Tag Archives: Maples Investments
Digital Publisher Company Vook Raises $5.25 Million
Vook is a digital publisher company that has raised $5.25 million in Series A funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners and Floodgate. Vook publishes iPad, iPhone, Android book apps, and multimedia Kindle books. Vook has partnerships with Deepak Chopra, Seth Godin, and Tom Peters. Vook was founded in 2008 by Bradley Inman. Vook has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Ron Conway, Baseline Ventures, Founder Collective, Maples Investments, and Lerer Ventures.
Vook Raises $2.5 Million In Seed Capital
Vook is an Alameda, California based video book publishing service. Vook intends to connect text with video and social media. Vook has partnerships in place with HarperStudio, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Filipacchi Media. Vook has just raised $2.5 million in seed capital from Ron Conway, Kenneth Lerer, Maples Investments, Baseline Ventures, and Founder Collective.
Gowalla Raises $8.4 Million From Greylock and Several Angel Investors
Gowalla is a location based social networking website that has raised $8.4 million in funding. Greylock Partners was the lead investor and the company plans to use the funding to strengthen their development capabilities. Thus far Gowalla has raised over $10 million since they started in 2007.
“Gowalla has rapidly attracted a passionate user base by creating an innovative, useful service that is also a lot of fun,” stated Greylock’s David Thacker. “It’s exciting to discover new places and earn stamps for your passport from places as diverse as Buckingham Palace and the Sydney Opera House to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the coffee shop down the street. Gowalla also connects you with your friends, letting you share your travels and meet up with others in real time.” Thacker has joined the Gowalla Board of Directors as part of the investment.
LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman also joined Gowalla’s board of directors as an observer.
Other investors in Gowalla include Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose, Maples Investments, Shasta Ventures, Ron Conway, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, and Chris Sacca. Previous investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund also participated in this round.
CoTweet Raises $1.1 Million From Several VC Firms
CoTweet is a startup that has built a Twitter platform for helping companies reach and engage customers. CoTweet has several prominent companies using their platform such as Ford, Starbucks, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated, Zendesk, and Dish Network.
CoTweet announced earlier this week that they have raised $1.1 million in first round funding from Baseline, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments, and Freestyle Capital.
The company platform has the ability to manage multiple tools and accounts at once. Several people also have the ability to post to a single account using the CoTweet platform.
CoTweet is available for free as of right now but the company will eventually charge for their services. “CoTweet is an essential tool that allows us to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, or have a single account with multiple people managing it,” stated Scott Monty, the digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford Motor Company in a press release. “We can also identify who’s responsible for Tweets, which gives us the flexibility to pull experts into the discussion, and to keep a human face while doing so.”
iPhone Game Development Company Ngmoco Raises $10 Million In Funding
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]
Ocarina iPhone App Company Smule Raises $3.9 Million
Sonic Mule Inc. (Smule) has created several interesting applications for the iPhone including Ocarina, Zephy, Sonic Vox, Sonic Boom, and Sonic Lighter. The Ocarina application did pretty well because Smule held a competition to determine who could create the 10 best videos using their app. Smule announced today that they have raised $3.9 million in funding led by Granite Ventures. Other investors participating include Bessemer Venture Partners, Maples Investments, and Jeff Smith (the founder of the company).
Dr. Ge Wang, Assistant Professor of Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford is the company’s other co-founder. Wang helped develop ChucK, the audio programming language that is used for some of the apps. ChucK is used to transmit voice and convert it into music over the iPhone.
According to a press release, “Smule will use the new funds to enhance its position as a leading developer of innovative applications and services for mobile users.” This does not seem very specific, but Bessemer is confident enough in Jeff to see a return on their investment. Jeff gave Bessemer a 30x return from an investment in his previous company.
Categories Bessemer Venture Partners, ChucK, Maples Investments, Smule, Sonic Mule Inc.
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