Amit Chowdhry | September 28, 2011 | 474 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Aaron Levie, Andreessen Horowitz, Box.net, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Dylan Smith, Emergence Capital, Emergence Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Salesforce.com, Scale Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners

Box.net has raised a new round of $50 million in funding. Investors in this round include Salesforce.com, Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners. Box.net has now raised a total of $128 million. Box.net has 7 million users and 300 million documents are stored on their service. Box.net was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith in 2005. About 77% of the Fortune 500 uses Box.net’s cloud storage solutions service. [TechCrunch]
Amit Chowdhry | August 15, 2011 | 387 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Blue Nile, Darrell Cavens, Mark Vadon, Meritech Capital Partners, Zulily

Zulily is a private sales website for moms, kids, and babies that was co-founded by two former executives at Blue Nile. The company has raised $43 million in funding, which brings the total funding to over $50 million. The latest round of funding is from Meritech Capital Partners.

Amit Chowdhry | July 20, 2011 | 609 views | 1 Comment
Categorized under Advanced Equities, Crosslink Capital, DCM, Dell Inc., Force10 Networks, Meritech Capital Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Pacesetter Capital Group, RWI Ventures, Tudo Ventures, Turin Networks Inc., U.S. Venture Partners, Worldview Technology Partners

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) is acquiring Force10 Networks Inc. for $700 million in cash. Force10 is a high-speed Ethernet networking equipment company that was planning to go the IPO route.

Amit Chowdhry | December 16, 2010 | 575 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Meritech Capital Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, Streetcar, Zipcar

Car sharing company Zipcar has raised $21 million in Series G funding. This may mean that the company is postponing their IPO. Zipcar has about 500,000 users. Zipcar filed for an IPO back in June and it is likely that they would have raised $75 million. The S1 also indicated the Zipcar would borrow $70 million under a one-year credit facility for purchasing new cars. Zipcar also recently bought their U.K. competitor Streetcar.

Amit Chowdhry | October 6, 2009 | 971 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Dave Roberts, John McCaw, Larry Bowman, Meritech Capital Partners, PopCap Games

PopCap Games has raised $22.5 million. PopCap Games makes game applications that are distributed on social networks. PopCap Games created Bejeweled which has been played over a billion times according to VentureBeat. The $22.5 million first round of funding was provided by Meritech Capital Partners. PopCap plans to use the funding for acquisitions and working capital.
PopCap has been profitable since they launched 10 years ago and the company has about 240 employees based in Seattle. PopCap’s games can be played for an hour before payment is required. The games cost $19.99 and Bejeweled has sold over 25 million units thus far. PopCap’s other hits include Zuma, Bookworm, Alchemy, and Plants vs. Zombies. PopCap competitors include Zynga, OnLive, and Playdom. Earlier this year, PopCap acquired Gastronaut Studios.
Other investors in PopCap Games include Larry Bowman and John McCaw. Bowman is a board member in PopCap games and has previously bought stock in the company. The CEO of PopCap is Dave Roberts.
Amit Chowdhry | September 11, 2007 | 1,272 views | 1 Comment
Categorized under Accel Partners, Facebook, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners
According to AllThingsDigital’s Kara Swisher, Facebook is considering raising additional funds for expansion or potential further acquisitions. Facebook’s first and only acquisition thus far is Parakey, a company created by two of Mozilla Firefox’s core programmers.
Considering the costs of maintaining Facebook between staffing, facilities, and server costs, I am not surprised that Facebook would be looking for more money. If I remember correctly, Facebook has roughly 40 million+ members, is expecting to make around $150 million this year in revenues (compared to $50 million in 2006), and is expecting to file for a possible IPO in the future. If Facebook decides to pursue an IPO, it would be around 2009 or beyond.
