Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » DFJ

Former MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro Raises Funding To Launch A Facebook Alternative

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:05:19 +0000

Dmitry Shapiro is the former MySpace Music CTO. Shapiro has raised funding from investors that include Draper Fisher Jurvetson to launch an alternative to Facebook called Altly. Altly will be a social network that has strong privacy controls and data ownership.

Below is a statement from the company.

There is clearly nothing wrong with Facebook making money, as all business has to do. What IS clearly wrong is when our privacy, our personal information, our digital lives are being subjugated for the sake of profit, without us having any meaningful capability to opt out, or even know the extent of such activity.

Is there another option? What are our alternatives? If we don’t like what Facebook is doing, what can we do about it?

Well, herein lies the problem. There are NO serious alternatives at this time. For every Coke there is a Pepsi, for every Ford there is a Chevy, for every PC there is a Mac and for every Facebook there is…. a void! Facebook has such overwhelming power that practically no one believes that trying to build an alternative is possible.

DFJ Managing Partner Josh Stein wrote in a tweet: “Incredibly excited to be an investor in Altly, my third adventure with @dmitry.” Some of Shapiro’s previous companies include Veoh and Akonix.

[AllThingsD]

Do@ Raises $7 Million From DFJ

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 23 May 2011 22:22:30 +0000

Do@ is a mobile search company that has raised $7 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Do@ co-founder Ami Ben-David said that the current way of searching on mobile devices is too inconvenient since it involves typing words and scrolling to find a good link.

So how does Do@ work? When doing common searches on the Do@ iPhone app like movies, music, restaurants, etc., the HTML5 version of the website with the search pulls up a slideshow of results. Tim Draper of DFJ will be joining the board of directors at Do@. Below is a video demo.

JiWire Raises $20 Million In New Round Of Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:06:02 +0000

JiWire is a mobile ad company that has raised $20 million in a round of funding made by Trident Capital, Comcast Interactive Capital, DFJ, Panorama Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners. JiWire has raised a total of $45 million in funding thus far. JiWire has a location-based ad platform that runs on WiFi through 40 public WiFi networks. Last year JiWire acquired location based mobile shopping company NearbyNow. [TechCrunch]

Gilt Groupe Raises $138 Million From Several Investors and Is Valued At $1 Billion

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 21:01:27 +0000

New York based discount flash sales website Gilt Groupe has raised $138 million in venture capital funding. Investors in this fifth round of funding include Softbank Group, General Atlantic, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, NEA, DFJ Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital, and Eastward Capital.

Softbank is putting $62.5 million in the round, which will go towards Gilt Groupe USA. Softbank is also putting a smaller amount into Gilt Groupe Japan. Gilt Groupe has raised a total of $240 million in funding. This values Gilt at $1 billion.

Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan is known for being an early employee at DoubleClick. Gilt was launched in November 2007. Gilt plans on using the funding towards launching new verticals and for acquisitions.

[AllThingsD]

Mobile Q&A Service Opinionaided Raises $1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 09:44:28 +0000

Opinionaided is a mobile Q&A service that has raised $1 million in funding several venture capital companies and angel investors. The investors include General Catalyst, SoftBank Capital, DFJ, ENIAC Ventures, Mark Wachen, Jonah Goodhart, Karl Jacob, and Vince Monical.

Opinionaided is an iOS application that lets people offer advice and opinions. On the app, users can input a question and determine a category for users to answer. It is like a Quora-type of business model but tailored towards mobile devices.

Thus far there has been 40 million responses to about 500,000 questions. The company is based in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Real Estate Community Website RentJuice Raises $6.2 Million In Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:30:29 +0000

RentJuice is a real estate community website where real estate agents and brokers can view real estate data. RentJuice raised $6.2 million in Series B funding led by Highland Capital and Tim Draper of DFJ. RentJuice automates administrative tasks for real estate professionals, brokerages, and landlords. RentJuice helps brokers capitalize on predictions that 10 million new renters will enter the U.S. market in the enxt 5 years. RentJuice was founded in 2009 by CEO David Vivero and CTO Kunal Shah.

Meebo Raises $27.5 Million In Series D

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:00:48 +0000

Meebo announced earlier this week that they have raised $27.5 million in Series D. The funding was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Sequoia Capital, DFJ, Time Warner, and JAFCO. Meebo said that they plan on using the funds to continue expanding upon their platform. Thus far the company has raised $70 million total.

Meebo recently launched the Meebo MiniBar browser extension and now they reach 33% of U.S. Internet users. Meebo receives 71 million domestic unique users and 142 million uniques worldwide according to comScore based on November 2010.

[PEHub]

TMS Buys Online Video Search Company CastTV

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:00:21 +0000

Tribune Media Services has acquired online video search services company CastTV. CastTV was founded in 2006 by Edwin Ong and Alex Vikati and they raised $3.1 million from DFJ, Ron Conway, and Marc Andreessen. “CastTV was profitable so we weren’t forced to make any decisions,” said Vikati. CastTV receives about 4 million monthly unique visitors. TMS plans on combining CastTV’s databases with their own metadata service. [AllThingsD]

Mobile Analytics Company Flurry Raises $15 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:22:20 +0000

Flurry Inc. is a mobile analytics and monetization solutions company that has raised $15 million in Series C funding. This round of funding was led by Menlo Ventures. Other investors include DFJ, InterWest, First Round Capital, and Union Square Ventures. Menlo Ventures Managing Director Sonja Hoel Perkins will join the board of directors at Flurry. Flurry plans to use the funding to expand their Flurry Analytics and AppCircle services across iOS and Android. Below is the full press release:

Flurry Raises $15M Series C to Solidify Mobile App Acquisition, Retention and Monetization Leadership

Flurry Reaches Over 100M Unique Devices per Month as Mobile App Market Explodes

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Flurry Inc., a leading provider of mobile application analytics, discovery and monetization solutions, today announced that it has closed a $15 million Series C round of financing. The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from existing investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest, First Round Capital and Union Square Ventures. Sonja Hoel Perkins, Menlo Ventures Managing Director, will join Flurry’s board of directors.

“We are thrilled to have Menlo Ventures lead this round of financing, and to have Sonja Hoel Perkins join our board of directors,” said Simon Khalaf president and CEO of Flurry. “The addition of Menlo Ventures builds on the strength of our existing investors, and our goal of powering the businesses of tens of thousands of application developers serving hundreds of millions of consumers in the explosively growing mobile application market.”

Flurry intends to use the funds to expand the reach of its Flurry Analytics and AppCircle services across the top mobile application platforms, including iOS and Android. The funds will also be used to expand sales and marketing, as well as accelerate the development of new services that change the way advertisers engage with consumers through mobile applications.
“Flurry plays a fundamental role in the booming mobile application market,” said Sonja Hoel Perkins, Menlo Ventures Managing Director. “More importantly, Flurry has positioned itself like no other company to help mobile app developers solve critical audience segmentation, distribution and monetization challenges.”

In November 2010, Flurry measured 5 billion anonymous, aggregated end-user sessions from over 100 million unique devices for a total of more than 35 billion data transactions. The company also announced that over 30 million unique users have viewed an AppCircle application recommendation and millions of apps have been downloaded as a result of AppCircle-targeted recommendations.
“Since joining as an investor and board member in January 2010, I have been impressed by Flurry’s fantastic growth and positive impact on the mobile application market,” said Doug Pepper, General Partner at InterWest Partners. “The importance of their role to the ecosystem – from developers and platform providers to agencies and brands – continues to grow.”

About Flurry

Flurry is a leading smartphone application analytics, promotion and monetization platform used by more than 35,000 companies in more than 60,000 applications across iOS, Android, Blackberry and J2ME. Flurry tracks over five billion anonymous, aggregated end-user application sessions each month.

Flurry Analytics helps developers make better applications, increase retention and grow revenue. Flurry AppCircle is an intelligent, analytics-powered cross-selling network that accelerates user acquisition for promoters and meaningfully monetizes applications for publishers.

Flurry is venture-backed with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.flurry.com.

JiWire Buys Location-Based Shopping Mobile Company NearbyNow

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 07:49:45 +0000

Mobile advertising company JiWire has announced that they have acquired location-based mobile shopping company NearbyNow. The financial details were undisclosed.

NearbyNow lets brands showcase products and confirm availability in actual stores. NearbyNow has reported that their ad click-through rates are over 20% and conversion-to-purchase average rates are about 5.8%. NearbyNow raised about $20 million in venture funding from DFJ and other investors.

[TechCrunch]