Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Highland Capital

Mobile Ads VP Leaves Apple

Riley Kennysmith — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:37:48 +0000

Apple’s VP of mobile advertising, Andy Miller, has decided to leave the company to become a partner at Highland Capital. Miller has been with Apple since early 2010.

Miller came to Apple when the tech giant acquired his mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless. Highland, the company he is moving to, is a venture firm that helped fund Quattro. [AllThingsD]

Web Advertising Company CampusLIVE Raises $3.1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 04:42:11 +0000

CampusLIVE is a web advertising company that is based in Boston, Massachusetts. CampusLIVE raised $3.1 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, Charles River Ventures, and other angel investors. Last year CampusLIVE raised $340,000 in funding. [Xconomy]

Bamboom Labs Raises $4.5 Million In Seed Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 04:28:47 +0000

Bamboom Labs is a company that develops technology for watching live TV on the Internet. Bamboom Labs has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by FirstMark Capital. Other investors include High Line Venture Partners, SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, and First Round Capital.

Bamboom Labs is led by Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia. Kanojia’s last start-up Navic Networks was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Many of Bamboom’s team members include former employees at Navic, Microsoft, Andrew Corporation, and Lucent.

Bamboom Labs rents out personal antennas to customers so that they are responsible for retransmitting the copyright content from the TV to the computer. Bamboom Labs is based in Long Island City, New York.

[VentureBeat]

2tor Raises $32 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:19:27 +0000

2tor is an online education website that is based in New York City. The company has raised $32 million in Series C funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Previous investors that participated in this round include Highland Capital, Redpoint, City Light, and Novak Biddle. 2tor has raised a total of $65 million. 2tor is pursuing the higher education market and is partnering with graduate programs. 2tor plans on providing a technology platform for higher graduate programs to offer classes online.

2tor’s first partner is the University of Southern California, which will use 2tor for its Masters in Teaching and Social Work classes. Next year 2tor will be launching a nursing program with Georgetown University and MBA classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. Before University of South California started using 2tor, they had 80 students in the Masters of Teaching program. Today they have 1,500 students in the program. These students are in the program from across 45 states and 28 countries. The online students all pay the same full tuition and they get the same degree. 2tor runs the course websites and provides students with a webcam. 2tor shares tuition revenue with the schools.

[TechCrunch]

Real Estate Community Website RentJuice Raises $6.2 Million In Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:30:29 +0000

RentJuice is a real estate community website where real estate agents and brokers can view real estate data. RentJuice raised $6.2 million in Series B funding led by Highland Capital and Tim Draper of DFJ. RentJuice automates administrative tasks for real estate professionals, brokerages, and landlords. RentJuice helps brokers capitalize on predictions that 10 million new renters will enter the U.S. market in the enxt 5 years. RentJuice was founded in 2009 by CEO David Vivero and CTO Kunal Shah.

Pixable Raises $2.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:17:52 +0000

Pixable is a New York based company that has raised $2.5 million from Highland Capital. Pixable also has announced a public beta test of a new feature called Pixable Videos. Pixable CEO and co-founder Inaki Berengeur said that the company’s goal is to allow people to choose photos from Facebook and transform them into fun videos. The videos are going to be entertaining than slide-shows. Pixable’s first product was to allow online photos into a printed photo album. After creating the Pixable Video, you can post it on YouTube, Facebook, and blogs. [VentureBeat]

Location-Based Game Company SCVNGR Raises $4 Million From Google Ventures and Highland Capital

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:57:45 +0000

SCVNGR is a location-based game platform company that works with mobile devices. Google Ventures and Highland Capital have both invested $4 million into SCVNGR. Google Ventures partner Rich Miner will be joining the SCVNGR board of directors. SCVNGR will be cash-flow positive with over $1 million in revenue.

SCVNGR focuses on a niche gaming platform. The niche is that they make location-based scavenger hunts for companies, schools, and organizations. Many schools use the location-based gaming platform for campus orientation. Major companies use it for team building. SCVNGR has about 40 employees. The company is led by 21 year old Seth Priebatsch.

Clients include Duke University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, the city of Rochester in New York, Yale University, MetLife, and HSBC. SCVNGR can be used using SMS on any phone, mobile web, or through free Android and iPhone applications.

Zoove Raising $13 Million Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:42:14 +0000

Zoove is a mobile marketing company that is planning to raise a $13 million Series C round of funding. Out of that $13 million planned round, the company has raised $5.2 million thus far according to an SEC filing. Zoove did not disclose who the investors involved are for the Series C, but the company previously raised $21.4 million over two rounds of funding from Worldview Technology Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Highland Capital.

Zoove brokers ads for SMS, MMS, and WAP. Zoove also has a technology called StarStar where users press the “star” sign on the phone to respond to the ads on digital billboards and on TV.

FanSnap Raises $5.2 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:02:10 +0000

FanSnap is a web startup that focuses on ticket searches. Earlier this week, the company announced $5.2 million in funding led by Highland Capital Partners. Richard de Silva of Highland will be joining the FanSnap Board of Directors as a result of the funding.

Thus far FanSnap has raised about $15.7 million after receiving $10 million in Series A from General Catalyst Partners last year.

To find the best deals on tickets, FanSnap searches through StubHub, eBay, and RazorGator. FanSnap claims to have over 13 million tickets indexed in their search engine across over 30,000 events.

One of the cool features FanSnap has to offer is that there is an image of the venue, such as a stadium with different hot spot images that correlate with the tickets that are selling. Below is an image of how it works.

[via TechCrunch]

Hangout Raises Additional $4 Million From Highland and Polaris

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:50:35 +0000

Hangout.net is a virtual environment that has fully customizable rooms, avatars, etc. The company makes it possible for MySpace users to create custom virtual rooms. Highland Capital Partners and Polaris Venture Partners has extended their Series A investment by an additional $4 million in Hangout.net.

The total funding that Hangout has raised is now about $10 million. The company’s seed funding is $1 million and the initial Series A financing was $5 million. The $4 million extension gave Hangout enough backing to last them a long time. The company confirmed the funding in an SEC document. Hangout is based in Boston, Massachusetts and is led by CEO Pano Anthos.

[via NEVC Funding]