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.
Bit.ly has been growing rapidly with the help of Twitter. People are constantly using Bit.ly to shorten URLs of stories, images, and videos that people want to share with their Twitter followers. Bit.ly was created under Betaworks, an incubation firm that helped sell Summize to Twitter last year. Betaworks has taken Bit.ly and is spinning it out as a separate, well-funded company.
O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and several other investors plugged $2 million into the URL shortening service. Other investors include Social Leverage, SoftTech VC, and Ron Conway. Bryce Roberts of O’Reilly will join the Board of Directors at Bit.ly.
Just last week alone, about 20 million URLs have been shortened using Bit.ly. That number is increasing by 10% every week. The only source of revenue Bit.ly has is Google Ads that are scattered around their homepage. This is a similar approach to their biggest competitor TinyURL.com. TinyURL depends mainly on donations and Google Ads too.
FitBit is a company that created a device and website to determine how much fitness and sleep you are getting. The device retails for about $99 and debuted at the TechCrunch50 conference. The device is wireless and comes with a recharging dock. The FitBit Tracker devices automatically uploads activities, calories burned, distance, and sleep quality to the website. This information is then presented to the device holder in an entertaining way.
True Ventures and SoftTech VC have decided to plug in about $2 million in funding into these companies. Through the round of funding, Jon Callaghan of True Ventures has joined the FitBit board. FitBit plans on using the funding to further the development and distribution of the device. The funding will also help develop additional products and services. Signing up for FitBit.com is free.
FitBit was started by Eric Friedman and James Park. Friedman has previously worked for Webshots and co-founded Windup Labs. Park was also a co-founded in Windup Labs.
