Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Novak Biddle Venture Partners

MindJolt Acquires Social Gaming Network and Hallpass Media

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:25:03 +0000

MindJolt is a gaming company that is run by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe left MySpace a few years after News Corporation acquired the social network company.

MindJolt appears to be in a better spot than MySpace right now. MySpace is continuing to lose money and MindJolt is profitable with $20 million in revenue. MindJolt has also recently acquired Social Gaming Network (SGN) and Hallpass Media. This acquisition doubles MindJolt’s staff to about 80 employees.

When MySpace’s revenue fell in 2009, DeWolfe who was CEO at the time was basically kicked out. Facebook started really dominating in 2009. Currently MySpace is being shopped around and it is rumored that buyers are not willing to spend higher than $100 million for it. DeWolfe is rumored to be involved as one of the buyers. This is a huge difference from the $856 million revenues that MySpace posted in 2008 and the $580 million price that News Corp. spent to buy the social network in 2005.

Hallpass Media is a gaming portal website that receives about four million monthly visitors. Hallpass Media also has 1,500 web based games that will be added to MindJolt’s portfolio. Social Gaming Network (SGN) creates iPhone and Android games that have a total of about 30 million downloads.

“Initially, a lot of energy was spent on games on the Web, through platforms like Facebook,” stated SGN founder and executive chairman Shervin Pishevar. “But over the past year, what we’ve seen is that a lot of that activity is going into mobile. We’ve reached a tipping point.”

SGN raised about $18 million in venture capital funding from Felicis Ventures, Greylock Partners, The Founders Fund, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, and Lars Hinrichs.

[NYT]

2tor Raises $32 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:19:27 +0000

2tor is an online education website that is based in New York City. The company has raised $32 million in Series C funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Previous investors that participated in this round include Highland Capital, Redpoint, City Light, and Novak Biddle. 2tor has raised a total of $65 million. 2tor is pursuing the higher education market and is partnering with graduate programs. 2tor plans on providing a technology platform for higher graduate programs to offer classes online.

2tor’s first partner is the University of Southern California, which will use 2tor for its Masters in Teaching and Social Work classes. Next year 2tor will be launching a nursing program with Georgetown University and MBA classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. Before University of South California started using 2tor, they had 80 students in the Masters of Teaching program. Today they have 1,500 students in the program. These students are in the program from across 45 states and 28 countries. The online students all pay the same full tuition and they get the same degree. 2tor runs the course websites and provides students with a webcam. 2tor shares tuition revenue with the schools.

[TechCrunch]

Docufide Raises $4.5 Million, Hires Matthew Pittinsky As CEO

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 02:57:06 +0000

Docufide is a Los Angeles based company that develops educational software used for transferring high school transcripts to colleges. The company raised $4.5 million and hired Blackboard founder Matthew Pittinsky as their CEO.

Docufide’s funding came was led by Novak Biddle Venture Partners. The company plans to move their headquarters to Scottsdale, Arizona. Pittinsky most recently the associate professor of sociology at Arizona State University. They will maintain an office in Los Angeles as well. Previous investors include AltoTech Ventures, Pasadena Angels, and the Tech Coast Angels. The current CEO John Reese will become Executive Chairman of the company.

[SoCalTech]

2tor Raises $10 Million Series A

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:53:52 +0000

2tor has announced that they have raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures and was co-invested by Novak Biddle Venture Partners and City Light Capital. The company was founded by Princeton Review Inc. founder John Katzman. 2tor is an online education company that helps universities manage online courses.

“2tor is proving that online education can be excellent and innovative. We are delighted to have Redpoint, Novak Biddle, and City Light on our team, as well as the expertise, commitment and perspective of their partners,” stated Katzman in a press release. “With them, we will continue to scale up our first program, ready the launch of our second, and step up to the role as the bridge between great universities and online learning.”

As part of the funding, Redpoint Partner Greg Martin and Novak Biddle General Partner Philip Bronner will be joining the 2tor Board of Directors.

Clearspring Raises $18 Million Third Round, Led By New Enterprise Associates

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:53:28 +0000

McLean, Virginia-based widget development company, Clearspring has raised $18 million in a third round of funding. This round of funding was led by New Enterprise Associates. Novak Biddle Venture Partners also participated in this round. This brings Clearsprings total funding to $35 million. Previous investors include Steve Case, Mark Jung, and Ted Leonsis. Clearspring is banking on ads built into widgets.

Clearspring primarily utilizes two services. LaunchPad and WidgetMedia are two of Clearspring’s biggest services. LaunchPad enables users to create, pubish, and distribute widgets across social networks. And WidgetMedia allows users to monetize widgets.

Clearspring clients include the NBA, RockYou!, NBC, Facebook, Adobe, Time, JibJab, MySpace, The Discovery Channel, Maxim.com, and Blogger. The company was founded by Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath.

Information Source:
[1] Widgeteer Clearspring Gets Its Big $18 Million Third Round by Joseph Weisenthal

Widget Syndication Services, Clearspring Technologies Receives $2 Mill in Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:31:00 +0000

It was announced earlier this week that Arlington, VA based company, Clearspring Technologies has raised $2 million in venture capital from Novak Biddle Venture Partners and a couple of other investors. Clearspring Technologies offers a widget syndication service for 2 types of people: Content Owners and Developers.

For content owners, Clearspring offers a partnership for brand name distribution through the forms of widgets. Clearspring enables you to package text, video, images, and applications into portable widgets. Then launches these widgets stamped with your brand across blogs and social networks. After this is complete, content owners can manage their widget content through a client interface. Lastly, Clearspring allows content users to analyze the real-time data statistics.

Widget developers can also benefit from Clearspring Technologies services. Clearspring allows developers to “push your widgets out to existing widget galleries in one click [source].” Developers can also analyze advanced statistics tracking on their widgets through Clearspring.

Christopher Marentis is the current CEO of Clearspring and is a former senior vice president of AOL Business Development. The two founders of Clearspring are Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath. Other Clearspring investors include Joel P. Adams, Miles R. Gilburne, and Bobby Yazdani.

[Source: BusinessWire]