ZestCash is a payday loan company that was founded by former Google CIO and VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill. ZestCash aims to legitimize the payday loan industry. ZestCash has raised $73 million in a new round of funding. Matrix Partners provided $23 million in the form of an equity round. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, GRP Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Lighthouse Capital Partners also participated in this round. The company also raised a separate $50 million line of debt financing from Victory Park Capital.

TaskRabbit is a Bay Area based startup company that helps you find personal assistants for having your house cleaned, running errands, building IKEA furniture, delivering groceries, etc. Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is joining TaskRabbit’s board of directors as a strategic adviser.

Tony Fadell designed the hardware for the iPod and he was the head of the iPod and iPhone division before he left his VP post to spend more time with his wife and kids. His family spent a year in Paris and then moved back to the U.S. While in Paris, Fadell decided what he wanted to do next: build a new high-tech thermostat.

Game developer Kixeye, formerly The Casual Collective, has raised $18 million in new funding. The investment comes from Jafco Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Kixeye also boasts two additions to the company’s board: Jafco partner Joe Horowitz and Zynga co-founder Andrew Trader. [TechCrunch]

Ning has recently been shopping around themselves for roughly $150 million according to sources with AllThingsD. Ning, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, gave a pitch to Google, Groupon, and several private equity companies.

Java platform company CloudBees has raised $10.5 million in funding for their cloud-based service. The investments come from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Matrix Partners. CloudBees also previously received funding from Robert Bickel and Marc Fleury. The company turns 1 year old in November and has already acquired companies InfraDNA and Stax Networks. [TechCrunch]

Loan service ZestCash has raised $19 million in funding to expand its short-term loans and debt financing. The funding comes from Lightspeed Venture Partners, GRP Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Lighthouse Capital Partners. GigaOM reports that Lighthouse’s contribution of $8 million is specifically for debt financing. ZestCash’s loans are data-driven; they offer loans to those whose online data says they’re credit worthy.

Nimble Storage, an alternative to cloud storage, has raised $25 million for international expansion and growth. The investors include Artis Capital Management, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company was founded by Varun Mehta and Umesh Maheshwari, and Nimble Storage appeals to those who don’t have IT teams, don’t want to deal with tons of servers or don’t completely trust the cloud. [TechCrunch]