By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor
It’s the day after President Obama’s big jobs speech, and if anyone needed encouragement on the prospects for the U.S. economy, they need not look any further than the tech startup sector. If the flood of funding and acquisitions announcements is any indication, there is no trace of further slowdown in tech. And you know what they say, “what’s good for tech is good for America” (I have no idea if anyone has ever said it, but we all know it’s true).
The most significant news of the week was Google’s acquisition of restaurant review guide Zagat. Once again, Google makes an unexpected, bold and innovative move (reference its YouTube acquisition for the best example of this). Google is a strong player in local for sure. Look out Yelp and other local reviews sites. GE made GreenTech news this week, investing $22 million in energy efficient building maker Project Frog. Other notable funding announcements included an eye-popping $200 million for vehicle transaction data publisher TrueCar and an additional $20 million for medical office innovator One Medical Group.
Series A funding announcements this week:
Lanyrd – $1.4 million
Shoes4You – Undisclosed
Mashape – $1.5 million
FullContact – $1.5 million
Trunk Club – $11 million
SOS Online Backup – $3 million
Fingerprint – $1.4 million
FastCustomer – $750,000
Striiv – $6 million
On StartUp Beat this week, we featured Q&As with the CEO of enterprise mobile apps builder Taptera and enterprise open source software solutions provider OpenLogic. Finally, check out the Featured Startup Pitch by the CEO of hosted IT infrastructure monitoring firm Logic Monitor.
And finally, we enter the weekend with rumors of merger discussions between AOL and Yahoo!. My first and only thought so far about it is what the heck would that mashup look like?
