Shazam started in 2002 as a mobile music discovery company. The company first gained an immense amount of popularity when launching an iPhone application. The Shazam application has been downloaded about 50 million times on the iPhone, Google Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, etc. Shazam has a database of over 8 million songs on their database which goes back to the 1950’s. Shazam is a private company that is based in London, England.

When you hear a song on the radio or on your laptop, you can Tag it using the Shazam application. Shazam will tell you the name of the song, give you a link to buy the music on Amazon or iTunes, and allow you to tweet what you are listening to.

The latest news with the company is that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has invested in them. Kleiner Perkins made the investment through their iFund financial arm which is intended for iPhone application developers. Shazam previously raised $12.3 million in funding from DN Capital and Acacia Capital.

Shazam is planning to launch a service that will connect with concert tickets for artists that have been tagged by the app. So far Shazam has been cash-flow positive.

According to an SEC filing, Booyah! has raised a second round of funding. Booyah designs iPhone applications and games that allow users to earn points when achieving real life situations such as going to the gym and learning new recipes. The achievements are then shared with other friends.

Booyah is based in Palo Alto, California and previously raised $4.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins. The SEC document did not list who participated in this round of funding.

V-Vehicle is an automotive startup company based in San Diego, California.  The vehicle company has raised $62.25 million and plans to raise an additional $4 million.  The companies involved in the $62.25 million are Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  V-Vehicle will be building cars in the northeastern region of Louisiana.

V-Vehicle raised a previous round from T. Boone Pickens and has former Mazda design chief Tom Matano on their staff.  V-Vehicle recently procured a facility that was owned by Guide Corporation.  And Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was at the announcement ceremony of the plant opening.  Jindal offered V-Vehicle $67 million as part ofa startup incentive package.  Local governments provided an additional $15 million.  V-Vehicle is aiming to raise about $50 million between equity and loans.

David Drummond, Google’s SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer is listed as one of the Board of Directors at V-Vehicle.  Former Oracle executive and founding CEO of V-Vehicle Frank Varasano had invested $100 million of his own money into the company.

Kleiner Perkins partners John Doerr and Ray Lane also have board seats in V-Vehicle.  James Davison, a trucking company leader is also listed as an investor.

In Louisiana, the company plans on developing a “green” car.  Tesla should beware, they’re not the only ones in the electric car game.

[via Xconomy/alarm:clock]

Booyah is an iPhone application development startup company that is based in Palo Alto, Calif.  The company was founded by Keith Lee, Brian Morrisroe and Sam Christiansen, who have all had some sort of gaming experience.  Lee was one of the head developers for the Diablo III franchise.  Booyah recently announced that they have raised $4.5 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’s iFund initiative.

“We were immediately compelled by the promise of Booyah and the background of the founders,” stated Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy in a press release.  “The iFund was created to help build the most promising and innovative businesses that utilize the discrete capabilities of the iPhone and iPod touch. Booyah is a terrific example.”

Last month Kleiner Perkins invested in Ngmoco, another iPhone gaming company.  Booyah has not announced when their product will be launching, but it is expected to revolve around MMO.  Booyah currently has beta sign ups on their website.

iZumi Bio is a biotechnology company that focuses on cellular reprogramming and stem cell research. iZumi is based in the Bay Area of California and started in 2007 with backing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers along with Highland Capital Partners. Now the company has signed an agreement with Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CIRA). CIRA will exchange part of their pluripotent stem cell lines with iZumi as part of the agreement. iZumi and CIRA will then determine which methods of cell lines are appropriate for drug screening and development.

Pluripotent stem cells tend to be embryonic which is different from adult stem cells. Inducing embryonic stem cells to perform certain functions is crucial for the advancement of stem cell research as a whole, but anti-abortion activists believes that this is a violation of human life. Induced pluripotent stem cells are made from adult stem cells, but have embryonic pluripotent characteristics so this would enable researchers to further conduct studies while avoiding ethical issues with anti-abortionists.

“The partnership between these two leading organizations is a critical step in furthering this research and turning stem cell research into therapeutic realities sooner,” stated former Vice President and Kleiner Perkins partner Al Gore.

[via Biz Times]

Ngmoco, the company behind Rolando, Wordfu, Topple, and several other iPhone games is taking their company to the next level by raising $10 million in funding.  The company has been around for about 9 months and this is their second round of funding.  The funding was led by Norwest Venture Partners.

This investment further proves that iPhone game development is a good way to go.  Ngmoco is based in San Francisco and was founded by former Electronic Arts executive Neil Young.  “Everything in this market happens so quickly,” stated Young. “The iPhone is really the first wave of new phones that have the same capability to play games as the handheld game systems have.”

Ngmoco’s previous round of funding was about $5 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers along with Maple Investments.  The new round of funding will be used to expand Ngmoco’s premium games such as Rolando, which sells for $9.99.  Ngmoco has made five top 10 games for iTunes thus far.

[via VentureBeat]

Zynga is a social network game-making machine.  The company has just raised $29 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Avalon Ventures, and Foundry Group.  Union, Avalon, and Foundry were all previous investors.  Zynga is based out of San Francisco, Calif.

Zynga was started by Mark Pincus.  Through this round of funding, Kleiner Perkins partner and former chief creative officer of Electronic Arts Bing Gordon will join Zynga’s board of directors.  Zynga’s last round of funding was $10 million in January 2008.  Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel of the PayPal mafia were a couple of investors involved in the last round of funding.

Zynga currently has about 18 million uniques per month.  Zynga’s revenue model is advertising and selling game add-ons.  Zynga’s top games on Facebook are Poker, Blackjack, Scramble, Word Twist, PathWords, Sudoku, Sea Wars, Mafia Wars, Dragon Wars, Triumph, Attack!, My Heroes Ability, Ghost Racer, Dope Wars, and YoVille.  Zynga recently acquired YoVille.

Related Links:
Zynga

Dollar Amount Involved: $3 Million Today / Expected $19 Million
Adify was founded in 2005 and has worked with large media companies such as Time, the Washington Post, NBC, and Comcast as clients to provide advertising supply.

Larry Braitman, the CEO/founder of Adify stated “We envision thousands of niche or vertically-focused ad networks emerging to meet specific market needs, driven by entrepreneurs and enterprises who are members of the specific communities they serve. These network builders are in the position to assemble publishers and deliver value to advertisers” at a recent Web 2.0 conference.

The first $3 million portion of a $19 million first round fund came from NBC Universal and GE Media Communications & Entertainment. Other investors in this round includes U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, and Time Warner.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Sequoia Capital has partnered with Gary Sanchez Productions for a new comedy video website that will feature clips with multiple hit actor, Will Ferrell. The producer of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Adam McKay is also heavily involved in the project. The project is called Funny or Die.

The website has already attained over 1.5 million page views as of today. The first video to appear on the website features Will Ferrell arguing with his landlord which happens to be an infant.Any user will be able to upload their own videos, but if they are given a low score by Funny or Die visitors, the video will be banished. Outstandingly comedic clips will be noticed by adminstrators of the website and may potentially score further movie deals according to Gary Sanchez Productions. The FunnyOrDie and Sequoia deal was brokered by Jimmy Miller and Deborah Klein.

Dollar Amount Involved: $300,000
5min is a website with video tutorials such as ‘how to catch a flying disc’ and ‘Sushi: How To Make Pickled Ginger.’ The founder of the company is Ran Harnevo, who is based in Israel. The $300,000 was in seed funding and the investors are unknown.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Yardbarker is like a Digg for sports news only. Users submit links and news articles with the best sports content from all over the Internet. Yardbarker, Inc. is based in Berkeley, CA and was founded in 2006. “Welcome to Sports 2.0″ states the About Yardbarker page.Russell Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins was the investor in this round of seed funding.Some of the other investors include Ron Conway, Steve Anderson (Baseline Ventures), Ronald “Ronnie” Lott (former USC/San Francisco 49ers football player), Harris Barton (HRJ Capital), Labrador Ventures, and the Band of Angels.

[Information Source: alarm:clock]

Sunnyvale, CA based company, KnowNow has received $13 million in funding from a plethora of investors but is led by Cambridge, MA based RSS Investors. KnowNow was founded in 2000. There are a number of solutions and products that KnowNow offers.

The products that KnowNow offers are eLerts, Enterprise Syndication Solution (ESS), and LiveServer. The solutions that KnowNow offers are Market Intelligence, Corporation Communication, and Alternative Marketing Channel. The eLert product is a free toolbar that is only available for IE and Windows for now, but “provides real-time notification of new content posted to web. You select the publishers or sites to watch and then alerts will appear describing what’s new as soon as it is posted by the publisher. You can click the link to read the full post, pin to your desktop as a reminder, or simply ignore it and let it fade away [source].”

ESS is a back-office integration system that allows employees, partners, customers, and managers to syndicate business information. And LiveServer is an “event-management engine that controls the flow of events to and from systems, applications and people. It is specially designed to manage thousands of simultaneous connections for instantaneous delivery of business-critical data [source].”

The other participating investor for this deal is Presidio STX. Other current investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Levensohn Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, TPG Ventures and Wachovia Strategic Ventures [source].

“Aside from an impressive list of enterprise clients, we were impressed by KnowNow’s ability to deliver solutions that fundamentally change the way enterprises act on information,” stated Richard Fishman, a managing partner of RSS Investors. “KnowNow is well positioned to capitalize on the burgeoning market for enterprise-class Web 2.0 solutions.”

The President and CEO of KnowNow is Todd Rulon-Miller, the founding General Partner of Apogee Venture Group. According to the KnowNow website, another major milestone for Mr. Rulon-Miller was that he “served on the Board of Directors at Active Software (NASDAQ), through its 1998 acquisition by WebMethods (NASDAQ) for $1.3 billion dollars.”

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