Funding's and Exits

Thursday, September 1, 2011

NFC mobile advertising startup Tapit raises seed funding

Tapit is a new mobile advertising startup, founded in March 2011, that facilitates the sharing and delivery offer NFC-enabled phone by simply clicking anywhere Tapit, you can find the logo.

The company is currently raises seed round of financing from Sydney angels in record time – just 22 days from the field until the round was signed to. This is the quickest investment to date for Angels, Sydney, not-for-profit membership Organization for Angels, which usually invests in Sydney-based startups.

NFC (near field communication), short-range wireless technology, is often associated with mobile payments and mobile wallets these days, as a new way to enable the purchase to the cash. But this is just one of many cases of possible uses for technology that can also support things like file sharing and media between devices, advertising, ticketless deals and much more. It can even be used to perform an action in a NTT DOCOMO TAP "follow" offer, which allows two Twitter users to each other simply by clicking the phone.

The idea is to use the Tapit NFC for use in marketing campaigns, working with agencies, brands, handset manufacturers and carriers. Marketing services include mobile commerce, coupon distribution, ticket sales, surveys and reviews, content delivery, contests and social community (e.g. tap here to "like" us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter).

The company is already involved in several campaigns this year – one for a group of radio Nova Australian radio network billboard JCDecaux and another for Australia's channel 10 TV show "LATVIA" and the third with NFC-based sales in shopping malls.

Says director Jamie Kaninghèm Tapit, speed, which was closed in this round is the approval group Tapit, and business models that we have created around our unique NFC technology. All whom we meet likes the idea of Tapit, it is addictive.

NFC, indeed, will step up from the now ubiquitous barcode scanning technology, which involves the use of Smartphone applications to scan QR codes via camera phone. Unfortunately the NFC usually requires accompanying chip, built into the phone itself. Due to this requirement, it is now back, a limited number of supported phones.

Nevertheless, analysts bullish on NFC in the future, with ABI, predicting 35 million phones to 2012, and Frost & Sullivan, assessment of about 868 million by the year 2015.

Tapit conditions in seed investment were not disclosed, but the Fund normally invests sidecar Angels Sydney between $ 100 K-$ 500 K in its portfolio companies.

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Quixey raises US $ 3.8 million, for functional search engine for your applications

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Quixey, on the basis of the Palo Alto startup that builds functional search engine for your applications, today announced that it closed the US $ 3.8 million series a funding round. Investment venture partners led the WI Harper group and the United States, with the participation of Webb investment network, along with subsequent investments, Eric Schmidt innovation. Series round adds to Quixey $ 400 K, grew in April from innovation endeavours to attract investment to $ 4.2 million.

We've all heard (and maybe even prototyping) quip "there is an app for that." It's really excellent quality of the Mobile revolution: there really is an app for just about everything you can think of, from call taxis for managing schedule scan for cancer or heart murmors skin. But it's also overwhelming, and find the application you want is not easy. There are a lot of noise and a lot of flawed approaches to app engine.

Quixey entered the game with the intent to build a new type of search, molded specifically for the unique features of the search for these everywhere, but sometimes elusive apps. Their decision came up with "functional search", which not only scans the major App stores, but blogging crawls, review sites, forums and social media sites to create a truly comprehensive picture of what the application can be done through reviews, Word of mouth and demos.

Quixey for search engine enables the user to enter queries like "baseball report and get a list of applications that provide only that (which they can then filter by platform). And the best part search Zarins Windows and Mac apps, iGoogle, extensions, and much more. It's not just the iOS and Android.

Although the Quixey seemingly to compete with the likes of Chomp and other, startup also has added value offers in the nutritional status of the search for other App stores, search engines and Web sites — just like Google — to facilitate the diffusion of its search engine for third-party sites throughout the Internet.

So it comes as no surprise then that Eric Schmidt innovation Ventures invests in search a great application. Attraction of external information and data from blogs, review sites and beyond, really adds an additional level of depth search applications (especially in being independent of the platform), as well as nutrition search through Web sites gives Quixey the ability to scale and be mixed with the very place it scans. Startup will use its new investment to continue achieving partnership with App stores and other app a great third party resources, and teammate Quixey, there are more than 25 potential partnerships in the pipeline. More partners, the more effective it becomes search engine.

This is an interesting new approach this "functional search, and from my experience so far, works as advertised. Chimes to let us know what you think. More about Quixey here.

Quixey is a functional search engine for your applications. Use the applications in your daily life. You are using Google apps on your phone, in your browser, social networking and ...

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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Cisco acquires collaboration software Maker Versly

Robin Wauters is currently staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. In addition to its activities, professional blogging, he is an entrepreneur, the organizer of the event, from time to time the Council consultant and an angel investor, but most importantly champion full launch. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found from his home or ... ? Read More

Cisco today announced that it has acquired San Francisco launch Versly, a privately held company that develops collaboration tools that integrate with Microsoft Office applications.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but all the Versly staff will be integrated into the Cisco collaboration software group (CSG) to the end of the purchase.

Versly builds plug-ins that allow groups of people to collaborate around content within Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and e-mail.

From the looks of it service remains private beta, so this is a quick way to Versly.

Here's how Murali Sitaram, Vice President and General Manager, Cisco's CSG buy resin:

"Cooperation is the main priority in Cisco. With this acquisition we are strengthening our offers of cooperation and improving the user experience by integrating social technologies in business individuals and group applications at work. "

Versly and software will be integrated into the victim as Cisco Quad, Jabber and WebEx.

According to the characteristics of their CrunchBase Versly was supported by seed funding from Accel Partners, increased, core enterprises, 500 startups and a pair of Angel investors, including Scott Dietzen, Kenny Van Zant, Jonathan Katzman and Rasool RAYANI.

The company was started by former BEA and Sun exec Benjamin Renault and former Yahoo-er Erik Eccles. The rest of the team here in detail.

Versly integrates with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, making it easy for groups to stay organized and on track is always and everywhere.

Cisco develops and sells equipment maintenance, software, networks and communications. Products are divided into five brands: Linksys, Cisco, WebEx, IronPort and Scientific Atlanta. Cisco was founded in. ..

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Russian giant Yandex search gets social news startup Tweeted times»

Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired a startup enterprise "Times" Tweeted that lets people create custom online "newspaper" of their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but ESPN Sports said it aims to continue to offer social news service and that the whole team "Times" Tweeted to join search engine company.

Tweeted once co-founded Maxim Grinev and Maria Grineva, computer scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and others.

Its users include celebrities like Snoop Dogg Alyssa Milano and Lance Weiler.

Yandex, which became public in May and is currently estimated at just shy of 10 billion dollars, plans to use the technology acquired from The Times, Tweeted to increase its search and content services with information from social networks.

This is the third Company Yandex acquired in the past nine months – his most recent purchases include single sign-on plugin maker Loginza and WebVisor in technology of analysis of behaviors and commands.

Tweeted once, formerly called the Twitter times competes with social news curation service Paper.li, which itself has raised more than $ 2 million in funding.

Another company operating in this space — Summify.

Yandex is an Internet technology company that operates in Russia and CIS countries. This is the largest Russian and seventh largest in the world of Internet searching. "Yandex" is an acronym for. ..

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Former PayPal CEO of Intuit raises $ 25 m for "new generation" financial consultant

Personal capital came out of stealth mode today on the "create a new model for financial services" and announced that he raised only 25 million dollars of venture funding. The funding includes a series a round led by institutional venture partners and series b round led by Venrock with NVS, also investing again.

The company is not quite ready to launch yet, how can you say with sparse website, but said that he would soon be debuting Advisor that provides custom investment management, banking and personal finance services built around each customer a unique and complete financial situation.

Personal capital manages private investor and former PayPal and Intuit's chief exec Bill Harris (CEO), EverBank co-founder and former Fidelity Investments personal trust company President, Rob Foregger (Chief Strategy Officer) and former E-loan CIO Jay Shah (CIO).

The company is based in Redwood City, California.

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Salesforce.com backs cloud solutions company Appirio world domination plans

Solution provider Appirio cloud this morning announced that it will expand at the international level to better serve its customers in the markets of Europe and Asia.

The expansion, which the company says, will be implemented through a combination of organic and inorganic growth, funded by the strategic investment from two existing investors: VC firm GGV capital and partners of Salesforce.com.

Appirio works with organizations, such as Facebook, NYU, Thomson Reuters and Home Depot to integrate and extend cloud applications and platforms like Google, Salesforce.com and workday. This month, Appirio celebrates its 5 year anniversary, and the company claims to have over 1 million people in the cloud since its inception.

The first International Office was opened in Tokyo, Japan, at the end of the 2008 year.

Earlier this year announced the acquisition of Appirio Infowelders, full-service Salesforce.com implementation consultancy firm (VMG).

One of the company's high-profile supporters, Sequoia Capital, apparently were not involved in the latest funding round of Appirio, which is not disclosed in the company.

Appirio, a cloud solution provider offers products and professional services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud computing. With more than 170 corporate clients is Appirio ...

Salesforce is enterprise cloud computing company that provides software for businesses on a subscription basis. The company is best known for its decision at the request of the management of customer relationships (CRM). Salesforce ...

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Accel has more than $ 30 m in digital marketing platform for auto industry Dealer.com

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney advocacy and community relations in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where it was ... ? Read More

Accel Partners has made a major investment in Dealer.com, a company that provides marketing solutions SaaS for auto dealers. Accel partner Todd Maclean will join the Board of Directors of the company as part of the deal, which is North of $ 30 million.

Based in Burlington, VT, Dealer.com sells SaaS application that manages the Web presence, auto dealers from beginning to end. Features include management of SEO tools for online advertising, online video, social media, lead management, inventory and marketing performance analytics. The company works with independent dealers, franchises, advertising agency and much more.

The recent shift towards purchases of cars and the success of sites like eBay mobile dealer Seeing success. Revenues reached $ 85 million in 2010, 60% increase over 2009, and more than three times the level of 2008, and the company expects to pass the $ 100 million in revenue in the year 2011.

McLean said that this investment is consistent with the Accel growth fund financing rapidly growing companies and theme true entrepreneurs who have built a reliable company and a great culture.

In the number of clients include Subaru of New England, American Suzuki Motor Corporation, Jaguar, Audi, BMW, Fletcher Jones Automotive Group, which has the largest Mercedes Benz dealership in the United States, as well as Gurley Leep car group and Napleton automobile group.

Dealer.com previously rasied 5 million dollars for funding year 2010.

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