Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Ron Conway

Groupon Acquires Kima Labs and Hyperpublic

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:04:51 +0000

Groupon has acquired mobile payments company Kima Labs and geolocation technology company Hyperpublic. Kima Labs is known for building the mobile barcode reading app called Barcode Hero and mobile payment app TapBuy. Groupon acquired a New York City based startup company called Hyperpublic, which is a geolocation service with layers of information on it like deals and events.

The Barcode Hero app will shut down effective February 20th. Those who use the app currently have until March 16th to download their data. It is unknown what will happen to Tapbuy. Tapbuy offers daily deals for about 100 brands. Tapbuy also processes transactions using credit card information provided by users.

Kima was founded by Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford. Both of these guys and Kima chief engineer Andrew Miner worked at Amazon. Kima’s investors include Naval Ravikant, Ron Conway, Owen Van Natta, and The Washington Post Company. Hyperpublic was co-founded by Doug Petkanics and Jordan Cooper.

Former Google China Head Kai-Fu Lee Raises $180 Million For Innovation Works Incubator

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:53:13 +0000

Kai-Fu Lee is the former head of Google China. Lee has raised $180 million for his startup incubator company founded two years ago known as Innovation Works. Innovation Works is an early-stage accelerator company.

Innovation Works provides funding, advisors, and support for start-up companies. “Our unique ‘incubation-plus-investment’ model has not only produced a pipeline of high-quality projects but also enabled local early-stage startup teams to grow quickly with the help of our 360-degree mentoring services, in effect creating the entrepreneurial academy for Chinese startups,” stated Lee. Innovation Works incubated 34 companies thus far. Nine of the companies secured additional rounds of funding from third-party venture capital firms.

Investors in this round include WI Harper, Silicon Valley Bank, Sequoia Capital, IDG-Accel, Foundation Capital, Foxconn, SAP, Bertelsmann, Motorola, Autodesk, and pension funds in the U.S. and Canada. Ron Conway and Yuri Milner was also in this round of funding. Executives from Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! also participated in this round. The incubator previously raised $115 million.

[TechCrunch]

Quid Raises $10 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:53:58 +0000

Quid is a quantitive analysis startup company that has raised $10 million in Series C funding from Atomico Ventures, SV Angel (Ron Conway’s investor fund), Founders Fund, Endeavour Vision, Infocomm Investments, and Charles Lho. PayPal co-founder Max Levchin joined Quid’s board of directors.

Quid previously raised $4 million from Founders Fund, Charles Lho, Max Levchin, Gordon Crovitz, Allen Morgan, James Hong, and Niko Dounchis.

“We are generating more information each year then the rest of human history put together,” stated Quid CEO Bob Goodson. “Data is one of the most important trends of the time we live in. Imagine the insights in the world that are now possible with this information, which hasn’t been available before? We’re building the tools to mine these insights, and help people make more informed decisions.”

Kevin Rose’s Milk Inc. Raises $1.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:04:55 +0000

Milk Inc. is a new company that was co-founded by Kevin Rose. Rose is the founder of Digg and co-founder of Revision3. Milk is essentially a company where several developers brainstorm technology and mobile ideas and works away at building them. If there isn’t any sudden traction, then the project gets shut down. Milk has raised $1.5 million in angel funding from well known investors. Investors include Mike Maples, Jr. (Floodgate), David Sze (Greylock Partners), Ron Conway, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Joshua Schachter, Ashton Kutcher, Michael Arrington, Philip Kaplan, Chris Sacca, Tony Hsieh, Gary Vaynerchuk, and several others. [VentureBeat]

Spark Capital Reneged On Lauren Leto’s Start-Up Bnter [RUMOR]

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:11:49 +0000

When Sarah Lacy interviewed Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet about the danger of venture capital firms investing in similar companies, she indirectly found out about some drama between Tumblr and BNTER after doing some follow-up investigation. Lacy found out from three sources that Spark Capital had reneged on a term sheet that was offered to BNTER, a start-up based in New York founded by Lauren Leto.

Backing out of the deal with BNTER angered angel investors Chris Dixon and Ron Conway, who was also investing in BNTER. Spark principal Andrew Parker reached out to Leto last December after being impressed by the company’s messaging product. At the time, BNTER was a two-person company. Leto pitched the company to Spark in Boston and negotiations carried on for several months.

In March, Spark Capital had faxed Leto a termsheet saying that it wasn’t signed because the partner could not get their hands on a fax machine, but said it was a done deal. After Spark checked in with Tumblr founder David Karp to see if he considers BNTER as a competitor, he said yes. Karp red-lighted Spark’s investment in BNTER because he believed they were direct competitors.

Spark did not end up sending the $2 million investment and they refused to pay a $200,000 break up fee. Thinking the deal was done, BNTER started to ramp up their company by hiring an Android developer. To make ends meet, Leto decided to cut her salary down to zero. Leto is a co-founder in Texts From Last Night (TFLN) and is a new college grad of Michigan State University.

[TechCrunch]

Confirmed: Flipboard Raises $50 Million At A $200 Million Valuation

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 03:58:54 +0000

Flipboard CEO Mike McCue has confirmed that the company has raised $50 million at a $200 million valuation. Insight Venture Partners led this round of funding. “We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” stated McCue. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

Other investors in this round includes Comcast Interactive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Jack Dorsey, Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, Ashton Kutcher, and Peter Chernin. Flipboard was co-founded by McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll.

Flipboard grabs information from media RSS feeds, Twitter, and Facebook data. Then it re-organizes the data in a tablet format. Flipboard plans on using the funding to increase the staff from 32 to 50 along with expanding internationally.

[AllThingsD]

Social Media Reading App Company Flipboard Raising Funding At $200 Million Valuation

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:03:42 +0000

Social media reading application company Flipboard is raising funding that would give them a $200 million valuation according to sources with AllThingsD. The valuation is subject to change. Flipboard was co-founded by Mike McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. When Flipboard launched in January, they had raised $10.5 million in VC funding from Kleiner Perkins, Index Centures, Jack Dorsey, Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, Ashton Kutcher, and Peter Chernin. Flipboard has zero revenue thus far. [AllThingsD]

PaaS Company DotCloud Raises $10 Million In Series A

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:03:47 +0000

DotCloud is a platform-as-a-service company that has raised $10 million in Series A. Ron Conway and Chris Sacca was the company’s angel investors. Investors in the Series A round includes Benchmark Capital and Trinity Ventures. Jerry Yang (Yahoo! co-founder), Marc Varstaen (Apple engineering manager), Peter Fenton (Benchmark Capital), Dan Scholnick (Trinity Ventures) will be joining DotCloud’s board of directors. DotCloud allows developers to build applications through custom components.

“With DotCloud, developers get their dream application platform and they no longer need to fill that sys admin role. Instead, developers and their IT teams can choose a stack, push code into our automated system and see their apps deployed with very little work,” stated DotCloud co-founder Sebastian Pahl.

[TechCrunch]

Offermatic Raises $4.5 Million In Series A

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:21:16 +0000

Offermatic is a free online service that helps people save money automatically through your credit or debit card. Offermatic has raised $4.5 million in Series A investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, SV Angel investor Ron Conway, former AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui, and early execs from Facebook/Mint.com. Hamoui will be joining the board of directors. Offermatic launched in beta in December 2010. By linking existing credit cards and debit cards to Offermatic, people can receive discounts on products and services without having to redeem coupons.

1000Memories Raises $2.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:49:39 +0000

1000Memories has raised $2.5 million in a round of funding led by Greylock Partners. Angel investors Caterina Fake, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Paul Buchheit, Mike Maples, and Chris Sacca also participated in this round. David Thacker of Greylock will be joining the board of directors at 1000Memories. 1000Memories is a website where loved ones can express words about people in their lives that have passed away. The appeal of 1000Memories is that it does not have ads and the website design is stylish. [TechCrunch]