Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Lightspeed Venture Partners

PayDay Loan Company ZestCash Raises $73 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:41:42 +0000

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.

ZestCash uses machine learning techniques and data analysis combined with traditional credit scoring to offer credit to many people who would normally be turned away. Payday loans are common among consumers that do not have the credit to take out standard loans through a bank. One example is that a consumer will pay an average of $60 to borrow $300 for 14 days. After 2 weeks, the borrower must pay the entire loan and fee back in one payment. If the borrower cannot pay the loan back, then he or she can get an extension but will have to pay another $60 for the additional amount of time.

The average payday loan gets rolled over 6 times, which means that the average borrow pays $420 in fees to borrow $300 in principal. That is insane! In 2010, 30 million Americans took out a payday loan. Using ZestCash, borrowers can pick how much money they want to borrow and for how long. The company displays their weekly payment based on the terms.

Most payday loans are processed through brick-and-mortar stores, but ZestCash operates entirely online. The startup promises flexibility when dealing with individual borrowers and late payments. ZestCash currently has 75 people in staff and has loaned millions of dollars to thousands of customers. This new round of funding will be used for innovations in underwriting, expansion into additional states, and company growth.

[TechCrunch]

TaskRabbit Raises $17.8 Million In Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:58:04 +0000

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.

TaskRabbit has raised $17.8 million in Series B funding from existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Allen & Company, and the Tornante Company. Eisner runs the Tornante Company.

TaskRabbit plans on using the funding to hire additional engineers and designers. They will also spend it on building mobile products like an Android app. They will also expand to other U.S. cities and abroad. In the next couple of months, TaskRabbit will be available in Seattle and Portland. International expansion is expected by the end of 2012.

Eisner approached TaskRabbit after hearing about it on a News special with Diane Sawyer this past September. TaskRabbit saw about 6.5 million users visit their company website after that. “He really saw the potential in what we’re building. Every single task that’s posted and completed is a story, and even the TaskRabbits themselves are stories,” stated TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque. TaskRabbit was founded in 2008.

[AllThingsD]

iPod Hardware Designer Tony Fadell Now Building A Thermostat

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:32:12 +0000

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.

Fadell said that there are tons of carbon being pumped into the air and people are losing billions of dollars in energy costs. There is no easy way to control the temperature as of right now. Fadell’s new thermostat company is called Nest Labs. The Nest Learning Thermostat is now available for pre-order at Best Buy and Nest.com for $250. It will start shipping this November.

The Nest Learning Thermostat uses artificial intelligence to report when to turn down the heat and when to increase the air conditioner so that you don’t waste money. You can also communicate with the Nest Learning Thermostat using your mobile device.

Fadell thought of the the thermostat idea when he was building a green home in Tahoe. He was very involved in the design of the house and wanted it to be as beautiful as the products he worked on at Apple. When the architects showed him the option for thermostats, Fadell thought all of them were ugly.

“What was wrong with them?” said Fadell in an interview with Wired. “They were ugly. They were confusing. They were incredibly expensive. They didn’t have half the features you would expect for a modern thing. None of them were connected, so they didn’t talk to each other. I wasn’t able to remotely control them. In Tahoe, you want to be able check on the temperature of the house or turn it on before you get there. Because it’s really cold in the winter. I couldn’t do any of that, and I was like, Why is this?”

Thermostats had not changed much in many decades and the most popular thermostat was the Honeywell Round. The Round was designed by Henry Dreyfus in 1953.

“Thermostats are made by very large companies with no incentive to innovate,” said Fadell. “Their customers are contractors or HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air conditioning] wholesalers, not consumers. So why spend to make them better? It’s a good business.” Fadell estimated there are about 100 million homes in the U.S. and each one has between one and two thermostats, which means that there is about 150 million thermostats in homes out there. In commercial spaces, there is about another 100 million thermostats. And every year 10 million thermostats are sold in residential spaces.

One of the first engineers that Nest Labs hired was a cell phone engineer named Shige Honjo, a program manager for the iPhone. “Think of all the air conditioning that runs in empty houses — it wastes hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and that’s Alabama alone!” said Fadell when he was pitching another early employee named David Sloo.

Some of the investors in Nest includes Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Intertrust, and Generation Investment Management. Through Generation Investment, Al Gore is an investor in Nest Labs. Gore was inspired by a demo that Fadell gave at TED.

Kixeye Raises $18 Million, Adds Zynga Co-Founder to Board

Riley Kennysmith — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:37:13 +0000

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]

Rumor: Ning Being Shopped Around For $150 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:09:50 +0000

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.

The sale would be a break-even for investors. Venture capitalists have put in about $120 million into Ning since the company was founded in 2004. Investors in Ning include Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Legg Mason, Allen & Company, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Rumor has it that AOL, Demand Media, and GoDaddy approached Ning with interest in an acquisition. The companies are interested in Ning’s technology, which has the ability to create custom social networks. Ning had 400% year-on-year revenue growth. They went from 17,000 to more than 100,000 subscribers with about 60 million monthly active users.

CloudBees Raises $10.5 Million For Java in the Cloud

Riley Kennysmith — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:05:22 +0000

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]

ZestCash Raises $19 Million to Provide Short-Term Loans

Riley Kennysmith — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:33:05 +0000

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.

ZestCash is led by Douglas Merrill, former CIO at Google, and the company’s credit assessments are compared to Google’s PageRank technology.

Nimble Storage Raises $25 Million for Non-Cloud Storage

Riley Kennysmith — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:18:09 +0000

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]

Kim Kardashian’s Internet Apparel Company ShoeDazzle Raises $40 Million From Andreessen Horowitz, LightSpeed, and Polaris

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:18:26 +0000

ShoeDazzle is a subscription based e-commerce company that was founded by Brian Lee and Kim Kardashian. ShoeDazzle recently raised $40 million from several Silicon Valley investor companies that include Andreessen Horowitz, Polaris Venture Partners, and LightSpeed Venture Partners. Andreessen Horowitz led the round with $30 million and general partner John O’Farrell will join the ShoeDazzle board.

ShoeDazzle sends members a monthly selection of shoes, handbags, and other apparel that matches their interests. They can buy one item every month for $39.95 or they can skip a month. The packages are sent through the mail in a box with a ribbon.

If the subscribers do not buy anything, then they will be charged $39.95 and will have that much in credit. ShoeDazzle has about 3 million subscribers thus far. This round of funding puts ShoeDazzle at a total of about $60 million in funding.

Peel Raises $16.7 Million To Turn Your iOS Device Into Universal Remote

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:56:49 +0000

Peel is a start-up company that has raised $16.7 million in Series B funding to turn your iOS device into a universal remote. Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed Venture Partners led this round of funding. Redpoint Ventures and other seed investors participated in this round.

Peel has developed hardware that communicates with the iOS device and the television set. The hardware looks like a pear fruit and it can be bought from Apple retail stores for $100. Peel’s application can be downloaded from the App Store. It takes about 10 minutes to install everything.

[TechCrunch]