Archive for the ‘Insight Venture Partners’ Category

RUMOR: Twitter Raising $100 Million From T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark, and IVP

Amit Chowdhry | September 24, 2009 | 359 views | Comments
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Micro-blogging company Twitter.com is rumored to be closing a deal worth $100 million in venture funding. The rumor is according to a Wall Street Journal source. The investors involved are T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). This is double the rumor that a TechCrunch source predicted earlier this month.

Spark Capital and IVP are previous investors in Twitter. In Twitter’s last round of funding, their valuation was $255 million. At an additional $100 million round of funding, the company is expected to be valuated beyond $1 billion. Despite the valuation Twitter has, the company does not have any substantial revenue model. But as we have learned from YouTube’s acquisition, that really doesn’t matter. YouTube was burning through VC funding before Google bought them out.

How many users does Twitter have? The company expects to have 25 million users by the end of this year. Twitter rival Facebook.com has about 300 million users. At one point Facebook made an offer to buy out Twitter for $500 million, $100 million in cash and $400 million in stock options. Rather than buying out Twitter, Facebook bought out FriendFeed.

VCs Betting Twitter Is Worth $1 Billion, Still No Revenue Model

Amit Chowdhry | September 17, 2009 | 337 views | Comments
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There are only a certain number of start-ups that can walk around feeling like over a billion dollars or more.  Facebook and LinkedIn are both in that club.   And now Twitter will be joining the billionaire’s club in their next round of funding that will give them that valuation.  Twitter co-founder revealed a new round of potential funding that will put them at a $1 billion valuation at an all hands meeting according to a TechCrunch source.

Twitter will raised $50 million to receive the $1 billion valuation.  In the past Twitter had already raised $35 million from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.  The $35 million round gave them a valuation of $250 million.  Thus far Twitter has raised $55 million in funding.  That should keep them going for a while despite not having a revenue model.  The rumored investor in the upcoming round is expected to be New York based venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners.

DriveCam Raises $19 Million Series D

Amit Chowdhry | August 14, 2009 | 306 views | Comments
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drivecam-logo
DriveCam is a company that improves risky drivers by setting up video event recorders on the windshield behind the rear-view mirror.  DriveCam reduces claims costs and improves the way people drive.

DriveCam offers driver coaching and expert analysis.  The company has announced that they have raised $19 million Series D.

The $19 million Series D round of investment was led by Triangle Peak Partners.  Other investors include Menlo Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, JMI Equity, and Integral Capital Partners.

DriveCam had year-over-year revenue growth and an 85% growth in their client base.  The company also had a positive cash flow for the first time in history.

[via NYT]

Recent Tech Funding: Oodle, Amp’d, Eyeblaster, MyCoupons, Ludic Labs, and Boorah

Amit Chowdhry | March 21, 2007 | 1,163 views | Comments
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Oodle LogoOodle is a startup that has over 20 million classified ads and features listings from all over the U.S. and the UK. Oodle has raised $11 million in a 2nd round from current investors, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures along with new investor, JAFCO Ventures. The first round was $5 million. Oodle has a partnership with The Washington Post (D.C.) and The Sun (British tabloid owned by News Corp).

Amp’d Mobile LogoThis is Amp’d Mobile’s 5th round of funding and the amount is quite substantial. According to the SEC, Amp’d has raised $107 million. This round of funding was provided by Old Lane Management (hedge fund created by former Morgan Stanley execs) and joins previous venture backers: Columbia Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Intel Capital, MTV Networks, Tudor Investments and Universal Music. The CEO of Amp’d is Peter Adderton, who also founded Boost Mobile.

eyeblaster Logo

Gal Trifon and Ofer Zadikario founded Eyeblaster in 1999 and has established the company as a leader in digital marketing. The company had announced today that it has raised $30 million in funding from private investors. The company has been profitable every year since 2002. The company was founded in Israel and had previously raised $10 million ($8 of which came from Insight Venture Partners). The current investors are Eli Barkat (BRM Capital), Jonathan Kolber (Koor Industries, Ltd.), Shlomo Dovrat (Carmel Ventures), Harel Beit-On (Carmel Ventures), and Nir Barkat. Eyeblaster designs rich media and standard banners.

MyCoupons Logo MyCoupons, a Pittsburgh-based company that was the first online coupon site launched in 1995 and took in $750,000 to re-launch its product… as a social network. “We have invested close to three quarters of a million dollars over the past year and we are proud to be able, today, to announce our re-birth” stated a company representative [Source: alarm:clock]. Jason Wolfe, the original founder of MyCoupons had bought back the domain name from Direct Response Technologies after the Save.com (who bought it for MyCoupons.com for $20M) went bankrupt after the dot-com bust.

Ludic Labs Logo

Ludic Labs is a San Mateo-based company that is run by Dr. Brian Totty. According to alarm:clock, Totty was most recently a Venture Advisor at Foundation Capital and was a Founding VP of Research and Development and a General Manager of Inktomi. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003. “Ludic Labs is creating a mass-scale, social-media service for internet and mobile devices” stated a Ludic Labs representative. The company says that they are well funded and are planning on hiring Python, Web UI, and Internet Service developers around Silicon Valley shortly.

Boorah LogoBoorah, a retaurant review website based in New York has raised angel funding and is now looking for venture capitalist funding. The company was founded by Nagaraju Bandaru and Eric Moyer. Both of them were previous executives for wireless broadband provider, MetroFi. Moyer presented BooRah at the past DEMO conference.

[Information Source: PaidContent and alarm:clock]