Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » GRP Partners http://pulse2.com Sun, 27 May 2012 17:08:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 PayDay Loan Company ZestCash Raises $73 Million http://pulse2.com/2012/01/19/payday-loan-company-zestcash-raises-73-million/ http://pulse2.com/2012/01/19/payday-loan-company-zestcash-raises-73-million/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:41:42 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=56276 Continue reading →]]>
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]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2012/01/19/payday-loan-company-zestcash-raises-73-million/feed/ 0 Mobile Ad Company Burstly Raises $5.5 Million http://pulse2.com/2011/12/01/mobile-ad-company-burstly-raises-5-5-million/ http://pulse2.com/2011/12/01/mobile-ad-company-burstly-raises-5-5-million/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:53:35 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=53800 Continue reading →]]>
Burstly is an app development company that has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, and SoftBank Capital. Burstly has a storefront for developers for creating a branded portal where ad companies can directly purchase placements within apps. You could almost consider it as being a “BuySellAds for mobile devices.”

Burstly is aiming to develop a universal dashboard for developers to take complete control of their revenue channels. This way developers can find out if they are making the most money from ad networks, cross promotions, or direct sales.

Burstly also launched a service called Burstly Rewards, which mediates mobile offers for iOS and Android. Burstly Rewards would allow developers to mediate multiple providers within one area, which mixes in-house and direct campaigns. The campaign managers would also be able to match the user interface to the look and feel of the app it is advertising on.

[TechCrunch]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2011/12/01/mobile-ad-company-burstly-raises-5-5-million/feed/ 0 ZestCash Raises $19 Million to Provide Short-Term Loans http://pulse2.com/2011/07/21/zestcash-raises-19-million-to-provide-short-term-loans/ http://pulse2.com/2011/07/21/zestcash-raises-19-million-to-provide-short-term-loans/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:33:05 +0000 Riley Kennysmith http://pulse2.com/?p=48743 Continue reading →]]>

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.

]]> http://pulse2.com/2011/07/21/zestcash-raises-19-million-to-provide-short-term-loans/feed/ 3 Cloud Database Company MongoLab Raises $3 Million From Multiple Investors http://pulse2.com/2011/05/18/cloud-database-company-mongolab-raises-3-million-from-multiple-investors/ http://pulse2.com/2011/05/18/cloud-database-company-mongolab-raises-3-million-from-multiple-investors/#comments Wed, 18 May 2011 22:39:27 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=47237 Continue reading →]]>
San Francisco based cloud database company ObjectLabs has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Foundry Group, GRP Partners, Baseline Ventures, Freestyle Capital, David Cohen, and a few others. ObjectLabs is best known for launching the database-as-a-service company MongoLab. MongoLab is the database-as-a-service provider for MongoDB. 10gen‘s MongoDB is used by companies like Foursquare, Bit.ly, and Etsy.

MongoLab provides cloud-based hosting services for MongoDB users on Amazon EC and Rackspace. MongoLab also can manage replication and back-up data on cloud servers.

“Developers have spent the better part of their careers writing code to change the shape of their data between object form and relational form. I recently heard one VP of Engineering refer to it as ‘our Vietnam’”, stated MongoLab CEO Will Shulman. “Since JSON is an object format, MongoDB makes a lot of these problems disappear. Developers have been waiting years for something like this.”

[TechCrunch]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2011/05/18/cloud-database-company-mongolab-raises-3-million-from-multiple-investors/feed/ 0 Ad.ly Raises $5 Million and Hires New CEO http://pulse2.com/2010/05/12/ad-ly-raises-5-million-and-hires-new-ceo/ http://pulse2.com/2010/05/12/ad-ly-raises-5-million-and-hires-new-ceo/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 05:05:09 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/?p=30928 Continue reading →]]>
Ad.ly is known for being a Twitter advertising company. Ad.ly has raised $5 million in funding from GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners, and Matt Coffin. Arnie Gullov-Singh has also been hired as the new CEO of the company. Arnie was previously the EVP of product, technology, and operations at the Fox Audience Network. [TechCrunch]

]]> http://pulse2.com/2010/05/12/ad-ly-raises-5-million-and-hires-new-ceo/feed/ 0 Amazon.com Invests In Bill Me Later; Online Bill Payment Market Heating Up http://pulse2.com/2007/12/12/amazoncom-invests-in-bill-me-later-online-bill-payment-market-heating-up/ http://pulse2.com/2007/12/12/amazoncom-invests-in-bill-me-later-online-bill-payment-market-heating-up/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:32:09 +0000 Amit Chowdhry http://pulse2.com/2007/12/12/amazoncom-invests-in-bill-me-later-online-bill-payment-market-heating-up/ Continue reading →]]> Amazon.com LogoAmazon.com announced today that they are investing in Bill Me Later, Inc. Not only that, but Amazon is also signing a agreement with the online billing company as well. eBay and PayPal has thus far proved the synergy of combining an online retailer with an online billing payment company. Over 90% of all eBay auctions are paid via PayPal so it made sense for eBay to buy them for $1.5 billion.

“Bill Me Later has developed a very customer-centric method to make online shopping even easier,” stated Matt Swann, VP of payments at Amazon.com. “We are pleased to make the convenience of Bill Me Later available to our tens of millions of Amazon customers [source: Amazon.com press release].”

The investment terms were not disclosed, but the company has $200 million in funding capital according to TechCrunch. Bill Me Later investors include Chase Paymentech, Azure Capital Partners, First Data Corp, Crosspoint Venture Partners, GRP Partners, CIT Group Inc., Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Citigroup, Equifax, T. Rowe Price, and Legg Mason Inc.

“Amazon.com and Bill Me Later share the same commitment to making shopping easy for consumers,” stated Gary Marino, the CEO of Bill Me Later. “Just as Amazon invented a new and better way for people to shop online, Bill Me Later has created a new and better way for people to pay for purchases online.”

Before joining Bill Me Later, Marino was an EVP, Chief Credit Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer of consumer lending at First USA/Bank One.

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