Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Betaworks

Google+ To Host VC Office Hours

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:26:27 +0000

In order to capture additional attention from startup entrepreneurs, Google+ is hosting a series of events called VC Office Hours. Google VP of Product at Google+ Bradley Horowitz revealed some of the names that are participating in this series:

We’re going to be doing Hangout on Air sessions with prominent VC’s and angel investors. In the next few weeks we’ll get started with:

+John Lilly of Greylock Ventures
+Chris Dixon of Founder Collective
+Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners
+John Borthwick of Betaworks

For each session, we’re hoping to find 6-8 interested and interesting entrepreneurs, students, or fans of tech investing to lob questions at the respective VC’s. We’ll do 30m or so sessions, that we’ll broadcast and archive for posterity. We’ll announce each VC session with an individual G+ post… and if you’d like to be part of the interview panel, you can respond in the comments. I’ll select a group of panelists from those that self-nominate.

I expect this is going to be a lot of fun! Very open to suggestions and feedback as we explore what the community (and perhaps even the VC’s) find valuable.

Google+ was recently redesigned and Google claims to have 170 million users on Google+. Google said that the first hangout will take place on Thursday May 10 at 8:15AM PST with John Lilly of Greylock.

Betaworks Acquires Vibe Mobile App

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:17:01 +0000

Betaworks has acquired the iPhone app called Vibe, which grew popular in the “Occupy Wall Street” community. Vibe allows people to post photos, videos, and messages within a geo-fenced radius. Users can post with a pseudonym or link the app to their Twitter account. Users can respond through the use of threaded conversations. Vibe was created by Hazem Sayed and the two person startup was acquired this past December. [TechCrunch]

OnSwipe Raises $5 Million In “Series Awesome”

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:20:17 +0000

OnSwipe is a tablet publishing company that has raised $5 million in “Series Awesome.” This past January OnSwipe raised $1 million in seed funding. This round of funding was led by Spark Capital and followed on by Lightbank. Yuri Milner, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Betaworks, Morado, Eniac Ventures, and Thrive Capital also participated in this round.

”We realized what we are building is a larger opportunity than we ever thought while growing at a breakneck speed. In order to own the market we went out and raised a Series Awesome from the best group of investors possible that share our goal of world domination. And yes…the legal docs actually say Series Awesome,” said OnSwipe co-founder Jason Baptiste.

[TechCrunch]

Confirmed: Twitter Acquires TweetDeck

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:47:25 +0000

TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth has confirmed that Twitter has acquired his company. The deal was completed yesterday. TweetDeck started with one team member and one user to a team of 15 with millions of users. The TweetDeck team will remain in London. Previous investors in TweetDeck include Betaworks, TAG, SV Angel, and PROfounders. [TweetDeck Blog]

Social Media Platform Company SocialFlow Raises $7 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:35:11 +0000

SocialFlow is a social media platform company that teaches brands how to use Twitter in effective ways. SocialFlow uses data analysis to help brands come up with what kind of tweets to send out. SocialFlow has some solid revenues and shows evidence of long-term growth. This is why investors have put $7 million into the company in a Series A round of funding.

SocialFlow had access to Twitter’s data before but on a trial basis. Since Twitter enjoyed what SocialFlow is doing with their data, they gave them broader access. “This is exactly what we want to see out of the ecosystem,” stated Twitter Platform lead Ryan Sarver. “These guys are building a real business,”

Softbank, RRE Ventures, Betaworks, High Line Venture Partners, AOL Ventures, SV Angel, and several other angel investors were involved in this round.

[TechCrunch]

Kickstarter Raises $10 Million From Union Square, Betaworks, and Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:23:31 +0000

Kickstarter is a New York based startup company that helps projects raises money. Kickstarter has raised $10 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Betaworks, and several angel investors. Kickstart takes a commission from each funded project. One of the most noteworthy projects that Kickstarter funded is a Robocop statue for the city of Detroit. [BusinessInsider]

OnSwipe Raises $1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:11:18 +0000

OnSwipe is a company that developed a WordPress plugin called PadPressed. PadPressed makes WordPress blogs look like a native application on tablets. OnSwipe has raised $1 million in seed funding.

This round of funding was led by Spark Capital, Betaworks, and ENIAC Ventures. Angel investors Dharmesh Shah, Jennifer Lum, Roy Rodenstein, and Wayne Chang also participated in this round. OnSwipe founder Jason Baptiste said he wants to use the recent funding to expand the platform to other content management systems like Moveable Type.

“We can rethink the way publishing is done, specifically because of the iPad. And if we can make the content look good then we can actually make the ads look good. People will actually enjoy ads for the first time ever,” stated Baptiste.

GroupMe Raises $10.6 Million From Several Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 03:04:13 +0000

GroupMe is a service that lets users create text messaging groups and conference calls. GroupMe has raised a second round of funding from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, Betaworks, and SV Angel. GroupMe is only 8 months old and they have 10 employees. [TechCrunch]

GroupMe To Raise Series B Funding Through A VC Bidding War

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:00:34 +0000

GroupMe is a service that lets you text a group of people using just one phone number. GroupMe is currently in the middle of raising venture capital, but there is supposedly a bidding war taking place. This round of funding would put GroupMe at a value that is close to $30 million.

The company’s growth is “nuts – thousands of percent,” according to a BusinessInsider source. The VC firms in the middle of the bidding war include Sequoia, Andreeseen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Flybridge, and Union Square Ventures.

GroupMe’s series A investors include Betaworks and First Round Capital. They invested about $700,000. It’s expected that these two companies will participate in this upcoming round as well.

[BusinessInsider]

Bit.ly Raises $8.9 Million In Series B Financing

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:48:42 +0000

Popular URL shortening and analytics service Bit.ly has raised $8.9 million in Series B financing. This round of funding was led by AOL Ventures and RRE Ventures. Existing investors include Betaworks, O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, Founders Fund, and SV Angel. Every day about 200 million Bit.ly short links are clicked on through Twitter and other services. Even though Bit.ly is no longer the default URL shortening service for Twitter, the traffic continues to grow for the service.

Bit.ly currently has 17 employees and their first source of revenues came from Bit.ly Pro accounts. They signed up about 3,000 companies and 1,000 power Twitter users. Bit.ly is working with The New York Times on a project called News.me, which is expected to launch soon. [TechCrunch]