At major events like birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings hundreds of pictures are being taken. However sharing the photos and group all of the photos taken become an issue when everyone has their own digital camera. The people posing and smiling for all the cameras become tired and don’t know what camera to look at. Clixtr has designed an application for the iPhone that sells for $2.99 that will use the GPS location of your photo and upload it into albums that are linked to the same GPS location you are at.
Its as easy as taking the picture and uploading it to Clixtr. From there the photos will automatically be linked to that location. These photos can also be seen through the iPhone in a streaming view. Although there are many photo sharing alternatives in the market today, Clixtr is one of the few location-based companies that sorts photos.
Clixtr has 5 employees and is based in San Francisco, California. The company started developing the application in October 2008. They have seed capital from DFJ and believe that they could also make money from location-based advertising.
According to a Form D filed with the SEC, MyShape has raised additional funding. MyShape designs custom online retail stores for you called myShop. myShop displays clothes that were made for your specific measurements.
The company raised funding in July 2007 and October 2008. In the Form D, MyShape claims to have sold $10.5 million worth of equity out of a total of $12.1 million available. Emily Melton of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tenaya Capital’s Ben Boyer, and former AOL CEO Barry Schuler both seem to have some sort of involvement in this round.
MyShape was started by Louise Wannier. This past October, MyShape raised about $12 million in funding from Lehman Brothers, DFJ, Pasadena Angels, and Tech Coast Angels.
Richrelevance designs personalized recommendation software used by companies such as Sears, KMart, Michigan Bulb Co., and Bestbuyeyeglasses.com. As a matter of fact, Amazon.com said that they saw a 25% profit increase based on personalized recommendations. In an SEC filing it has been revealed that Richrelevance has raised $12.5 million in additional funding. Currently it is unclear whether this is a new round of funding or an add-on to the previous round.
The previous round was Series C at $9 million, led by DFJ with contributions from Greylock Partners, Tugboat Ventures, and several others. Interestingly, the last time I wrote about a combined investment between Tugboat and Greylock, the Cuil search engine was involved. That search engine was quickly hyped up and forgotten about despite a $200 million valuation. Hopefully Greylock and Tugboat have better luck in this investment.
Richrelevance’s first couple rounds of funding amounted to $9 million in total funding. That investment was also provided by Greylock, DFJ, and Tugboat. The company has an office in Seattle and hired former Amazon.com Principal Engineer Darren Vengroff to run the company. In the past year, Richrelevance said that they have tripled their revenues and has plans to further expand.
At the beginning of the year, Facebook filed a complaint against Power.com accusing them of copyright and trademark infringement and unlawful competition. Power.com was attempting to act as an aggregated social network where users can enter login information for MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hi5, Orkut, and Facebook and all of their contact information would be updated at once amongst all the networks.
Facebook blocked access and sued them in January as a result. Now Power.com has responded with their own lawsuit alleging that Facebook is trying to monopolize the social networking industry.
Power.com started in Brazil and tried to capture the U.S. audience this past December with help from investors such as DFJ and Esther Dyson. Power.com wanted “to be the center of the world” according to CEO Steve Vachani. Power.com has a huge spike in traffic, but then it died out.
At one point there was 8 million users and just last month there were only 14,000 U.S. users that visited their website according to analytics web company Compete.com. Power.com claims that they received 250,000 unique visitors in the U.S. last month.
Power.com stated that Facebook is stifling competition by blocking access to their service. But Facebook made a statement saying that they made many attempts to work with Power.com but claims that they continued to put user data at risk.
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is a space transportation companies that was started by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. SpaceX is building reusable space launch vehicles called the Falcon 1 and the Falcon 9 along with a Dragon series of vehicles.
The company started in 2002 and employs about 800 people. Musk himself put $100 million in seed funding for the company. After that the company raised $20 million in Series A from The Founders Fund. The company is now pursuing an additional $60 million additional round. DFJ put in about $15 million of the new round.
Last year SpaceX launched a rocket into space after failing three times. Now SpaceX is being hired by aerospace companies and the government to launch satellites.
Yodle is a startup that provides local online advertising across search engines and other web real estate. Yodle is based in New York and has raised $10 million Series C from JAFCO Ventures, the DFJ Growth fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Yodle started in 2005 and reports that they have increased 700% in annual revenue compared to 2007. The run rate for their fourth quarter in 2008 was about $30 million. Yodle has about 9 people in staff in 2006 and now they have 250 people. The company has over 5,000 customers. They had 125 in 2006. The company expects to make a profit in about six months.
Yodle helps small businesses advertise their products on search engines and Yodle will track and optimize the ads. This includes the clickthrough rates, phone calls, and click per action rates. Yodle has their customers grouped into different sectors such as Beauty & Personal Care, Business & Professional, Health & Medical, Home & Garden, and Travel & Lifestyle.
Yodle was founded by Nathaniel Stevens. He currently serves as the VP of Media Operations. Stevens started the company while he was attending Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Stevens was accepted into the Venture Initiation Program, UPenn’s incubation initiative. Yodle’s first round of funding was $3 million by Bessemer Venture Partners. Yodle’s second round of funding was $12 million and provided by Bessemer Venture Partners and DFJ. This gives Yodle a total of $15 million.
Power.com is a social networking company with 5 million users and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company raised $8 million Series A investment from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. On December 30, Facebook sued Power.com.
Power.com aggregates all of the activities from different social networks and places it on one page. Facebook claims that Power.com is violating copyright and trademarks. Facebook also referenced the scraping of proprietary data from the social network in the lawsuit.
“After discussing the issues with Power.com for about a month without reaching a resolution, we filed a lawsuit to enforce our terms of service, maintain the integrity of our site and to assure our users’ privacy and security are protected,” stated Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook.
Steve Vachani, founder of Power.com stated that his company has been in discussions with Facebook to get their feedback. Facebook suggested that Power.com uses Facebook Connect instead of scraping the data directly.
Facebook attempted to stop Power.com for using data without permission. The first complaint was sent on December 1 when Power.com was first announced. On December 12, Vachani stated that Facebook Connect would be implemented in two weeks but then asked for an extension. After December 26, Power.com kept using Facebook in an unauthorized manner.
That was the last straw. Stay tuned for more updates regarding this lawsuit.
Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Tim Draper are participating in a NCsoft Operation Immortality experiment to send DNA into outer space.
Kevin Rose is the founder and creator of Digg. Robert Scoble is a tech blogger, social media advocate, and a videographer at FastCompany.TV. Tim Draper is the founder of venture capital company, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Since this news had Kevin Rose’s name in it, I submitted it to Digg and it became popular within 14 hours. Digg it up if you like the news. Richard Garriot, a game designer is also sending his DNA.
All of these individuals are travelling to the International Space Station on October 12 to send their DNA. Operation Immortality is sending a digital time capsule of the human race on the ISS with DNA samples of musicians, athletes, and some of Silicon Valley’s brightest.
“It is exciting to have Kevin, Tim and Robert join this project and be a part of preserving their accomplishments which have changed our world,” stated Garriott. “These three individuals are some of the most creative and innovative minds in Silicon Valley and we are honored to include them as part of our snapshot of humanity in the 21st Century.”
Guidester, Inc. has relaunched as Searchandise Commerce. Searchandise has raised $7.5 million from private equity firm Cloquet Capital Partners LLC, DFJ Gotham, Wheatley Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, and Tim Draper.
Searchandise provides CPC solutions to manufacturers that want to advertise on online merchandising companies like Become.com, Buy.com, and PriceGrabber. Searchandise uses their partnership with ATG to distribute the ads. ATG created an ad-supported e-commerce platform.
“Searchandise Commerce has the potential to change the online retail landscape,” stated Burt McGillivray, President of Cloquet Capital. “Combine the company’s established customer base, with its innovative technology and a new and proven executive team, and this is an exciting investment for us to lead. I have worked with John and his team in the past and they have a superior track record of successful ventures. Searchandise Commerce will be no different.”
