Amit Chowdhry | January 9, 2012 | 416 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under BuzzFeed, Greg Coleman, Hearst Media, HuffingtonPost.com, Jonah Peretti, Ken Lerer, Lerer Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Patrick Kerins, RRE Capital, SoftBank Capital

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.

Amit Chowdhry | December 1, 2011 | 258 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Burstly, GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, SoftBank Capital

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.”

Amit Chowdhry | October 19, 2011 | 382 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Apple Inc., Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Capital, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook

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.

Amit Chowdhry | April 8, 2011 | 1,149 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under AOL Ventures, Betaworks, High Lines Venture Partners, RRE Ventures, Ryan Sarver, SocialFlow, SoftBank Capital, SV Angel, Twitter

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.

Amit Chowdhry | March 12, 2011 | 578 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Boxee, General Catalyst Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, SoftBank Capital, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures

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.

Amit Chowdhry | March 6, 2011 | 771 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under DFJ, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Eniac Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Jonah Goodhart, Karl Jacob, Mark Wachen, Opinionaided, SoftBank Capital, Vince Monical

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.

Amit Chowdhry | February 4, 2011 | 634 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under PPLive, PPTV, SoftBank Capital

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]
Amit Chowdhry | February 2, 2011 | 433 views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Atomico, Loic Le Meur, Omidyar Network, Salesforce.com, Seesmic, SoftBank Capital, Wellington Partners

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.