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Berlin Is Still Sexy But No Longer Poor – Earlybird Raises $100m For A $200m Fund
Apr 03, 12:06PM
It looks like Berlin, famously described by the city mayor as "poor but sexy", is now quite a bit less poor in the realm of early stage tech startup financing. Earlybird Venture Capital has announced the $100m first close of its fourth venture fund. The target fund size is $200m. The new fund will be dedicated to early-stage investments in "disruptive global consumer and enterprise internet and technology businesses originating from Europe, with an emphasis on German speaking countries." Much of that innovation is coming out of Berlin right now, which has become a hotbed for startups and a talent pool for locals, internationals and the highly-prized engineering talent close by in Eastern and Central Europe.Eventbrite: Facebook Drives More Ticket Sales Than Twitter And LinkedIn Across US And UK
Apr 03, 11:36AM
Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are becoming increasingly strong marketing platforms, and, eventually, we should start to see more metrics that show how effective all those likes, shares and RT's really are for businesses. (There are still precious few.) One company that's gotten an early start on that is Eventbrite, the online ticketing site, which today publishes some numbers that point to which social networks are giving it the best returns across its operations in the U.S. and UK.Quepasa And MyYearbook Rebrand As MeetMe
Apr 03, 11:00AM
When social networking companies myYearbook and Quepasa merged last year, myYearbook CEO Geoff Cook told employees that his goal was to "build an enduring, global brand for meeting new people." That's still the plan, but the company is announcing that it will build that brand under a new name — MeetMe. Cook (who's now COO) says both the myYearbook and Quepasa names don't quite capture the current vision. myYearbook started out as a social working site for high schoolers, and even though it evolved into more of a social discovery service — one that's increasingly mobile — the name still reflected its early roots. Meanwhile, Quepasa, which tries to do something similar for a Latin American audience, has a name suggesting a regional social network.YouDazzle Launches As A Simple File Sharing And Web Meeting Platform For SMBs
Apr 03, 11:00AM
A new startup, YouDazzle, is taking on the file sharing space today with the launch of its cloud-based collaboration, storage and online meeting platform. The company has also announced a round of seed funding from Chamath Palihapitiya's Social+Capital Partnership, and other undisclosed angels. The cloud based SaaS allows businesses to organize project or deal related files in a central online repository that customers or colleagues can access from anywhere and from any device; share large files that are too large to send via email; and conduct screen sharing and web meetings via YouDazzle.The Story of Skout: From Deadpool's Door to $22M Led By Andreessen Horowitz
Apr 03, 10:50AM
Eighteen months ago, it looked like the location wars were over. Foursquare had just closed a $20 million Series B round and rivals like Gowalla, Loopt and Brightkite weren't having the same buzz or traction. Meanwhile, Christian Wiklund's company Skout was down to a skeleton crew of three people after burning much of the $4.6 million it had raised since being founded in 2007. "We were close to going under. We had no traction," Wiklund said. "But we were really stubborn and there was no way we were going to let that happen." A first-time entrepreneur, Wiklund and his co-founder Niklas Lindstrom put their heads down. In 2009, they changed the app to focus on a new demographic: young people who wanted to meet strangers and singles who wanted to flirt.The Limits Of Social Influence? Big Ben Is Influential On… Drugs
Apr 03, 10:45AM
This is a guest post by Monty Munford. Last week I found myself in a sports bar in London's West End. I was standing next to a couple being interviewed by Middle Eastern TV news channel Al-Jazeera who were giving their (inane, alas) views on a football match between two teams from Liverpool. This experience was far removed from the one I'd had two hours previously when in the neighbouring cinema I had attended the UK première of "The Price of Kings: Yasser Arafat", a film about the life of the Palestinian leader. This juxtaposition is typical of a 'proper' night out in London, the new melting pot of Europe, but it had happened not because of any random connection or because I liked football. The invitation for the première was down to my alleged influence on social media and had come from PeerIndex and its new PeerPerks marketing service.Dropcam Begins Shipping The $149 Dropcam HD WiFi Security Camera
Apr 03, 10:00AM
Dropcam is back with its second and most advanced security camera. Introduced back at CES 2012, the Dropcam HD is finally ready to ship and delivered within 5-7 business days. It's quite a good bargin, too. Not much has changed since we first looked at the unit in early January. This model does 30 fps, night vision, two-way audio and 16x the resolution as the original Dropcam Echo. The live video is accessible through a cloud service for $9.99 a month. Dropcam also offers a DVR functionality. At $149 it's priced very aggressively against other products with a smaller feature set.More Developments For Amazon's In-App Payment System For Appstore, But More Work Needed
Apr 03, 9:33AM
When we interviewed Ray Anderson, the CEO of mobile payments company Bango last month and asked him when we would see one of its key customers, Amazon, roll out its own mobile payment service, his cool answer was "in due course." A report out today from Bloomberg points to the company getting warmer on the idea. Bloomberg says that app publishers have been trialling Amazon's payment service for around the last month. The service would cover both one-off purchases as well as subscriptions through apps. And, like Google and Apple, Amazon plans to take a 30 percent commission on payments made using the platform.Pinterest Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Is Now EIR At Andreessen Horowitz
Apr 03, 7:26AM
More developments for Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra, who we reported yesterday was leaving Pinterest as Ben Silbermann officially took helm as CEO. Sciarra is going VC and joining Andreessen Horowitz as entrepreneur-in-residence. The move follows the bigger trend of startup execs/founders getting snapped up by the VC firms, to help them get a bit smarter in how they work with their portfolio companies. Just yesterday, First Round Capital hired Scribd's Jack Leidlein as head of talent.Aframe Goes After Avid With A Fresh $7 Million And A Very Big Cloud
Apr 03, 7:03AM
Pop quiz! How much is spent on making Television shows in the US annually? It's $300 billion or there-abouts. That's a lot of video. Petabytes of data and more. Next question! How are all those shows edited and produced? Well, it's almost all put though big-ass editing suites and in-office servers from the likes of Avid. Lastly, how many tech startups have gone after this TV market? No, I'm not taking about Brightcove and your little video podcast. I mean one that goes after Avid and that TV industry. Answer: None. Why? It's just very, very tough. But now one has. Aframe, the SaaS/cloud video production platform which has been bubbling under in Europe since 2010, has today raised a new $7 million Series A round of funding led by Octopus Investments and Eden Ventures, with participation by existing investor, Northstar Ventures. This is a large Series A in European terms, but one which also sees Aframe launching into North America with operations in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Yes, folks, these guys are taking on the television production world with all guns blazing, already working with companies such as the BBC and MTV.Can Two Young Entrepreneurs Solve The High Cost Of Hearing?
Apr 03, 4:18AM
It's not an unfamiliar story: There's a niche market, which despite its relatively large size, goes unnoticed by most entrepreneurs and investors, because, simply put, it's not sexy. For this and countless other reasons, as time goes by, legacy models and hardware, fragmentation, and high prices prevail. In short, it begs for new blood, new ideas, and a fresh perspective. The same can be said for countless industries, but it's especially true for many of the markets within the bloated, backwards beast we know as the health industry. Case in point: Hearing aids. Of the 27 million Americans who qualify for a hearing device, 75 percent choose not to purchase one -- only one in seven Americans over 50 years old who need a hearing aid actually wear one. The problem is a sizable one, so former Stanford University classmates Sam Tanzer and Ross Porter decided to do something about it. In early 2011, they founded a startup called Embrace Hearing to apply some entrepreneurial pressure to the situation.Mobile Social Gaming Company Dragonplay Raises $14M From Accel To Expand To iOS
Apr 03, 4:00AM
Dragonplay, a free-to-play social games developer for Android and Facebook, has raised $14 million Series A funding from Accel Partners, Founder Collective and Entrée Capital. The Israeli company was founded in 2010 by Sharon Tal. Dragonplay specializes in multi-platform social game experiences in the cards, casino and board game category and is best known for its Android app Live Holdem Poker Pro. The studio's games are mainly free-to-play and use in-app purchases of virtual good for monetization. Live Holdem Poker Pro is frequently the top ranked application on Android's Google Play, and has over 12 million installs with more than 2 million monthly active players.Online Community For Small Businesses Manta Raises $44M From Norwest Venture Partners
Apr 03, 2:55AM
Manta, an online community dedicated entirely to small business, has raised $44 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners. This brings the company's total funding to $61 million. With this investment NVP's Jon Kossow and David Su have joined Manta's board of directors, which includes previous investors Athenian Venture Partners and Reservoir Venture Partners. Manta is an online community meets social network for small business owners. The network aims to help these businesses easily gain an online presence, increased visibility with customers and prospects and ultimately increase sales. Owners can create, manage and share an online profile for their business; promote their companies, products and services; as well as build and engage with other businesses on the platform. The company aims to provide these services for businesses who have less than $5,000 in marketing spend.How Does Y Combinator Scale Y Combinator?
Apr 03, 1:54AM
The startups that presented at Y Combinator's Demo Day last week were remarkable in their own right, but perhaps the most striking thing was the sheer number of them. With 66 companies and 180 founders in this season's batch, the auditorium at Mountain View's Computer History Museum was practically bursting with angel investors and reps from every notable venture firm last week. And that was just the latest class. Since 2005, Y Combinator has since spawned more than a dozen batches of startups including Dropbox and Airbnb. The last two classes alone have created more than 120 companies. So it raises the question of how Y Combinator has been able to grow in size while sustaining both the quality of startups it churns out and the value it provides for founders. Essentially, how do you scale a company that creates companies?BrightEdge: Here's How To Make Paid And Organic Search Work Together
Apr 03, 1:14AM
If your company shows up in both the organic and paid search results of a given search term, is that a good thing? Or a waste of money? That's something that Google itself has been researching, and today, SEO service BrightEdge took a closer look at one advertiser's approach for balancing search strategies. Specifically, it released a case study about how hotel marketing agency HeBS Digital used integrated tools from both BrightEdge and Adobe to manage organic and paid search results for Loews Hotels. The strategy supposedly paid off in a 63 percent increase in revenue from online room bookings and 44 percent ROI increase on targeted keywords.Roomorama And Lofty Merge Online Rental Sites, Take $2.1M Seed Round From ProFounders, Lerer Media
Apr 03, 12:37AM
As a wave of new hopefuls enter the online travel market using social media elements to stand out from the pack, two sites that focus on vacation rental accommodation, Roomorama and Lofty, are merging to scale up, and they're picking up a $2.1 million seed round to help them along the way. The list of new investors in Roomorama, as the merged company will be called, include names that are already connected to the online travel market, including Jose Marin (investor in Russian travel site HipWay and hotel booking site GuestMob); PROfounders Capital, Lerer Media Ventures, and Thrive Capital Partners.First Round Capital Brings On Scribd's Jack Leidlein As Head Of Talent
Apr 03, 12:11AM
Increasingly VC firms are functioning as one-stop-shops for all your starting up needs; Some have dubbed this the Andreessen-ification of venture, where the definition of investment becomes more about resources beyond just cash, as money is easier to come by for startups than connections and experience. Like A16Z, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital is hitching its horse to this trend, bringing on Scribd's Head of Business Operations and Recruiting Jack Leidlein as its new Head of Talent.Keen On… Clay Christensen: How To Escape The Innovator's Dilemma [TCTV]
Apr 03, 12:07AM
Why do so many great companies fail? Professor Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School argued they fail because of something he called The Innovator's Dilemma - a term he popularized to describe the way in which smart companies become prisoners of their own innovation. So is it possible to escape the innovator's dilemma? I had the honor of interviewing Clay at The Economist's Innovation event in Berkeley last week where the great man talked to me about how Google might escape the innovator's dilemma, why he worries about Apple's future, how to effectively innovate in education and healthcare and why most business school professors get the economy so wrong.Two Months Removed From AddressGate, Path Starts Hashing, Anonymizing Data
Apr 02, 11:53PM
Back in early February, Path met with some serious backlash when Arun Thampi revealed that the social app was uploading address book data without explicit permission from its users. Path responded by taking Mike Arrington's advice, deleting the entire collection of user-uploaded contact information from its servers, along with an app update which added an opt-in feature to prompt users for permission before using its data. Today, Path is re-upping its commitment to showing users that it takes privacy seriously, announcing via blog post the release of Path 2.1.1 that the latest version enhances security by "hashing user data so that it is anonymized." According to the post, this includes last names, phone numbers, email address, Twitter handles, and Facebook IDs -- all of which will be anonymized.1DollarScan Improves Its Book Digitization Service With Fine Tune and Dropbox
Apr 02, 11:48PM
1DollarScan — the service that offers to digitize books and documents for as little as, yes, $1 — is now promising an improved experience through a service called Fine Tune. The company is a subsidiary of Bookscan Japan, and it launched last August with the goal of bringing the Bookscan service to the U.S. market. Users send their books, documents, photos, and other printed material to the 1DollarScan office, which then handles the scan process. For a price of $1 per "set" (for books, one set means 100 pages; for documents, it's 10), you get a PDF that you can read on your smartphone or tablet. Don't send any physical copies that you're particularly attached to, however, because books will have their spines removed for scanning, and all of the printed materials will be recycled two weeks after the scan.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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