Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » SoftBank Capital

Viral Tracking Pop Culture Website BuzzFeed Raises $15.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:10:24 +0000

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.

Former Huffington Post President Greg Coleman is also joining the BuzzFeed board of directors. BuzzFeed was founded by co-founded by Jonah Peretti, who was the former CTO of The Huffington Post before the company was acquired by AOL.

BuzzFeed has recently hit some major milestones. For example, the company has tripled their traffic to 25 million monthly unique visitors in the past year. They hired Politico’s Ben Smith to serve as the head editor. And recently they broke the news about how John McCain was going to endorse Mitt Romney before CNN and other news agencies.

[TechCrunch]

Mobile Ad Company Burstly Raises $5.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:53:35 +0000

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.”

Burstly is aiming to develop a universal dashboard for developers to take complete control of their revenue channels. This way developers can find out if they are making the most money from ad networks, cross promotions, or direct sales.

Burstly also launched a service called Burstly Rewards, which mediates mobile offers for iOS and Android. Burstly Rewards would allow developers to mediate multiple providers within one area, which mixes in-house and direct campaigns. The campaign managers would also be able to match the user interface to the look and feel of the app it is advertising on.

[TechCrunch]

Steve Jobs Worked Up Until A Day Before He Passed Away

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:00:59 +0000

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.

Son believes that Jobs resisted death so he could witness the iPhone 4S announcement. Jobs’ work ethic is highly regarded in the industry and he has been compared to other innovators in history such as Henry Ford.

[PCMag]

Social Media Platform Company SocialFlow Raises $7 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:35:11 +0000

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.

SocialFlow had access to Twitter’s data before but on a trial basis. Since Twitter enjoyed what SocialFlow is doing with their data, they gave them broader access. “This is exactly what we want to see out of the ecosystem,” stated Twitter Platform lead Ryan Sarver. “These guys are building a real business,”

Softbank, RRE Ventures, Betaworks, High Line Venture Partners, AOL Ventures, SV Angel, and several other angel investors were involved in this round.

[TechCrunch]

Boxee Raises $16.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:23:28 +0000

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.

Boxee plans on using the funding to further develop their product and increase partnerships. Boxee is not mainstream and they face intense competition from Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

[BusinessInsider]

Mobile Q&A Service Opinionaided Raises $1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 09:44:28 +0000

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.

Opinionaided is an iOS application that lets people offer advice and opinions. On the app, users can input a question and determine a category for users to answer. It is like a Quora-type of business model but tailored towards mobile devices.

Thus far there has been 40 million responses to about 500,000 questions. The company is based in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Chinese Video Company PPLive Raises $250 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:13:28 +0000

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]

Seesmic Raises $4 Million, Bringing Them To A Total Of $16 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:28:45 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:29:30 +0000

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.

Ben Huh founded Cheezburger in 2007. Now there are about 50 websites in the Cheezburger network of websites and they has a user base of about 16.5 million people that have uploaded 500,000 pictures and videos. Between all of their pictures and videos, the Cheezburger network sees about 375 million pageviews and 110 million videos per month.

Huh plans on increasing their staff size from the existing number of 50 people. The company is also planning on expanding internationally.

Paper.li Creators SmallRivers Raises $2.1 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:26:43 +0000

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.