Marc Ecko Enterprises is struggling with debt, but their digital and print publication Complex Media has been attracting some investments. Complex Media raised $12.8 million in funding according to an SEC filing. The $12.8 million in funding was provided by Austin Ventures and Accel Partners. This is Complex’s first round of funding.
Complex Media is led by CEO Rich Antoniello and general manager Brian Kelley. Complex Media has a network of about 26 websites including OliviaMunn.com, PlanetXbox360.com, and Loud.com.
Complex Media isn’t the only Marc Ecko company that received a major investment. Marc Ecko Enterprises sold a majority stake for $108 million to Iconix Brand Group. Marc Ecko Enterprises includes several clothing lines, a video game division, and an online video network.
Groupon.com is a local deal website that focuses on deep discounts. The deep discounts are applied for everyone if enough people apply the coupon. If not enough people apply the coupon, then nobody will get the deal. An example of where Groupon’s business model worked is when 1,600 people signed up for skydiving lessons in Chicago and each of them received 44% off. Groupon themselves are based in Chicago.
Groupon raised $30 million in VC funding from Accel and New Enterprise Associates. Groupon makes money by charging a fee to the local businesses. Group takes about 30-50% of the total price from each service. Based on these numbers, Groupon expects to make $100 million in gross merchandise sales by the end of 2010. The company was profitable in June 2009 which is only 6 months from the time that the company launched.
Chicago is the first city that Groupon launched in and since then they have expanded to 26 other cities. The company has 126 employees as of right now and over half of those are in sales.
Seeking Alpha is a financial news website that competes with The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The company has just raised $7 million in Series B. The investors include DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital, and Accel Partners. Seeking Alpha has over 3,700 contributors and now their content will be syndicated on Nasdaq.com.
Seeking Alpha receives over 4 million unique visitors per month based on Google Analytics. Seeking Alpha started in 2004 and was founded by David Jackson. The company raised their Series A round of funding in September 2006 from Benchmark and Accel.
Seeking Alpha makes money through advertising and job listings for hedge funds. The company publishes about 250 articles every day.
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) has closed an acquisition deal with Playfish. Playfish is a company that designs games for social networks such as Facebook. EA is spending $400 million to buy out Playfish. Of the $400 million, $300 million will be given upfront and the additional $100 million will be paid as an earn-out. Rumor has it that EA was considering buying out Playfish competitor Zynga Inc. too.
This past September about 250 million people played games on Facebook. One of Playfish’s most popular games called Pet Society has over 20 million active users. Playfish was started by Kristian Segerstrale and Sebastien de Halleux. Playfish raised venture capital from Accel Partners and Index Ventures.
Jim Breyer of Accel Partners had an amazing 24 hours yesterday. Raytheon had acquired BBN Technologies and Disney bought out Marvel. Breyer helped buy out BBN Technologies about five years ago which gave a nice return to Accel Partners.
Breyer was the third largest direct shareholder in Marvel Entertainment. He made the investment from his own personal funds and not on behalf of Accel. According to regulatory filings, Breyer will make $5 million personally from Disney’s acquisition of Marvel.
BBN was purchased by Bell Atlantic back in the day but ended up not gaining much traction after that. BNN was started by three MIT professors that implemented ARPANET (the base for the founding of the Internet). BBN was the first to create packet switching, the first router, and the first network e-mail using the @ symbol.
Former Google executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy was one of the candidates for replacing Tim Armstrong after he quit Google and became the AOL CEO. Now Cassidy is a CEO-in-Residence at Accel Partners and has just been appointed to become a board member at retail company J. Crew.
When Cassidy was at Google, she was responsible fr the search engine company’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations. Before Google Cassidy worked at Yodlee, Amazon.com and OpenTV. Below is a full press release about the new position.
Sony Ericsson has partnered with application store company GetJar. The partnership gives Ericsson users access to 45,000 free applications. The applications are part of the GetJar PlayNow arena.
“With its experience in delivering mobile applications to a wide consumer base, GetJar has demonstrated the value of choice, quality and performance when it comes to distributing mobile content,” stated Sony Ericsson Head of Developer & Partner Engagement Christopher David. “In the rapidly growing mobile content market, partnering with GetJar will allow us to complement the quality application offerings of our mobile content and entertainment service PlayNow arena.”
The GetJar app store has about 450 million downloads. The company has about 45,000 mobile applications available for download. GetJar is backed by Accel Partners.
Seatwave is a European startup that sells secondary tickets over the Internet. Given that this is a huge market, the company has attracted $17 million in Series D funding. This round of funding was led by Accel Partners and Atlas Venture. Other investors in this round of funding Mangrove Capital Partners, Fidelity Ventures, and Adinvest.
GP Bullhound named Seatwave the fast growing digital media company. Joe Cohen, a former employee of Atlas Venture founded Seatwave. Through this round of funding, the company has raised a total of $53 million.
