Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Madrona Venture Group

Rover.com Raises $3.4 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:14:14 +0000

Rover.com, the “Airbnb for dogs” has raised $3.4 million. Just like Airbnb is an alternative to staying at hotels, Rover.com helps you find alternatives for dog kennels. Rover.com has expanded nationwide after only being supported in a few markets. Rover.com currently has 9 employees and has raised funding from Madrona Venture Group, CrunchFund, and other angel investors.

Rover.com CEO Aaron Easterly worked for Microsoft’s advertising business and estimates that the commercial dog-boarding market is worth $6.5 billion annually. Rover.com has over 10,000 active users. They currently charge between 5 and 15% for the service.

To handle emergencies, Rover.com launched a round-the-clock support called Barkline. They are also offering a satisfaction guarantee that covers the dog, owner, and host.

Animoto Raises $25 Million for Video Production Service

Riley Kennysmith — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:17:10 +0000

Animoto, a video editing software startup, has raised $25 million in funding. Investors include Spectrum Equity Investors, Madrona Venture Group and Amazon. TechCrunch reports that the company has more than 3 million registered users, 100,000 of whom pay for the service. Spectrum’s Ben Spero joined Animoto’s board.

Decide.com Raises $6 Million In Series B

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:16:04 +0000

Decide.com, a consumer electronics shopping company in stealth mode, has raised $6 million in a Series B round of funding led by Maveron. Madrona Venture Group and other angel investors also participated in this round of funding. Decide.com has raised a total of $8.5 million in venture capital funding thus far.

Dan Levitan (Maveron) and Hugh Crean (former Farecast CEO) has joined Decide.com’s board of directors. Ram Shriram (Founding board member of Google) and Erik Blachford (former Expedia CEO) are joining Decide.com as investors. Shriram will be an advisor.

“Maveron is known for supporting the growth of transformational consumer and ecommerce brands including eBay and Groupon, and is a perfect fit for us,” stated Decide.com CEO Mike Fridgen. “We are thrilled to have the guidance of Dan and the rest of the team as we build a product that puts the power of shopping for electronics back in consumers’ hands.”

[Decide PR]

MaxPoint Raises $8 Million To Help Advertisers Target Specific Neighborhoods

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:29:45 +0000

MaxPoint Interactive has raised $8 million in an investment round led by Madrona Venture Group. MaxPoint uses point-of-sale data to segment the U.S. into 34,000 different neighborhoods based on the characteristics and interests of the people that live around there. MaxPoint has raised a total of $11 million. [paidContent]

Cheezburger Blog Network Raises $30 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:29:30 +0000

The Cheezburger network of websites include FAIL Blog and LOLcats. The company has raised $30 million in funding led by the Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, and SoftBank Capital. Brad Feld (Foundry), Greg Gottesman (Madrona), and Rich Levandov (Avalon) will be joining the board of directors at Cheezburger. I Can Has Cheezburger now has a total of $32.5 million.

Ben Huh founded Cheezburger in 2007. Now there are about 50 websites in the Cheezburger network of websites and they has a user base of about 16.5 million people that have uploaded 500,000 pictures and videos. Between all of their pictures and videos, the Cheezburger network sees about 375 million pageviews and 110 million videos per month.

Huh plans on increasing their staff size from the existing number of 50 people. The company is also planning on expanding internationally.

PHP SaaS Company PHP Fog Raises $1.8 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:48:09 +0000

PHP Fog is a platform-as-a-service (PHP PaaS) company that has raised $1.8 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group, First Round Capital, Founder’s Co-Op, and several angel investors. According to a press release, PHP Fog is the only company “offering effortless deployment and infinite scaling of PHP applications in the cloud.” PHP Fog has one-click deployments for many PHP application frameworks like WordPress, Drupal, SugarCRM, etc. PHP Fog is currently in private beta, but they expecting to launch in the first half of this year.

Cloud Automation Company Skytap Raises $10 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:50:42 +0000

Skytap is a cloud automation solutions company that has raised $10 million in a Series C round of funding. OpenView Venture Partners led the round of funding with participation from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and Washington Research Foundation.

Skytap plans on using the funding to scale their sales and marketing teams. Scott Maxwell, the senior managing director of OpenView will be joining the board of directors at Skytap. Below is the full press release:

Skytap Secures $10 Million to Accelerate Business Growth for Cloud Automation
OpenView Venture Partners Leads Round With Participation From Current Investors — Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation

SEATTLE, WA–(Marketwire – January 3, 2011) – Skytap, the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced an oversubscribed $10 million Series C round of funding led by OpenView Venture Partners with participation from existing investors Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The investment will be used to scale sales and marketing, and accelerate innovation of the company’s flagship cloud automation platform. Scott Maxwell, senior managing director of OpenView Venture Partners, will join Skytap’s board of directors.

“After evaluating the emerging cloud market it became very clear that Skytap is a driving force in cloud automation and a breakout success in every sense of the word,” said Scott Maxwell at OpenView Venture Partners. “The company’s market leading cloud automation solutions are some of the most complete and well-received offerings on the market. We’re eager to contribute to Skytap’s future growth and lead this round of funding.”

Since its launch in 2006, Skytap has broadened its portfolio of cloud solutions and built a comprehensive cloud automation platform. Based on the breadth of its offerings and rapid customer adoption, Skytap has experienced both usage growth and year over year revenue growth of more than 300 percent.

“Skytap had a tremendously successful year and we are enthusiastic about what’s to come as we refuel for aggressive execution on all fronts,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Hundreds of customers have chosen Skytap for their cloud automation needs and these same customers frequently double or triple their users and usage after just a few months. This funding will enable us to expand our current customer relationships, further build out our sales team, and develop new solutions that help customers accelerate their transformation to the cloud.”

“Since our first investment in Skytap, we’ve been extremely impressed with the company’s ability to routinely exceed its business and revenue goals,” said Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona Venture Group. “Over the last year, Skytap has also delivered against key product milestones that position the company well for its next stage of growth. We’re proud to invest in Skytap’s future and support the company as it continues to build its reputation as one of the most innovative technology companies.”

Along with this funding and the company’s rapidly growing customer roster, Skytap has received numerous accolades based on the superiority of its cloud automation technology. Recent awards include: SD Times 100, Red Herring 100, AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100, SearchCloudComputing Top 10 Cloud Computing Startups and the 2010 Best of VMworld finalist. Skytap has built one of the strongest partner networks in the cloud industry enabling Fortune 1000 enterprise customers and government and defense agencies to accelerate their transition to the cloud. Earlier this year, Skytap was selected by Google as a cloud partner for the Google Apps Marketplace launch, and global IT leader CSC selected Skytap to power its prestigious CloudLab offering.

About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, application migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

About OpenView Venture Partners
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion stage venture capital fund with a focus on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, OpenView helps portfolio companies to quickly scale Product, Go-To-Market, and Organizational and Operational functions with best practices. The firm was founded in 2006 and has total capital under management of approximately $240 million. OpenView recently launched its new operational value-add content site at www.openviewlabs.com. OpenView Venture Partners is based in Boston and invests on a worldwide basis. To learn more, please visit www.openviewpartners.com.

Bain, Khosla, and Madrona Invest $5.3 Million Into AdReady

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:46:53 +0000

AdReady is a Seattle-based online advertising company that has raised $5.3 million in funding as noticed on an SEC filing. The VC companies involved in the deal include Madrona Venture Group, Bain Capital, and Khosla Ventures. This round of funding puts the total funding AdReady has at $17.3 million. The company has also hired Steve Singh, Chairman/CEO of Concur as a board member. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is also on the B.O.D. at AdReady.

AdReady develops tools that make ads efficient to produce and monitor. Many of AdReady clients include small and medium sized businesses. AdReady was co-founded by Aaron Finn. Karl Siebrecht, the CEO and President at AdReady was a general manager for Microsoft.

[TechCrunch]

Jambool Raises $5 Million From Madrona And Bay Partners

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:01:39 +0000

Jambool is a virtual currency startup company that has a platform called “Social Gold” that works with social networking applications. Jambool has raised $5 million in funding, led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Bay Partners.

Vikas Gupta, co-founder of Jambool said that the funding will be used to accelerate the growth of the company.
“The last ten months have been a whirlwind for us,” stated Jambool CEO and co-founder Vikas Gupta. “Since we launched Social Gold, we’ve seen virtual goods become the de facto monetization engine for social applications. It has been very exciting to build the platform and tools that power large online, virtual economies and enable a great in-app purchase experience for millions of users on social networks. We are thrilled to partner with Madrona and Bay as we accelerate our product development and distribution.”

Madrona Venture Group Invests $6 Million Into BuddyTV

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:36:11 +0000

Seattle, Wash.-based, BuddyTV is a television information social network slash listings site slash game site. Â BuddyTV has a large number of users constantly reading their TV show ratings, interviews, etc. Â BuddyTV recently raised $6 million Series B funding from Madrona Venture Group. Â The company previously raised $2.8 million from Gemstar-TV Guide around July 2007.

BuddyTV lists top shows for all you idiot box addicts. Â Top shows include The Amazing Race, America’s Next Top Model, American Idol, Big Brother, Desparate Housewives, Heroes, Step It Up And Dance, Flavor Of Love, etc. Â Each of these shows contain the aforementioned features.

Other companies that Madrona Venture Group invested in includes Amazon, Classmates.com, VacationSpot, Sharebuilder, Photoworks, Farecast, PayScale, and TripHub.

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: BuddyTV Raises $6 Million From Madrona Venture Group by Jason Kincaid