StartUp Beat

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

Self-Improvement Marketplace Betterfly Raises $1.5M, Gets A New CEO (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

EmployInsight Grabs $1M For Its Employee Measurement Platform (And NYSE As Its First Client) (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Customer service app Tello raises $2.7M (via VentureBeat)

Web/Content

Charts For Everyone: Cloud-Based iCharts Picks Up $3.1 Million For Consumer Push (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 02:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with Comprehend Systems co-founder and CEO Rick Morrison. The Palo Alto, California–based company was founded in 2010.

SUB: Please describe what Comprehend Systems is, and the value proposition you bring to clinical research.

Morrison: Comprehend Systems offers data visualization, analytics and reporting software that works across multiple disparate data sources, while leaving the data intact. Our technology allows data scientists to explore and ask questions to data without having to know how to program.

Our first product, Comprehend Clinical, improves the way clinical researchers access, understand, explore and analyze data. The problem most clinical researchers face today is that they use several different data collection systems over the course of a clinical trial, but they are usually not interoperable and take significant investment to integrate. Specifically designed for clinical trials, Comprehend Clinical allows pharmaceutical and medical device companies to use best-of-breed data collection systems without having to worry about how they’ll access the data, enabling easy, ad-hoc reporting across multiple, disparate data sources, all through a user-friendly web page.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Morrison: Our target markets are any organizations that deal with clinical trial data, including: pharmaceutical companies, biotechs, medical device makers, contract research organizations (CROs), electronic data capture (EDC) vendors, research hospitals and regulatory bodies.

More broadly, anybody who deals with multiple datasets could benefit from our technology.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Morrison: There are many reporting and visualization tools on the market, but almost all of them only work against a single database. No vendor currently offers the power that Comprehend Clinical includes, and other solutions are much more difficult to use. Our competition is most often a makeshift system that a programmer quickly put in place to connect two data sources, often outputting an Excel spreadsheet. These systems are fragile, break often and are difficult to use.

SUB: What differentiates Comprehend Systems from the competition?

Morrison: Comprehend Clinical provides easy to use dashboards and ad-hoc reporting through a standard web browser. On the back end, it connects to multiple, disparate databases simultaneously while leaving the data in place. Unlike other visualization tools that are cumbersome and costly to implement, Comprehend Clinical is easy to deploy, use and integrate with other systems. With simple, embeddable and interactive dashboards, Comprehend Clinical also enables ad-hoc reporting from any data source in real-time, offering a view into the most critical high-level operational metrics faster than any other system.

We’ve built a team of top software developers who have a passion for making solid software. Our team is also extremely experienced with both analytics software and the clinical trial space, including experience architecting and writing software that is now used by the FDA and top pharma.

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

Morrison: Comprehend Systems was founded in 2010 in Palo Alto by a team of entrepreneurs with decades of combined experience in clinical research and software development. Before we had any investors, my cofounder, Jud Gardner, and I attended several trade shows to listen to what potential customers were saying. We had an idea of the pain points in the clinical research community, but we spent a significant amount of time and energy validating our assumptions.

The investments we made early on researching the market are really paying off now, because our product is well positioned and meets a real market need.

Our current investors include Y Combinator, Yuri Milner, Menlo Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Garry Tan, and several others with enterprise and clinical experience.

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

Morrison: The inspiration came from both my cofounder and I having spent several years writing software in the clinical trial space. We collected insights into how people extract answers from data, and how the existing tools on the market aren’t meeting customer needs.

The pharmaceutical industry has invested billions of dollars in technologies to collect and protect their clinical data—one of their most vital assets. But while current tools have matured, sponsors still struggle to maximize the value of all that data in an easy, cost-effective way that enables them to make smarter, faster decisions about their clinical trials.

We realized that we could do it better than the current tools on the market, and we’ve been building a team of top Silicon Valley developers since then.

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

Morrison: Gaining initial traction was one of the biggest obstacles we faced when building Comprehend. It’s extremely difficult for an enterprise software startup to build a product and then convince large companies to use it. Luckily, we have a lot of experience writing clinical software and understand the specifics of this space.

To further reinforce our strategy and approach, we’ve hired experts to ensure our product meets critical industry standards and regulations. We’ve also brought on a team of great investors and advisors who have built large software companies and are leveraging their experience and expertise to truly penetrate the market.

SUB: You recently raised $1.2 million in Seed funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Morrison: We’re using those funds to hire developers and to continue to build out Comprehend Clinical. We have our first fully validated and tested version of Comprehend Clinical, and are deploying it into production now. We’re going to continue selling the product, and will use this round of funding to introduce new features and functionality based on customer feedback.

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

Morrison: We currently have ample runway in the bank plus a strong sales funnel, but will be looking for additional capital to help us grow quicker.

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

Morrison: Our goals are to focus on sales and hiring. Comprehend Clinical is in production and ready for use, and we’re focusing on getting it adopted by many companies in the industry. We also want to continue to expand our team in all capacities, including our team of top developers.

Comprehend Systems – www.comprehend.com

Posted by startupbeat at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Cloud

Vaultive keeps your data safe in the cloud, raises $10M (via VentureBeat)

Enterprise

Google Ventures And Others Put $5M In Enterprise Mobile Security Company Duo (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, And Obvious Put $4.5M In Sleek Social, Mobile Gifting Platform Karma (via TechCrunch)

Poppin Seals $6M Series A From Shasta and First Round To Beautify Your Bland Office (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 10:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Cloud

Dropbox acquires Cove for strong leadership team (via VatorNews)

Advertising/Marketing

OpenX Acquires Supply Side Platform LiftDNA (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 02:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with exfm co-founder and COO Charles Smith. The New York City–based company was founded in March of 2010.

SUB: Please describe what exfm is, and the value proposition you bring to music discovery.

Smith: Exfm is a platform for social music discovery. We have four tools that combine to make the platform: 1.) ex.fm, our destination web site; 2.) browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari; 3.) iPhone and Android apps; 4.) a site music player.

The browser extensions and site player provide a great playback experience on music sites across the Internet, while adding songs to our database. All of those songs are then also available for listening on ex.fm. Once they are discovered and loved, they are shared with users’ networks, providing a great opportunity to discover new music. 

SUB: What are your target markets?

Smith: For ex.fm and our mobile apps, anyone who loves music. For our site music player, any site that hosts music and wants to have a terrific playback experience.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Smith: Music is entertainment, so any and all forms of entertainment could be considered our competition. We strive to continually grow the amount of time the end-user spends listening to great music via exfm.

SUB: What differentiates exfm from the competition?

Smith: Our approach and our interface. Our approach is to take music from all over the Internet and put it into a variety of options for playback. Utilizing both human and automated forms of aggregating playlists gives every listener a taste of what they like. Our interface balances the functionality of listening with the display of the social aspects of our service.

SUB: What do you hope motivates people to switch from music services like Spotify and Pandora to exfm?

Smith: People that love discovering the best new music on the web will use our service rather than Pandora or Spotify—we’re much more committed to discovery than either of those services.

SUB: What social media platforms is exfm available on at this point?

Smith: We currently have song sharing options for Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and email.

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

Smith: The company was formed in March 2010. Our initial product was a Chrome browser extension that allowed the user to play back all of the mp3s on any page while also creating a library of all of those songs. We had a tremendously loyal user base which pointed our way to the push-play experience we have now.

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

Smith: There is so much free, legal music available on the web and we saw an opportunity to build a platform that organized all of that music and enabled users to listen in one place and share what they love. The sources for the music are infinite: music blogs, artist sites, fan sites, and many others. Our “aha” moment was realizing that users would benefit from a platform that gave them a way to share what they loved on a platform designed for discovery.

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

Smith: All startups face similar obstacles; building an audience, finding a team that is passionate about your vision and delivering a product that users love. We’ve been extremely lucky to have managed our growth effectively and built a core team that loves music and is able to blend their own passion with that of our users. 

SUB: You recently raised $1.5 million in new funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Smith: We need to continue to build out our team so that we can fulfill our product vision. We also plan to work on how we can start to have an impact on different pieces of the music industry such as live shows. 

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

Smith: No.

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

Smith: Our main goal is to continue to expand our platform so that more people discover more great music with exfm every day. 

exfm – www.ex.fm

Posted by startupbeat at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Social Media

Votizen Raises $750k From Sean Parker, Others, To Turn Elections From Fundraising To ‘Friendraising’ (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

Apple Buys Chomp App for iOS, Android App Searches (via eWeek)

Mobile

Walkie-Talkie App Voxer Popular With Investors, Too, Raising $15M to $20M At Up To $300M Valuation (via TechCrunch)

Game Closure Turns Down Facebook & Zynga To Raise $12M For HTML5 Mobile Gaming (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

QVC Acquires Personalized E-Commerce Site For Fashion Accessories, Send The Trend (via TechCrunch)

Mobile Payments Company GoPago Nabs Investment From JPMorgan Chase (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

Retickr receives $1.5M funding, launches reboot (via VatorNews)

SimpleReach raises $1.5M from High Peaks and Village Ventures for stealthy pivot (via VentureBeat)

Mobile

Scan Gets $1.7M From Google Ventures And Shervin Pishevar To Make QR Codes Actually Useful (via TechCrunch)

IT/Security

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

A Q&A with Profitero co-founder and CEO Vol Pigrukh. The Dublin, Ireland–based company was founded in Winter of 2010, and recently won IBM’s Smart Camp Global Finals competition.

SUB: Please describe what Profitero is, and the value proposition you offer to retailers and manufacturers.

Pigrukh: Profitero offers an online service to retailers to help them monitor competitors’ prices, stock availability and shipping charges. We help our clients increase sales and maximize profits by leveraging high-quality online competitive data. Profitero simplifies and significantly speeds up the process of collecting and assessing this data and the service can be used by both online and offline retailers. Our web-based platform drastically reduces the manual effort involved in collecting and assessing pricing information, helping those working in the retail sector to increase sales and profit margins. We can collect quality assured data directly from a retailers’ competitor websites for daily monitoring. Prices across grocery, drinks, health and beauty, household and electrical goods—the A-brands and own-label lines—can all be compared under the Profitero application.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Pigrukh: Over the past fifteen months, Profitero has secured contracts with a number of key retailers in the European market. Tesco, Auchan, Worten are just a selection of the high-profile retailers using our software to help them grow their sales and profit margins. While Europe is our key market right now, we plan to take the product to the US market in the next twelve months.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Pigrukh: There are a number of players operating in this area in the European market—some of our competitors are operating in the UK. Our European competitors are Brand View, Cogenta, InSiteTrack, Futuresource Consulting, Skuuudle and WorkIT.

SUB: What differentiates Profitero from the competition?

Pigrukh: In terms of scalability and reach we cannot be matched by the competition.

We currently monitor 28 million products across 2,800 European retail websites, and it’s growing all the time. We hope to grow this number to 100 million this year.

As well as signing contracts with some of Europe’s leading grocers and consumer electronics firms, Profitero is discussing partnerships with a number of world market leading corporations operating in the retail field.

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

Pigrukh: Our VP of Engineering, Kanstantsin, has expertise in online retail. As an owner of several ecommerce sites, he identified with the pain that retailers went through with competitor monitoring and the lack of viable solutions on the market. In 2010 he started to develop a scalable technology with a vision to monitor an unlimited number of products against an unlimited number of competitors. This technology platform grew into Profitero.

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

Pigrukh: Profitero was established in the winter of 2010. Myself, Dmitry Vysotski (CTO) and Kanstantsin Chernysh (VP Engineering) are the founders of Profitero. Dmitry and myself met in Dublin while working for multinationals Google, IBM and Microsoft; Kanstantsin is a lifelong friend of Dmitry’s.

We carried out a feasibility study, which highlighted the gap in the market for this service so we set up Profitero. Dmitry and I had already seen the huge potential for this when working for the multinationals.

Our company name came from profiteroles. When we were brainstorming the name of our start-up we all liked profiteroles—it had profit and sweetness associated with it. But the domain Profiteroles.com was already taken. We sent a survey to over 100 friends to pick their favorite name from a list of alternatives and Profitero got the most votes.

Today it is now a commercial product helping retailers track their products against their competitors.

We received financial and mentoring support from the beginning from venture capital firm Seedcamp and Enterprise Ireland, the state body to support Irish start-ups on the international market.

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

Pigrukh: When we started out, our clients told us there was a big gap in the market for this service. “I was looking for something like Profitero for two years and couldn’t find anything even close to it! What used to take me two to three hours each day, I do now with Profitero in minutes!” one client says. Another said, “We were price comparing 1,000 products once a week which took one person a full day. Now we price compare over 2,000 products, checked daily and all we have to do is analyze the information given to us by Profitero.”

However, it is very hard for a startup to begin working with a large company; they have many layers of hierarchies and thousands of constantly changing priorities. Despite some successful cases where we managed to build some really great business relationships, this is a tough area to break into.

SUB: You recently won IBM’s Smart Camp Global Finals competition. What has it meant for you and your business?

Pigrukh: It is fantastic that IBM supports startups and gives them an opportunity to connect with the right people. The experience and range of mentors at IBM SmartCamp was incredible—entrepreneurs, VCs and IBM’ers were asking us the really tough questions. We also obtained some really key contacts during the SmartCamp competition and afterwards too. Also, the media coverage that being named IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year brought us has been fantastic. Being mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post was incredible and just last week TheStreet.com named Profitero one of 5 Start-Ups Big Tech Is Eyeing In 2012. Being mentioned alongside Big Blue goes a long way with clients and leads.

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

Pigrukh: We will consider launching a funding round in late 2012. A venture capital firm with specialist knowledge in the retail and enterprise software would be the preferred choice while the amount sought would depend on achieving milestones.

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

Pigrukh: We plan to expand both on the business side and on the product scale. We got a good foothold in UK and continental Europe with clients, and now we are looking to enter the USA. Working with IBM and developing our new partnership is also a key priority for us for the next year.

Profitero – www.profitero.com

Posted by startupbeat at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Web/Content

Zipcar backs peer-to-peer car sharing startup Wheelz (via gigaom)

Enterprise

InVision Raises $1.5 Million to Revolutionize Collaborative Application Design

Advertising/Marketing

Resonate Raises $22 Million for “Values” Ads (via AllThingsD)

Posted by startupbeat at 11:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology early-stage funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

Fab Buys Casacanda For $11M To Fight The Samwers In Europe (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

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

Today’s early-stage funding news roundup:

Healthcare

GoodRx Grabs $1M+ From SV Angel, Founders Fund & More To Help You Find Cheap Prescription Drugs (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

Posted by startupbeat at 11:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with Klaas Kersting, co-founder and CEO of flaregames. The Karlsruhe, Germany–based company was founded in March of 2011.

SUB: Please describe what flaregames is, and the value proposition you bring to mobile gaming.

Kersting: We create seriously awesome mobile games. Games are our passion, gaming is our lifestyle. That may sound like a marketing blurb but it is totally true. We’re gamers and do games for gamers; we’re very dedicated to quality and great gameplay experiences. Also, we believe in free to play—when done right—is a fair and comprehensive value proposition for every player.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Kersting: We’ll be starting to go international with the first product, mainly in what we call the “EFIGS” languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish. More languages will follow later.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Kersting: We’re not trying to emulate specific companies. The mobile market is huge and growing fast, so there is definitely room for everybody. But everybody in the mobile space competes for AppStore rankings and eyeballs, so we’re all competitors in a way.

SUB: What differentiates flaregames from the competition?

Kersting: We believe that we have an especially strong team and a very solid plan of how we go about conquering the market. Between us, we have years and years of experience in free to play mechanics, game design and monetization. We are very metrics-conscious and have rock solid tracking technology in place, but still we won’t neglect the need of the gamers for a really great game experience. We want to give the world games that stand above the crowd through that extra bit of development love we put in it.

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

Kersting: The company was founded in March 2011 and the founders each brought something unique to the table: Klaas provided the initial spark and has deep entrepreneurial know-how, as he has built a big company before and is a well-connected Angel investor. Matthias contributed his first-rate technology know-how and part of his former company, Rough Sea Games. Andreas brought his excellent understanding of game design and more than a decade of experience with game projects small and big. Georg is a top-of-the-class business developer and brought his former company, Orbster.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for flaregames? Was there an “aha!” moment, or did the idea develop gradually?

Kersting: I’m an avid gamer, I play games of every genre. I even wasted the first two years at University becoming one of the world’s best Alpha Centauri players. In 2010 I left Gameforge and suddenly had a ridiculous amount of time to kill. I wanted to play all the big games I had missed, but…I found myself hooked on one iPhone game after the other. But most were games of limited scope, over in a few hours and centered on a single mechanic. I wanted deeper experiences, open-ended games—and decided to build them myself, with a new company. Much like in 2002 when I wrote “Wogen des Schicksals”, a browser-based strategy game, which, in my opinion, was something the market did not really offer at that time.

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

Kersting: There have been no real obstacles; everything is running really smoothly so far. Perhaps we aimed too high with our first project, in terms of scale; that has kept us from getting a game out of the door very fast. But we have learned many things during development, so the time is not wasted.

SUB: You recently raised $7.9 million in funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Kersting: Nothing surprising: We’re going to continue hiring great people. Also, we are building marketing budgets to spend when we finally start releasing games. We currently have a line-up of five games slated for launch during the first half of 2012.

And we’re not ruling out small acquisitions, but this is not central to our operation.

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

Kersting: We’re well funded now and plan on being cash flow positive by the end of 2012. If we’re going to accept more funding, it has to be an exceptional strategic fit.

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

Kersting: We want to launch a number of games this year, learn much doing so and be in a good position to release even better games next year. During that process we will build a user base and reach to make launching games much more streamlined later on. And last but not least we will invest in our own technology platforms.

flaregames – www.flaregames.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Today’s early-stage funding news roundup:

Mobile

Flickr co-founder announces newest startup & newest funding (via VentureBeat)

Ecommerce

Intel invests in two Brazilian fashion e-commerce sites (via VentureBeat)

Social Media

Lady Gaga Startup Has Revenue, Raises $4.5 M. From Top Tier Investors (via BetaBeat)

Web/Content

Real Estate Site VivaReal Raises Cash To Be The Zillow For Brazil (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 10:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s early-stage funding news roundup:

Web/Content

Memrise raises $1.05M to make memorization a game (via gigaom)

Fight My Monster Lands $2.1 Million Investment From Greycroft (via PandoDaily)

Ecommerce

Posted by startupbeat at 11:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s early-stage funding news roundup:

Cloud

FileTrek grabs $10M from Anthem Venture Partners, Telesystem to help businesses track cloud-based files (via VentureBeat)

Web/Content

Posted by startupbeat at 11:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Social Goodies

Website: www.socialgoodies.com

Founder: Carie Salter

Headquarters: Pasadena, California

Year Founded: 2011

Investors: Self-funded

Twitter: @socialgoodiesco

Brief Company Description: National daily deal site funding good deeds with good deals. We give customers a way to change the world and get something in return.

By Carie Salter, Founder

At Social Goodies we offer amazing deals from retailers in the home décor, lifestyle, fashion and beauty arenas at up to 70 percent off and donate 20 percent of the gross purchase price of every deal to charity. We feel our business model delivers tremendous value, as we have created a win-win-win for our customers, featured charities and retailers. Our customers receive great deals on cool merchandise while simultaneously and effortlessly donating 20 percent of their gross deal purchase price to well-vetted charities. Our three featured charities receive concentrated amounts of money from a new donation source, as well as increased exposure about the good work they do.

Finally, our retail partners are not only able to “give back,” but also receive an above-average percentage of the deal purchase price, increased publicity (we even blog about them) and new customers (they own the relationship, as customers use their vouchers to shop directly on the retailers’ websites).

Product Overview

Our retail partners are generally smaller, niche-oriented companies with an incredible amount of originality and creativity. That, coupled with the editorial background of our promotions manager, contributes to the distinct coolness factor of the deals we feature at Social Goodies.

Founder’s Story

I was inspired to start Social Goodies when performing volunteer consulting work with the Harvard Business School Association of Southern California Community Partners. At the time, it became evident to me that many amazing nonprofits were having a tough time because their endowments were being hit at the same time donors were tightening their belts. I started thinking about how I could use some money I had available to help create a new funding source for charities that could continue for years and years to come (as opposed to just writing a few meaningful checks to certain organizations). At the time, daily deal sites were just beginning to become popular, and I thought the business model was ideally-suited for funding charity—hence, Social Goodies was born!

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Right now, our primary goal is to maximize public exposure to socialgoodies.com. We want people to learn about our site and how every time they buy one of our amazing deals they can effortlessly donate 20 percent of the gross purchase price to charity. We’re using a multi-level strategy to raise awareness, including public relations outreach, social media, member newsletters and retailer-focused blogs to get the word out.

How Social Goodies Differentiates Itself from the Competition

There are several things that set us apart from other daily deal sites. First and foremost, we’re in business to fund the good work of great charities and make a difference in the world—not to fill our coffers. As such, transparency and accountability are of the utmost importance. While many businesses pledge to donate a “portion of proceeds” to charity, we contribute 20 percent of the gross purchase price of every deal sold (we even have a dynamic tally on our site). We only feature three carefully-selected charities on our site at any given time because we want to make sure they receive meaningful donations. Further, we form contractual relationships with the charities we feature and provide a full accounting of all the funds we receive on their behalf. We don’t just put a logo on our site and promise to make a donation—we make a commitment. Social Goodies is really a reaction to other charitable giving sites that feature countless charities but don’t provide any sort of transparency or accounting for the funds they raise.

Of course, in order to make a difference, we have to make sales, and we do that by offering our customers incredible national deals—up to 70 percent off—from terrific, socially-conscious retailers. Because our deals are national as opposed to local, and are on products as opposed to services, people can purchase and use these deals from the comfort of their own home no matter where they live.

Business Model

Since Social Goodies has a national, not regional, focus, our members are able to purchase deals that they can redeem online no matter where they live. It’s similar to the national strategy Groupon rolled out after we were up and running. But at Social Goodies, we’re all about creating a sustainable business model—a win-win-win for our customers, charities and retailers. As mentioned beforehand, our customers get great deals on terrific products while simultaneously giving to charity; our charities get concentrated amounts of money from a new funding source and additional exposure for the good work they do; and our retailers are able to “give back” in addition to getting an above-average portion of the deal sale price, publicity and acquisition of new customers.

Current Needs

Social Goodies has a great core team, and we’re not looking to add to it at this time. We’re self-funded, which gives us a lot of flexibility and allows us to focus on our core mission of raising money for charities. As such, we presently have no plans to raise outside capital. Our objective is to build a self-sustaining operation that can continue to help charities fund their important work for years and years to come.

Social Goodies – www.socialgoodies.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s early-stage funding news roundup:

Web/Content

nFluence Media Closes $3M Series A Funding Round, Reveals First Product -- dealBoard App

Social Media

Lover.ly Raises $500K To Be An Online, Visual Inspiration Engine For Weddings (via TechCrunch)

Pearltrees Raises $6.7M For Its “Collaborative Interest Graph” (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

SpaceCurve Raises $2.7M for Big Data Innovations, Hires Industry Veteran John Slitz as CEO

Posted by startupbeat at 09:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ecommerce

YCombinator Startup DoubleRecall Receives $1.6 Million In Seed Funding For Paywall Alternative Technology

Web/Content

Aggregator Soup.me Raises $530,000, Is Unrelated to SoupSoup (via BetaBeat)

Finam Puts $10M In Mobile Messaging Application IM+ (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Pops Raises $1.5M From Mangrove To Sexify Mobile Notifications (via TechCrunch)

Behind New Funding, Matchbook Wants To Turn Bookmarking Into Action With Intent-Based Deals (viaTechCrunch)

Enterprise

SaaS Website Security Startup StopTheHacker Launches Commercial Services Based on Initial Funding Round

Advertising/Marketing

Marin Software Raises $30 Million Funding

Posted by startupbeat at 12:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

OpenLabel Exits Stealth, Raises $80K To Turn Barcodes Into Public Labels (via TechCrunch)

Stripe attracts $18M in funding at $100M valuation (via VentureBeat)

Mobile

Posted by startupbeat at 09:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with OneSchool co-founder and CEO David Adewumi. The Mountain View, California–based company was founded in June 2011 and recently raised $750K in Seed funding.

SUB: Please describe what OneSchool is, and the value proposition you offer to college students.

Adewumi: OneSchool is a smartphone app designed for students to navigate college campuses and connect with classmates easily. Within a single app, students can discover the best lunch spots, buy textbooks, find their classroom on the go, track the bus to see where it is right now, search for professor and faculty contact info, check course listings, access the sports schedule and more. We’re continuously building out the app to be most useful for students.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Adewumi: OneSchool is targeted for students to use on campus, though professors and other staff on campus find the app helpful as well for its campus map, sports scores, and food, for example. You must have a “.edu” email address to use the app.

We launched our app at eight different universities last month: Stanford University, Yale University, Penn State University, Columbia University, UCLA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Houston, and University of Waterloo. We plan to roll out at more schools in the coming semesters.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Adewumi: There are a handful of schools that have mobile apps but we’ve found that many schools are not meeting student demand. What’s unique about OneSchool is that we offer practical information that students need for university life—both inside and outside the classroom. While smartphone usage among students has skyrocketed, most colleges don’t have native mobile apps.

We’re filling a need—students can use OneSchool to find everything they need in one place, and can access it anywhere on the go.

SUB: What differentiates OneSchool from the competition?

Adewumi: Not many college campuses have dedicated apps for their students to use, and the apps that exist aren’t updated regularly. Our team at OneSchool is constantly updating our app to provide students with the tools they need. We are putting students reps called Campus Founders on each of our launched campuses to gather on-the-ground feedback about what students want. Each university is different and Campus Founders capture insider information and unique details about student life to make sure the app is relevant for each campus.

Also, our product is completely free. We don’t charge schools an enormous sum to create an app for their campus. Instead, we take the information that is publicly available on the Internet and package it in one accessible app for every student. Schools have been seeing our app and want to get an app developed for their campus as soon as possible. We currently have over 150 schools on the waitlist.

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

Adewumi: The company was started in June 2011. It wasn’t long before we realized we had to move the team to California to pursue the creative and financial opportunities in Silicon Valley. My co-founders and I left Penn State to move to the Bay Area to begin working full-time on the app.

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

Adewumi: The idea for OneSchool started with a picture message of a homework problem that was sent between friends. That’s when a few of us at Penn State realized that students use their smartphones all the time, yet there was not a lot of useful information available when it came to colleges.

Many college websites provide information about applying and other official information, but lack the day-to-day tools and resources students use every day. We decided to change that by creating something that allows students on any campus to have the resources and practical info they need to succeed both in and outside of the classroom, available anytime and anywhere on their smartphone.

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

Adewumi: The fundamentals are always the most significant: building a world-class team, raising funds to support the business, and setting an overall strategy and vision for the direction. So far we’ve been blessed to have had an easier time of this than 99 percent of companies, and that’s due to a great team and incredible advisors.

SUB: You recently raised $750K in Seed funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Adewumi: We’re using the funds to continue rolling out the app at more campuses and add additional features. The feedback we get from students is invaluable and lets us know what they want to see in our app next.

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

Adewumi: At the time being we’re focusing on building out and improving our product.

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

Adewumi: We want to continue rolling out the app on more campuses. We currently have a waiting list of over 150 schools that have requested a OneSchool app. Each campus is unique so we are also working closely with Campus Founders at each school to create the best app experience for students across multiple campuses.

OneSchool – www.oneschool.com

Posted by startupbeat at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news:

Ecommerce

Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million From Chris Sacca, Max Levchin And Others To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System (via TechCrunch)

Online Art Market Paddle8 Secures Series A Funding of c.$4MM Led by Prominent Technology Investors Founder Collective with Luxury Investors Mousse Partners

Cloud

Nivio nabs $21 million for affordable cloud computing (via VatorNews)

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Implement Mobile Cloud Services in Titanium (via ReadWriteWeb)

Clusterpoint secures €1m from BaltCap to scale its database for clouds (via TechCrunch Europe)

Web/Content

GigaOM buying ContentNext Media, will pick up paidContent, mocoNews, and other sites (via VentureBeat)

BoardProspects Wants To Help Companies ‘Build Better Boards’, Raises $650,000 (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

Dassault Systemes Acquires Netvibes

Infogr.am gets HackFwd backing to democratise cool info-graphics (via TechCrunch Europe)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with Joe Morin, Social Rewards co-founder and CEO. The Torrance, California–based company was founded in March of 2010 and recently raised $600K in Seed funding.

SUB: Please describe what Social Rewards is, and the value proposition you bring to social media and consumers.

Morin: Social Rewards is a social media based loyalty program platform where brands may identify and track social media engagement and reward them for social loyalty.

Points are exchanged for room nights, show tickets, dinners and drinks. Points can be fully integrated into an existing loyalty program, or built as a hybrid blend of existing points and custom redemptions such as free drinks.

SUB: What are your target markets? 

Morin: Tourism, travel, hospitality, restaurants, entertainment, conferences and ecommerce.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Morin: We’d rather not call out our competitors at the moment.

SUB: What differentiates Social Rewards from the competition?

Morin: Other companies addressing the social loyalty industry at the moment currently do not offer as robust a platform as Social Rewards. Our value proposition is our ability to track sales online via our tracking URLs to extract ROI data from social media utilizing a points platform as incentive. 

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

Morin: We incorporated in March of 2010 but began development of our core technology in September of 2009. Once we had developed the technology, we built a working base Alpha prototype and showed it to several potential clients or influential individuals to ascertain market worthiness. [We] got some rave responses so we knew we were on to something.

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

Morin: There really was. My business partner Mike Uesugi was fascinated with Twitter after I told him that I hadn’t been this excited about a company since the advent of Google. So he and his team created a prototype tracking platform that initially was going to be an affiliate tracking program where one didn’t need a published site in order to become an affiliate, just a Facebook or Twitter account. 

On the other hand I was seeking to discover a way to reward influential users online and had recently discovered Klout and had joined their advisory board so that their technology could aid in that. The “aha” moment came when I was handed a movie loyalty card at a theater and was handed back a coupon for a free buttered popcorn. I figured that loyalty points could be the perfect vehicle to reward these individuals since points could be given both online and offline. Mike and I are both extreme frequent fliers and travelers and we wanted a way to get rewarded ourselves for our social media activity. When we sought out a solution we realized there was none at the time, so we created it for ourselves.  Loyalty points seemed the perfect way to reward that usage.

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

Morin: Time! Working on raising funding and at the same time working on product development while attempting to close enterprise level sales for use of the platform has been challenging with a small team. Another giant challenge was staying focused on one market in order to get it right. We’ve had over 500 inquiries into using our platform in countries from Dubai to Brazil from small businesses to enterprise level. Staying focused on Las Vegas as our launch market was tough and learning how to say no was also challenging but it turned out to be the right decision as we’ve captured 80 percent of the Las Vegas resort casino market in a year.

SUB: You recently raised $600K in Seed funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Morin: This was a ‘rolling close’ so we have been fund raising for a while and already put these funds to work. The funds have enabled us not only to launch our Alpha pilot version 1.0 of our platform but also version 1.5 which we rolled out to Luxor Las Vegas. This really taught us a lot and where we needed to improve. We took everything we learned in versions 1.0 and 1.5 and threw it into our massively scalable and robust version 2.0, which coincidentally we were writing alongside the other versions since we knew we would need a highly scalable version of our Beta test software.

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

Morin: We will be seeking a Series A round of financing this year. 

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

Morin: We plan to enter additional markets both geographically and by industry. Entertainment looks promising.

Social Rewards – www.socialrewards.com

Posted by startupbeat at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news:

Social Media

Lance Tokuda’s SchoolFeed rounds up $1.75M for fast-growing classmates network (via VentureBeat)

Web/Content

Stealthy Legal Startup DocRun Raises $1.1M From Resolute.VC, Don Dodge And Others (via TechCrunch)

Video Network Blip Drops ‘.tv’, Picks Up $12 Million (via PaidContent.org)

Marketing/Advertising

Extole pockets $10M for social marketing platform (via VatorNews)

Mobile

Mystery music app TastemakerX nails down a $1.8M funding round pre-launch (via VentureBeat)

LA-based Viddy steals $6M from Silicon Valley VCs for social video (via VentureBeat)

Social Media

LinkedIn Is Buying Smart Email Startup Rapportive [REPORT] (via Mashable)

Enterprise

Hadoop startup WibiData raises $5M to power web analytics (via gigaom)

IT/Security

Posted by startupbeat at 10:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Badgeville

Website: www.badgeville.com

Founders: Kris Duggan, CEO, and Wedge Martin, CTO

Headquarters: Menlo Park, California

Year Founded: September, 2010

Investors: Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Trinity Ventures

By Kris Duggan, co-founder and CEO

When customers walk into Badgeville headquarters today, they find it hard to believe that our company launched just over a year ago. In 2010, I decided to launch a company, along with my co-founder Wedge Martin, that would help businesses measure and influence user behavior. After talking to many of my friends and acquaintances across the enterprise, it became increasingly clear that there was a huge opportunity to combine game mechanics and sophisticated behavior analytics to increase serious business objectives.

While “gamification” has made its way to one of the top trends of 2012, when Badgeville launched few had heard of the term. The handful of companies trying to sell game-based programs to marketers were hocking Flash-based games that at best provided only short-term value to the business. Badgeville is the first and only company to approach gamification as a holistic, fully-integrated business strategy that ties into a brand’s entire digital footprint.

A Great Start: Winning Audience Choice at TechCrunch Disrupt

When Badgeville launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010, we already had a handful of beta customers and significant revenues for a pre-launch company. The team, just five of us at the time, didn’t know what to expect exactly. Even though I knew the company was solid, one can never be sure what judges and the masses will think. We were very fortunate to win Audience Choice at the show, and more importantly, to obtain a large amount of press resulting in hundreds of qualified leads.

One of the biggest challenges in launching a startup is guessing what demand will be. You can make intelligent estimates, but ultimately the sheer volume of interest for an innovative market may come as a surprise, for better or worse. For us, it was a good problem to have, and we quickly scaled to support the demand, adding 50 employees over one year and $15 million in funding.

When growing a team to support demand, it’s important to hire the right people, and not rush into any hires. I am very fortunate to have been able to put together a world-class team of experts from social gaming, loyalty, social media, and enterprise software, who together have built the world’s most widely-deployed gamification platform for the enterprise. With a dream team of employees who previously worked with Zynga, Playdom, WebEx, Amazon, American Express, Salesforce.com and other well-recognized brands, Badgeville was able to reach and exceed significant milestones from day one.

Bringing Gamification to Businesses Today

Today, Badgeville is enabling hundreds of companies to measure and influence their customer and employee behavior. Instead of businesses sitting on the sidelines and observing user behavior, Badgeville’s Behavior Platform now helps businesses create sophisticated programs to actually drive user behavior. Our customers are currently experiencing increases in key business objectives 20 percent to more than 200 percent.

Badgeville Customer Gamification Examples:

Samsung Nation (www.samsung.com)

Universal Music (www.scottymcreery-official.com)

Beat the GMAT (www.beatthegmat.com)

Everyday Health (www.jillianmichaels.com)

Janrain / Shop with your Friends (www.shopwithyourfriends.com)

In addition to smart gamification programs, Badgeville offers a unique product that turns any site into a social network. This product democratizes the power of Facebook, and infuses real-time, social experiences into any brand. Instead of sending fans to a Facebook or Twitter page, the Behavior Graph allows for an internal increase in user-driven activities, and for businesses to own their audience data. For serious businesses, this translates to an increase in user-generated content, customer referrals, time spent on the site and paid conversions.

Badgeville’s Behavior Lifecycle Management product suite includes powerful solutions such as The Dynamic Game Engine, Widget Studio & API, and Behavior Analytics, making it easy for businesses to easily incorporate gamification across their entire online experience. Recently, Badgeville announced its Cloud Connectors Program, offering easy integration into popular third-party enterprise applications such as JIVE, Omniture and Salesforce.com. We also have begun to announce a series of strategic partnerships with truly world-class social enterprise companies such as Bazaarvoice.

Badgeville’s Dynamic Game Engine (DGE) is recognized for its flexibility, power and scalability to track and reward any user behavior. It supports storing and surfacing of massive quantities of user behavior data, since we use a modern technology known as horizontal sharding for our databases.

What Businesses Must Know About Gamification

Before you jump into gamification, start by deciding on your key business objectives. Is a five percent increase in conversions going to add a significant amount of revenue for your business? Do you need to increase time on site 100 percent in order to see real value in your gamification program? Then, determine which behaviors help you achieve these objectives. Finally, deploy a program which is designed to increase these behaviors, track your success, and iterate to improve your results.

While we provide world-class technology, ultimately we also recognize that the success of your gamification program is largely due to its program design and your user experience. That is why we focus so heavily on our production team, client services and support, and providing turnkey frameworks for virtually every industry. Our frameworks offer competitive, collaborative, and solo gamification and reputation experiences that are supported with their own unique set of widgets and program design models. These enable our customers to design scalable, sustainable programs that have benefited by best practices and our learnings from our entire client base.

Badgeville in 2012—and beyond

Since its inception in 2010, Badgeville has risen to the top of the gamification industry and has fast become the gold standard for measuring and influencing consumer and employee behavior. With over 100 customers from around the globe, including some of the largest F1000 enterprises, we are by far the most widely deployed gamification platform.

According to Constellation Research, Inc. Principal Analyst and CEO Ray Wang, by 2013, “more than 50 percent of all social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification concept.” For Badgeville, this means a sizable increase in customers looking to experience an increase in user behavior, paid conversions, social sharing and user generated content. We experience this first hand every day in the calls we receive from new businesses looking to add smart gamification programs to their user experiences.

Badgeville – www.badgeville.com

Posted by startupbeat at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news:

Web/Content

Flingo raises $7m to make your TV smarter (via gigaom)

Exceptional Acquires Error Tracking Application Airbrake (via TechCrunch)

Ecommerce

Dwolla’s payment ambitions grow with $5M round (via gigaom)

Accel, SV Angel, Y Combinator Put $1.5M In Online Bank Payments Platform GoCardless (via TechCrunch)

Marketing/Advertising

Spongecell snaps up $10M for interactive Web ads (via VatorNews)

Enterprise

Dimension Data Acquires Telecom Expense Management Provider, Xigo

Gaming

Posted by startupbeat at 08:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news:

Web/Content

Pedestrian Map App, Lumatic, Raises $800K From Joi Ito And 500 Startups (via TechCrunch)

Social Ridesharing Pioneer Ridejoy Receives $1.3 Million in Seed Funding

Mobile

Mobeam Adds $1.5M To Series A Following Partnership With P&G (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

With $50M raised, Nicira disrupts Cisco and Juniper with network virtualization (via VentureBeat)

Posted by startupbeat at 11:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news roundup:

Ecommerce

Ticket aggregator TiqIQ raises $1.7M as it goes head to head with rival SeatGeek (via VentureBeat)

Stylistpick scores £11m in funding (via Econsultancy)

Enterprise

Sales Automation Company, Leads360, Secures $15M in Funding

Web/Content

Evernote’s First Institutional Investor Troika Sells Stake To Sequoia For Over 10X Return (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with David Koretz, CEO of Mykonos Software. The San Francisco–based company was founded in 2009 and recently raised $4 million in Series A funding.

SUB: Please describe what Mykonos is, and the value proposition you bring to web security.

Koretz: Mykonos is the smartest way to secure websites and web applications against hackers, fraud and theft. Our Web Intrusion Prevention System uses deception to detect, track, profile and prevent hackers in real-time. Unlike legacy signature-based approaches, Mykonos is the first technology that inserts thousands of detection points to proactively identify attackers before they do damage—without any false positives.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Koretz: Financial services, ecommerce, SaaS, and the Federal Government.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Koretz: We are the first web intrusion prevention system. We compete with other technologies that are concerned with protecting websites like web application firewalls.

SUB: What differentiates Mykonos from the competition?

Koretz: Mykonos uses deception to detect, track, profile and prevent hackers in real-time. Unlike legacy signature-based approaches, Mykonos is the first technology that inserts thousands of detection points to proactively identify attackers before they do damage—without any false positives.

SUB: When was the company founded?

Koretz: Mykonos Software was founded in 2009.

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

Koretz: The company’s genesis came from employees working at a SaaS company that was on the receiving end of hacks. In researching the market to protect the web application from hacks, there were two options available. First option was to scan the code and fix the vulnerabilities which is theoretically good but very difficult in practice. Second option was install a web application firewall which is a signature-based solution that can only defend against known attacks and is useless against unknown zero day attacks. Mykonos was built from the need to protect web applications and detect and prevent the behavior that leads to an attack.

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

Koretz: Building a product and company with limited resources.

SUB: You recently raised $4 million in Series A funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Koretz: The new funds will be used to improve the product by expanding security and engineering capabilities and increasing investment in sales and marketing.

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

Koretz: We will consider all options to strategically move the company forward.

SUB: What are your goals for Mykonos over the next year or so.

Koretz: 2012 will be focused on creating great customer experiences.

Mykonos – www.mykonossoftware.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ecommerce

Ex-Amazon.com manager lands $3M to bring late-night infomercial products to the Web (via GeekWire)

Little Black Bag Raises $2.75M From GRP, Chamath P., David Tisch And Others (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Social Rewards Closes $600,000 Seed Round, Exceeds Financing Goals

Gaming

Flaregames raises $7.9M from Accel for free-to-play mobile games (exclusive) (via VentureBeat)

Enterprise

ShoreTel Acquires Hosted Unified Communications Pioneer M5 Networks

Posted by startupbeat at 12:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A Q&A with Adzuna co-founder Doug Monro. The London–based company was founded in 2010.

SUB: Please describe what Adzuna is, and the value proposition you bring to the job search.

Monro: Adzuna is a next generation search engine for jobs. We help you find the perfect job, by bringing together all the vacancies on the web in one simple search engine, and then overlaying useful, unique features like social network integrations, that help you get hired with a little help from your friends, and salary stats and company reviews that help you zero in on the right place for your skills.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Monro: Initially, we are focusing on UK job search. We do not specialize in any particular job market sector as our search engine is comprehensive, although we find that our audience of ‘social early adopters’ tends to skew us a little towards graduates, media and digital candidates. We have plans to expand soon into the real estate and automotive verticals and also into international markets. 

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition? 

Monro: In jobs, our competition comes from other vertical search engines like Indeed, Jobrapido or Trovit, that also aggregate ads in one place.

SUB: What differentiates Adzuna from the competition?

Monro: Two main things: social and data.

By connecting to Adzuna with LinkedIn or Facebook, we allow you to find jobs at your friends companies, and get the inside scoop on the opportunity or even a referral from your first or second degree connections. This is a hugely powerful feature that connects the power of a full database of jobs—and your social graph—with the real, offline behavior of finding jobs through your network.

On data, we’re able to help people find the right jobs for them by using the information we gain from analyzing our large database of jobs to show statistics and trends on vacancies and salaries in their local job market—plus user added content on company interviews and ratings. This content really empowers users to make better decisions.

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

Monro: The idea came about in late 2010. Andrew Hunter, my co-founder, I worked together previously at Gumtree, the UK’s equivalent of Craigslist, and were chatting in a London pub one evening about classifieds search and how broken it was...and from there we started to think about how it could be made better and whether we could do that. Over the next couple of months we developed our ideas, then involved our lead developer George and coding—and seed fundraising—began in earnest in early 2011. 

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

Monro: Finding great engineering talent is always challenging, but we can’t complain as we have managed to get together a great small team of developers, split between London and Athens. Working with a distributed team has been surprisingly easy, thanks partly to tools like Skype, Dropbox, Jira, etc.

Building a critical mass of users on a shoestring budget is also hard to do in the early days of any startup, but we have experience of how to do this from previous companies and so far so good.

SUB: You recently raised (approximately) $800K in Series A funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Monro: Yes, we recently raised 500K GBP—about $800K USD—from Index Ventures and others. We’re very pleased to have such experienced and successful investors involved. We plan to invest the funds in further product innovation around social and data, and expansion into new verticals and countries.

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

Monro: We have no current plans to raise more outside funding, but if we see profitable expansion opportunities that call for it we would certainly reconsider. 

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

Monro: We aim to grow from hundreds of thousands to millions of monthly visitors, and to keep developing our product and bringing to market innovations that make it the best place to search for jobs—and other classified ads—by far. We want to build a proven model in terms of product, user engagement and revenue that we can roll out rapidly into other markets. And we want to have fun and build a great company we can all be proud of along the way.

Adzuna – www.adzuna.co.uk

Posted by startupbeat at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s technology funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Ecommerce

Vegas startup Rumgr raises $500K for a better, prettier Craigslist app (via VentureBeat)

Web/Content

Videoplaza pockets $12M for monetizing online video (via VatorNews)

Social Media

Bday Launches Gift Finder on Facebook, Announces $2 Million in Funding

Enterprise

Business intelligence startup Domo pulls in another $20M (via VentureBeat)

Posted by startupbeat at 11:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)