Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Atomico

Quid Raises $10 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:53:58 +0000

Quid is a quantitive analysis startup company that has raised $10 million in Series C funding from Atomico Ventures, SV Angel (Ron Conway’s investor fund), Founders Fund, Endeavour Vision, Infocomm Investments, and Charles Lho. PayPal co-founder Max Levchin joined Quid’s board of directors.

Quid previously raised $4 million from Founders Fund, Charles Lho, Max Levchin, Gordon Crovitz, Allen Morgan, James Hong, and Niko Dounchis.

“We are generating more information each year then the rest of human history put together,” stated Quid CEO Bob Goodson. “Data is one of the most important trends of the time we live in. Imagine the insights in the world that are now possible with this information, which hasn’t been available before? We’re building the tools to mine these insights, and help people make more informed decisions.”

Angry Birds Maker Rovio Raises $42 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:35:46 +0000

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, has raised $42 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners and Atomico. Atomico co-founder Niklas Zennström will be joining the board of directors at Rovio. Angry Birds was one of the most download games on the Apple App Store and on Google Android. After that investors were begging to put money in their company.

Rovio plans on using the funding to increase their international reach, media production, partnerships, and merchandising. Rovio recently hit over 2 million Angry Birds plush toy sales recently as well. Rovio has about 50 employees based in their Espoo, Finland offices.

[GigaOM]

Social Music Service Rdio Raises $17.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:40:09 +0000

Rdio is a social music service start-up that has raised $17.5 million from new and existing investors. Mangrove Capital Partners has joined as a new investor along with previous investor Janus Friis through investment entities Atomico and Skype. The funding will be used to expand their platform and regions. Warner Brothers Records Chairman and Grammy-nominated producer Rob Cavallo is also joining the board of directors at Rdio.

Seesmic Raises $4 Million, Bringing Them To A Total Of $16 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:28:45 +0000

Seesmic is a social media application company based in San Francisco that enables people to send out mass updates on Twitter and other services. Seesmic competes directly with TweetDeck. Earlier this month Seesmic has raised $4 million in a new round of funding from Salesforce.com, Softbank Group, Atomico, Omidyar Network, and Wellington Partners. Seesmic has raised a total of $16 million thus far.

Fabricly Raises $400,000 From Atomico Ventures

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 02:29:12 +0000

Fabricly is a company that was incubated at Y-Combinator that has raised an additional $400,000 round of seed funding from Atomico Ventures. The idea behind Fabricly is to crowdsource fashion designs and have customers determine whether specific clothing gets manufactured.

Designers submit their ideas to Fabricly and it will become part of a competition where users would vote on which items are liked best. Then it goes into a “pre-order” stage, which determines whether it will be manufactured based on how many people are committed to buy. If the threshold is met, the manufacturing happens, otherwise the whole order is cancelled.

Fabricly will work with factories in Los Angeles and New York to create the fashion items if the threshold is met. If you are a customer that placed an order on a winning fashion item, then you could expected to receive it within weeks.

The advantage of this approach in fashion is that there is a lack of overhead costs. Ari Helgason, the founder of Fabricly, said that consumers can expect steep discounts because they do not have to maintain retail outlets either. Every time that a designer’s fashion item is purchased, they will receive a 5-15% commission.

[TechCrunch]

Skype Founders’ VC Company Atomico Raises $165 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:49:37 +0000

Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype started a company called Atomico Ventures in 2006. The VC firm was started to invest in early-stage European technology companies. Atomico has just announced that they have raised $165 million in funding.

“The type of companies we are looking at are consumer-facing and also small business… that do not need to build up sales forces around the world to scale and grow,” stated Zennström in an interview with the Financial Times. “These are the kinds of companies like Skype, Google and Facebook who, if the business model is really working, they can get large revenues without having to go through too many financing rounds.” [Financial Times]

Atomic and Mangrove Invest $4.2 Million In Jolicloud

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:23:18 +0000

Tariq Krim, the founder of Netvibes has been working on a new project for well over a year now called Jolicloud. Jolicloud is an operating system intended for use on netbooks. The company has raised $4.2 million in funding from Atomico and Mangrove. Niklas Zennström of Atomico, Gilles Samoun (fotopedia CEO), and Michael Jackson (Mangrove partner) have joined the Jolicloud Board of Directors as a result of the funding.

The Jolicloud operating system utilizes a web application and cloud service interface. Krim sees Google’s announcement of the Chrome OS as a validation for what he is trying to achieve with Jolicloud. Krim left Netvibes on a full-time basis this past May. Netvibes is an RSS reader website built on a cloud that has built in web applications. In a way Jolicloud and Netvibes complement each other. Jolicloud wants to be your default OS on a netbook and Netvibes wants to be your default homepage.

The user interface of the Jolicloud OS is similar to the iPhone operating system. The icons of applications are large and there is very little hardware needed to keep Jolicloud running smoothly. Jolicloud will also support touchscreens.

[via TechCrunch]

Xobni Raises $7 Million From Cisco, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:16:25 +0000

Xobni is a San Francisco, Calif. based startup that built a platform around Microsoft Outlook. Xobni makes it easier to find people, email, and attachments within Outlook. Bill Gates even called Xobni the next generation of social networking. Xobni has recently raised $7 million in Series B. Xobni started as a Y-Combinator company then went on to raise $4.26 million in Series A.

Xobni’s Outlook software has been downloaded over 1.5 million times. Xobni is currently doing product trials with Fortune 500 companies. Some of the companies Xobni has partnered with includes LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, and Yahoo! Cisco’s investment in Xobni is an indication that they are becoming serious about enterprise email. In August 2008, Cisco acquired PostPath, an email and calendar company for $215 million.

Prior to the $7 million investment, Xobni raised $4.26 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Atomico, and First Round Capital. The individuals that participated in Xobni’s first round of funding was Ariel Poler, Saar Gur, and Tom Pickney.

WooMe Raises $12.5 Million Series B; Valuated At $41 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:21:46 +0000

WooMe is a video dating social network that allows users to communicate on webcams. One of the features that makes WooMe popular is Woo Sessions. Woo Sessions are basically webcam video chatrooms. WooMe calls themselves an “introduction platform” according to VentureBeat’s Chris Morrison.

WooMe raised a second round of funding at $12.5 million led by Index Ventures, Atomico, and Mangrove Capital Partners. This brings WooMe’s total funding to $16.9 and now they are valuated at $41 million.

In terms of users, the company say that they have roughly 350,000 users and has 15,000 sessions per day. WooMe hopes to raise about another $500,000 in this round from “strategic angels.” WooMe started in December 2006.