StartUp Beat is flashing back this week to some of the standout posts from 2011. Enjoy!

From October 10:

Zimride is a social ride sharing service. The –based company was founded in 2007 and recently raised $6 million in Series A funding.

SUB: Please describe Zimride, and the value proposition you offer to your customers.

Zimmer: Zimride is the largest online social ride sharing service in the U.S, and we’re transforming the transportation infrastructure by integrating social networks and ride sharing. We embrace ridesharing as a social activity, and the service integrates with Facebook to make it fun and easy for users to share the seats in their car or find a ride.

Zimride currently has ridesharing communities on over 120 university and corporate campuses across 30 states in the U.S.—in fact, 35 percent of Facebook employees use us! And we’ve recently rolled out an SF/LA route that's picking up steam. We’ve even partnered with artists Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews Band and Sheryl Crow to provide ridesharing to their events.

Since launching in 2007, Zimride has facilitated more than 26,000 carpools, helped users travel over 100 million miles and created over $50 million worth of savings in vehicle operating expenses.

SUB: How does the service work, from the user’s perspective?

Zimmer: Zimride connects drivers and passengers online. Participants create profiles that show their favorite in-car music, radio stations and even smoking preferences; then if you have seats available in your car, post your ride on the site with your price for the seats available. It’s easy to find passengers and coordinate your trip, check out profiles and read reviews to determine who your next passengers will be. If you need a ride, find the route you want and check profiles and reviews to learn more about your driver. 

Because Zimride users connect via Facebook, it adds a layer of trust to the system and gives drivers and passengers a better idea of who they are sharing rides with. So, before a rider accepts a seat in a car or a driver accepts a passenger, he or she can view the person’s profile information to ensure he or she is comfortable with the match. And drivers and passengers are encouraged to communicate with each other before the ride.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Zimmer: No one has the same approach as Zimride with Organization Networks including UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Intuit, Facebook and JetBlue—along with a consumer strategy. Other companies in a similar space include GoLoco, PickupPal, Zebigo, and Avego. 

SUB: What do you offer that differentiates Zimride from your competitors or from companies with similar offerings?

Zimmer: Our combination of social and accessibility is really key to our success. Zimride users connect via Facebook, adding a layer of transparency to the system. Users can view profiles of potential rideshares before accepting, which removes the anonymity that accompanies other forms of rideshare connections, allowing users to feel secure about their rideshare partners. On Zimride, participants create profiles that show their preferences to ensure an enjoyable ride.

And Zimride isn’t just about changing transportation to be more efficient and cost-effective, but it’s really about the relationships our users build—we want to create a community around transportation. In fact, Zimride users cite cost savings as their initial reason to try the service, but say they come back for subsequent trips for the relationships they make.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Zimride? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea longer in developing?

Zimmer: CEO and founder Logan Green was inspired by what he saw on a 2005 trip to Zimbabwe—a grassroots public transportation system—and so he derived the firm’s name from that country. The name also made sense when he met me through Facebook, where the service started as an application.

Logan has a background in transportation and web development, and he created the first car-share program at UC Santa Barbara and served on the board of the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District. I’m passionate about community driven solutions to environmental problems. I actually left Lehman Brothers in early 2008, where I spent two years after graduating from Cornell University’s hotel school. I moved from New York City to Palo Alto in July of 2008 by using Zimride to carpool across America.

SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?

Zimmer: We initially launched as an application on Facebook in 2007, and we were one of the first companies to do this. In fact, we received $250,000 in seed money from a Facebook (fbFund) grant the same year.

In order to build the critical mass we knew would be imperative to a successful ride-sharing service we began by initially only allowing users from verified social networks such as colleges, universities and companies to use the platform. This gave us a consistent, large, dependable user base. Then in August this year, we opened our first public route, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The route was so successful that we’ve now included the reverse route from Los Angeles to San Francisco. And more public routes are coming!

SUB: You recently raised $6 million in Series A funding—how do you plan to use the funds?

Zimmer: We plan to use this new round of funding to significantly scale our 120 current networks, build out new markets (municipalities) and routes, and expand product functionality (mobile, transactions etc.).

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise new funding?

Zimmer: We have made serious milestones from a revenue and adoptions stand point.

SUB: What big goals do you have for Zimride over the next year or so?

Zimmer: We maintain our vision of creating a new form of transportation where everyone, everywhere will be able to say, “I can fly, take the bus or Zimride.” We first launched as a native Facebook app and started the SaaS business to build up networks, and we eventually grew to break even with 100 networks in July this year. 

So over the next year, Zimride plans to grow into a known brand and service for students, employees and the general consumer. We plan to reach more than 300 networks and double the size of the company.

Zimride – www.zimride.com

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Mobile

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StartUp Beat is flashing back this week to some of the standout posts from 2011. Enjoy!

From October 24:

By David Galvan, president of Schedulicity

Daily deal services have become a multi-billion dollar industry and have reestablished focus on the local marketplace since late 2008. With Groupon and LivingSocial leading the pack, there were, as recently as a year ago, more than 350 players in the space providing deals, platforms, data, analytics and aggregation.

But that was then. The current state of the daily deal industry has quickly shifted, creating challenges as well as brand new opportunities for small businesses.

The daily deal site pool is shrinking at a remarkable rate. According to The Wall Street Journal, nearly one-third of all daily-deal sites in the United States have shut down. This consolidation of the industry cannot be ignored, and when the daily deal dust settles, those who’ve discovered how to deliver benefits to both the merchant and the consumer will ultimately be the last men standing.

What Happened?

Touted as the consumer’s crusader, daily deals exploded because they saved the masses tons of cash, although many times at the expense of small and startup businesses. The sites then took as much as 50 percent of the revenue off that already discounted product or service, leaving merchants with as little as $25 (or less) to deliver a $100 service. Furthermore, many daily deal horror stories have centered on the logistical nightmares of accommodating the front end (and back end) loaded nature of appointment-based offer redemption. It was not uncommon to see an attractive offer of $50 for $150 of spa services, sell upwards of 300 or 400 units. Fulfilling 400 massages starts with taking 100 phone calls the first few days and trying to accommodate everyone who’s after the Saturday 11a.m. slot. 

The cost of acquiring customers has skyrocketed, from around $7 per new customer at the outset to as much as $25 per new customer today. Groupon spent more than $241 million in 2010 and $466.5 million on marketing during the first nine months of this year alone. While some companies are big enough to absorb these costs, smaller operations certainly cannot. More importantly it seems like the venture-backed cash pipe for daily deal companies is starting to run dry, as painfully noticed by BuyWithMe’s rumored liquidity problems.

What Now?

This consolidation has serious implications for small business and startups looking to cash in on the daily deal craze.

Whereas merchants once saw daily deals as an opportunity to get in front of a lot of people in a short time, the market consolidation means many merchants have learned from past mistakes. Random, “go-for-broke” deals will evolve into well thought-out, planned and managed offers. This gives merchants the opportunity to establish loyalty by offering targeted, hyper-local deals. The more geographically concentrated the consumer base, the better the chance of turning deal-seekers into repeat customers. 

With fewer daily deal options to vet, merchants and service providers now need to employ productivity management tools to maximize a deal’s potential. For example, scheduling applications like Schedulicity provide easy and inexpensive daily deal management by allowing a service provider to meter the fulfillment of an offer over a specific set of time blocks for the entire duration of the offer. Basically, the merchant could set aside 20 appointments for daily deal redemption per week, the availability of which could be easily accessed by the consumer. Once the slots were filled for the week, the consumer would be forced to move into the following weeks for availability. In addition to alleviating the onslaught of phone calls, scheduling services allow the merchant to set aside ample appointment slots for current, walk-in and other full-paying customers.

What About the Future?

While it’s hard to envision what this dynamic industry will look like a year from now, we can make a few predictions.

Going forward, we will continue to see massive consolidation and an evolutionary fine tuning of the remaining players. I see the space ultimately being run by a couple of the large, national “big guys”, a bunch of vertical niche players and a long tail of smaller local guys who are able to form strong hyper local market penetration. For small businesses, it means owners can now pick the right deal partner for the right deal offering. The biggest isn’t always the best, especially if you are a provider of specialty goods and services. With vertical deal providers, from luxury goods to babies to pets to children (and everything in between), merchants can find the perfect match beyond simple location. A little homework and small and startup businesses will be amazed at the type of deal partner they can find!

Daily deal fatigue has become a common term, as the slew of daily deal emails to consumers’ inboxes has become more of an annoyance than an enjoyment. This fatigue will ease in the coming months and years, as consumers begin to dictate what types of deals they want to receive and from whom (check out personalization products like dealadar.com). Discount directories will allow consumers to search for deals that interest them, transforming passive discount recipients into active couponers. Digital “coupon books” will offer small businesses an engaged, active audience and another way to leverage their existing consumer relationships with hyper-local offers.

Some sites have dabbled in hyper-local deals, but they will come into their own in the near future. Today, a consumer sees a deal across town, but will make the journey to take advantage of the deal. Unfortunately, that customer is not likely to make the trek again to pay full price for the same service. The merchant is the one affected, as they offered a discount service to a one-and-done consumer. However, a consumer who lives five blocks away and received the same deal is more likely to return to that business. Opportunities for startups and small businesses to use hyper-local deals will become more and more prolific, allowing them to connect with customers and turn them into repeat business. We can’t forget about the role of mobile, which will provide a quick and efficient medium for hyper-local deals, allowing merchants to push offers to customers in the vicinity and quickly move time-sensitive inventory.

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David Galvan is President at Schedulicity. He is an internet industry veteran who previously served as Vice-President of Sales and Business Development at Topix LLC, an online news and community site, where he was responsible for managing all revenue programs for the company and advertising development of new revenue products and local strategy. Prior to joining Topix, Galvan was the Senior Vice President of Business Development and New Media for business and consumer database provider Infogroup Inc., previously InfoUSA. From 2001 to 2005, he served as the Senior Director of Business Development for the Search and Marketplace Group at Yahoo!, working across the Yellow Pages, Local, Search, Real Estate, Classifieds, Pets, Maps, City Guides, Autos, Tickets and Employment verticals. While there, he negotiated and closed complex revenue deals and strategic partnerships, resulting in 20 to 40 percent revenue growth each year. In addition, Galvan has held senior roles at leading technology organizations throughout his career at: AOL/Netscape, Motorola and Unisys. He is a frequent speaker on the Search and Local marketplace scene. A native Californian, Galvan is a graduate of Stanford University.

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Social Media

Fund.me: Mobile Social Network Startup Just.me Raises $2.7 Million (via TechCrunch)

GreenTech

BP Joins GE, Google Ventures, ConocoPhillips, and NRG Energy in Investing in Cool Planet BioFuels

Web/Content

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StartUp Beat is flashing back this week to some of the standout posts from 2011. Enjoy!

From July 26:

Company: BiteHunter

Website: www.bitehunter.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @BiteHunter_com

Employees: 6

Brief Company Description: “BiteHunter.com is the first real-time search engine helping frugal foodies locate great dining deals in their area from one website.”

By Gil Harel, co-founder

With more than 10 years of online management experience in the hospitality and restaurant industry, I was hungry for my own business venture in the dining industry. While working on my first startup in the industry, I saw a problem in the market. It was fragmenting and users had to spend too much time trying to find the great specials and deals everyone was offering to them. We wanted to alleviate having to go to multiple sources just find that $5 off. So, my business partner and I put our heads together and came up with the idea of helping consumers dine out without the guilt of spending money AND make it easy. Thus, BiteHunter was born. Although it was founded in early 2010 by myself and Ido Shillon, BiteHunter did not release its official beta version of the site until March 2011. From there, we rapidly grew.

The site was first penned as “the Kayak.com” of the restaurant world, the first real-time search engine for restaurants and dining deals. Whether a consumer is concerned about saving a buck or finding out if their favorite eatery will deliver right to their doorstep, BiteHunter scavenges the web for all of the best deals and information necessary to help make those dining decisions. We pull the info that restaurants are promoting via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, newsletters, daily deal sites and more and compile it in one easy-to-navigate website. Its search capabilities allow consumers to find listings by delivery options, location, specific kinds of food you might be craving and more.

Only three short months after the official launch, we saw such success in our first three cities (New York, San Francisco and Chicago) that we expanded and announced the unveiling of our new iPhone mobile app. Based on location and time of day, BiteHunter shares all the greatest specials, offers and daily deals right to your mobile device. With a few weeks, BiteHunter’s app made the “New and Noteworthy” Featured list on the app store, as well as top dining apps, “What’s Hot” and “Top-Rated” free apps. While the website still ran in only three cities, the mobile app expanded BiteHunter to nationwide coverage.

Today, both the website and the mobile app are available to cities nationwide. With our first round of seed funding, we are able to continually update our database with information pertinent to those seeking deals and dining information right to their computer or phone. Consumers are always looking for convenience, so we’re giving them just what they’re looking for.

In an effort to continually build BiteHunter’s consumer base and database, the company focuses on four major aspects of marketing and promotional strategy. The first being partnership and syndication. Our dining deal platform provides an API that can feed many players such as directories, mobile apps, travel websites and more, which can then power the dining deals section of many of these mentioned players. The second is having a product in which we are constantly improving users’ engagement and experience by providing social and viral tools embedded within the product such as Facebook and Twitter connect. The third is focusing on public relations and social media to help spread the word about our service and generate positive buzz about using BiteHunter when dining out. Lastly, BiteHunter focuses on smart, paid marketing tactics to help increase awareness about the website and mobile app.

BiteHunter.com differentiates itself from its competitors because of its constant updates of data in real-time. By offering more to the consumer than the ordinary—location, business hours and menu—we are sure to constantly give more than a business card. With everything from delivery options, deal offers, daily specials and more, BiteHunter brings everything you need to know to one comprehensive tool.

BiteHunter’s current business model has two major revenue streams: an affiliate fee from transactions that BiteHunter produced – such as purchasing daily deals, reserving tables via OpenTable or ordering food – and an ad network that provides the option for advertisers to bid on search result keywords and receive exposure on BiteHunter’s mobile devices, websites and its partners’ websites. BiteHunter also released an application programming interface (API) which enables third parties to integrate a live stream of restaurant updates, specifically creating websites and applications for specific deals and events. Our first partnership is with LocalPAGES.com. The LocalPAGES.com Local Food Deals feature simplifies the process of scrounging for grub on an empty stomach by displaying geo-targeted results based on the user’s IP address. They obtain all their information via BiteHunter.com. Most of the restaurants on BiteHunter were already included in the extensive LocalPAGES registry; therefore, the partnership seemed like a natural fit.

Currently, BiteHunter is in the process of raising additional funds to help build upon the already rapid growth of the company, as well as continue to improve its service and technology for its consumers. Our goal is to provide users a way to help find and experience great restaurants while still living within their budgets. Plans for the future include developing more apps for Android and the iPad, pushing more real-time offers from multiple sources and personalizing the user experience.

BiteHunter – www.bitehunter.com (get the mobile app)

[Editor's Note: BiteHunter recently raised 800K in new funding and even more recently entered into a partnership with fellow mobile dining app LocalEats.]

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Advertising/Marketing

Call Genie Executes Definitive Agreement to Acquire VoodooVox Inc.

Enterprise

Mu Sigma Closes $108 Million Investment Round, Led by Global Growth Investor General Atlantic

General Cannabis buys weed software company MMJMenu (via VatorNews)

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StartUp Beat is flashing back this week to some of the standout posts from 2011. Enjoy!

From March 3:

Eventbrite is an online event planning and ticketing service. The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2006.

SUB: How many tickets have been sold through Eventbrite to this point?

Hartz: We’ve sold over 22.5m tickets.

SUB: What is the story behind the Eventbrite idea? Was there an “aha” moment of inspiration behind the company?

Hartz: We fundamentally believe in the power of the "Live Experience" - we love the notion of bringing people together around shared passions, pursuits and interests. We saw an opportunity to gather people offline through an online service. For example, we’re all familiar with the seismic shift in music. The Internet commoditized recorded music, but the live concert industry is thriving. That is because you can’t simply copy or duplicate the experience of a gathering. This is a universal truth across all events, whether music, art, education, sports, festivals, or conferences. Eventbrite plays a key role in facilitating this.

The need for transformation and change in ticketing - Ticketing hasn’t changed very much or kept pace with the innovation we see around us in commerce, social media, data analysis, and service. We strive to bring this Silicon Valley “magic” to a broken and fragmented industry. In addition, Eventbrite is much broader than the merely ticketing. We support an enormous community of organizers—some full time at it and some part time—who make money from their interest and expertise. In the same way that eBay, Airbnb or Etsy do, Eventbrite makes it easy for people to turn a passion into profit.

SUB: What is your business model? How do you make money?

Hartz: Eventbrite is completely free to use for free events. If an event host isn’t charging for ticket sales, we’re not charging them—and they get the full functionality of the product. For events that do charge a ticket price, we charge a small percentage of the cost of the ticket, plus a $.99 per-ticket fee.

SUB: Who do you see as your primary competition?

Hartz: We feel that Eventbrite is the only solution catering to such a wide variety of events—we are working with hosts who manage events of all sizes and types. It’s a really flexible tool.

SUB: What differentiates Eventbrite from the competition?

Hartz: Attending events is an inherently social thing, so people want their friends to join them. Eventbrite makes it really easy for people to share ticket purchases across multiple social media networks, so that attendees can get their friends to join them. This also means that event hosts enjoy organic, viral promotion through their attendees’ shares. The other thing that makes us stand out is the way in which we build data collection into the ticketing process. If it’s important for an event host to collect information from his or her attendees, we make it easy to do so. We also offer hosts customizable tracking links that help them better understand the ways in which their attendees learned about the event.

SUB: How much outside funding have you raised to this point?

Hartz: We have the funding support of Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and DAG Ventures.

SUB: Where do you see Eventbrite in roughly a year from now?

Hartz: In a year, we will have doubled headcount from 100 to 200 Britelings. We’ll be enjoying our brand-new office in SOMA, and we’ll be ticketing larger and more complex events.

SUB: Finally, a question I always ask: as an entrepreneur who has weathered the down economy and built a growing business, what advice do you have for those just starting out—especially in an economy that remains less than dynamic?

Hartz: Find a large, underserved market and build something people want. Often times it doesn’t take a huge amount of capital to get started, especially with the open source resources and platforms out there today. The best, most innovative products are born out of leaner times – use this to your advantage.

Eventbrite – www.eventbrite.com

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StartUp Beat is flashing back this week to some of the standout posts from 2011. Enjoy!

From July 11:

Editor’s Note: This is a new Q&A series from StartUp Beat that features entrepreneurs who have successfully guided their startups (or multiple startups) to maturity. It is meant to complement StartUp Beat’s coverage of early-stage startups and an effort to provide further insight into the experiences of tech entrepreneurs.

Bio: Mr. Bui is a consumer software veteran with over two decades of experience leading and developing technology for top consumer brands that focus on usability and mass market acceptance such as Amazon.com, Visto.com, JavaSoft, and Apple. While at Amazon.com, Hong’s division was the driver for development of their award winning consumer shopping experience used by millions each day. His division also helped develop Amazon’s platform that has been a model of worldwide scalability. Prior to Amazon.com, Hong co-founded Visto and was instrumental to creating widely accepted mobile computing technology to compete with the Blackberry. At JavaSoft, he is credited with development of the Java Servlet standard that has since been adopted industry wide. Hong spent 7 years at Apple where he led teams to develop highly regarded workgroup software solutions and networking technology that is today’s standard for consumer excellence.

Memeo, a leading Silicon Valley company, partners with some of the largest consumer electronics device manufacturers in the world to build innovative software and services that allow consumers to access their personal content from any device, including iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet, HDTV, Google TV, Windows, Mac and Web.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Bui: Visto was my first entrepreneurial venture. However, back when I was nine I realized that I could multiply my investment by selling baby goldfish to neighborhood kids and local pet stores.

SUB: What prompted you to start both Visto and Memeo? What was the inspiration behind the companies? 

Bui: Visto was founded as “Roampage.” We wanted to offer a then unique push email service allowing corporate email to be accessed from outside the company firewall. In 1996, Visto offered what was the first complete synchronization PC to browser-based application suite, Visto Briefcase, which included email, a to-do list, calendar, address book, online file storage, and browser bookmarks.

Memeo was born out of necessity. My laptop was dropped by the security guard and I lost all files including my engagement and travel photos. The company co-founder later shared with me that his mother’s system had crashed and years of work files as well as cherished photo collections were lost. There were literally hundreds of back-up solutions out there; however, none of them addressed needs from a consumer perspective. Our experiences with file loss helped us design the basic pillars of Memeo. Memeo’s simple “zero-touch” back-up technology and flexible backup destinations eventually helped define the back-up industry standard.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew both Visto and Memeo would hit it big?

Bui: Steve Jobs once said, “Software is the consumer experience.” With consumers moving rapidly to the digital world for everything from photography and music to finance and mobile communication, protection against loss of valuable data files had become paramount. Helping consumers safeguard and manage their digital files in a convenient and simple way was the focus of Memeo. It was a big validation of our success when Seagate decided to license Memeo software even after they had acquired Maxtor and Mirrar—both of which had their own versions of backup software. WD quickly followed since Memeo Autobackup was ahead in terms of simplicity and robustness.

Visto, in retrospect, was about 10 years ahead of the market. It had its fair share of highs and lows, but the turning point was when we won a patent infringement suit against RIM. It allowed the management to build out their plan to go after Enterprise and Government sectors in providing mobile security software and services. Visto/Good had positioned itself as a leader for mobile device management software, according to Gartner. And although I was one of the co-founders and co-authors of the court tested patents, it was the perseverance of the management, especially Brian Bogosian and Daniel Mendez, which made Visto’s success possible.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” (for lack of a better term) when both Visto and Memeo really picked up steam and where they started growing exponentially?

Bui: For Visto I believe it was when the government adopted Visto’s secure mobile platform. Memeo paved the way for the back-up industry and worked with the world’s top companies to make backing up simple and affordable for millions of consumers and businesses. Memeo’s relationship with Google also catapulted it into the forefront of digital content management technology.

SUB: What were the first steps you took in establishing both Visto and Memeo?

Bui: Getting a focused, smart, and hard-working team of people together who were passionate about seeing the vision turn into a reality.

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing your companies have been?

Bui: In general, I was blessed and very lucky to work with some of the most amazing people, and a culture fit is critical. Continue to be extremely vigorous on the hiring beyond the founding days.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing Visto and Memeo to maturity?

Bui: Growing pains are real and you confront them at all stages of growth. One of the hardest parts of developing your company is knowing when you have to build your team and bridge the knowledge gap. Finding and attracting the best people were the most significant obstacles.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding have you raised in your experiences with startups?

Bui: I’ve raised funds with NEA, Bessemer , Trinity, Foundry, G51.

SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that the companies had moved past startup stage?

Bui: Visto was a startup when I left. Memeo is still a startup and it should continue to operate like one for the foreseeable future. Amazon operated much like a startup for most of the time I was there from 1998 to 2002. I don’t know if there was ever a metric or milestone that indicated when either moved past the startup stage. For me, it still feels like a startup when I get to spend most of my time building and producing.

SUB: What were the most important lessons you have learned about entrepreneurship through your experiences as an entrepreneur?

Bui: There are many lessons I have learned. One is that getting started is a tough step. So much is never accomplished simply because it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the to-dos and fear of the unknown. When feeling this way, I like to recall a Chinese proverb: “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.” Only just thinking about your ideas will never amount to anything. You have to take steps and be proactive: do some research, talk to potential customers; build a prototype and seek advice. As you do this it is key to focus on the very few that are really vital to your customers and business. Before long you’ll realize how gratifying this journey is that you’ve embarked upon.

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By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor,

This week included some notable acquisitions and at least one giant funding round. Gaming hardware and accessories startup Razer raked in a whopping $50 million for the new year. Other notable funding announcements included Appconomy’s $10 million Series A, and Eventasaurus’s Angel round—notable because the company has perhaps the best name of any new startup this year.

Acquisitions this week included some big names, including Vistaprint’s purchase of Webs, Inc., Nuance’s acquisition of Vlingo, Ebay’s BillSAFE buy and Akamai’s acquisition of Contendo.

StartUp Beat featured Q&As with Own Point of Sale—which recently raised a $1.2 million Seed round—and coupon and deals aggregator CouponCabin; and Featured Startup Pitches from social platform for beta testing BetaBeat and foodservice social media loyalty platform ServisTree.

Seed and Series A funding this week:

BestVendor – $3 million

Eventasaurus – Undisclosed

Appconomy – $10 million

Razer – $50 million

Ge.tt – €350K

SurDoc – $4 million

SpreeCast – $4 million

Cloudability – $1.1 million

Rock City Apps – Undisclosed

Happy Holidays from StartUp Beat!

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Today’s holiday funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Mobile

UpTo Lands Seed Funding To Go “Beyond Status Updates And Check-ins” (via TechCrunch)

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A Q&A with CouponCabin COO Tim Fagan. The Whiting, Indiana–based company was founded in 2003.

SUB: Please describe CouponCabin, and the value proposition you bring to shopping and coupons/deals.

Fagan: CouponCabin.com is one of the top coupon sites on the web, offering everything from online coupon codes and free samples to grocery coupons and printable, in-store coupons. No matter what type of coupon you’re look for, CouponCabin.com is a great hub of all things savings. I like to think of it at the best place to start your shopping. In addition, CouponCabin.com has saved its users nearly $300 million since 2003 and the average user saves $19 in just 80 seconds on the site. 

SUB: Who is your target market?

Fagan: CouponCabin caters to anyone looking to save money....who wants to pay full price? We have coupon codes for online shoppers, printable coupons for those hitting brick and mortar stores including grocery, and the largest collection of daily deals.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Fagan: There are a lot of other coupon sites on the web, but our content sets us apart. Between our exclusive coupon content, guaranteed-to-work coupons and huge variety of offers, we truly are one of the top coupon hubs on the web. 

SUB: What differentiates CouponCabin from the competition?

Fagan: The main differentiators of CouponCabin include our stringent coupon testing policies and a commitment to providing a one-stop-shop for savings and exclusive coupon content. We offer the highest quality coupons that are guaranteed to work. In addition, our team works directly with its retail merchants to secure its coupon codes and deals, many of which are only available on our site. The site was founded in 2003 with 150 stores and 1,000 coupons and has grown to more than 3,500 stores and 100,000 offers in 2011.

SUB: How big of a market opportunity do you see in the coupon and deals space?

Fagan: In 2010 Borrell Associates estimated the U.S. coupon market to be a $40 billion market, with only 20 percent of these dollars online.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Fagan: In 2003, founder and CEO Scott Kluth was one of the developers of a major retailer’s ecommerce site. One of his job duties was to test competitor sites. He was given a set budget each month and was allowed to keep his purchases. In order to stretch his dollars, he would search for online coupon codes to apply at checkout for discounts. After spending too much time looking for codes, he realized there was a need for a one-stop shop for coupon codes and created CouponCabin.com using his own savings.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Fagan: The coupon industry is very broad, and can be very confusing for consumers. Online coupon codes, grocery coupons, in-store printable coupons, daily deals, free samples, local coupons mailed to your home, the list goes on. As this large, still largely offline category migrates online, it can be an intimidating sea of offers which get drowned out in the eyes of the consumer. Or, leading players in the online coupon category can create a large opportunity of savings for consumers that can be targeted, timely, and useful. Our obstacle, and opportunity, has been to find the most targeted, elegant, and consumer friendly way to engage consumers in each of these category “verticals.”

SUB: You recently received a $54 million growth investment from JMI Equity? What do you plan to do with the new funds?

Fagan: On the most basic level, we want to expand and grow our business to connect more consumers with our merchant customers. This investment will enable us to grow our local, grocery and printable coupon offerings, making us the deepest and broadest consumer destination for coupons on the web. This investment will also help us better engage with more than 1.3 million fans on Facebook, and accelerate our mobile efforts in 2012.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funding?

Fagan: As evidenced by a number of different public and private transactions closed in 2011, there is quite a bit of interest from the investment community to participate in this tremendous online coupon market. The migration of offline dollars to online will continue at a rapid pace, and CouponCabin wants to accelerate our initiatives to capture those dollars and re-invest into our merchant base and consumer audience.  

SUB: Do you plan to raise additional outside funding in the near future?

Fagan: CouponCabin is profitable and growing, but with our current investors we’ll always evaluate future capital raises if and when appropriate.  

SUB: What are your goals for CouponCabin over the next year or so?

Fagan: To execute against our biggest obstacle and to create a world class consumer experience in each of our core category verticals. Doing this will drive tremendous value to our merchants and fuel longer term growth and expansion for CouponCabin.

CouponCabin – www.couponcabin.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Cloud

Cloudability Closes $1.1 Million Investment Round

Ecommerce

eBay Inc. Acquires BillSAFE

IT/Web

Posted by startupbeat at 10:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Cloud

SurDoc Launches with $4M in Funding from IDG Ventures

Web Content

Posted by startupbeat at 10:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: BetaBait
Website: www.betabait.com
Founders: Cody Barbierri and Rory Thompson
Headquarters:  Bridgeport, CT
Year Founded:  2011
Twitter: @betabait
Brief Company Description: A place for startups to connect with early adopters who love new apps.

By Cody Barbierri, co-founder

Product Overview

Launched in 2011, BetaBait is a service for startups to connect with early adopters who love to test and try new web, mobile and social applications. BetaBait’s mission is to become the destination for startups to find beta users and testers, while providing consumer and professional early adopters access to the newest applications. With the notion of early access to the latest apps, our users have opted-in to receive a daily email spotlighting all beta opportunities. BetaBait currently has a growing community of more than 400 beta users and testers and 80 startups. BetaBait is 100 percent free.

Founders’ Story 

My co-founder and I have helped startups for a number of years figure out how to approach their technology, marketing and social media strategies. A major part of the startup process was to find beta users and testers who would help to work out bugs or jumpstart a public launch. After many conversations and countless hours of research, we determined that there had to be an easy way to find these willing and eager early adopters. BetaBait was born.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Our initial marketing and promotional strategy is to focus on generating buzz among the technology and early adopter communities via coverage among top press as well as word of mouth within the social media landscape. Our platform enables users to share the apps that are of interest, which enables us to aggregate more sign ups. Finally, we have major plans around partnerships with key companies within the startup and entrepreneur circles, including angel investors, venture capitalists and like-minded startups. Our goal is to surround ourselves with well-connected and vibrant members of the startup community.

How We Differentiate from the Competition

Our closest competition are beta testing management services which help startups to manage the feedback of beta testers. Our approach is to not help manage the beta process, but rather help startups find the beta users they need to be successful.

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup: 

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A Q&A with Own founder and chairman Verdi Erel Ergün. The San Francisco–based company was founded in 2009.

SUB: Please describe Own, and the value proposition you bring to point of sale transactions.

Ergün: Own is the first social point-of-sale that goes beyond the sale, enabling merchants and retailers to control their entire operations, sales and customer loyalty program, from one device. Its platform is unlike any other because it empowers merchants by providing intelligence via customer interactions, buying preferences, and sale-driven analysis to optimize employee scheduling and payroll, detail menu item performance, provide user-specific deals and incentives, and much more.

SUB: Who is your target market? 

Posted by startupbeat at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Social Media

BestVendor Raises $3M For Work App Recommendation Platform (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

Eventasaurus raises Angel round for one-click events creator (via TechCrunch Europe)

Skyword Raises $6 Million From Cox Media Group

Ecommerce

Appconomy Closes $10 Million Financing Round, Including Strategic Shareholder Neusoft; accelerates operations in China

Enterprise

Vistaprint Agrees to Acquire Leading Micro Business Digital Marketing Services Provider Webs, Inc.

Posted by startupbeat at 09:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor,

So, the flow of funding and acquisitions announcements this week killed my (unoriginal) theory that the holidays would result in a slowdown of F&A activity in the tech sector. Startups and later-stage companies representing a wide swath of technology categories geared up for the new year with new funding rounds, including cloud-based presentation software make Prezi’s $14 million Series B, ‘service’ network TaskRabbit’s $17.8 million Series B, and online merchant lender Kabbage’s $12 million round. See below for a full list of this week’s Seed and Series A announcements.

Notable acquisitions this week included TPG Growth and SurveyMonkey’s purchase of MarketTools, VerticalResponse’s acquisition of social marketing company Roost, StubHub’s pick up of event promo destination Zvents, and Salesforce’s purchase of workforce management software firm Rypple.

StartUp Beat this week included a Featured Startup Pitch from the very cool RobotsAppStore—a site modeled on the mobile apps model where robot owners can buy apps to extend the functionality of their automated helpers. It’s all good until the “self-awareness” app debuts. We also featured a Pitch from HealthRally, which employs a crowdsourced model to motivate people to reach health and wellness goals.

Finally, big tech blog ReadWriteWeb was acquired this week, reportedly for $5 million by SayMedia. Tech news and feature blogs seem to be a prime acquisition target these days. StartUp Beat is a tech blog…I’m just saying… J On the other hand, an example of the possible downside of an acquisition is the aftermath of AOL’s TechCrunch buy, and the news that its CEO (and GM of AOL’s technology properties, post-acquisition) Heather Harde is leaving the tech blog. It’s too bad—along with founder Michael Arrington, who left AOL/TechCrunch a few months ago, Heather and TechCrunch truly redefined technology media.   

Seed and Series A funding announcements this week:

Ecomom – $4 million

PlaceIQ – $4.2 million

MixRank – $1.5 million

Life360 – $3.5 million

PartyEarth – $4 million

BlueSprig – $10 million

Posted by startupbeat at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

Ebay-owned StubHub acquires Zvents for event listings (via VentureBeat)

Enterprise

Posted by startupbeat at 09:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with HealthRally co-founder and CEO Zack Lynch. The San Francisco–based company was founded in March of 2010.

SUB: Please describe what HealthRally is, and the value proposition you bring to health and wellness.

Lynch: HealthRally is a crowdfunding platform for personal health motivation. HealthRally offers friends and family a powerful new way to motivate one another to reach health goals with money. We’ve designed an approach that marries social inspiration and financial motivation to push people to achieve important health goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and excelling at fitness.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Lynch: Our real competition is the couch. People have access to plenty of information about why they should get healthy and an ever growing number of apps that can help them track everything from their eating habits to running routines. Despite all this information and personalized feedback, most people still lose the focus and motivation to get and stay fit after a few weeks of trying. This is why we developed HealthRally.

SUB: What differentiates HealthRally from the competition?

Lynch: Everybody likes to celebrate reaching important milestones, so every rally has a reward that the leader gets if they reach their goal. Supporters inspire their friend with comments and chip in money toward the reward throughout the rally to motivate their friend to succeed. Rewards can be social, like a spa day with friends; personal, like an iPad2, new outfit or running shoes; charity-focused, with a donation to a favorite non-profit; or can even be flexible, with a cash rewards card. The motivational momentum of each rally is monitored and users are nudged to share their experiences and to motivate their friend with money and inspirational support over the course of the rally.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Lynch: I founded the company in March of 2010. The first thing I did was sit down and scope out a patent describing how we intended to use financial incentives in a social networking context to motivate behavior change. While there is plenty of debate about the validity of software patents, I, nonetheless, found the rigor required to specifically define our core value intellectual property and processes to be extremely useful in guiding product and business development decisions. Next, I pulled in the best minds in financial incentives and social networking to help guide my efforts.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for HealthRally? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Lynch: I’ve been playing around with different aspects of the idea for years, but there was also an “aha” moment. I was participating in a small meeting on the next ten years of neuroscience and behavior change hosted at the Princeton headquarters of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A few of us were talking about behavior change, when I shared with the group that it would be great if I could find a way for myself and my family to support my brother to quit smoking. I said that I wanted to pay him a few hundred bucks and I bet my family would too. And that’s when the rest of the table spoke up about someone special in their lives that they wished they could motivate to be healthy with the use of money as a reward tied to social support. Whether it was losing weight, taking diabetes meds, or just getting off the couch, everyone had a similar story to share. That’s when I realized there was a missing support system out there that would harness the desire of friends and family to participate in and help motivate behavior change.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Lynch: There are always challenges in a building a company. The trick is to realize that this is part of the process and to not let any one issue dominate your time too much.

SUB: You just raised $400K in seed funding—how do you plan to use the funds?

Lynch: We are using the proceeds to build an engaging experience for our users and partners.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funding?

Lynch: There are lots of trends driving the emergence of the wellness space, as opposed the regulated healthcare marketplace. There is a realization that major changes in both how we care for healthy and sick people, as well as how the system can become more efficient, will be heavily influenced by innovation in the health and wellness sector. Improving health behavior is a massive $2.5-trillion opportunity, so the medical establishment and wellness technologists are getting heavily involved, creating many opportunities for new solutions and discontinuous innovation. Investors realize we are at the beginning of this wave of change and that this represents a good opportunity to get in early.

SUB: Do you plan to raise additional funding in the near future?

Lynch: Yes, we are raising a Series A in 2012.

SUB: What are your goals for HealthRally over the next year or so?

Lynch: Our goals are to engage our users, iterate our product with their feedback and expand the pool of motivators that can influence everyone’s health and wellness.

HealthRally – www.healthrally.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s tech startup funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Mobile

BlueSprig(TM) Secures $10 Million, Launches Security App for iOS and Android

Web/Content

TPG Growth and SurveyMonkey Partner to Acquire MarketTools

Marketing/Advertising

VerticalResponse acquires social marketing firm Roost (via VatorNews)

Cloud

Prezi Announces $14M Series B Funding; Adoption of Zooming Presentation Software Growing Fast 

Finance/Investment

European bank launches €100m fund to co-invest with VCs (via TechCrunch Europe)

Ecommerce

CarWoo Raises $6 Million To Spare You The Car Dealership Blues (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

LightSpeed Venture Partners Leads TaskRabbit's $17.8 Million Series B Round

KidZui Raises $2.4M, Launches Zui Studios To Create More Videos For Kids (via TechCrunch)

Outbrain Raises $35 Million USD in Series D Funding; Led by Index Ventures

Lightbank Backs Belly, A Customer Loyalty And Rewards Platform For Local Businesses (via TechCrunch)

Zipcar Acquires Controlling Stake In Spain’s Largest Car Sharing Operator (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Tagged acquires Hi5 in a bid to double its user base (via VatorNews)

Finance/Investment

LA-Based Startup Accelerator Amplify Launches $4.5M Fund With Backing From Mark Burnett, Brian Grazer, Eric Schmidt (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

Ecwid Completes First Venture Funding From Runa Capital, Announces Silicon Valley, London Presence

Cloud

Xeround Secures $9 Million in Series C Funding

PARC Spin-Out PowerCloud Systems Raises $6 Million From Qualcomm (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 10:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: RobotsAppStore
Website: www.robotsappstore.com
Founder: Elad Inbar
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2011
Brief Company Description: RobotsAppStore is an online robotic apps marketplace that enables robot owners to purchase and download applications written by developers from around the globe that extend the functionality of their robots.

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Advertising/Marketing

Display Ad Data Intelligence Startup MixRank Raises $1.5M From Mark Cuban, 500 Startups (via TechCrunch)

Local Mobile Ad Network xAd Raises $9M From SoftBank And Others (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Life360 Surpasses 10 Million Users and Announces $3.5 Million Series A

Web/Content

Party Earth Lands $4 Million For Personalized City Guides (via TechCrunch)

Getaround Announces Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing Launch in Portland, OR with $1.725M Grant

Jun Group Secures $2.5 Million From Western Technology Investment (WTI)

Ecommerce

Online Merchant Lender Kabbage Raises Another $12 Million (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 10:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with OwnLocal founder and CEO Lloyd W. Armbrust, II. The Austin, Texas-based company was founded in early 2010.

SUB: Please explain what OwnLocal is, and the value proposition you bring to traditional local media outlets.

Armbrust: We work with traditional media outlets to provide them with a suite of products to sell to their small-business customers. We enable them to become a fully-featured digital marketing agency that can resell our website creation tools, Search-Engine Optimization, social-media management, and directory management products.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Armbrust: We are a lot like ReachLocal or Yodle.

SUB: What differentiates OwnLocal from your competitors?

Armbrust: We work through a trusted local sales force and local brand. In most markets the local newspaper has been around for hundreds of years which gives instant legitimacy to local merchants. There is also a significant SEO advantage to working through the local paper.

SUB: What’s your business model? How does (or how will) OwnLocal generate revenue?

Armbrust: The newspapers sell our products on a SaaS model and we take a revenue share.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea? Was there an “aha” moment, or was it longer in developing?

Armbrust: I’ve worked in the newspaper industry for ten years. Originally we saw newspapers losing revenue and were just trying to make them money.

After about a year testing and talking to small businesses in the field, we developed this product set from what we learned.

SUB: When was OwnLocal founded and what were the first steps you took toward establishing it?

Armbrust: In Jan 2010 we became a Y-Combinator backed company which was the start of pretty much everything.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building the business?

Armbrust: Hiring the right employees. We made a lot of mistakes from engineers to sales people and had to develop a complicated hiring system and set of policies to get it right.

SUB: You just closed a new round of funding—how do you plan to use the funds?

Armbrust: Getting to profitability, marketing, and new hires.

SUB: Why was this a good time to raise outside funding?

Armbrust: Honestly? Because we needed the money. It wasn’t the climate that lead us to raise, it was the right business decision at the time. We actually took four months to do right and make sure that we got all of the right people on board.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more funding in the near future?

Armbrust: Not in the near future.

SUB: What goals do you have for OwnLocal over the next year?

Armbrust: Get to profitability and launch our app store for newspapers—allowing other great startups to leverage this amazing distribution channel that we have discovered.

OwnLocal – www.ownlocal.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

Health Conscious Mom Commerce Site Ecomom Raises A Healthy $4 Million (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

Hyper-Local Ad Targeting Startup PlaceIQ Raises $4.2 Million And Moves To New York City (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

SOASTA, Leader in Cloud Testing, Secures $12 Million

IT/Connectivity

Posted by startupbeat at 09:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor

Things have slowed down a bit in technology funding and acquisitions, presumably because of the holiday season, but this week still featured several notable, mostly later-stage deals. There were, however, also some early-stage funding announcements of note, highlighted by online health community HealthTap’s $11.5 million in Series A that included Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors (see below for the full list). Notable acquisitions this week included gaming startup Red Robot Labs picking up UK-based games studio Supermono and Lattice Semiconductor’s acquisition of custom mobile device solutions provider SiliconBlue.

StartUp Beat this week featured Q&As with the founders of a dynamic group of startups—online polling and collaboration engine VoteIt, apps productivity and sharing platform Hojoki, and in-store navigation and shopping platform aisle411; and a Featured Startup Pitch from social media monitoring and reporting suite StatFly.

This week’s Series A and Seed funding announcements:

Late Night Labs – $1.1 million

MarkaVIP – $5 million

HealthTap – $11.5 million

TouchType – $2.4 million

Iron.io – $1.4 million

OrderWithMe – $3 million

Posted by startupbeat at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Gaming

Red Robot Labs buys Supermono game studio (via VentureBeat)

Mobile

Lattice Semiconductor to Acquire SiliconBlue

Ecommerce

Posted by startupbeat at 08:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with VoteIt co-founder and CEO Taylor Beery. The New Orleans–based company was founded in March of this year and recently secured $800K in Seed funding.

SUB: Please describe what VoteIt is, and the value proposition you bring to group collaboration.

Beery: VoteIt is a mobile and web platform that helps groups make decisions by integrating discussion with voting to build consensus and take action.

With a simple and engaging interface, innovative commenting, voting and rewards, VoteIt will deliver the collaborative potential of three people making a decision around a table to scale, and provide it to every device in real-time.

SUB: Who are your target markets?

Beery: VoteIt will aid in decision-making for corporate and non-profit boards of directors for governance, small to large businesses for internal strategic development and consumer outreach, colleges and universities for student organizations, faculty, and administration and faculty interaction, and healthcare providers for comprehensive and efficient consultations.

We’re not limiting our platform to those industries, though. Anyone can create a vote on VoteIt, which will be free to casual users.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Beery: In the online decision-making space, one can choose a survey or poll, such as Surveymonkey, which scales well but completely eliminates collaboration, or email. Anyone who’s ever been on an email with more than 6 people trying to make a decision have seen the impact of completely disorganized collaboration and what it can do to our inboxes.

SUB: What differentiates VoteIt from the competition?

Beery: Collaboration is essential for the best decisions and group “buy-in”—from three person groups to 300,000 person groups. We deliver the collaborative potential of three people making a decision around a table to scale, and providing it to every device in real-time.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it? 

Beery: The company was founded in March 2011. After testing out the concept with a variety of groups, we built a basic voting widget and put in people’s hands. The overwhelming responses convinced us we were onto something.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for VoteIt? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Beery: There have been a series of “aha” moments. Our seed idea and seed funder, Matt Wisdom, began developing the general concept for this product almost ten years ago. The overwhelming number of recent examples of breakdowns in decision-making and frustration at all levels for the current crude tools for engagement led us to believe that now is the time to bring this tool to the market.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Beery: Like other startup tech companies, we’re seeing the shortage of quality developers. One of the most time-consuming parts of building VoteIt has been seeking out the best developers available to work. We have an amazing, growing team so far, though, and it’s all been worth it.

SUB: You recently raised an $800K seed funding round—how do you plan to use the funds?

Beery: We’re developing our mobile and web applications and increasing awareness of the VoteIt platform.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funding?

Beery: Our management team has built a reputation for execution. Our investors understood our business. There is a great deal of interest in what is going on in New Orleans right now, including the tax benefits of investing in this region.

SUB: Do you plan to raise additional funding in the near future?

Beery: Yes.

SUB: What are your goals for VoteIt over the next year or so?

Beery: We will execute on our strategy to continue developing our platform, expand our partner network, raise additional capital and establish VoteIt as the way that all groups make decisions.

VoteIt – www.voteit.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Education

Edmodo Raises New Round of Venture Capital Financing; Reid Hoffman, Matt Cohler Join Board

Cloud

Mailjet raises 180,000 euros, helps companies send and track emails (via TechCrunch Europe)

Ecommerce

Plum District Secures $20 Million in Funding to Accelerate Local Commerce

TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Winner OrderWithMe Raises $3 Million From Infinity Venture Partners, SOSventures (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

Bill.com Raises $15.5 Million in Series D Financing Round Led by Financial Partners Fund

Posted by startupbeat at 10:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: StatFly

Website: www.statf.ly

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California

Year Founded: March, 2011

Investors: Self-funded

Twitter: @statfly

Brief Company Description: StatFly Social Media Management and Analytics makes campaign monitoring and reporting collaborative, intuitive, powerful, and affordable.

By Bryan Crick, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

StatFly is a Social Media Management and Analytics company created by both agency and tech-industry veterans like myself. StatFly’s newly launched social media reporting and management platform is designed with a usability-first philosophy to be intuitive, powerful, and affordable.

StatFly is designed to provide our subscribers with the ability to efficiently:

·      Monitor keywords and conversations on their Facebook and Twitter accounts (Google analytics feature is coming soon)

·      Perform live searches across social media platforms

·      Engage their audience by publishing posts and responses directly to each platform from StatFly

·      Measure the results of interactions around their content through a filtered set of data points

·      Create and monitor campaigns via their Bitly

·      Generate one-click analytics reporting

·      Collaborate with their colleagues and clients on data analysis with the ability to annotate data points, share reports and export into PDFs

Founders’ Story

I began working in sales and marketing in the tech industry in 2002 then shifted gears to focus on brand management. While working on a variety of brand-focused projects on my own, I realized I needed a more comprehensive solution for tracking analytics and campaign successes. I began developing technology to meet the in-house needs of my own clients. That technology would become the impetus for founding StatFly, which we launched in November 2011, after nearly a year of design and development. We decided to make StatFly a subscriber-based platform to cater to the needs of a variety of clients, from Social Media Directors at major agencies to the individual blogger who needs a simple yet robust way to keep tabs on their own influence and content.

My education background includes a BA in Economics from Wabash College and a MBA from ESADE Business School.  

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

When we founded StatFly, our goal was to build a ready-for-market Social Media Management and Analytics product for “the rest of us”—advertising, marketing, PR agencies, as well as brands and individuals who wish to monitor, measure and manage the influence and effectiveness of their content through a clean, simple and easy-to-use social media management and analytics reporting interface.

Our strategy for the StatFly launch has thus far incorporated a three-pronged approach: word-of-mouth beginning with our immediate colleagues, contacts, friends, families and from companies involved in the beta testing. Next we implemented a public relations strategy to introduce StatFly to the marketing and brand-focused media, as well as the startup, entrepreneur and consumer social media verticals. Our word-of-mouth and PR efforts are reinforced by targeted advertising to attract the broader startup, entrepreneurial and brand management and marketing communities.

Our PR team is also seeking out appropriate speaking engagements for me and some of our team to heighten StatFly’s industry profile. Our business development, which consists of outreach to advertising, marketing and PR agencies as well as small businesses and individual bloggers, will lend additional industry awareness of StatFly’s offering.  

What Differentiates Us from the Competition 

We recognize that there is no shortage of social media tools on the market, but we see an opportunity to create an application that provides enough depth to service the needs of tech-savvy power users while eliminating the barrier to participation for less technical executives, and without watering down the data.

Business Model

StatFly is a subscription-based social media and analytics company.

Current Needs

Our current needs include developing partnerships and soliciting resellers. We’re focusing efforts on greater awareness in the marketing and communications agency, startup, entrepreneur and small business verticals.

StatFly – www.statf.ly

Posted by startupbeat at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Mobile

SwiftKey Attracts $2.4 Million in Series A Financing to Accelerate Consumer and OEM Adoption

Web Content

Uber Gets $32M From Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos And Goldman Sachs (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

Backed By Angel Round, GiftRocket Goes Beyond The Check-In To Make Virtual Gift Giving Even Easier (via TechCrunch)

Marketing/Advertising

Martini Media Raises $13 Million in Funding

Cloud

Iron.io Raises 1.4 Million in Seed Funding Led By Baseline Ventures

Twilio Announces $17 Million in Series C Funding From Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures

Posted by startupbeat at 09:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with Hojoki co-founder and CEO Martin Böhringer. The company is based in Germany and was founded in March of this year.

SUB: Please describe what Hojoki is, and the value proposition you bring to users of cloud-based apps.

Böhringer: Hojoki makes all your cloud apps work as one. Connect with Google Docs, Dropbox, Delicious and all the other tools you love. Integrate them into one personalized activity stream. Share your activities with others and get instantly notified of theirs.

People work in lots of separate apps. Currently, there is no way of getting all the team on the same page. This leads to problems like; nobody knowing what’s going on. Coordination costs are very high. Search risks are very high. Discussions around work items are fragmented.

Hojoki provides an inbox for your cloud. We build a Facebook-like activity stream including all your connected apps. This creates a complete overview on what’s going on in your projects. Plus, you can comment, like or write micro-blogging postings.

SUB: Who is your target market?

Böhringer: We target everyone who uses one or more cloud apps to work with others. The number of people using Google Docs, Dropbox and Delicious is vast and it continues to rise. We focus especially on the following sub-markets: developers, knowledge workers, creative types and business.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Böhringer: There are some other young startups around aiming to solve the cloud app fragmentation problem with slightly different approaches—Streamer, 300milligrams, BusyFlow.

SUB: What differentiates Hojoki from the competition?

Böhringer: Hojoki provides rich activity streams and creates a knowledge base for all your apps. You can split your stream into multiple projects and work with others. That’s something none of the others seem to have. All of them are still in beta, though.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Böhringer: The company was established in March 2011 with the development starting a few months before. We pretty much bootstrapped the first months with earnings from our previous jobs and other sources of funding. After we had the initial prototype and received lots of great feedback, we decided to take the next step and looked for funding. We found it very quickly with Kizoo Technology Ventures, who recently invested in us.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Hojoki? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Böhringer: All of us are power users of cloud apps in the first place and suffer from all of them being separated. Also, some of us were involved in some microblogging projects with tools like Yammer and Status.net which showed us how streams work to connect teams. We suddenly came up with the idea that those streams could not only be fed by people typing messages, but also by cloud apps posting their activities. The basic model here is Facebook. Hojoki is like a Facebook fed by cloud app activities.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Böhringer: Doing what Hojoki does is quite a technical challenge. There was not really the possibility to just code a quick prototype to make user tests or convince investors. We had to come up with a sophisticated solution at first which was a great challenge for us.

SUB: You recently raised $620K in seed funding—how do you plan to use the funds?

Böhringer: We will use it to keep up the speed of development. Our goal is to add three new integrations each month. To meet this goal we hired additional engineers. Also, Adam, our new community manager, joined us to take care of our users. But basically, we want to keep the team at a small size to stay agile.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funding?

Böhringer: The time is perfect for a tool like Hojoki, with cloud productivity apps becoming standard more and more. We just have to launch it now and the funding made this possible. Furthermore, we see competitors showing up and the funding helps us to keep our edge.

SUB: Do you plan to raise additional funding in the near future?

Böhringer: We’ll have to see about that.

SUB: What are your goals for Hojoki over the next year or so?

Böhringer: Hojoki to integrate more than 20 apps, have several hundreds of thousands of users and help them each day to rock their cloud apps.

Hojoki – www.hojoki.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

MarkaVIP Closes $5M Series A Funding Round

Web/Content

Eric Schmidt, Mayfield Fund Put $11.5M In Online Medical Community HealthTap (via TechCrunch)

BIA Digital Partners Makes Growth Capital Investment in Cooking.com, Inc.

HP Acquires Hiflex, a Web-to-Print and Management Information Systems Software Company

Enterprise

Posted by startupbeat at 08:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with aisle411 co-founder and CEO Nathan Pettyjohn. The company was a Featured Startup on StartUp Beat back in July, and has since released version 2.0 of its in-store navigation app with new features and big plans for the future.

SUB: Please briefly explain what aisle411 is, and the value proposition you offer to consumers and merchants.

Pettyjohn: With the aisle411 platform, users can easily create and manage shopping lists in any store, plan and search recipes, locate items and share experiences with friends via social media integration. aisle411 has partnered with ZipList, a leading recipe search and shopping list platform to integrate the entire shopping experience with aisle411’s in-store navigation platform.

aisle411’s core technology is its in-store, item level aisle navigation solution, which allows users to map thousands of products throughout the store. The technology can be integrated seamlessly with other shopping list technologies, recipe search technologies and digital coupon technologies.

SUB: You recently released version 2.0 of your app—what new features does it include?

Pettyjohn: Version 2.0 of the aisle411 app provides new and enhanced features that can be used in any store. The Shopping List Manager enables management of multiple shopping lists by topic or retailer. Lists can be built online, on the device via typing, voice, or scanning, then routed once a shopper checks-in to a store. The Recipe Search provides access to more than 130,000 recipes, which can be integrated with shopping lists, and routed via Aisle Navigation. Search inside participating stores for the section of the aisle of hard to find products with intuitive voice recognition technology powered by Nuance. Aisle Navigation maps an optimized path through participating stores with a digital map for one item or a whole shopping list. Instantly locate products down to the specific section of the aisle.

SUB: How many times has the app been downloaded to this point?

Pettyjohn: At this point, we are not disclosing this information.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea?

Pettyjohn: This was born out of frustration over wasting time in the store. I spent 10 minutes looking for a surge protector. I knew the technology was in the store system to locate the product, but it was frustrating trying to find someone who could tell me where it was.

SUB: How has the mobile in-aisle shopping platform business been changing/evolving since we last heard from you back in July?

Pettyjohn: Smartphone penetration and retail app growth is well documented. Initially, retail apps emerged as mobile portals to an ecommerce experience. Today, however, shoppers demand utility from their in-store apps and progressive retailers are quick to respond in the interest of customer service. Along with the evolution of mobile payment systems, price and inventory transparency, retailers are seeking ways to generate brand preference and loyalty by serving their customers with helpful mobile tools.

Item level, in-aisle navigation is the foundation from which all mobile in-aisle shopping services emerge. Walmart reports that three quarters to 92 percent of shoppers at Walmart U.S. stores bring lists when they shop. Eighty percent of shoppers report difficulty finding items in store and 23 percent of shoppers report abandoning items on their original purchase intent because they can’t find them in store. aisle411 brings together a pre-plan, list build and in-store execution platform that is seamlessly integrated with other shopping list technologies, recipe search technologies and digital coupon technologies.

SUB: How many retailers now use aisle411?

Pettyjohn: The aisle411 recipe engine and shopping list utility can be used anywhere you shop. The item level, in-aisle navigation feature is currently available in over 2,500 stores, with growth plans to be in tens of thousands of stores in 2012. 

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been to building the business so far?

Pettyjohn: aisle411 has maintained a consumer focus from day one. We’ve spent nearly three years building and refining the best available in-store shopping experience. Others have tried and failed to deliver item-level aisle navigation, but we’ve never allowed ourselves to take the easy path and we’ve always stayed true to our ultimate goal of helping people find things in store.

Two major obstacles that we’ve been able to succeed in are: accessing in-store inventory information from retailers so that we provide a truly enhanced shopping experience; and mapping a store is fairly simple, but connecting all the data to a map and organizing the data so it’s usable to a shopper was a big challenge. We feel this is now one of our greatest assets that others have not been able to accomplish.

By offering a great shopper experience, we’re now getting retailers calling us and asking how they can work with us, and we’re now able to scale out solutions rapidly since we’ve invested significant resources in our technology, user experience and market knowledge.

SUB: Do you plan to raise outside funding in the near future?

Pettyjohn: While I can’t speak publically to specifics of aisle411’s funding strategy, I generally feel most startups are always looking for capital resources to help them grow, weather that’s funding, talent or partners.

SUB: What are your goals for aisle411 over the next year or so?

Pettyjohn: We’ve entered the rapid growth phase of our company and will focus on continued product enhancements and increased distribution. Our objective over the next 6-to-12 months is to make the aisle411 item level, in-aisle navigation service available to millions of users at tens of thousands of retail locations. Our platform position, easy integration into strategic partner apps, and our superior understanding of shopper behavior and demand is our path to success. You’ll see aisle411’s platform embedded within retailers’ applications, along with several new features aimed at not just mapping stores, but enhancing the in-store shopping experience through location-based solutions.

aisle411 – www.aisle411.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Mobile

mFoundry Secures $18 Million in Growth Capital From Mobile and Payments Industry Leaders

GlobalSCAPE(R) Acquires Innovative Mobile File Sharing Company TappIn(TM)

Japanese Mobile Social Gaming Startup Gumi Raises $26 Million (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

Late Nite Labs Raises $1.1 Million To Bring Virtual Science Education To Campuses

Enterprise

uTest Closes $17 Million Series D Financing Led by QuestMark Partners

Actifio Bulks Up with $33.5 Million to Extend Leadership in Virtualizing Data Management

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

TechStars 2011 Grad Promoboxx Raises $565K For Brand-To-Retailer Marketing Platform (via TechCrunch)

With $2 Million In Funding, Senzari Prepares To Take On Pandora (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

French Birchbox competitor JolieBox enters UK with acquisition of Boudoir Privé (via TechCrunch Europe)

Posted by startupbeat at 10:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: imATHLETE

Website: www.imathlete.com

Founders: Jeff Matlow

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California

Year Founded: 2009

Twitter: @IAmAthlete

Brief Company Description: imATHLETE: leveraging technology to enhance and inspire athletic activity, through registration, fundraising and community interaction.

By Jeff Matlow, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Simply put, imATHLETE is aggregating athletic interaction. Like Fandango did for movies, TripAdvisor for travel and Yelp for dining, imATHLETE is disrupting the $90 billion amateur athletic industry by uniting the commerce and community into one single, robust platform.

We provide unique technology that helps event organizers, city governments, non-profits and governing bodies better manage their participant interactions. imATHLETE’s technology is focused on supporting the four pillars of athletic commerce: registration, fundraising, ecommerce, training. We provide systems that streamline and transform our clients’ businesses in ways never before seen: reducing workload by up to 60 percent and increasing revenue channels into new, innovative arenas.

imATHLETE launched in 2009 and since then has become one of the fastest growing and respected companies in the industry. With clients like City of Philadelphia, USA Triathlon, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, USA Volleyball, Life Time Fitness, Susan G. Komen, and thousands of others, we are considered by many to have the most robust, flexible and dynamic technology available.

And that’s just the beginning.

And speaking of beginning…

Founder’s Story

imATHLETE all started as an inkling of an idea from Jeff Matlow, the founder (who, by the way is the author, so that’s why this in the first person—before it gets all creepy). I’ve had a wonderful career as an entrepreneur, first in the music business where I started and sold a record label. Following that I built a marketing agency, where we developed strategic plans for Fortune 100s, including Citibank, Universal, Mattel and Kraft. After that agency merged with a larger conglomerate, I shifted my focus to my true passion: sports.

I’m an Ironman triathlete, marathoner and swimmer. I’m a sports marketer, published journalist and involved in governance at the Olympic level (former USA Triathlon Board of Directors, current Running USA Board of Directors).

In 2008 I recognized a dire need to aggregate the market and acted quickly. I acquired SportsWare, Inc., a registration company based in Alabama, hired a brilliant CTO (Ken Nakai), formerly from Rent.com, and we began building imATHLETE. 

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

imATHLETE is heavily involved in the endurance sports market. Though we sponsor quite a few conferences throughout the year and have an amazing sales force, our biggest asset is word of mouth. We’re proud and humbled to say that most of our clients are passionate about us. Once we get a few clients in one market, the expansion is dramatic and fast. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we have a Referral Rewards program where we pay four percent of our net profit to anybody that refers new business to us. We take care of the people who take care of us.

How We Differentiate from the Competition 

There are a variety of ways in which we differentiate ourselves from others. From a strategic level, our focus is not simply on processing credit cards, like many other online registration systems, but on aggregating the community that drives the transactions. imATHLETE integrates all primary commerce channels (fundraising, ecommerce, travel, coaching) and the athletic community interaction like no other company is doing and, as a result, monetizes each transaction in more beneficial ways.

Our product offerings provide new opportunities for our clients to dramatically expand their businesses at no cost to them. At the same time, our social strategy is focused on continually leveraging the immense athletic community to enhance and increase the interaction with our clients’ products.

At a more granular level, imATHLETE’s technology solves problems that event organizers didn’t even know they had. We’ve streamlined their processes to such an extent that up to 60 percent of their workload is off the table for them.

Business Model

imATHLETE makes money through a variety of channels, including:

* online registration technology

* fundraising/donation management technology 

* online advertising/marketing services for organizations interested in reaching physically  active consumers

* ecommerce/merchandising solutions           

* sales of coaching/training plans

Current Needs

In terms of fundraising, we are cash flow positive and have been since 13 months after launch. We raised a small angel round of less than $400k in 2008. We will be raising Series A financing within the next four months to accelerate growth and complete one-to-two additional acquisitions.

Meanwhile, imATHLETE is looking to hire two more sales personnel as quickly as possible. Both people will be focused on encouraging event organizers to use imATHLETE’s technology. One of the openings is for somebody with up to three years’ experience in sales, while the other opening is for somebody with 5+ years’ experience in sports, technology and/or SaaS product sales. All sales people must have an understanding of the endurance sports world, whether through previous jobs or participation. Both positions are based in our Santa Monica office.

imATHLETE – www.imathlete.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

HealthRally Raises $400K to Motivate Wellness with Real Rewards

Awe.sm nets $4M for social data monitoring platform (via gigaom)

AVG Acquires ‘Online Family Protection’ Software Maker Bsecure (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Social TV startup Miso raises $4m from Khosla Ventures (via gigaom)

Mobile

New Social Discovery App Ntro Launches, Backed By $1.7 Million In Funding (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

Sociocast Closes $1.5MM Bridge Financing Round to Continue Growth and Development Pace

Zentyal secures $1M for small-business server tech (via VatorNews)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)