Today’s early-stage startup funding and acquisitions news:
Commerce
BuyReply is adding an interesting new twist to ecommerce, and today announced that it has secured $1 million in Seed funding from Valar Ventures and Square Peg Ventures. The Austrailia-based startup allows consumers to make purchases from offline media (TV, radio, magazines, etc.) via text message, email or Twitter. BuyReply was founded in 2011. More on the funding, from The Next Web.
UK-based Teddle has landed £255K from a group of Angels for its home cleaner search and booking service. The company was founded in early-2012 as a general local services provider, and pivoted later in the year to focus exclusively on home cleaning services, according to TechCrunch.
After just recently launching its car rental service at San Francisco’s SFO airport, FlightCar has closed a $5.5 million Series A funding round. Investors include General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky, and Ryan Seacrest’s Seacrest Global Group. FlightCar allows privately-owned vehicles to be made available for rental by their owners at reduced rates compared to car rental companies (don’t worry—the company includes a $1 million insurance policy with all rented cars). Here’s more on the funding, from TechCrunch.
Mobile
Google has acquired Knight Foundation-backed startup Behav.io, according to GigaOm. Behav.io is a mobile data company that turns Andriod phones into ‘smart sensors’ that allow for behavior analysis of users. The startup’s co-founder and CEO is a former product manager for Andriod.
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