Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Azure Capital Partners

Education.com Raises $9.75 Million Series B From California Technology Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, And TeleSoft Partners

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:30:26 +0000

“We are excited to have CTV join our board and the continued support of our investors to ensure that no parent gets left behind. The Series B investment will allow us to continue to produce world class educational content and to continue to build ground-breaking new resources, such as our SchoolFinder application,” stated Ron Fortune, CEO of Education.com. “Parents today, more than ever before, need access to an authoritative and timely resource to ensure their child gets the most out of her education.”

Education.com has announced today that they have raised $9.75 million from Azure Capital Partners, California Technology Ventures, and TeleSoft Partners. Education.com is an online educational resource for kids in preschool through high school. Education.com has 4,000 reference articles that range from health to politics to cooking to navigating parent-teacher conferences. Education.com has virtual neighborhoods where parents of similar interests can discuss challenges.

Education.com claims to have reached 10 million parents over the last year. Monthly pageviews have grown to about 4 million. Azure and TeleSoft Partners were also previous investors in Education.com.

“We looked at dozens of companies addressing the needs of parents online but found Education.com to be the only one with a truly cutting edge approach that was meeting the information and resource needs of parents online,” stated Dorothy Pavloff, Managing Director at California Technology Ventures. “The sophistication behind its use of analytics to assess what users are looking for on the site and delivering on that need is truly industry leading, and we’re pleased to support the company’s in its next stage of growth.”

Amazon.com Invests In Bill Me Later; Online Bill Payment Market Heating Up

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:32:09 +0000

Amazon.com announced today that they are investing in Bill Me Later, Inc. Not only that, but Amazon is also signing a agreement with the online billing company as well. eBay and PayPal has thus far proved the synergy of combining an online retailer with an online billing payment company. Over 90% of all eBay auctions are paid via PayPal so it made sense for eBay to buy them for $1.5 billion.

â€œBill Me Later has developed a very customer-centric method to make online shopping even easier,â€ stated Matt Swann, VP of payments at Amazon.com. â€œWe are pleased to make the convenience of Bill Me Later available to our tens of millions of Amazon customers [source: Amazon.com press release].â€

The investment terms were not disclosed, but the company has $200 million in funding capital according to TechCrunch. Bill Me Later investors include Chase Paymentech, Azure Capital Partners, First Data Corp, Crosspoint Venture Partners, GRP Partners, CIT Group Inc., Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Citigroup, Equifax, T. Rowe Price, and Legg Mason Inc.

â€œAmazon.com and Bill Me Later share the same commitment to making shopping easy for consumers,â€ stated Gary Marino, the CEO of Bill Me Later. â€œJust as Amazon invented a new and better way for people to shop online, Bill Me Later has created a new and better way for people to pay for purchases online.â€

Before joining Bill Me Later, Marino was an EVP, Chief Credit Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer of consumer lending at First USA/Bank One.

Photo-Storing Phanfare Raises $2.5 Million Third Round

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:27:09 +0000

Metuchen, New Jersey based photo-sharing company, Phanfare recently raised $2.5 million. This is Phanfare’s third round of funding and the investment was lead by Azure Capital Partners. Phanfare als received funding from Acadia Woods Partners. Other investors include Dwight Merriman, DoubleClick’s (co-founder), Kevin Ryan (former CEO of DoubleClick), and Fabrice Grinda (founder of Zingy).

Phanfare makes money by selling subscriptions and competes directly with Photobucket and Flickr. The disadvantage that Phanfare has is that it is already competing against major photo-sharing players that are backed by major corporations. Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and Photobucket is owned by News Corp. However this could also work out in Phanfare’s favor because adding features around the website won’t require as much bureaucratic approval.

Phanfare has roughly 10,000 customers.

Information Source:
[1] paidContent: Phanfare Raises $2.5 Million Third Round For Photo Storing by Joseph Weisenthal