In less than 2 years since launching, Mint.com is supposedly selling themselves to Intuit Inc. Mint.com is a financial tool that allows you to aggregate all of your bank and credit card information and find ways to save money. The deal is expected to close within the next few days.

Mint had launched at the TechCrunch50 conference two years ago and took the top prize giving them $50,000. Mint raised $31.8 million in total funding from First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Sherpalo Ventures, Hite Capital, DAG Ventures, and The Founders Fund. Angel investors in Mint include Ron Conway, Mark Goines, Geoff Ralston, and Dave McClure.

This acquisition is interesting because Intuit had previously sent Mint a letter demanding an explanation for how they jumped to 850,000 users within several months.

Wonderhill is a company that creates “wholesome” casual games.  Wonderhill recently raised $7 million from Shasta Ventures and Charles River Ventures.  Before that the company raised $750,000 from Ooga Labs.  Two wholesome games that Wonderhill developed include Dog World and Green Spot.  Wonderhill was founded by James Currier.

Currier created Emode which is now Tickle.com back in the 90’s.  Wonderhill’s CCO Nick Rush had a similar role at EA’s Pogo.com before joining the startup.  Charles River Ventures partner Saar Gur told VentureBeat that Wonderhill’s ability to create viral hits was one of the reasons why they received the major investment.

Wonderhill’s competition includes Zynga and Playfish.  Zynga recently raised $35 million and Playfish raised $21 million.

Yen Lee, former General Manager of Yahoo! Travel has raised $10 million in Series B funding for his start-up.  His start-up is called UpTake.com and the funding was led by Trinity Ventures and Shasta Ventures.  The first round of funding was $4 million in December 2007.  UpTake.com is a travel search engine that grabs data from multiple sites at once.  This includes websites: TripAdvisor.com, Expedia.com, Fodors, goCityKids, Virtual Tourist, and Yahoo! Travel. 

With this round of funding, UpTake plans to expand into Lodging, Things To Do, Restaurants, and Beaches features.  UpTake will continue to invest in it’s own search engine technology.  UpTake works with BedandBreakfast.com, Restauranti.ca, OpenTable, La Quinta Inn & Suites, Away.com, and FriendCommunications for RV and campground reviews.

“We looked at dozens of investment opportunities in the online travel industry for several years before deciding to invest in UpTake,” stated Patricia Nakache, general partner of Trinity Ventures. “UpTake has a distinct approach that addresses a big search and discovery gap in the travel market and is run by a proven CEO and team.”

UpTake has aggregated and organized about 20 million traveler reviews, ratings, and articles.  UpTake is based in Palo Alto, Calif. and has engineering units in Beijing and Moscow. 

“We are thrilled to close this significant round of financing,” stated Shawn Hardin, CEO of Flock. “Following the tremendous market response to Flock’s commercial release, this new funding will enable us to continue our browser innovation – making engagement and participation across social networks and the Web as effortless as consumption.”

Flock is an open source social networking browser built around other open source layout engines.  Flock was created using Javascript, DOM, XUL, and XPCOM.  Yesterday Flock announced that they have raised $15 million in Series D funding.  The funding was provided by Fidelity Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures. 

With the new round of funding, Flock plans to expand business for R&D, marketing, and expansion.  Flock stated that this round of funding was higher than prior investments and that revenue has risen 400% since Jan. 2008.  And Flock’s user base increased by 250% since Jan. 2008.

Information Source:
[1] Flock Press Release

“Turn has achieved the critical mass that our unique technology needs in order to ensure market leading performance. We’re now ready to scale our market with an even broader group of advertisers and publishers.”
-Jim Barnett, CEO of Turn

Redwood City, Calif.-based ad network company, Turn Inc. recently raised $15 million in second round funding. The investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Shasta Ventures. About 3 years ago, Turn raised $8.5 million. This news complements the launch of Turn.com’s Smart Market feature, an automated online advertising service for publishers and advertisers.

“Today’s announcement of the Turn Smart Market demonstrates that the underlying technologies driving Turn—automatic targeting, machine learning, and goal-driven auction pricing—are rock solid,” stated Jim Barnett, the CEO of Turn. “Turn has achieved the critical mass that our unique technology needs in order to ensure market leading performance. We’re now ready to scale our market with an even broader group of advertisers and publishers.”

Barnett is a former CEO of search engine, AltaVista.  Advertiser clients of Turn include CapitalOne, Classmates, Comcast, DeVry, eHarmony, FTD, Geico, Motorola, Netflix, Quicken, Staples, and T-Mobile. Turn was founded in 2005 by Jim Barnett and John Ellis.

[Information Source: Turn Inc. press release via Yahoo!]

Eye-Fi[1] is a company looking to solve a simple problem. In order to share pictures on the Internet, camera owners have to transfer the files to their computer and then upload it. Eye-Fi is developing technologies to eliminate the need to transfer pictures to the computer and to even be near a computer. This would be made possible by WiFi.

Eye-Fi raised $5.5 million in Series A funding by Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures. With the funding, Eye-Fi will enhance operations and product development.  Opus Capital[2] has previously invested in people search engine Spock and Shasta[3] invested in Tumri Inc. about a week ago.

“Digital cameras have made it very easy to take pictures, but it’s a chore to get photos off the camera to a place where you can print or share them,” stated Robert Coneybeer, the managing director for Shasta Ventures “This is a very real problem affecting both consumers who own digital cameras, and companies in the digital photography industry looking to boost profits. We see a huge market opportunity for Eye-Fi because anyone with a Wi-Fi network and a digital camera is a potential customer.”

Eye-Fi has an interesting model because there are many cellphones that have built-in features to transfer pictures online. The way I see it is that they’ll be competing against such features so they need to find a way to “switch” users of such technology.

[1] eye.fi
[2] Pulse 2.0: Opus Capital coverage
[3] Pulse 2.0: Shasta Ventures coverage

Tumri Inc.[1], a company that focuses on advertisement personalization services, announced today that they have raised $10 million in funding from several investors.  The lead investor was Lehman Brothers Venture Partners[2] and other investors included Shasta Ventures[3] and Accel Partners[4].  With this round of funding, David Kim joined the company as a senior vice president of business development and so did Sandeep Nawathe, the vice president of engineering.  The company plans on expanding support sales, marketing, and product development.

“As the first integrated merchandising and advertising network that can intelligently deliver targeted products to online consumers, Tumri is poised to capitalize on a rapidly growing market,“ stated Ben Boyer, the vice president and principal at Lehman Brothers Venture Partners.  “Tumri’s vision for interactive advertising is based on a strong technical foundation and we are very excited to invest in this innovative company.”

This service benefits online retailers, publishers, and bloggers.  The online retailers have their products featured on the websites of publishers and bloggers.  The most recognized service on Tumri is there AdPod feature.  AdPod is a widget that is customized by the publisher or blogger and features items from the online retailers.  AdPod was built with XML and AJAX.  AdPod makes shopping interactive rather than just displaying an item and a link to the retailer. 

Tumri was started in 2004 and is based in Mountain View, CA.  The company was founded by Hari Menon, Pradeep Javangula, James Rice, and Richard Billington.

[1] Tumri.com
[2] Lehman Brothers-Investment Management-Private Equity-Venture Capital:Technology
[3] Shastaventures.com
[4] Accel.com