Tag Archives: IVP
Zynga Expected To Raise Between $850 Million and $1.15 Billion In IPO
Zynga has filed documents with the SEC this morning which indicates that they are planning on raising between $850 million and $1.15 billion in their public offering. This is about $15 million more than their previous estimates.
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Business Insider Raises $7 Million Led By IVP
Business Insider has raised $7 million in funding. They plan on using the funding to do “more cool stuff over the next couple of years, all of which we hope will make Business Insider much more useful, comprehensive, and fun for you.” Institutional Venture Partners, a new investor in the company, led this round of funding. Somesh Dash and Todd Chaffee of IVP will be advisors at Business Insider going forward.
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Out Of Stealth Mode, Personal Capital Raises $25 Million
Personal Capital is a company that has recently exited stealth mode and has raised $25 million in venture financing. The funding includes a Series A round that was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and a Series B round that was led by Venrock and more participate by IVP. Personal Capital is not planning to launch yet, but they will soon debut a financial advisor service that delivers an investment management and personal finance service. The chief executive of Personal Capital is former Intuit CEO Bill Harris. Everbank co-founder Rob Foregger serves as the chief strategy officer of Personal Capital. And former E-Loan CIO Jay Shah serves as the CIO of Personal Capital. The company is based in Redwood City, California.
Clearspring Technologies Raises $20 Million Led By IVP
Clearspring Technologies is the parent company of AddThis, a widget that enables website visitors to share content. Clearspring has raised $20 million in a fourth round of funding, led by Institutional Venture Partners. Former AOL executive and director Ted Leonsis is the company’s chairman and Hooman Radfar is CEO. AddThis is installed on over 9 million websites and is used over 1 billion times per month. [MarketWire]
Sugar Inc. Raises $15 Million From Sequoia Capital and IVP
Sugar Inc. is a women-focused content website that has raised $15 million in a new round of funding from Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Sequoia Capital. Sugar Inc. has raised a total of $46 million thus far and they plan on using this round of funding on acquisitions and international growth. One of Sugar’s top websites is PopSugar.com. Rumor has it that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) was interested in acquiring Sugar Inc. However Brian and Lisa Sugar, the husband and wife co-founders wanted to remain independent. Below is the full press release:
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LivingSocial Raises $400 Million
Less than four months ago LivingSocial raised $175 million from Amazon.com and now they have raised an additional $400 million. The investors in this round include Amazon.com, Lightspeed Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). This puts LivingSocial at a $3 billion valuation.
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HomeAway.com In Talks For A $300 Million IPO
HomeAway.com is in talks with several banks about a $300 million IPO according to BusinessWeek sources. The banks that HomeAway is talking to include Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs.
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ConnectAndSell Raises $7.5 Million, Led By IVP
ConnectAndSell is a website that automates live telephone sales calls. ConnectAndSell has raised $7.5 million in series C funding, led by Institutional Venture Partners. IVP general partner Steve Harrick will be joining the ConnectAndSell board of directors. Mike Maples, managing director at Floodgate Fund, will be joining the board as well. [Xconomy]
Categories ConnectAndSell, Institutional Venture Partners, IVP, Mike Maples, Steve Harrick
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Yext Raises $25 Million From Sutter Hill Ventures And IVP
Yext is an online yellow pages service that sells click to ads. The company claims that they have 20,000 customers are connected to Yext Calls. The company has raised $25 million led by Institutional Venture Partners. Sutter Hill Ventures also participated in this round of funding. Yext claims to be pulling in $20 million in revenues this year.
Yext was founded in 2006 and they have partnered with publishers by installing Yext Numbers. Yext Numbers is a local search monetization platform. Yext partners include YellowPages, Topix, and Local.com. Yext uses IBM’s speech-to-text recognition to keep track of calls for billing. Yext is led by Howard Lerman and Brian Distelburger. Distelburger was the COO of CDS and Lerman was the COO of Datran Media.
“We are confident that Yext will become a leader in local web-based advertising,” stated IVP General Partner Dennis Phelps. “Howard, Brian and Brent’s company has the potential to solve this huge problem by focusing on advertisers as users.” Phelps is now a board member at Yext.
RUMOR: Twitter Raising $100 Million From T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark, and IVP
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.