In less than 2 years since launching, Mint.com is supposedly selling themselves to Intuit Inc. Mint.com is a financial tool that allows you to aggregate all of your bank and credit card information and find ways to save money. The deal is expected to close within the next few days.
Mint had launched at the TechCrunch50 conference two years ago and took the top prize giving them $50,000. Mint raised $31.8 million in total funding from First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Sherpalo Ventures, Hite Capital, DAG Ventures, and The Founders Fund. Angel investors in Mint include Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Geoff Ralston, and Dave McClure.
This acquisition is interesting because Intuit had previously sent Mint a letter demanding an explanation for how they jumped to 850,000 users within several months.
Thread is a dating application on Facebook that suggests potential matches that has just raised a new round of funding. The company raised $1.2 million from Sequoia Capital, the Founders Fund, First Round Capital, and angel investor Ron Conway.
Thread was founded by several former PayPal product managers. “The best people to date are friends of friends,” stated Thread CEO Brian Phillips. “Not all the best people are on dating sites. All the best people are on Facebook.” Phillips recently went on his third date with someone he met on Thread.
Thread pulls in your contact information using Facebook Connect and pulls the public profiles of all your friends. Through the website, you can find out which friends of your friends are single and ask you mutual friend to introduce you. Stalking at its finest.
Thread was originally known as Frinto (friend+intro) but decided to change their name. The Thread.com domain name was already taken and it took them two years to negotiate a deal over the ownership. The owner was told that they would receive equity if the business was successful. If it wasn’t successful, the owner would get the domain name back.
GumGum is an analytics and publisher monetization company that has two license models catering to publishers of larger and smaller sizes. According to a recent SEC filing GumGum raised $2.6 million in funding led by GRP Ventures. First Round Capital also participated in this round.
Thus far, GumGum raised a total of $3.8 million in total. Last year, First Round and Crosscut Ventures invested $1 million in the first round of funding. GumGum was founded by CEO Ophir Tanz. One of GumGum’s biggest clients is the Gawker network for image licensing and monetization.
CoTweet is a startup that has built a Twitter platform for helping companies reach and engage customers. CoTweet has several prominent companies using their platform such as Ford, Starbucks, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated, Zendesk, and Dish Network.
CoTweet announced earlier this week that they have raised $1.1 million in first round funding from Baseline, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments, and Freestyle Capital.
The company platform has the ability to manage multiple tools and accounts at once. Several people also have the ability to post to a single account using the CoTweet platform.
CoTweet is available for free as of right now but the company will eventually charge for their services. “CoTweet is an essential tool that allows us to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, or have a single account with multiple people managing it,” stated Scott Monty, the digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford Motor Company in a press release. “We can also identify who’s responsible for Tweets, which gives us the flexibility to pull experts into the discussion, and to keep a human face while doing so.”
Just like the creatures that Ugobe Inc. models their toys after, the company may go extinct. Ugobe makes the Pleo dinosaur robotic toy. It received a lot of media coverage back in 2003 when the toy was first released. Caleb Chung, inventor of the Furby founded Ugobe. The Furby sold about 50 million units in the 90’s.
The Pleo sells for $350 which was too high for consumers. In 2008, Ugobe made about $19.2 million in revenue, but that dropped to $209,000 in the first quarter of 2009. The Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed in Idaho where the company is based. The company moved from Emeryville to Idaho last year. Ugobe has $1.64 million in assets and $3.56 in liabilities.
The dinosaur Pleo toys have the ability to bark and shake. They are intended to respond similarly to real pets.
The company previously raised three rounds of funding which amounted to about $23.75 million. All of the venture capital companies involved with Ugobe were Asia-based. The first round was $2.75 million by Frontier Management Group, First Round Capital, and Softbank China Holdings President Chauncey Shey. The $8.5 million second round was by Maxima Capital. And the third round $12.5 million was led by Hyield Venture Capital, a division of Foxconn.
Xobni is a San Francisco, Calif. based startup that built a platform around Microsoft Outlook. Xobni makes it easier to find people, email, and attachments within Outlook. Bill Gates even called Xobni the next generation of social networking. Xobni has recently raised $7 million in Series B. Xobni started as a Y-Combinator company then went on to raise $4.26 million in Series A.
Xobni’s Outlook software has been downloaded over 1.5 million times. Xobni is currently doing product trials with Fortune 500 companies. Some of the companies Xobni has partnered with includes LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, and Yahoo! Cisco’s investment in Xobni is an indication that they are becoming serious about enterprise email. In August 2008, Cisco acquired PostPath, an email and calendar company for $215 million.
Prior to the $7 million investment, Xobni raised $4.26 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Atomico, and First Round Capital. The individuals that participated in Xobni’s first round of funding was Ariel Poler, Saar Gur, and Tom Pickney.
Transpera is a mobile web video company that is based in Santa Monica, California. The company is led by Frank Barbieri, former President at Viva Vision and former Group Product Manager at Microsoft. Transpera has raised their second round of funding at $8.25 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, and First Round Capital. Transpera also received debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank.
“Transpera is demonstrating true leadership in the mobile video market by building an ever-expanding network of premium content partners and delivering innovative, game-changing advertising opportunities,” stated Jeff Bussgang general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. “We continue to be pleased with their progress in setting a new standard within the mobile video landscape.”
Transpera will be using the money for expanding their product line and service customers. Transpera already helps monetize video for AccuWeather, Associated Press, Break.com, Revision3, ManiaTV, Fox, MTV, etc.
Transpera has also hired Brian Monnin as Chief Product Officer. Monnin is former VP of Publishing Products as Brightcove.
“When looking at investment opportunities in the consumer internet sector, we found myYearbook offered the most attractive and engaging value proposition for both members and advertisers alike,”stated stated Sergio Monsalve, partner at Norwest Venture Partners.“The company has created a service that is highly valued by its members and a platform for marketers to reach and engage this audience in a friendly and effective way.”
myYearbook.com has raised $13 million Series B from U.S. Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners. myYearBook plans on using the money to provide additional services to members and focus on building revenue. Brother and sister teenage entrepreneurs, Dave and Catherine Cook started myYearbook in 2005.
myYearbook receives about 10 million monthly unique visits per month. So far, myYearbook has raised about $18.6 million. Sergio Monsalve will be joining myYearbook.com’s Board of Directors through this round of funding.
“We are excited to have NVP and Sergio on board as we enter this next phase of our growth,” stated Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook. “We are focused on creating new, innovative services that will offer long-lasting value to both advertisers and our members. NVP’s track record of success and Sergio’s deep operational experience from brand name companies like Photobucket and eBay will be invaluable to our team.”
Aaron Patzer had a vision in November 2005. When using Quicken for his own personal accounting, Aaron realized that he was running through a lot of tedious work. Patzer then started developing Mint, a Web 2.0 tool that is used for all the different forms of money management.
Today, Mint is backed by First Round Capital and previous executives from eBay, Google, Charles Schwab, and Reuters. Josh Kopelman became a Mint Board of Director after investing into the company. Kopelman is the founder of Half.com, which eBay bought in June 2000 for $318 million. Mint’s current funding is $5 million.
As of tonight, Mint has another award to list as an accomplishment: the TechCrunch40 Conference 2007 winner. The personal finance application will take home $50,000 as an award.
Yesterday, First Round Capital has decided to join Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures for investing into Stikkit’s Series A round of funding. The announcement was published in the Stikkit Values of N blog and was also covered by StartupSquad. Stikkit is based in Portland, Oregon and the Stikkit team is lead by Rael Dornfest, a former CTO of O’Reilly Media.
Stikkit allows users to save information and transfer it to various other event-tracking applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal, and 30Boxes. According to StartupSquad, users can also transfer to-do lists, directories, and bookmarks using Stikkit as well.
First Round’s funding was influenced by Rael spending time with First Round managing partner, Josh Kopelman during the early stages of Stikkit development. Through the funding, First Round partner, Rob Hayes entered the Stikkit Board. Hayes then influenced Rael and the Stikkit team to share office space with Platial, “The People’s Atlas” technology company.
Personally, I have not tested out Stikkit since I stopped creating to-do lists after graduating college, but I do believe that Stikkit software would be useful for those who are dependent on computers for their daily event-tracking needs. Below is a screenshot from StartupSquad:
Aaron Patzer had a vision in November 2005. When using Quicken for his own personal accounting, Aaron realized that he was running through a lot of tedious work. Patzer then started developing 
