Tag Archives: Charles River Ventures
Zendesk Raises $19 Million In Series C
Heartland Robotics Raises $20 Million In Series B
Heartland Robotics is a company that was founded in 2008 by Rodney Brooks. Brooks was an iRobot co-founder and was the former director of MIT’s Computer Science and A.I. Lab. Heartland has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Highland Capital Partners. The Series B was joined by existing investors Charles River Ventures and Bezos Expeditions along with new investor Sigma Partners. [TMCNet]
Yammer Raises $25 Million In Funding
Yammer, the micro-blogging service for enterprises, has raised $25 million in funding. The funding was led by U.S. Venture Partners. Emergence Capital, Charles River Ventures, and the Founders Fund had participated in this round. Yammer’s total funding is at $40 million. U.S. Ventures’ Mamoon Hamid will join the Yammer board of directors.
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BNI Video Raises $16 Million From Time Warner, Comcast, Cisco, Etc.
BNI Video is a company that helps video service providers in the telecommunications industry manage video delivery. This is why some telecommunications companies got together to put money into BNI. Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Charles River Ventures, Castile Ventures, and Time Warner Cable invested $16 million into BNI.
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Rapportive Raises $1 Million From Several Angel Investors
Rapportive is a startup that created a plugin for making GMail work better. It provides contextual information about your GMail contacts. As a result, Rapportive has raised $1 million in seed funding from several angel investors.
Categories 500Startups, BOLDstart Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Dave McClure, David Cancel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jason Calacanis, Kima Ventures, Martin Kleppmann, Naval Ravikant, Nivi Ravikant, Paul Buchheit, Rahul Vohra, Rapportive, Roy Rodenstein, Sam Stokes, Shervin Pishevar, VentureHackers, Y Combinator, Zelkova Ventures
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Millenial Media Raises $16 Million In Series C
Millenial Media is a mobile ad network that competes with AdMob. AdMob was recently acquired by Google for $750 million in stock. Millenial Media is based in Baltimore, Maryland and raised $16 million in Series C for New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, and Charles River Ventures.
Millenial will use the funding to help push the company past profitability, grow overseas, hire additional talent, and build more technology. Given that Google already spent a ton of money on a mobile ad network it seems uncertain what Millenial’s exit strategy will be.
Wonderhill Raises $7 Million From Shasta and Charles River
Wonderhill is a company that creates “wholesome” casual games. Wonderhill recently raised $7 million from Shasta Ventures and Charles River Ventures. Before that the company raised $750,000 from Ooga Labs. Two wholesome games that Wonderhill developed include Dog World and Green Spot. Wonderhill was founded by James Currier.
Currier created Emode which is now Tickle.com back in the 90′s. Wonderhill’s CCO Nick Rush had a similar role at EA’s Pogo.com before joining the startup. Charles River Ventures partner Saar Gur told VentureBeat that Wonderhill’s ability to create viral hits was one of the reasons why they received the major investment.
Wonderhill’s competition includes Zynga and Playfish. Zynga recently raised $35 million and Playfish raised $21 million.
Scribd Reaches Deal With Publishers For Hosting E-Books
Scribd is a document sharing website that has about 50 million monthly users and has about 50,000 documents uploaded daily. The company was rolled out of Y-Combinator and eventually raised funding from Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and The Kinsley Hills Group. It was recently announced that Scribd signed an agreement with major publishing companies to host free e-books.
Through Scribd, users can upload PDFs, DOCs, and other text files. Scribd then presents the document in a web Flash format.
Scribd signed agreements with Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Workman Publishing Co. The terms of the agreement was undisclosed. Scribd will provide a variety of book material at no cost. This includes excerpts from books and even full books. Full novels without much of an audience will be the ones made free.
[via Ars Technica]
Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz Invest $6.7 Million In Metaplace.com
What is Metaplace? They are a startup company that creates custom virtual worlds. Users can decorate virtual apartments, music stages, or even create space action games. Metaplace has just raised $6.7 million from Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Marc and Ben both founded Opsware and sold it to HP. To date, Metaplace has raised $9.4 million.
Metaplace is building their virtual platform in Flash using a drag+drop interface. Metaplace offers developers a full scripting engine, which is also used in Second Life.
The founders of Metaplace.com include Raph Koster and John Donham. Koster was COO of Sony Online at one point and served as the lead designer for Ultima Online and Ultima Online: The Second Age. Donham is a former VP of Sony where he saw the shipping of games such as EverQuest 2, Untold Legends, PlanetSide, etc.
“Building virtual worlds has always been the purview of large companies with deep pockets,” stated Raph Koster. “Our vision at Metaplace is to combine the ubiquity and ease of the Web with the immersive and addictive nature of video games to give everyday users the power to create a network of worlds based on their interests be it community, games, education or business. “In the coming years, as virtual places become a standard element of the Web, alongside text, audio, images, and video, Metaplace will be the engine that enables the transformation.”
Jason Hable is Metaplace’s VP of Business Ops. Prior to joining Metaplace, he was a Principal at Crescendo Ventures to oversee the investment. Hable worked at Wells Fargo to fund entrepreneurs. Hable has an MBA from University of Minnesota and an undergrad degree from the University of St. Thomas.
The whole Metaplace team includes artists, programmers, Olympic contestants, and even symphony musicians. Metaplace has about 25 employees and about 6 advisors.
Categories Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Metaplace.com
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ODEO Gets Acquired For More Than A Million
On February 20, ODEO wrote on their blog that they were looking for a new home. ODEO was owned by Obvious.com, who are the same creators of Twitter. Since Obvious is focused on Twitter and that company is doing very well, letting go of ODEO was not a very hard decision.
ODEO was acquired by SonicMountain, a New York based startup company. TechCrunch reported that the price was not disclosed, but the amount is above $1 million in cash. The founder of ODEO and Obvious.com, Evan Williams will be working at SonicMountain as an advisor for 6 months.
ODEO has had a rocky past. The company previously raised $5 million in funding from Charles River Ventures and a few other angel investors. After that, Evan Williams didn’t like the idea of having investors, so they bought the company back. The amount that they paid back for the company is rumored to be above the $5 million. Sometimes you make decisions and can’t look back. Congratulations to Obvious.com and SonicMountain.
Categories Charles River Ventures, Obvious.com, ODEO, SonicMountain, Twitter
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