Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » IDG Ventures

Minted Raises $5.5 Million In Series B Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:17:42 +0000

Minted.com, an e-commerce service for stationery and cars, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding in a round led by Benchmark Capital, IDG Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Marissa Mayer, and Jeremy Stoppelman. Minted connects independent graphic designers to consumers looking for prints such as holiday cards, notebooks, calendars, and wedding invitations. The designer makes a percentage of every sale of their design.

To provide designers with extra exposure, the company holds contests. One popular contest was the Art Print Challenge. The winning designer would be able to sell his or her prints on One Kings Lane. Minted CEO and founder Mariam Naficy said that revenue has grown several hundred percentage since 2008. The company plans on using the funding for recruiting and support growth opportunities. They will also look into new product lines.

Smartling Raises $10 Million for Quick Crowdsourced Translations

Riley Kennysmith — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:15:46 +0000

Crowdsourcing translation service Smartling has raised $10 million in funding to improve its localized language tech. Smartling’s investors include U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock, First Round Capital and IDG Ventures. Smartling has already gained some big-name customers, including Foursquare and Scribd. [GigaOM]

Social Game Developer Company Funzio Raises $20 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 12 May 2011 04:32:14 +0000

Funzio is a social game developer company that is best known for making the game Crime City. Funzio has raised $20 million in a first round of funding from IDG Ventures. Funzio has recorded about 600,000 daily active users on Facebook. The company is planning to triple their employees to 90 in order to launch games faster. Funzio’s chairman is Rick Thompson, who had co-founded Playdom. [paidContent]

Mobile App Developer Company Sourcebits Raises $10 Million From Sequoia Capital and IDG

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:21:08 +0000

Sourcebits has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures. Sourcebits has operations in Atlanta and India. Developers outsource iPhone, Mac, iPad, Android, Palm, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7 application development to them. Some of the apps they have developed include Skyfire, Robokill, Daily Deeds, and Night Stand. [TechCrunch]

The Rubicon Project Acquires Fox Audience Network

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:38:09 +0000

The Rubicon Project is an ad optimization company based in Los Angeles, California. The company has raised $18 million in funding and they acquired the Fox Audience Network (FAN). After this round of funding, it brings The Rubicon Project’s total funding to $60 million.

News Corporation will get a small stake in Rubicon as part of the deal too. A source with paidContent said that News Corp’s ownership is about 19.9%.

FAN was created by News Corporation to sell ads for MySpace and other third-party sites. Before selling FAN to The Rubicon Project, News Corp considered folding it to MySpace. Adam Bain, the guy who “founded” FAN is joining Twitter as the president of global revenues this past August.

About 100 FAN employees will be joining staff at The Rubicon Project in the areas of engineering and product. News Corp. participated in the $18 million round of funding in Rubicon. Clearstone Venture Partners, IDG Ventures Asia, Mayfield Fund, Peacock Equity, and Jarl Mohn also participated.

[paidContent]

SimplyHired Raises $4.6 Million From IDG and Foundation

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:30:54 +0000

SimplyHired is a job search engine that aggregates listings from various websites. SimplyHired is based in Mountain View, California and has raised an additional round of funding at $4.6 million, led by IDG Ventures and Foundation Capital. This brings SimplyHired to a total funding amount of $22.3 million.

Previous investors include Gautam Godhwani, Peter Weck, Anil Godhwani, Jerry Crowley, the late Rajeev Motwani, Kanwal Rekhi, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, James Hong, Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Fox Interactive Media, IDG Ventures, and Foundation Capital.

Fox Interactive Media launched a classifieds website through MySpace since they made their investment in SimplyHired. SimplyHired stated that they have had positive operating cash flow over the past four quarters. The company had revenue growth for 16 consecutive quarters.

The additional funding will be used to hire additional employees and for international expansion. SimplyHired syndicates their technology to LinkedIn, The Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Plaxo, and CNNMoney.

[via paidContent]