LoyalBlocks is a loyalty marketing solutions company that has raised $9 million in their first round of funding. The company plans to use the funding to expand their U.S. operations and continue developing their platform for SMBs. Founded in 2011, LoyalBlocks was created by Ido Gaver and Eran Kirshenboim with operations in New York City and Tel Aviv.
Sift Science is a company that has raised $5.5 million in funding to help fight fraud. Investors that participated in this round include Y Combinator, SV Angel, Start Fund, Alex Rampell, Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Lee Linden, Kevin Scott, Alexis Ohanian, Rich Barton, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, Max Levchin, Chris Dixon, Marc Benioff, and several others. Sift Science has created technology that helps e-commerce companies, payment companies, and retailers detect fraudulent activity. Albert Wenger of Union Square will be joining Sift’s board of directors.
About.me is a website that allows users to put up a digital business card with links to the social media profile. The About.me website features a large picture as the wallpaper to give your digital business card a bit more personality. About.me was sold to AOL two years ago and now the founders have bought it back.
Gigwalk is a mobile application company where users can post “gigs” or jobs from companies based on their location. Gigwalk has raised a $6 million Series A round of funding from August Capital along with existing investors Greylock, Harrison Metal, SoftTech VC, Founder Collective, and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui.
1000memories is a website and mobile app companies that lets you store, organize, and digitize print photographs. 1000memories has been acquired by Ancestry.com. 1000memories will continue to operate independently, but will be given more resources. 1000memories was started in 2010 with a purpose to store collections of family photos. These family photos can be stored in virtual “shoeboxes.” 1000memories has an iOS and Android app that lets you take photos of your individual printed photos and then edit them. Then they can be saved to your 1000memories account with captions, dates, and tags.
Zynga has acquired a casual gaming company called A Bit Lucky today. A Bit Lucky is known for developing games like Lucky Space and Lucky Train, which is known for having larger male audiences. “We independently both arrived at the same conclusions that there is a place to combine hard or midcore DNA with social gaming,” stated A Bit Lucky CEO Frederic Descamps.
eBay has acquired Svpply, a New York based startup company that tries to replicate the window-shopping experience with a social and curated experience. The acquisition terms were undisclosed. Svpply lets you keep track of products that you like and based on your friends on Twitter and Facebook, the company will show you products they like.
In order to capture additional attention from startup entrepreneurs, Google+ is hosting a series of events called VC Office Hours. Google VP of Product at Google+ Bradley Horowitz revealed some of the names that are participating in this series:
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