Outright.com has raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures, and SoftTech VC. This is Outright’s second round of funding. The company is just like Mint.com but uses more of a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Outright raised $2 million in funding previously from seed investors. The seed investors include the companies that put in the second round except for Sequoia. Outright is intended for small businesses and individuals. This helps people put their taxes together easier too. The service is free and the company plans to introduce several add-on services in the future.

DailyBooth is a real-time photo blogging website that launched out of Y-Combinator. The website launched this past August and has been receiving a good amount of traffic ever since. Now the company has raised $1 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel (Ron Conway), Betaworks, Kevin Rose, and Caterina Fake (Flickr founder). DailyBooth was co-founded by Ryan Amos and Jon Wheatley.

The service encourages users to send messages along with webcam photos. DailyBooth receives about 6 million monthly visitors and a majority of their visitors are 15-25 year old women. The company said that they plan to use the funding for developing a premium offering and photo-printing distribution platform. Below is a screenshot of the service.

Thread is a dating application on Facebook that suggests potential matches that has just raised a new round of funding.  The company raised $1.2 million from Sequoia Capital, the Founders Fund, First Round Capital, and angel investor Ron Conway.

Thread was founded by several former PayPal product managers.  “The best people to date are friends of friends,” stated Thread CEO Brian Phillips. “Not all the best people are on dating sites. All the best people are on Facebook.”  Phillips recently went on his third date with someone he met on Thread.

Thread pulls in your contact information using Facebook Connect and pulls the public profiles of all your friends.  Through the website, you can find out which friends of your friends are single and ask you mutual friend to introduce you.  Stalking at its finest.

Thread was originally known as Frinto (friend+intro) but decided to change their name.  The Thread.com domain name was already taken and it took them two years to negotiate a deal over the ownership.  The owner was told that they would receive equity if the business was successful.  If it wasn’t successful, the owner would get the domain name back.

MobileIron is a mobile phone company that launched after being in stealth mode last week.  The company raised $9 million immediately after coming out of stealth mode.  MobileIron is intended to be a mobile security company for enterprises.

“The MobileIron Virtual Smartphone Platform is the first solution to combine data-driven central management of smartphones with deep visibility into real-time usage and cost drivers,” states the MobileIron Products page. “It is a simple-to-install appliance that plugs into your corporate network and lets you quickly gain control of your smartphone operations. Smartphone data moves to the cloud, giving IT, finance, and end users full visibility and control of smartphone operations through a central window.”

MobileIron can also monitor the data usage and alert IT departments when employees are nearing certain thresholds.  This way the IT departments of companies can maintain costs when providing employees with smartphones.

The investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.

[via InformationWeek]

JustDial is a local search engine company based in India.  Sequoia Capital India has invested 40 crore (around $8 million) into the search engine company recently.  This round of funding gives Sequoia about 10% equity in the company.

As a result of the investment, Sequoia Capital India Managing Director Sandeep Singhal will be joining Just Dial’s board of directors.  The last time I wrote about Singhal was when there was potential conflict of interest in Minglebox’s round of funding by Sequoia.

Sequoia has about $1.8 billion in capital for investments in India.  The investment in Just Dial is from a $300 million venture capital fund.

Joost was started by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis back in October 2006.  The company raised about $45 million in funding shortly after starting up.  Investors included Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Viacom, CBS and Li Ka-shing.  Joost killed off their desktop application and became purely a web service in September 2008.

Joost announced that they have replaced former CEO Mike Volpi.  Joost SVP of Engineering Matt Zelesko will be replacing Volpi.  However Volpi will remain as Chairman of the board.

As a result of Joost’s lack of growth compared to YouTube, Hulu, and other video services Joost has decided to focus on providing video platforms for bigger companies.  There will also be major layoffs.  Joost employs about 100 people in New York and London.

[via Reuters]

GameGround is a game expansion development company based in Israel.  Currently they do not have any published products and they are labeling themselves as being in alpha phase.  Despite the lack of a product to showcase, the company has raised $6.1 million already.  The latest round is $4.1 million from Sequoia.

GameGround was started in 2007 and was founded by Shaul Olmert, Guy Margolin, and Itzik Ben-Bassat.  The three of them have some sort previous history in game development.  Ben-Bassat used to work at Blizzard and Margolin worked at 888.com.  Olmert is a former MTV VP in their Digital Products division.

The basic idea behind GameGround’s product is that will serve as a “special agent for Mac and PC that can work with existing games to expand their online functionality, even after they’re released,” according to TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid.

Sugar Inc. is a blog network that focuses on women.  Some of the blogs in their network include PopSugar, GeekSugar, BuzzSugar, etc.  Earlier this week the company raised a $16 million Series C round of funding from Sequoia Capital.

Through the investment, Sugar plans to launch  Super Digital Entertainment, a division that will focus on online video, TV, film, videogames, etc.  Sugar has also hired David Grant, the former President of FOX TV Studios.  Sugar also acquired the company that Grant has founded, ShopFlick.com.

“These moves further our rapid growth into a leading media company,” stated Sugar Inc. founded and CEO Brian Sugar.  “Sugar Digital Entertainment, run by an executive with a successful track record in television and digital, will leverage our brand and expertise into online video, TV and film.  Shopflick’s team and online video expertise will enable ShopStyle to further leverage the powerful relationship between content and commerce, an area of vast potential online.  In short, we have become a media company with exceptionally diversified revenue streams encompassing advertising, commerce and license fees.”

[via BusinessInsider]

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has acquired Pure Digital Technologies Inc. for $590 million in stock.  Pure Digital is a company that makes digital cameras and video camcorders.  In addition to paying $590 million, Cisco will pay about $15 million in equity incentives to keep Pure Digital workers on board.

Pure Digital builds the Flip Video camcorder for $150-$230.  The Flip Video can record 60 minutes of video and can be plugged into USB drives.  These videos can be uploaded to YouTube.

Pure Digital started about 8 years ago and was powered by VC capital by Sequoia and Benchmark Capital.

Paul Graham has made the VCs open their wallets once again.  Y-Combinator has raised $2 million from Sequoia Capital and several other angel investors.  Up until now, only Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston, and Trevor Blackwell were the sole investors in Y-Combinator companies.

Through this round of funding, Y-Combinator will open a new investment arm.  Y-Combinator will also be able to increase the number of companies that they invest in ever year.  They wil go from about 40 companies per year to 60.  Y-Combinator invests about $15,000 per startup.  Before Y-Combinator invested about $5,000 for 6% equity in the company and provided startups with office space and other resources.

Some of the companies to come out of Y-Combinator include Snipd, heysan!, Weebly, Addmired, Justin.TV, Tipjoy, Songkick, Disqus, Dropbox, Anywhere.FM, Loopt, Scribd, Xobni, Reddit, and Omnisio.

Greg McAdoo of Sequoia led the investment.  Some of the angels that joined in the investment include Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, and Aydin Senkut.

[via VentureBeat]

Amobee Media Systems, a mobile advertising company has raised $22 million.  The $22 million round was led by Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO).  Amobee raised a total of $52 million thus far.  Previous investors in Amobee includes Telefonica, Accel Partners, Vodafone, Sequoia Capital, and Globespan.

Amobee’s goal is to help fund telecommunication companies through advertising.  Vodafone Spain is using Amobee to insert advertisements into Vodafone’s mobile site. 

“We have built the first and only telco- grade ad-serving solution specifically designed to address the unique needs and requirements of the mobile operator across multiple channels and services,” states Amobee’s Operators page.

Amobee was founded in 2005 and launched in Feb. 2006.  Amobee’s headquarters are in Redwood City, Calif. and has research and development based in Herzliya, Israel.  Amobee is lead by CEO Zohar Levkovitz.

Related Links:
1. Amobee.com
2. alarm:clock

Rackspace is a web hosting company based in San Antonio, Texas.  Rackspace is getting ready to have an initial public offer on the NYSE with stock ticket symbol, RAX.  Rackspace is opening with 15 million shares at $12.50 per share.  Through the IPO, Rackspace will raise about $187.5 million.  Goldman-Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Merrill Lynch are book running the IPO.

Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital own 27.8% of Rackspace combined.  Norwest owns 11.6% and Sequoia owns 16.2%.  Rackspace wanted to raise $276 million through the IPO, but had to target for a lower price because of the economic conditions.

Rackspace was co-founded by Pat Condon, Dirk Elmendorf, and (Update: see comment #1) Richard Yoo.  Some of Rackspace’s partners include Microsoft, Redhat, Dell, Cisco, HP, AMD, VMware, and PCI.

Related Links:
1. Rackspace.com
2. GigaOM

“Consumers are in love with TokBox, and use it to keep in touch with friends and family around the globe,” stated Nick Triantos, CEO of TokBox. “We’re proud of the service we’ve created and how easy it is for anyone to use TokBox. We are grateful that a world-class venture firm like Bain Capital Ventures also sees our potential, and are thrilled to have them join Sequoia Capital as investors in TokBox.”

TokBox is a “live video calling” service.  TokBox and Skype have similar functionality, except TokBox can be embedded on social network profiles, blogs, and personal websites.  TokBox has a “Push to Talk” button that appears on the social network applications.

TokBox has raised $10 million in Series B from Bain Capital and Sequoia Capital.  TokBox’s Series A was $4 million, bringing the video chat service’s total funding to $14 million.  Scott Friend (pictured above), Venture Partner at Bain Capital will join TokBox’s Board of Directors through this round of funding. 

“TokBox has an impressive and very loyal and energetic user base,” stated Friend. “The company is executing well and its service offers consumers a variety of great features that strongly differentiate TokBox from competitors. We are excited to be investing with our partners at Seqouia in a company we believe has the potential to be the next ‘big thing’ in web communication.”

TokBox is run by CEO Nick Triantos, a former Partner at Quantum Technology Partners.  Youniversity Ventures, an early-stage ventural capital firm started by Jawed Karim (YouTube co-founder), Kevin Hartz (early PayPal and Friendster investor), and Keith Rabois (former EVP at PayPal) is also an investor in TokBox.  Roelof Botha, a VC for Sequoia is also on the board of directors for TokBox.  TokBox was founded by Ron Hose.

“Tokbox is uniquely positioned as a leader in the burgeoning consumer video communications market,” stated Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital. “Their ultra-simple user interface sets a new bar for ease-of-use for consumers to hold video calls with their friends and family around the world. We’re very happy with their growth to date, which is why we are enthusiastic to participate in their Series B investment.”

The beauty of TokBox is that no download is needed to chat.  It is 100% free and it has solid privacy controls.  TokBox is based in San Francisco, Calif.

Related Links:
1. TokBox
2. VentureBeat
3. TechCrunch 
4. TokBox Press Release

PopularMedia is a company that helps clients make content go viral.  It is a similar concept as ACS SEO.  However PopularMedia is a fully-funded social media company.  To date, PopularMedia has raised over $12 million in funding across three rounds. 

The latest round of funding was $8 million.  VentureBeat reported that the funding was provided by DAG Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Steamboat Ventures.  PopularMedia is run by CEO Jim Calhoun. 

PopularMedia also released a new product called SocialNotes.  SocialNotes is a widget that can be placed on blogs to get feedback.  SocialNotes looks like a floating sticky note.  The datasheet is available here.

Related Links:
1. PopularMedia.com

Mevio, a video website that was founded by Ron Bloom and Adam Curry started the company originally to podcast.  About 4 years later, the founders decided to rename their former company, Podshow to Mevio.  Mevio hosts original videos and will allow others to syndicate their content.

This idea impressed Crosslink Capital, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, DAG Ventures, and Sherpalo Ventures because these companies gave Mevio $15 million in Series C.  All of these VC firms were previous investors as well.  To date, Mevio has raised about $38 million. 

Some of Mevio’s clients include Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, and Hewlett Packard.  Mevio has over 1 million hours of video content.  Mevio also self-proclaims themselves as a leading site to discover new artists and free use licensing for original music. 

Related Links:
Mevio

Information Source:
Silicon Alley Insider