Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Flybridge Capital Partners

PayDay Loan Company ZestCash Raises $73 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:41:42 +0000

ZestCash is a payday loan company that was founded by former Google CIO and VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill. ZestCash aims to legitimize the payday loan industry. ZestCash has raised $73 million in a new round of funding. Matrix Partners provided $23 million in the form of an equity round. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, GRP Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Lighthouse Capital Partners also participated in this round. The company also raised a separate $50 million line of debt financing from Victory Park Capital.

ZestCash uses machine learning techniques and data analysis combined with traditional credit scoring to offer credit to many people who would normally be turned away. Payday loans are common among consumers that do not have the credit to take out standard loans through a bank. One example is that a consumer will pay an average of $60 to borrow $300 for 14 days. After 2 weeks, the borrower must pay the entire loan and fee back in one payment. If the borrower cannot pay the loan back, then he or she can get an extension but will have to pay another $60 for the additional amount of time.

The average payday loan gets rolled over 6 times, which means that the average borrow pays $420 in fees to borrow $300 in principal. That is insane! In 2010, 30 million Americans took out a payday loan. Using ZestCash, borrowers can pick how much money they want to borrow and for how long. The company displays their weekly payment based on the terms.

Most payday loans are processed through brick-and-mortar stores, but ZestCash operates entirely online. The startup promises flexibility when dealing with individual borrowers and late payments. ZestCash currently has 75 people in staff and has loaned millions of dollars to thousands of customers. This new round of funding will be used for innovations in underwriting, expansion into additional states, and company growth.

[TechCrunch]

SavingStar Hits 1 Million Users In Under A Year

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:53:13 +0000

SavingStar is a service where you can receive grocery discounts by entering your loyalty cards into the system. I just registered an account with them and I noticed that they are able to get me an additional $2.00 off from 2 boxes of Pepsi, $1.00 off a bag of Tostitos, 50 cents off Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, etc. from Kroger. Other stores that work with the service include Rite Aid, CVS, Piggly Wiggly, Albertsons, County Market, Food City, Lowes Foods, Jack’s SuperValu, Ralphs, and the list goes on. SavingStar launched in beta this past August and raised $2.3 million in funding from Flybridge Capital Partners, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, and several angel investors.

SavingStar renamed the company from SaveWave and raised $7 million in Series B financing this past April. Buddy Media Founder and CEO Michael Lazerow joined the company board of directors.

The company has hit a major milestone this past week. In exactly 230 days, the company has surpassed 1 million active users. This growth is faster than Groupon, Twitter, and Foursquare. SavingStar considers themselves as being a “Groupon for groceries.”

Every year, consumers spend about $550 billion per year on groceries. The benefits for grocery companies is that they can add their products to SavingStar for free and they will not be charged until a product is actually purchased.

[SavingStar Press Release]

ZestCash Raises $19 Million to Provide Short-Term Loans

Riley Kennysmith — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:33:05 +0000

Loan service ZestCash has raised $19 million in funding to expand its short-term loans and debt financing. The funding comes from Lightspeed Venture Partners, GRP Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Lighthouse Capital Partners. GigaOM reports that Lighthouse’s contribution of $8 million is specifically for debt financing. ZestCash’s loans are data-driven; they offer loans to those whose online data says they’re credit worthy.

ZestCash is led by Douglas Merrill, former CIO at Google, and the company’s credit assessments are compared to Google’s PageRank technology.

33Across Raises $9 Million In Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:34:17 +0000

33across is a company that develops technology that is valuable to retailers. If you buy something on eBay, 33across is able to identify which of your contacts are connected to you. “We identify the anonymous connections of consumers that are buying and shopping a certain brand,” stated 33across co-founder Eric Wheeler. 33across has raised $9 million in funding with Flybridge Capital Partners being the lead investor. First Round Capital and QED Investors also participated in this round. [PEHub]

GroupMe To Raise Series B Funding Through A VC Bidding War

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:00:34 +0000

GroupMe is a service that lets you text a group of people using just one phone number. GroupMe is currently in the middle of raising venture capital, but there is supposedly a bidding war taking place. This round of funding would put GroupMe at a value that is close to $30 million.

The company’s growth is “nuts – thousands of percent,” according to a BusinessInsider source. The VC firms in the middle of the bidding war include Sequoia, Andreeseen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Flybridge, and Union Square Ventures.

GroupMe’s series A investors include Betaworks and First Round Capital. They invested about $700,000. It’s expected that these two companies will participate in this upcoming round as well.

[BusinessInsider]

T2 Biosystems Raises $15 Million In Equity

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:04:33 +0000

T2 Biosystems Inc. has raised $15 million from 9 different investors. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate development and commercialization for its diagnostic platform. The investment round was led by Physic Ventures. Other investors include Arcus Ventures, RA Capital Management LLC, Camros Capital LLC, WS Investments Company, Flagship Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Partners Healthcare of Boston. T2 Biosystems raised $10.8 million in Series B financing two years ago. [Bizjournals]

DataXu Raises $11 Million In Series B From Menlo, Atlas, and Flybridge

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:56:17 +0000

DataXu has raised $11 million in Series B funding. Investors include Menlo Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Flybridge Capital Partners. Atlas and Flybridge were involved in DataXu’s first round in April 2009. The new round of funding will be used for product development, sales, marketing, and expansion. DataXu has offices in Boston and N.Y. DataXu is an online ad exchange service. [paidContent]

Video Storage and Infrastructure Company Blackwave Raises $7 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:07:54 +0000

Blackwave is an Acton, Mass. based company that hosts and streams videos on the Internet. The company has recently raised $7 million in Series C from Globespan Capital Partners, Sigma Partners, and Flybridge Capital Partners. Thus far Blackwave has raised a total of $29 million in total funding.

“This renewed investment, combined with the ongoing acquisition of a range of new customers and partners, signals the market’s great confidence in our technology and our value proposition,” stated Blackwave CEO Bob Rizika.

Transpera Rings In $8.25 Million Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:28:37 +0000

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.