Starting a new business is typically demanding, especially raising the necessary amount of startup capital to get your dreams off the ground and running. Usually startup entrepreneurs secure funds from family, friends and mostly from their own funds when they bootstrap. Angel investment is a common second round of financing for start-ups. Venture capitalists are approached for larger funds. Startup funding is one of the first real challenges entrepreneurs face. These nine startups successfully secured over $80 million this week after a series of investor meetings and possibly presentations to existing and new investors.
# Influitive raised $7.3M in a Series A funding round. The round came from Hummer Winblad and Relay Ventures, along with Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Illuminate Ventures, Resolute.VC, Common Angels, and other angels.
# Duetto Research, which develops forecasting software for the travel and hospitality industry, raised $10M in a Series A funding. The funding was led by Battery Ventures and Altimeter Capital, and also included Thayer Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com.
# Storage technology developer Exablox raised $22M in two rounds of funding. The firm said the funds came after completing oversubscribed Series A and Series B funding rounds.
# Nor1, a developer of pricing and merchandising software used to help upsell hotel and resort amenities, raised $9M in a Series B funding, the company said today. The funding was led by Concur, the developer of travel and expense management software.
# Fitstar raised $5M in a seed funding round, to build a digital health and fitness platform. The funding was led by Google Venturs, and also included Advancit Capital, and FLOODGATE Fund.
# LUMO BodyTech, a developer of sensors, devices, and software which monitors a user’s posture to help improve back health and reduce back pain, raised $5M in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group.
# Signifyd raised $2M in a seed funding round, for developing a risk and fraud prevention platform for online e-commerce customers. The funding came from Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective, IA Ventures, QED Investors, Resolute.VC, Tekton Ventures and other angels.
# Puribus Networks, a developer of network virtualization hardware aimed at private and public cloud infrastructure, raised $23M in a Series C funding round. The round was led by Menlo ventures.
# Grockit, an online site which helps students with test prepration for such tests as the GMAT, SAT, ACT, LSE, and GRE, raised a strategic funding round, according to the company today. The investment was led by Discovery Communications. Size of the round was not announced, however, reports place the funding at around $20M.
