Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Andreessen Horowitz

Socialcam Raises Funding From 46 Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:38:13 +0000

Socialcam is an iPhone app that spun off of video sharing website Justin.tv last year as part of Y Combinators winter 2012 class. Socialcam has raised seed funding from 46 well known angel investors. Socialcam’s fiercest competitor is Viddy. They have been fighting back and forth as the top Photo & Video app recently. Socialcam has reportedly surpassed the 20 million user mark. Below is a list of all of the investors involved as compiled by TechCrunch.

Brian Chesky – CEO, Airbnb
Jonathan Abrams – Partner, Founders Den
Jason Johnson – Partner, Founders Den
Zachary Bogue – Partner, Founders Den
Michael Levit – Partner, Founders Den
Jeff Kapel – Assistant Coach, Duke Basketball
Ari Emmanuel & Jason Lublin – WME
Trajan Langdon – Retired NBA Basketball Player
Yuri Milner & Felix Shpilman – Startfund
Troy Carter & Allison Streuter – Atom Factory
SV Angel – Ron, David, Kevin, Topher, Robert
Crunchfund – Michael, MG, Patrick
Paul Buchheit – Inventor of Gmail, Founder FriendFeed, Partner Y-Combinator
Garry Tan – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Posterous
Alexis Ohanian – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Reddit
Harj Taggar – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Auctomatic
Paul Graham – Co-founder Y-Combinator
Jessica Livingston – Partner Y-Combinator
Tim Draper – Draper Associates
Stewart Alsop – Alsop Louie
Erik Moore – Angel investor in Zappos
Justin Kan – Co-Founder EXEC, Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Emmett Shear – CEO & Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Kyle Vogt – Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Matt Ocko – Angel Investor
A-Grade Investments – Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Chris Hollod
Ronny Conway – Andreessen Horowitz
Justin Caldbeck – Lightspeed
Shervin Pishevar – Menlo Ventures
Laurene Powell Jobs & Stacey Rubin – Emerson Collective
Ram Shiram – Sherpalo, Angel Investor in Google
Shane Battier – NBA Basketball player, Miami Heat
Michael Rapino & Michael Abrams – Live Nation

People Search Engine Ark Raises $4.2 Million In Seed Round

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:55:34 +0000

Ark is a people search engine launched at Y Combinator Demo Day that has raised $4.2 million in a seed round of funding. Ark crawls Facebook, RenRen, LinkedIn, and Twitter to find out as much data as possible. The founders at Ark got the idea for the startup when they found out that 30% of searches are for people.

In March 2012, Ark indexed over 1 billion people from their social networking data. About 250,000 people have signed up for beta invites.

The $4.2 million seed round is the largest that any Y Combinator has received. Investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel, Atlas Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Expansion Venture Capital, and Felicis Ventures. Angel investors from Facebook, Salesforce.com, Qualcomm, and Microsoft also participated in this round.

Ark currently has 20 people on staff and they plan to hire more for their mobile and search engineering teams. Ark started in summer 2011 and their search engine was developed during the Y Combinator Winter Program.

Facebook Acquiring Instagram For $1 Billion

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:45:45 +0000

Facebook has announced that they are acquiring Instagram, a popular photo-sharing application, for $1 billion in cash and stock. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on a profile post from his account. Zuckerberg said that they are planning to allow Instagram run independently from Facebook. It was only three days ago where it was that Instagram raised $50 million.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family,” stated Zuckerberg. “Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Instagram’s investors include Baseline Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Adam D’Angelo, Jack Dorsey, and Chris Sacca.

Below is the press release from Facebook:

Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.

The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, posted about the transaction on his Timeline:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

Andreessen Horowitz Raises $1.5 Billion

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:59:18 +0000

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital company run by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz has raised $1.5 billion. Ben Horowitz confirmed the investment on his blog today. The company has raised a total of $2.7 billion thus far.

The $1.5 billion will be going towards Fund III. Fund III will be used for extending their capabilities to more “disruptors and pioneers.” In 2011, Andreessen Horowitz hosted over 600 presentations to corporate customers and partners at their Menlo Park office. The presentations resulted in over 3,000 introductions between portfolio companies.

The company has relationships with over 4,000 engineers, designers, and product managers. Andreessen Horowitz has added over 550 executives to their network in 2011. Some of AH’s investments include Zynga, Foursquare, Groupon, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Jawbone.

Fab.com Raises $40 Million, Now Valued At Over $200 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:24:17 +0000

When Fab.com originally started, it was a social network for the LGBT community. Now the website is a flash sale website with 72-hour deals. The company has just raised $40 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and is now valued at over $200 million. It was only about 6 months ago since Fab.com switched from being a gay social network.

This past July, Fab.com raised funds that gave them a valuation of around $25 million. Fab.com processed about 100,000 orders in November alone, which was double the month before. Now Fab.com is averaging about $1.4 million sales per week. Fab.com currently has 1.2 million registered users. The company is expected to hit 4 million members by next year.

First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures, Baroda Venures, SoftTech VC, and Ashton Kutcher were investors in Fab.com’s series A and is believed to be participating in this round as well. Fab.com plans on using this round of funding for making investments in their distribution and customer service capabilities. Fab.com currently employs about 120 people. Fab.com CEO and co-founder Jason Goldberg previously founded website Jobster Inc. The company runs about 14 sales per day which lasts about 72 hours.

[WSJ]

Microsoft and Silver Lake Submitting A Plan To Buy Minority Stake In Yahoo!

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:12:09 +0000

A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

Yahoo!’s financial advisers Allen & Company and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) made the end of the business day on Monday as the deadline for minority stake offers according to a source with The New York Times.

After turning down the acquisition offer from Microsoft a couple of years ago, Yahoo! seems to be less interested in selling themselves as a whole. After an investor buys a 20% stake in the company, Yahoo! would then take on debt to finance a stock buyback.

Jerry Yang and David Filo holds roughly a 10% stake in the company. The board may consider a bid for the entire company if it is strong enough and if the terms are appealing enough.

Some of the other investment companies that are reportedly a part of the consortium includes Andreessen Horowitz, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, THL Partners, and Hellman & Friedman.

Yahoo! partner company Alibaba Group of China is discussing a possiblity with the Blackstone Group about making a bid to buy the company as a whole. Yahoo! Inc. currently owns 40% of Alibaba so this would be a way for the Chinese company to get the stake in their company back.

“YouTube For Businesses” Service Vidyard Raises $1.65 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:08:17 +0000

Vidyard is a company that is considered a “YouTube for Businesses.” The company has raised $1.65 million from SoftTech VC, Jawed Karim (YouTube co-founder), Y Combinator, SV Angel, iNovia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Paul Buchheit, Vivi Nevo, David Nizkad, Dennis Kavelman, and several others.

Vidyard launched in August and is intended for businesses to use as a marketing tool. Vidyard is similar to YouTube, but their video upload services links to the brand’s website rather than YouTube itself. Vidyard also has real-time analytics about embed performance and there is ad free video hosting. Video players can be branded and there is instant search technology.

Vidyard allows you to upload a video file or a video from YouTube. Then you can add a custom thumbnail and use 10 different player skins with different sizes and colors. You can also enable viral sharing on Twitter and Facebook.

Vidyard has also added the ability to push video content to YouTube channels, Facebook walls, and Twitter feeds today. You can also pull in YouTube analytics into your Vidyard Dashboard.

[TechCrunch]

How Much Groupon Executives and Investors Made From The IPO

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:57:39 +0000

Yesterday Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) had an initial public offering. The company set their stock price at $20 and yesterday it closed at $26.11. The company was given a valuation of over $17 billion. BusinessInsider.com has compiled a list of how much the executives and investors made from the IPO. Below is the list:

Ted Leonsis – Former AOL Vice Chairman – Made $48.27 million from 1,848,770 shares owned
Brian Totty – Groupon SVP of Engineering – Made $16.31 million from 624,786 shares ownde
Howard Schultz – Starbucks CEO/Groupon board member – Made $49.59 million from 1,899,336 shares owned
Kenneth M. Pelletier – Former Groupon CTO – Made $70.47 million from 2,698,944 shares owned
Robert S. Solomon – Former Groupon President and COO – Made $105.88 million from 4,055,000 shares owned
Andreessen Horowitz – VC Firm – Invested $40 million, Earned $132.2 million, Gain of $92.2 million
Maverick Fund – VC Firm – Invested $50 million, Earned $165.3 million, Gain of $115.3 million
Greylock Partners – VC Firm – Invested $65 million, Earned $214.9 million, Gain of $149.9 million
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – VC Firm – Invested $65 million, Earned $214.9 million, Gain of $149.9 million
Morgan Stanley – VC Firm – Invested $75 million, Earned $248 million, Gain of $173 million
T Rowe Price – Investment Firm – Invested $100 million, Earned $330.6 million, Gain of $230.6 million
Fidelity Investments – Investment Firm – Invested $100 million, Earned $330.6 million, Gain of $230.6 million
Battery Ventures – VC Firm – Invested $58 million, Earned $417.4 million, Gain of $359.4 million
Technology Crossover Ventures – VC Firm – Invested $150 million, Earned $459.9 million, Gain of $345.9 million
The Growth Fund of America – Fund – Invested $175 million, Earned $578.6 million, Gain of $403.6 million
Accel Partners – Invested $20 million, Earned $866.96 million, Gain of $856.96 million
Digital Sky Technologies – Invested $151 million, Earned $1.11 billion, Gain of $959 million
The European Founders Fund – Earned $1.02 billion based on 6.2% ownership in Groupon
Brad Keywell – Groupon Co-Founder – Earned $1.07 billion based on 6.5% ownership
Andrew Mason – Groupon CEO – Earned $1.2 billion based on 7.3% ownership
New Enterprise Associates – VC Firm – Invested $14.8 million, Earned $2.28 billion, Gain of $2.26 billion
Eric Lefkofsky – Groupon Co-Founder – Gained $1.67 billion based on over 10% ownership of the company
Elizabeth Lefkofsky – Wife of Eric – Gained $1.67 billion based on over 10% ownership of the company

Andreessen Horowitz Preparing To Raise $900 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:34:14 +0000

Andreessen Horowitz is preparing to raise $900 million for their newest fund, known as Fund III. The company’s first fund was worth about $300 million. The company used that funding to put money into Skype and Fusion.io. In late 2010, Andreessen Horowitz raised $650 million for Fund II. They used this fund to invest in Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, and Zynga. Now the company is preparing to raise $900 million, which means that the company will have $2.15 billion in assets to distribute to companies. Andreesen Horowitz has invested in about 70 companies. The new fund will be used to make investments from between $10,000 to $100 million. [Uncrunched]

Box.net Raises $81 Million With Valuation That Is Over $600 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:37:25 +0000

Cloud storage company Box.net has raised $81 million in Series D funding from Salesforce.com, SAP Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Box.net has now raised a total of $162 million. This puts Box.net’s valuation at over $600 million.

Box.net has 7 million users and stores about 300 million documents. Box.net was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith from their dorm rooms in 2005. Box.net currently provides cloud storage to 77% of the Fortune 500. About 100,000 businesses are using Box.net’s services and 250,000 new users are joining every month.

Box.net has even received several acquisition offers that was roughly worth about $500 million. The company eventually plans on going public.

[TechCrunch]