Jelly Raises Funding From SV Angel, Spark Capital, And Several Angel Investors

Jelly is a startup that was founded by Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter.  The company is still in stealth mode and we have no idea what the company does.  Jelly has raised a Series A round of funding led by Spark Capital, SV Angel, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, Bono, Evan Williams, Jason Goldman, Al Gore, Greg Yaitanes, and Roya Mahboob.  Spark Capital general partner Bijan Sabet has joined the Jelly board of directors as part of the funding.

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FWD.us: A Political Action Group Started By Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, has started a new political group called FWD.us. The purpose of FWD.us is to focus on immigration reform and Zuckerberg wrote an editorial about it on The Washington Post.  In Zuckerberg’s article, he called the U.S. immigration policy strange and said is unfit for today’s world.  Zuckerberg was joined by many notable technology company executives for this initiative.
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Online Investment Company Wealthfront Raises $20 Million

Wealthfront is an online investment company that has raised $20 million led by Index Ventures.  Other investors that have participated in this round include The Social + Capital Partnership and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn founder).  Existing investor DAG Ventures also participated in this round.  Other investors that participated in this round include Matt Mullenweg, Andy Dunn, Adam D’Angelo, Michael Schroepfer, Hunter Walk, Cipora Herman, Satya Patel, and several others.

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Treehouse Hits $3.6 Million In Revenues

Treehouse is a video focused technology education company that has hit $3.6 million in revenues [TNW].  The company has around 18,700 users and over 380,000 quizzes have been completed.  Around 330,000 hours of tutorial videos have been watched on the website.  The company went from 11 employees to 54 employees since 2011.  The company will now be getting into print through a book series published by Wiley Publishing.  They are starting with an HTML5 book.  This will be followed up with a CSS3 and iOS 6 book.  Treehouse created getting started courses for WordPress and then introduced jQuery lessons.  They also launched courses on Android and iOS.  They have funding from Chamath Palihapitiya, Reid Hoffman, Kevin Rose, and Mark Suster.  Check out Treehouses’ YouTube channel to learn more about the company.

Reid Hoffman Made 3,000 Times His Initial Investment In Facebook

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invested $37,500 in Facebook in 2005.  He revealed this info while on stage in an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco when being interviewed by Michael Arrington.  When Hoffman made the investment, Facebook was being valued at around $5 million.  Even after Facebook’s stock price dropped, Hoffman’s stake in the company is still worth $75 million and he sold $36 million in shares at the IPO.  This means that he has made 3,000 times his initiative investment in Facebook.  [BusinessInsider]

LinkedIn: 175 Million Users, $228.2M Q2 Revenues, $1M Spent Fixing Hack

Earlier this week LinkedIn has announced their second quarter earnings.  They reported $228.2 million in revenues and earnings per share at $0.16.  Analysts were expecting revenues of $216 million and EPS at $0.16.  Year-over-year revenues are up around 89%.

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Zynga Being Investigated By Law Firms For Insider Stock Sell Off

Zynga’s stock is currently trading at $3.09 per share, which is well below their high point of $14.69 in March 2012.  Zynga’s market cap back then was over $8 billion and now it is at around $2.27 billion.  A couple of days ago, Henry Blodget at BusinessInsider.com wrote an article about insiders at Zynga that cashed out right before the stock crashed.

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