Tag Archives: SoftBank Capital
Viral Tracking Pop Culture Website BuzzFeed Raises $15.5 Million
BuzzFeed is one of my most favorite time-pass websites because they have interesting galleries and lists of pop culture. BuzzFeed has raised $15.5 million in Series C funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Other investors that participated include Lerer Ventures, Hearst Media, SoftBank, and RRE Capital. NEA General Partner Patrick Kerins will be joining the BuzzFeed board of directors. Ken Lerer, the Huffington Post co-founder and BuzzFeed board member, will become the BuzzFeed executive chairman.
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Mobile Ad Company Burstly Raises $5.5 Million
Burstly is an app development company that has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, and SoftBank Capital. Burstly has a storefront for developers for creating a branded portal where ad companies can directly purchase placements within apps. You could almost consider it as being a “BuySellAds for mobile devices.”
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Steve Jobs Worked Up Until A Day Before He Passed Away
The late Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs worked on company operations up until the day before he passed away. When Apple CEO Tim Cook was meeting with Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank Capital, he received a call from Jobs. “That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died,” said Son.
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Categories Apple Inc., Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Capital, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook
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Social Media Platform Company SocialFlow Raises $7 Million
SocialFlow is a social media platform company that teaches brands how to use Twitter in effective ways. SocialFlow uses data analysis to help brands come up with what kind of tweets to send out. SocialFlow has some solid revenues and shows evidence of long-term growth. This is why investors have put $7 million into the company in a Series A round of funding.
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Boxee Raises $16.5 Million
Boxee is a New York City based company that makes software for watching online video on TV. The company has recently raised $16.5 million in a round led by Pitango and Softbank. Previous investors that participated in this round include General Catalyst, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures.
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Mobile Q&A Service Opinionaided Raises $1 Million
Opinionaided is a mobile Q&A service that has raised $1 million in funding several venture capital companies and angel investors. The investors include General Catalyst, SoftBank Capital, DFJ, ENIAC Ventures, Mark Wachen, Jonah Goodhart, Karl Jacob, and Vince Monical.
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Chinese Video Company PPLive Raises $250 Million
PPLive is a Chinese video company that has raised $250 million in Series D. SoftBank made the investment and has attained a 35% stake as a result. PPLive is known for offering the video-on-demand service PPTV. This round of funding is larger than what Youku raised in their $203 million IPO. PPTV has 200 million registered users and 105 million active monthly users. PPTV viewers spend about 2 hours and 30 minutes on average watching the video on demand service. [TechCrunch]
Categories PPLive, PPTV, SoftBank Capital
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Seesmic Raises $4 Million, Bringing Them To A Total Of $16 Million
Seesmic is a social media application company based in San Francisco that enables people to send out mass updates on Twitter and other services. Seesmic competes directly with TweetDeck. Earlier this month Seesmic has raised $4 million in a new round of funding from Salesforce.com, Softbank Group, Atomico, Omidyar Network, and Wellington Partners. Seesmic has raised a total of $16 million thus far.
Cheezburger Blog Network Raises $30 Million
The Cheezburger network of websites include FAIL Blog and LOLcats. The company has raised $30 million in funding led by the Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, and SoftBank Capital. Brad Feld (Foundry), Greg Gottesman (Madrona), and Rich Levandov (Avalon) will be joining the board of directors at Cheezburger. I Can Has Cheezburger now has a total of $32.5 million.
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Paper.li Creators SmallRivers Raises $2.1 Million
Paper.li is a website that takes links shared on your Twitter and Facebook feeds and then converts the information into a newspaper-like website. SmallRivers SA, the company behind Paper.li has raised $2.1 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital, and Endeavour Vision. Dan Hova of Highland and Ronald Fisher of SoftBank Capital will join the Board of Directors at SmallRivers.