Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Crosslink Capital

People Search Engine Ark Raises $4.2 Million In Seed Round

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:55:34 +0000

Ark is a people search engine launched at Y Combinator Demo Day that has raised $4.2 million in a seed round of funding. Ark crawls Facebook, RenRen, LinkedIn, and Twitter to find out as much data as possible. The founders at Ark got the idea for the startup when they found out that 30% of searches are for people.

In March 2012, Ark indexed over 1 billion people from their social networking data. About 250,000 people have signed up for beta invites.

The $4.2 million seed round is the largest that any Y Combinator has received. Investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Greylock Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel, Atlas Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Expansion Venture Capital, and Felicis Ventures. Angel investors from Facebook, Salesforce.com, Qualcomm, and Microsoft also participated in this round.

Ark currently has 20 people on staff and they plan to hire more for their mobile and search engineering teams. Ark started in summer 2011 and their search engine was developed during the Y Combinator Winter Program.

Infographics Design Company Visual.ly Raises $2 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:37:01 +0000

Visual.ly is an infographics design company that has raised $2 million in seed funding. The investors in this round includes Crosslink Capital, SoftTech, 500 Startups, Kapor Capital, Giza Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Mark Goines, Josh James, etc. Visual.ly had about 26,000 users sign up as part of their beta. Over 300,000 infographics have been created and they receive about one million pageviews per month. Some of the companies that Visual.ly works with include BuzzFeed, AskMen, CNNMoney, GOOD, NASDAQ, Skype, the Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic. Visual.ly plans on using the funding for building their development team and hire additional data visualization specialists.

Sports Website Bleacher Report Raises $22 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:30:24 +0000

Bleacher Report is a sports website that has raised $22 million in a round led by Oak Investment Partners. Crosslink Capital and Hillsven Capital participated in this round. Oak Investment Partners plans on helping Bleacher Report expand to other verticals where content creation and publishing is encouraged by social engagement.

Bleacher Report will use the funding for building additional content and expanding into video and mobile. Bleacher Report has raised $40.5 million in funding total. Bleacher Report is also fighting the notion that they are “all SEO fodder.” They plan on optimizing their content for search, but only 30-35% of their traffic is from Google and 30% is direct traffic. Bleacher Report will also use the funding for creating new content formats.

[paidContent]

Empire Avenue Raises $1.2 Million In Series A

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:28:01 +0000

Empire Avenue is a stock market website for social influence. The company has raised $1.2 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was led by Crosslink Capital. iNovia Capital, TriplePoint Capital, and BioWare co-founders Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk also participated in this round.

Empire Avenue plans on using this round of funding to ramp up hiring and expand their platform to focus on growing their virtual goods and currency sales. Launched in 2010, Empire Avenue is a social stock market where users take the role of a company and their product values are determined by the level of online activities. The company wants brands to enhance their social media participation.

Empire Avenue is plugged into websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. Brands can turn contributions into actual revenue by by utilizing an ad platform used by Empire Avenue to deliver targeted ads

[TechCrunch]

Dell Paying $700 Million In Cash To Acquire Force10 Networks

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:18:30 +0000

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) is acquiring Force10 Networks Inc. for $700 million in cash. Force10 is a high-speed Ethernet networking equipment company that was planning to go the IPO route.

Force10 is best known for developing 10 gigabit Ethernet networking switching and routing products. Force10 was founded in 1999 and merged with Turin Networks Inc.

Between Turin and Force10, they raised over $630 million in venture capital. The company’s most recent round of funding was $30 million, which gave the company a valuation that is greater than $200 million.

Some of the previous investors in the company include Advanced Equities, Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, DCM, Morgenthaler Ventures, New Enteprise Associates, Pacesetter Capital Group, RWI Ventures, Tudo Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, and Worldview Technology Partners.

In-Game Ad Company Kiip Raises $4 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:46:10 +0000

Kiip is an in-game advertising company that has announced $4 million in Series A funding in a round that is led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, and True Ventures. Kiip has not revealed how they plan on using the funding. They plan on using the funding to “bridge the gap between mobile advertising and mobile gaming.” Hummer Winblad partner Lars Leckie will be joining the board of directors at Kiip. Kiip has hired former director of sales at Digg Chris Kobran as VP of sales and former EA Mobile employee Dan Silberberger as VP of business development. [Vator TV]

Marin Software Raises $16 Million In Series E

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:33:50 +0000

Marin Software is a company that makes search engine management tools for advertising companies. They have raised $16 million in Series E funding led by Crosslink Capital. DAG Ventures, Focus Ventures, Benchmark Capital, and Triangle Peak Partners also participated in this round. Marin now has a total of $51 million in funding.

Eric Chin, a Crosslink Capital partner will be joining the board of directors at Marin Software. Former Shutterfly VP of Finanace John Kaelle will be joining the Marin team as the EVP and CFO as well.

Marin’s software helps advertising companies and agencies manage paid search campaigns over Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Marin Software has about 800 clients and manages about 600 million keywords. They also manage $2 billion in annualized paid search spend for their customers.

[TechCrunch]

The Washington Post Buys iCurrent

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:42:10 +0000

The Washington Post Company has bought out iCurrent, a service where people can view news according to their interests. There is no word on what the acquisition price, but VentureBeat speculates that it is above $5 million. iCurrent was funded by Crosslink Capital, who plugged in about $3 million since the news company started in 2007. [VentureBeat]

Social Network Company Hi5 Raises $14 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:49:47 +0000

Social networking company Hi5 has raised $14 million in a second round of funding. Hi5 plans to use the funding to expand their social gaming platform and increase virtual goods. Hi5 started making free games, but virtual decorations require real money. This round of funding was provided by Crosslink Capital and Mohr Davidow. [VentureBeat]

Like.com Raises $32 Million Series C From Menlo Ventures, Crosslink Capital, BlueRun Ventures, and Leapfrog Ventures

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:30:04 +0000

Like.com, the visual search engine started by Munjal Shah, Burak Gokturk, and Azhar Khan has raised a substantial round of funding. Like.com raised $32 million in Series C from Menlo Ventures, Crosslink Capital, BlueRun Ventures, and Leapfrog Ventures. Through this round of funding, Prazan Vazirani from Menlo Ventures joined the Like.com Board of Directors.

Through this round of funding, Like.com is believed to be above a $100 million valuation. Employees that have shares in the company also had the opportunity to sell shares through the funding process as well. Like.com launched in November 2006 and their strongest service is matching goods that are displayed in a picture.

Like.com made about $1 million in revenue in about one year. Now they are making about $20 million. And they are planning to launch a UK version of the site. The company also created an iPhone application called LikeThis that allows phone users to take a picture of an item and find similar items for sale.

A few months ago, Like.com started placing ads on Facebook that matched fashion products that linked to a user’s profile picture. For example, if I was wearing Oakley sunglasses on my profile picture, the ad will appear alongside with sunglasses that look very similar.

LikeThis is also available on the Like.com website for testing. To test it out, I uploaded a picture from Entourage. Then I highlighted the shoes of the guy in the green shirt (center). After uploading, Like.com will ask you which attributes are most important to you between Color, Shape, Pattern, or all three equally. I selected all three are equally important to me. Like.com asked for my e-mail to let me know when they are done analyzing the photo.

Once I get an e-mail back, I’ll let you know how accurate the results are. Look for an update on this post.

Update: Below are the results