Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Insight Venture Partners

Blog Service Tumblr Raises $85 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:48:38 +0000

Tumblr is a popular blogging service that has raised $85 million in a new round of funding. Tumblr is best known for simple blogging tools to post photos, videos, songs, etc. The investment in this round was led by Greylock Partners. Insight Venture Partners, the Chernin Group, Richard Branson, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, and Sequoia Capital also participated in this round.

Tumblr founder David Karp said that this extra round of funding “allows us to continue to scale our business and give real focus to the further development of Tumblr.”

Traffic increased to 13 billion page views per month. There are now 30 million blogs that have been created using Tumblr. Across these 30 million blogs, 40 million posts are being generated per day. About 623 million minutes per month are being spent by people looking at Tumblr blogs.

“Tumblr has come far since we began our journey,” said Mr. Karp. “From the early users signing up to easily share all of the things they cared about, to the global community today where creators have an incredible opportunity to reach an audience of hundreds of millions, it’s been a remarkable four years.”

Buddy Media Raises $54 Million

Riley Kennysmith — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:34:12 +0000

Buddy Media has raised $54 million in its latest financing round. The company, which helps advertisers manage their Facebook and Twitter presence, is reportedly worth $500 million. The funding comes from Insight Venture Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and GGV Capital. CEO Mike Lazerow says the money will be used to expand the company to Europe and double their staff. [AllThingsD]

Groupalia Raises $26 Million

Riley Kennysmith — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:13:05 +0000

Groupalia, a European online group buying company, has raised $26 million in funding. The startup’s investors include Nauta Capital, Caixa Capital Risc, General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva. The daily deals company is just two years old and has 10 million users. [TechCrunch]

Confirmed: Flipboard Raises $50 Million At A $200 Million Valuation

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 03:58:54 +0000

Flipboard CEO Mike McCue has confirmed that the company has raised $50 million at a $200 million valuation. Insight Venture Partners led this round of funding. “We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” stated McCue. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

Other investors in this round includes Comcast Interactive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Jack Dorsey, Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, Ashton Kutcher, and Peter Chernin. Flipboard was co-founded by McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll.

Flipboard grabs information from media RSS feeds, Twitter, and Facebook data. Then it re-organizes the data in a tablet format. Flipboard plans on using the funding to increase the staff from 32 to 50 along with expanding internationally.

[AllThingsD]

Spanish Group Buying Website Groupalia Raises $15 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:37:01 +0000

Groupalia is a Spain-based group buying website that has raised $15 million from their current shareholders and new investors. Investors in this round include General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners, and Index Ventures. Like Groupon.com, Groupalia has a daily deal in the form of discount coupons and they are expecting to turn over about $150 million in 2011 revenues. The extra funding will be used for consolidating their position in the countries that they are already established in. Groupalia has about 6 million users, 400 employees, and is present in 8 countries. [TC Europe]

Textbook Rental Chegg Raises $75 Million From Asian Company

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:38:19 +0000

Chegg is a very popular online textbook rental service. Chegg has recently raised $75 million from Ace Limited, an Asian-based investment firm. Chegg had $144 million of funding before this. Other venture firms that put money into Chegg include Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital, and Insight Venture Partners.

Chegg started as a classifieds rental service in 2005 on the campus at Iowa State University. Chegg works across 7,000 schools in the U.S and the company employs about 120 people across Silicon Valley and Louisville, Kentucky. Chegg recently acquired CourseRank, a Mountain View, California based start-up where students can share class schedules with friends and write reviews on classes.

[AllThingsD]

Chegg Raises $112 Million In Funding, Debt Facility, and Credit Facility

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:54:33 +0000

Chegg is the biggest online textbook rental company and they are aggressively funding themselves in order to expand their business. The company raised $57 million in Series D equity funding led by Insight Venture Partners. Insight Venture Partners also provided Chegg with $25 million in credit facility. Before that Pinnacle Ventures and TriplePoint Capital provided Chegg with $30 million in debt facility. This gives Chegg a total of $112 million to work with.

Insight Venture Partners Managing Director Deven Parekh will be joining the Chegg Board of Directors as part of the funding round. By providing textbook rentals, Chegg has helped students across 6,400 colleges save about $65 million.

“We are thrilled with the continued excitement from leading investors who understand the tremendous value we provide to students around the country,” stated Chegg.com CEO and Co-Founder Osma in a press release. “This new funding is a significant step up from Series C and a testament to the growing market opportunity for Chegg.com’s textbook rental offering. With college tuitions continuing to climb and higher unemployment rates, parents and students are looking for any and all ways to cut costs.”

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

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:25:47 +0000

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 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:11:19 +0000

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 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:00:41 +0000

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]