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These 7 Companies Raised Over $140 Million In Funding This Week

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:46:47 +0000

SoundCloud, which develops an online service to allow users to record, promote, and share sounds with others raised funding reported to be worth $50M. The round was led by led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GGV Capital, along with others.
Bionovo, a publicly held developer of pharmaceuticals for treating both menopause and cancer raised $5M in a private investment. The funding came from Socius CG II, Ltd, a Bermuda-based investment firm which is part of Socius Capital Group, LLC.
Accellion raised $12M in a Series 3 round of funding. The round came from private equity firm Riverwood Capital. Accellion is a provider of cloud-based, file sharing and collaboration service aimed at the corporate and government market.
Lithium Technologies, which develops social marketing software for brands and businesses raised $53.4M in a Series D round of funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Assocaites.
Spool, which develops software which allows users to save articles, images, and videos for viewing on mobile devices has raised $1M in a seed funding round.
Los Gatos-based SuVolta, a developer of CMOS-based, lower power IC technology raised $17.6M in a funding round.
Flotype, a developer of technology for real-time messaging between enterprise applications raised $1.4M in a seed funding round. The Y Combinator firm received the funding from Ignition Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Yuri Milner, Salesforce, and Y Combinator.

Apply Now: Y Combinator Applications for Winter 2012 Funding Are Now Open

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:58:59 +0000

San Francisco based startup incubator Y Combinator has today announced via Twitter that applications for Winter 2012 YC Funding are now open. Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in March 2005. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year. In exchange, they take an average of about 6% of the company’s equity.

If you want to apply, please submit your application online by 8 pm PT on October 10, 2011. Groups that submit early have a significant advantage because we have more time to read their applications.

On October 31, Y Combinator will invite the groups that seem most promising to meet in Mountain View during November 12-16. They will reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses.

As of June 2011, Y Combinator had funded 316 startups. The number of startups funded in each cycle has been gradually increasing. The first cycle in summer 2005 had eight startups. In the summer 2011 cycle, there were more than 60.

The deadline for winter 2012 applications is October 10th.

Kicksend Lets You Send Files of Any Size To Any Email Address

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:20:49 +0000

Kicksend allows friends and family to easily share files in real-time on the web, mobile, and desktop. Kicksend’s desktop, web, and mobile apps allow you browse through the photos, videos and other files that people have sent you and also allows you to send files effortlessly to multiple people at once.

As well as sharing files with one individual, you are also able to create lists of people to securely share with. You can drag & drop sets of files at once and everybody on your list starts securely downloading the file instantly without having to manually approve the downloads.

How it works
Start by downloading one of Kicksend’s clients for your desktop or smartphone. You can choose the web interface you like. Next you start adding friends by their email addresses. You can drag the files into the Kicksend interface and drop it on a friend’s email address.Friends receive an email notification when their files are ready. To send files to multiple friends, create email groups and drop files on them.

Kicksend is currently free for up to 1GB of sending bandwidth, and, according to Kicksend Co-founders Pradeep Elankumaran and Brendan Lim, the startup’s future monetization strategy consists of adding premium features, wherein users will likely get a 10GB capacity per month, as well as delivery alerts, and a full set of detailed analytics.

Kicksend launched in beta this month, and its one of the most recent summer batch of Y Combinator companies.

Codecademy Is The New Interactive Way To Learn How To Code

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:33:02 +0000

Y-Combinator unveiled its 63 graduates at the just ended demo day for its Summer 2011 class. Codecademy, one of the startups that graduated from the summer class is seeking to teach users how to program computer code in an interactive and social way.

“Often, people learn how to code by starting with a side project and figuring out things as you go along. So that’s what we’ve done with Codecademy. The interactive interface gives the user points for completing exercises and keeps them motivated.” Codecademy’s reward system comes in the form of badges, which successful pupils can triumphantly share across the web through Twitter and Facebook. Zach Sims(co-founder told wired

How it works
At Codecademy.com you’ll be prompted to complete the first lesson, which involves printing out and finding the length (in letters) of your name. It isn’t until you’ve made it through a few lessons that the site prompts you to create a user account, when it reminds you that if you don’t register, all of your progress will be lost.

Codecademy now has more than 200,000 users(users who have actually interacted with the app)

Y Combinator Graduates 63 Startups, 31 Presenting To Investors

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:44:34 +0000

Y Combinator today is graduating 63 new companies, its largest and most biggest class ever. 31 of the startups are presenting themselves on the record for investors at the new Y Combinator headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

“We didn’t become less selective,” Y Combinator founder Paul Graham said of the latest class, his program’s thirteenth. “We funded three percent of the applicants just like we always do. It’s just a larger percentage of the total pool of start-ups is coming through Y Combinator.”

Some of the graduates include:

Aisle50: Groupon for groceries — the future of CPG promotions.

Interstate: Project management software that lets you share development roadmaps with customers.

MixRank: Competitive intelligence for online advertising.

Picplum: We automatically send premium photo prints for parents with young children. They send us their best photos, we print & send them to grandparents and family once a month.

Launchpad Toys: We’re building digital toys that empower kids to create, learn, and share their ideas with friends and family around the world — the Adobe Creative Suite for kids.

Interviewstreet: Interviewstreet helps companies hire the best programmers.

Debteye: Automated debt counseling.

DoubleRecall: A new captcha-like ad type that monetizes 12x better than banners.

Envolve: A customizable chat system for your website.

Quartzy: Life science labs spend $9BB (US) on consumables, yet they use Excel to manage inventory and orders. Quartzy provides free inventory and ordering software, aggregating demand and creating a marketplace.

Munch On Me: Daily deals for food.

Paperlinks: Paperlinks is the QR code infrastructure for businesses.

PageLever: Analytics that help businesses be more effective on Facebook. Customers include YouTube, MTV, etc.

MarketBrief: Marketbrief takes SEC filings and puts them through a system of humans and computers to create an easy to understand article containing all important information from the filing.

Snapjoy: Snapjoy stores and organizes the world’s photos.

Opez: Yelp for individual service professionals.

Bushido: Hosted ecosystem and app store for web apps.

Stypi: Stypi is Google Wave done right.

Proxino: Proxino is a cloud platform that makes it easy to debug and deploy JavaScript code.

MongoHQ: MongoHQ allows you to quickly and easily create MongoDB databases for use in your applications. We offer data hosting and management, performance monitoring, scaling and optimization.

ZigFu: ZigFu is an app store for motion control apps. Developers use our tools to create gesture-controlled user interfaces and full-body motion games.

Parse: Heroku for mobile — power your mobile apps with our cloud platform. Add a backend to your mobile app without servers.

Science Exchange: Science Exchange is an online marketplace for outsourcing science experiments. We’re improving the efficiency of scientific research by making it easy for scientists to access experimental expertise across research facilities.

Verbling: Connect language learners to native speakers for verbal practice through in-browser, real-time live video. If you’re learning Spanish, we’ll connect you to an Argentine who’s learning English, for example.

MobileWorks: MobileWorks is crowdsourcing, reinvented. Businesses can outsource work to our crowd in 3 clicks and developers can add human intelligence to their applications.

Vidyard: YouTube for Business.

Tagstand: NFC platform that makes it easy for developers and businesses to incorporate near field communication into their apps.

Kicksend: Realtime file sharing and delivery for friends and family.

Vimessa: Video voicemail — the ease of SMS with the magic of video.

Can’tWait!: We use trailers to get users to tell us what upcoming media releases they want to watch or buy, and then sell it to them when the media is released.

Codecademy: Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.

[Apply To Attend] 2011 Startup School

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:57:54 +0000

Are you a hacker who has thought about one day starting a startup? Have you already started it? Then you’re invited to a free, one-day startup school this October 29 at Stanford. Y Combinator have a range of experts speaking about startups from their own experience. The purpose of this event is to teach technical people about startups.

The event is free, but you are requested to fill out a brief application form if you want to attend. The application deadline is noon PT on September 28, and acceptances will be issued on October 4.

2011 Speakers (So Far) includes: Marc Andreessen Partner, Andreessen Horowitz; Founder, Ning, Opsware, Netscape. Ron Conway Partner, SV Angel. Paul Graham Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb. Drew Houston Founder, Dropbox. Max Levchi Founder, Slide , Paypal. James Lindenbaum Founder, Heroku. Mike Moritz Partner, Sequoia Capital.

Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University.
When: 29 October 2011, 9:00 am.

InDinero Is Mint.com For The Small Business Owner

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:44:21 +0000

inDinero creates software to help small businesses better track and manage their finances. Indinero aims to provide its users with instant insights into the finances of their companies. inDinero was launched by Jessica Mah and Andy Su in July 2010 as a new way for businesses to see their money. Having run their own businesses before, they decided that there had to be a better way to keep track of their finances.

Like Mint, Indinero uses Yodlee to allow businesses to transferring bank and credit card account information from financial institutions. But Indinero’s site caters to the financial health and needs of small businesses, breaking out data that addresses cashflow, runway, spending, profits and more.

How inDinero works
Once you enter your account information, inDinero will fetch all of your bank statements and organize your transactions into different categories. The app then update your budgets and provide you with an easy-to-use financial dashboard.

inDinero has raised over $1 Million from investors such as Y Combinator.

12 Reasons Why Every Entrepreneur Should Own A Blog

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:50:17 +0000

The best part of blogging is the people you will meet
You Will Meet Other Smart People
Each article that you publish is a synthesized thought process that may click with other entrepreneurs instantly.
You might make a new acquaintance, a new co-founder for the future, potential investor, hire,etc.
Being an entrepreneur is about finding other smart (hopefully smarter) people to collaborate with and writing frequently helps make this happen.
Writing helps to generate enthusiasm and passion for your business and the industry you write about
Your experiences will provide insightful knowledge to other entrepreneurs
Experienced entrepreneurs out there such as Paul Graham, Dharmesh, Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky have prevented young entrepreneurs from making mistakes that they might have made otherwise.
By writing you get a chance to establish domain expertise by sharing it with the world.
You develop the ability to communicate more clearly to an audience of many, by providing a logical argument with a unique angle to your position.
It synthesize your thoughts into actionable goals which can create the “buzz” that is required to attract clients to your business
Writing helps you to go closer to interesting people which are otherwise not reachable.

Some of The Best Online Resources (Blogs, Articles, etc.) On Startups

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:33:59 +0000

Articles

Andy Rachleff on Entrepreneurship from a VC perspective: http://iinnovate.blogspot.com/20…

Eric Ries on Building a Lean Startup: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/… (more at http://www.startuplessonslearned…)

Achieving Product-Market Fit (Horowitz): http://bhorowitz.com/2010/03/20/…

Dave McClure’s, Startup Metrics for Pirates. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i…

13 revenue models: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/10…

Sequoia Capital (VC Fund) on how to write a business plan: http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas

Legal resources: 101 on Stocks / Options by David E. Weekly: http://www.scribd.com/doc/559450…, http://www.seriesseed.com/, http://www.orrick.com/practices/…

Lists:
These contain great additional resources and links.

Ryan Spoon’s “Must-read Quora posts on Entrepreneurship”: http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2010/1…

Andrew Chen’s list: http://andrewchenblog.com/list-o…

Tom Eisenmann’s (HBS prof) “Compilation of the best Web Advice”: http://platformsandnetworks.blog…

YCombinator startup library: http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

Khosla Ventures: http://www.khoslaventures.com/kh…

Business Insider has a top 10 blogs for entrepreneurs: http://www.businessinsider.com/1…

365 Days of Startups – http://www.365daysofstartups.com

Entrepreneurdex -http://www.entrepreneurdex.com

The Combined Value of Top 21 Y Combinator Companies Is $4.7 Billion

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:47:42 +0000

In Paul Graham’s latest article on Y Combinator Numbers, he answered a question posed to him in his recent interview on how YC is doing. He stated that the best thing Y Combinator can do at this stage is to use the acquisition prices of the companies that have been acquired and try to estimate the current values of the rest.

The standard test of how well a company is doing is its value. So the best measure of something like Y Combinator is the average value of the companies it funds, he wrote.

That’s not as hard as it sounds he said, because like any portfolio of startups ours has a pretty steep power law distribution. If we can produce accurate estimates of the values of the top 10%, we’ll have a sufficiently accurate estimate of the total value.

He further stated that the combined value of the top 21 companies is $4.7 billion.

$4.7 billion / 210 = $22.4 million, so the average value of startups we’ve funded is about $22.4 million.

After the analysis Paul stated that “Of course that could be cut in half tomorrow. Startup valuations are even more volatile than ordinary equities. But at least we now have a measure of how we’re doing. And unless the top VC funds as a whole lose money, this number should be a lower bound on actual exit valuations.”
Paul Graham:
The real lesson here though is how long it takes to measure performance in this business. We’re 6 years in, and we could easily be off by 3x in either direction. Startup outcomes are unpredictable, and the outcomes of their investors doubly so, because it’s hard to say whether the big successes are repeatable, or if the investors just got lucky. Even 6 years in, all we can say is that the numbers look encouraging so far