Ari Gold has Lloyd, but not all of us can have an assistant that is as handy as the Entourage character. The problem with business today is that sometimes administrative tasks may take as much time as important jobs.

Solvate is a startup company that has just raised $2.3 million to help you find an assistant. Julie Ruvolo, the co-founder and COO of the company considers today to be the company’s real laucnh date even though the company was first noticed back in March. The investors in this round include RRE Ventures and DFJ Gotham Ventures Solvate recently redesigned their website too.

The website works like this: first you tell Solvate what you would like to have accomplished. The company finds who is the most qualified and charges you for every 5 minute increments of work with a rate of about $25 per hour. The company contracted can be contacted by the client through e-mail or phone. Some of the tasks that can be done include PowerPoint presentations, expense report management, sale management, and trip planning.

“There’s this hegemonic Valley mentality that the way to scale is automation,” stated Ruvolo in an interview with VentureBeat. However Solvate does not believe in automation as much as they believe in human interaction and involvement. And I couldn’t agree with them more. I’ve used eLance before and it seems like that there isn’t much human interaction at all.

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.

[via NYT]

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.

[via VentureBeat]

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.

[via TechCrunch]

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.

[via TechCrunch]

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 21^st Century.”

Here is the press release of the news.

SkyGrid is a news aggregation and filtering service that is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.  SkyGrid has announced that they have raised $11 million as part of their Series B round of funding.  The lead investor was RRE Ventures.  Previous investor, BlackRock also participated.  Other previous investors includes Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Esther Dyson, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

SkyGrid scans millions of news sources and then filters out the important information.  SkyGrid was started in 2005 and is run by Kevin Pomplun.  SkyGrid looks very similar to Bloomberg’s software, but positive news stories are color coded green, negative stories are color coded red, and neutral are white.  Below is a screen shot from GigaOM.

SkyGrid has applied for several patents on their “sentiment algorithm” and seven other components of their search technology.  I haven’t seen any other search engine provide color-coded company stories and blog posts so I am definetely impressed.

SkyGrid’s services are about $500 per month.  The last round of funding added up to about $2.25 million.

Related Links:
1. SkyGrid
2. paidContent

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.”

Related Links:
1. Searchandise press release

“The new media content space and specifically animation, is growing at an explosive rate,” stated Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at DFJ. “aniBoom created a disruptive model harnessing the power and reach of digital distribution to generate tremendous opportunities for animated content created by a massive network of independent professionals around the globe.”

aniBoom, an animation social network for creative minds to collaborate on cartoons has raised a big round of funding at $10 million Series B.  AniBoom is based in Israel and the funding was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures and previous investor Evergreen Venture Partners also participated in this round.  aniBoom raised $4.5 million in February 2007. 

aniBoom was started in 2006 by Uri Shinar.  Uri is also the CEO of the company.  aniBoom wants to become the YouTube of animation according to TechCrunch.

aniBoom has over 4,000 independent creators across 70 countries.  These artists are all working together to help making a music video for songs on Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” album through a contest.

“In teaming up with DFJ and DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures, we are proud to partner with one of the top venture firms in the world,” stated Uri Shinar.  “aniBoom is the innovator of the now very hot virtual digital animation studios and animation incubation model, and to see the major media and entertainment powers following suit is a strong endorsement of our vision.”

Aniboom is located at www.aniboom.com

 

Dave Sifry’s blog search platform, Technorati has come a long way since it’s inception.  In 2006, Technorati won numerous awards including the Best Technical Achievement and Best of Show at South by Southwest and was also nominated for a 2006 Webby award.

Sifry launched Technorati in 2002.  The name, Technorati is based on the fusion of the words technology and literati (intellectuals).  Technorati allows users to search for blogs, photos, and other media.  Technorati redesigned their platform in 2007 to gain the attention of bloggers, Internet startups, entrepreneurs, and mainstream media.

In the first three rounds of investment, Technorati brought in $21.6 million.  Today the company announced that they have raised $7.5 million out of a targeted $10 million Series D round.  Montgomery & Co. is working on brokering an acquisition of the blog search engine company.

Previous investors in Technorati include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, August Capital, and Mobius Venture Capital.  In this round, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation participated.

Upon visiting the Technorati homepage I noticed that at the top it says, “what’s percolating in blogs now.”  The frontpage consists of stories in the media that many blogs are commenting on and linking to.  This approach is very similar to Techmeme and Digg.

Technorati has a feature called Authority and Ranks individual blogs.  The more a blog gets linked to, the more authority and ranking it receives. The top 100 blogs on Technorati are available at: http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/.

Technorati will be making an official announcement next week about the funding and will be announcing a business strategy initiative.  Look for additional Technorati news next week.

Information Sources:
[1] paidContent: More Cash For Technorati: Blog Searcher Gets $7.5 Million Of $10 Million Fourth Round by Joseph Weisenthal
[2] TechCrunch: Technorati Confirms New Financing; New Business Focus Coming by Michael Arrington

Meebo, the online chat application that is powered by AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber has raised a Series C round of investment at $25 million. JAFCO Ventures was the lead investor. Other investors include Time Warner, KTB Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Meebo was started in September 2005 and is currently valuated at $200 million.

Meebo is a top 400 site within Alexa.  The online instant message company plans to utilize their partnership through Time Warner by working with its subsidiaries such as AOL, TMZ, New Line Cinema, People Magazine, and CNN.

Meebo will be expanding to Japan and Korea with this round of funding.  Meebo also has partnerships with VideoEgg, CBS, PUMA, and 4 record labels.  Meebo started in September 2005 and has over 29 million users sending over 150 million IMs daily.

The actual name of the company was written on a napkin by the three co-founders.   What is the deal with  coming up with business plans and Internet company names on napkins?

Redux is a social network company based in Berkeley, Calif. VentureBeat just wrote that the company has raised $6.5 million from Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Redux’s first round of funding was provided by Alsop Louie Partners and Peter Thiel. Thiel is an early investor in Facebook and PayPal co-founder.

Redux was started by Darian Sharazi. Darian used to work for Facebook and also started Fotodunk, a mobile photo-sharing company. Redux has an algorithm that helps people find others with similar interests. Redux allows users to chat on all pages and exchange media.

Below is a video from DEMO.com of Darian presenting Redux: