NewEgg.com is an online retail company that sells electronics such as digital cameras, cell phones, and laptops. The company plans to file for an IPO and raised roughly $175 million in the process. NewEgg.com started in 2001 and made about $2.2 billion in revenues last year. Insight Venture Partners invested $20 million in NewEgg.com around 2005. Insight Venture Partners has a 12.7% stake in NewEgg.

Newegg.com Inc. is based in City of Industry, California. Newegg was founded by Fred Chang and the company is run by CEO Tally C. Liu. When NewEgg.com was founded, it was a subsidiary of ABS Computer Technologies Inc. NewEgg has about 1,500 employees. The funds raised will be used to fund operations expansion in Canada and China. The company has even been profitable since they started in 2001. The IPO is being managed by JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Citi.

DigitalGlobe is a Longmont, Colorado based company that sells space imagery and geospatial content. DigitalGlobe also operates a remote sensing spacecraft. The company was started in 1992 and has 350 employees. Some of their customers include Google (Google Earth, Google Maps), GeoEye, Spot Image, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The company is planning for an IPO this month in order to raise money for building a new satellite.  They were planning to go IPO last year but postponed it due to the weak economy.  Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Citi, UBS Investment Bank, JPMorgan, and Jefferies will be handling the offering.  Lehman will be helping despite their Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Lehman has $20 million in debt owed by DigitalGlobe.  After the IPO, Lehman also has the right to appoint five out of nine of DigitalGlobe’s board members due to being a large enough investor.  DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 orbiter will cost roughly $283 million which will be fully paid for after going IPO.

GeoEye Inc. is DigitalGlobe’s biggest competitor.  GeoEye is based in Dulles, Virginia and they employ about 130 people.  DigitalGlobe earned about $95.8 million on $151.7 million in revenue in 2007.

DigitalGlobe will be the fifth IPO this year in the United States.

[via alarmclock/StreetInsider]

AOL co-founder Steve Case has come a long way since his days as running the dial-up giant. Case was started in 2007 as a payment network. Revolution Money is based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Today the company announced a $42 million round of funding. The Series C round was led by Goldman Sachs. Other investors that participated included Steve Case, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, former AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis, former Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck, and JP Morgan Chairman David Golden.

The company previously raised $50 million Series B in September 2007. Thus far Revolution Money raised $92 million.

The idea behind Revolution Money is to lower credit card charges and other payment transfers. Merchants are charged an 0.5% transaction fee.

“It’s a vote of confidence from the insiders and we were able to bring in this affiliate of Goldman [a new investor],” stated Leonsis. “It’s such a big opportunity and big play. There hasn’t been a new entrant since PayPal, which was about a dozen years ago.”

Revolution Money’s two products are called RevolutionCard and RevolutionMoneyExchange. RevolutionCard is a credit card that charges the 0.5% per transaction which is compared to the 1.5% to 4% fee normally charged to traditional companies.

Revolution MoneyExchange is a P2P payment system that allows users to exchange money for free. MoneyExchange has about 400,000 registered users since the service started.

[via WSJ]

 
Greylock Partners announced today that they would be investing $4 million in New York City based company, Payoneer.  Payoneer is a company that allows companies and business partners to pay each other via MasterCard online.  Payoneer is a private company that markets and manages prepaid MasterCard cards and works with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware to process card transactions.

Upon realizing the importance of developing strong partnerships with Web 2.0 companies, Payoneer currently works with selected business allies such as Metacafe, Amie St., oDesk, and BitWine.  Using such a service could also be very beneficial for Web 2.0 start-ups with only a few employees that share office expenses.

“The Internet payout space may well become a killer application in the next few years as Internet companies transition to smarter ways to pay out their partners around the globe,” stated Moshe Mor, a partner at Greylock Partners. “Payoneer’s team has deep payments experience, and an already impressive track rate of customer adoption and solutions. We’re delighted to work in partnership with Payoneer to fuel the company’s expanded market presence.” 

“Web-driven businesses have the unique opportunity to use payments as a retention tool, not just a cost line-item,” stated Yuval Tal, the CEO and founder of Payoneer. “With our additional funding on board, we’ll be adding to our team, expanding our service offerings, and working aggressively to win new accounts during this exciting high-growth time in our market.” 

Payoneer was founded in 2005 and maintains a research and development facility in Tel Aviv, Israel.   The co-branded MasterCards provided by Payoneer can be used anywhere whether it is in any store, online, or ATMs that MasterCards are accepted.

Proven Model Cases:
Citigroup Inc./eCount Inc.
“The prepaid card market is experiencing high growth, and is currently estimated at more than $2 trillion worldwide, as corporations and consumers continue to move from paper checks to electronic-based payment methods” states a Citibank press release announcement of the fairly recent eCount Inc. acquisition.

eBay Inc./PayPal
Another proven model is the legendary $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal.  In July 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock.  PayPal now has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies.

It is expected that with this round of funding that Payoneer will become hypercompetitive amongst some of the major aforementioned players out there.  I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll start seeing the Payoneer logo quite a bit more as we shop online.

[Information Source: E-mail from PR Representative for Greylock Partners]