Recent Tech Funding: OnRequest Images, Investopedia, Personal Bee, And Rivals.com

By Amit Chowdhry ● Apr 13, 2007

$9 Million
From the land that brought you Boeing, Microsoft and Starbuck’s comes good news for Seattle-based custom imagery website: OnRequest Images. The funding came from Menlo Ventures and previous investors, Frazier Technology Ventures and Maveron LLC.

The amount of third-round funding is $9 million.

“Menlo Ventures is proud to lead this round of funding for OnRequest Images,” said Menlo Ventures founder and Managing Dir., H. DuBost Montgomery. “Having spent 30 years working with companies in the technology and communications industries, I understand the tremendous workflow and productivity improvements OnRequest Images is delivering to corporations. Leveraging its proprietary OnProâ„¢ production technology, which streamlines the complex process of creating, sharing, and managing custom imagery, brand marketers can now have custom brand-aligned image libraries to complete their brand marketing strategies.”

OnRequest Images serves high-end clients in the Fortune 100 and employs 1,600 photographers.  On the OnRequest website, there is a case study of the brand imagery created for T-Mobile.

Acquisition
Forbes Media, a company that is known for publishing lists of the world’s richest powerful men and women, has acquired a Canadian company that owns finance resource website, Investopedia.com. Investopedia gets over 1.5 million visits and has over 15 million page impressions per month. Investopedia is essentially a guide for Stock Quotes and financial exam certifications such as Series 6, Series 7, Series 63, etc.

“When Forbes announced our partnership with Elevation Partners, we said we wanted to accelerate our pursuit of exciting opportunities for growth. This acquisition of Investopedia.com clearly demonstrates there are excellent companies to acquire that will enhance and grow Forbes Media in a strategic way,” said Forbes President and CEO Steve Forbes. “Investopedia.com is a smart, popular and innovative site that quickly delivers invaluable financial and investor education to people who want to understand and be personally involved in their investment decisions. We look forward to growing the business together.”

Investopedia also has a financial dictionary commonly used by finance professionals. The amount paid for this company was not disclosed. Investopedia was started in June 1999 by Cory Janssen and Cory Wagner. There are over 5,000 dictionary entries, 1500 financial articles, and 750 tutorials.

Undisclosed
Yesterday Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati blogged that the company has made their first major acquisition yesterday. The company that was acquired is Berkeley, Calif. based company: Personal Bee.

Personal Bee allows users to create personalized homepages similar to services provided by Newsvine. Personal Bee previously raised $500K from Mohr, Davidow Ventures (MDV).

Sam Jadallah provided this funding for Personal Bee and believes that the company has found a great partner. Sam said, “Normally we don’t expect such quick exits for our investments, but the fit for Personal Bee and Technorati made enough sense that we agreed.”

Upcoming Acquisition Rumored at $100 Million+
Rivals.com is powered by 300 writers and reporters and has more than 85 employees in Tennessee. And Rivals.com has been around since 2001.

Rivals.com had 3.5 billion page views in 2006 and is now seeing 2.5 million readers. Rivals.com is a leading website for basketball and football coverage. The company raised $75 million in a previous round of funding.

Jim Heckman was a previous manager at Rivals.com, but then later founded Scout Media. Scout Media is now owned by Fox Interactive Media.

Rivals.com syndicates content from Yahoo!, AOL, Sports Illustrate.com, MSNBC, USA Today and Sirius. Yahoo! is rumored to be eyeing the company and quite possibly may wrap up the deal soon.