Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » August Capital

WePay Raises $10 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:14:38 +0000

WePay has raised $10 million from Ignition Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and August Capital. The company launched as a way to help friends and family pool resources. Now they are offering online payment tools for merchants and non-profits.

WePay is aiming to compete against PayPal for SMBs. The advantages they have include ramp up time, fees, setup, and installation. WePay COO and co-founder Rich Aberman said WePay offers “one-stop shop tools to get anyone up and running accepting payments online, the way that they want to accept payments,” in ab interview with Betakit.

WePay charges a flat rate of 3.5% per transaction compared to PayPal’s 2.9% plus $0.30. They charge $0.50 if funds are drawn from a user’s bank account instead of a credit card. WePay is also targeting non-profits by offering a donation page creation tool. They charge the same 3.5% rate that they charge businesses. This is less than competitors like Kickstarter and First Giving.

WePay plans on using the funding to expand their team. Currently they have 40 employees. Mobile is becoming one of their core focus.

Rocket Lawyer Raises $18.5 Million

Riley Kennysmith — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:23:24 +0000

Rocket Lawyer has raised $18.5 million in new funding for their online legal services. The funding comes from Google Ventures, August Capital and Investor Growth Capital. Founder Charles Moore expects to reach 20 million users by the end of this year. [TechCrunch]

Reputation.com Raises $41 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:37:33 +0000

Reputation.com is an online privacy start-up company that has raised $41 million in funding. The new round of funding was led by August Capital. Insight Capital, Jafco Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in this round. This brings the company revenues to over $65 million. This is the company’s fourth round of funding.

Reputation.com is raising additional money because they are getting into a new business. Reputation.com’s new business is to collect data on individuals and place layers of their own technology on that data. Then the company creates assessments on those individuals that consumers can license. Consumers would also be able to claim their online profile.

Reputation.com currently has 150 employees and opened another 100. They are currently based in Redwood City, California and plans to open a new office in San Francisco.

SnagAJob Raises $27 Million Led By August Capital

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:03:41 +0000

Online job search company SnagAJob.com has raised $27 million in funding led by August Capital. SnagAJob.com plans on using the funding to expand operations, increase marketing, and pursue acquisitions. In November, SnagAJob.com made plans to double their staff. They have about 210 employees as of right now and expects to hit 300 by the end of the year. The company has also moved into a 35,000 square foot office at the Innsbrook Corporate Center in Henrico County, Virginia. Eric Carlborg of August Capital will be joining the board of directors at SnagAJob. Other investors in this round include Adams Street Partners, Baird Venture Partners, and C&B Capital. [Times Dispatch]

RelayRides Raises $5.1 Million In Series A From August Capital and Google

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:30:43 +0000

RelayRides is a car sharing service that is similar to Zipcar. The company has raised $5.1 million from August Capital and Google Ventures according to an SEC filing. The company is still aiming to raise an additional $770,000 according to the filing.

RelayRides lets car owners list their vehicles on the website and rent it out to others in the community. Once the car is listed, RelayRides sends out a representative to attach a device to the car. This lets RelayRides member access to the reserved car. Car owners set the price.

The car owner gets 65% of the total rental fee and RelayRides gets 15%. The rest of the fee goes towards insurance. Borrowers have to go through a driving record check. RelayRides is based in Boston and started in November 2008.

[VentureBeat]

Google Invests In Car-Sharing Service RelayRides

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:06:55 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary Google Ventures has invested in RelayRides, a car rental service. RelayRides is very similar to Zipcar. RelayRides is launching in San Francisco today. August Capital also participated in this round of funding.

Anyone can list their car for rental and the owner can set the price. The price is generally 10% less than other car-sharing services. The owner also lists what time someone can rent the car. The owner gets 65% of the total rental fee and RelayRides get 15%. The other 20% goes towards the insurance policy.

Borrowers have to pass a verification process and must have a clean driving record. After an owner lists their car on the website, RelayRides will install a device on the car to detect cards for activating the service.

[VentureBeat]

Blippy Raises $11.2 Million, Now Valued At $46.2 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:54:03 +0000

Blippy, a service that shows what your friends are buying through social networking has raised $11.2 million in funding. On paper, the company is now valued $46.2 million. The latest round of funding was led by August Capital. August partner David Hornik will be joining the board of directors at Blippy. Hornik actually shared his investment on Blippy too… yup he shared that he put in an $8 million investment in the web company. Charles River Ventures put in $3.2 million out of the $11.2 million investment in this round. Blippy plans to use the funding for marketing and closing business deals. [TechCrunch]

WePay Raises $1.65 Million In First Round Of Funding From August Capital, Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:28:13 +0000

WePay, a startup where groups of people manage financial accounts has just raised $1.65 million in their first round of funding. August Capital and several angel investors were involved in the WePay funding. WePay can be used for invoice production, money collection, and transaction management.

WePay was founded by Boston College students Bill Clerico and Rich Alberman. The company has been moved to Silicon Valley ever since and has moved into Palo Alto’s University Avenue where Facebook used to be based. Interestingly WePay’s founders had a hard time finding funding out in Boston. The investors in Boston said that they were too much in the early stages. Y Combinator ended up accepting WePay.

WePay makes money by taking 3.5% from every transaction, similar to the PayPal business model. WePay is starting by partnering with small companies and professional groups. Some of the angel investors include Max Levchin (PayPal co-founder), Paul Buccheit, Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Angus Davis, Andrew McCollum, and Joe Campanelli.

Bill.com Raises $8.5 Million From August, DCM, and Emergence

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:13:29 +0000

Bill.com has raised $8.5 million from August Capital, DCM, and Emergence Capital recently. David Hornik of August Capital will be joining the Bill.com Board of Directors as part of this round of funding. Thus far, Bill.com has raised a total of $17 million. Bill.com acts as a collaborative online bill payment for businesses.

Bill.com has software that encourages businesses to eliminate filing bill paper documentation. Large businesses usually have to managers approve large bills and then the finance department has to approve of them. Bill.com software makes this whole process available online. Bill.com accepts faxed bills and then they scan them and e-mail it to people that need to approve the documentation.

Bill.com also uses OCR to enable searching for documentation later on. The base fee of one user for Bill.com is $24.99 and each user after that is $9.99. Each check payment has a small fee attached for Bill.com as well. According to Bill.com’s VP of Marketing Jeff Schultz, businesses are saving as much as 50% in the amount of time taken to pay bills.

René Lacerte founded Bill.com in 2007. The company presented at the DEMO conference and won the DEMOgod award. The company was originally called CashView. Lacerte had previously built a company called PayCycle, which was bought out for $170 million by Intuit last month.

Google, August, and CMEA Invest $5.75 Million in Pixazza

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:17:53 +0000

Pixazza.com is service that connects advertising to images. The company released a press statement about their $5.75 million in funding earlier this week. Investors include Google Inc., August Capital, and CMEA Capital.

Let’s say that you find a picture of a celebrity, Pixazza places a price tag icon on the apparel that they are wearing. Putting your mouse over the price tag reveals an ad that tells you where you can find that product online.

Like.com has a very similar feature where you upload a picture and it e-mails you the place that you can find similar products. Like.com used to be called Riya and it was rumored that Google wanted to acquire that company a couple of years ago.

“Pixazza hopes to do for images what Google’s AdSense did for web pages,” stated Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza. “We are excited about the potential our technology holds for delivering an engaging user experience that creates incremental revenue for web publishers.”

Pixazza’s angel investors consist of Ron Conway, former eBay COO Maynard Webb, and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu. The company was started by James Everingham. He brought together a team of people that worked on Netscape in the 1990′s to put together Pixazza. The company is based in Mountain View, Calif.