Tag Archives: Spark Capital
Blog Service Tumblr Raises $85 Million
Tumblr is a popular blogging service that has raised $85 million in a new round of funding. Tumblr is best known for simple blogging tools to post photos, videos, songs, etc. The investment in this round was led by Greylock Partners. Insight Venture Partners, the Chernin Group, Richard Branson, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, and Sequoia Capital also participated in this round.
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Skillshare Raises $3.1 Million From Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital
Skillshare is a P2P learning company that has raised $3.1 million in funding from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Skillshare is a platform that can help turn anyone into a teacher. Users can offer their own offline classes based on their skill. Skillshare takes 15% of the revenue.
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Biz Stone Joins the Spark Capital Team
Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter who recently stepped away from the company to relaunch Obvious, has taken a role as strategic advisor at Spark Capital. According to Mashable, startups Spark Capital has invested in include Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Boxee, Kik and Stack Exchange. Stone also runs the Biz & Livia Stone Foundation and is a strategic advisor at AOL.
Categories Biz Stone, Obvious.com, Spark Capital, The Obvious Corporation, Twitter
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OnSwipe Raises $5 Million In “Series Awesome”
OnSwipe is a tablet publishing company that has raised $5 million in “Series Awesome.” This past January OnSwipe raised $1 million in seed funding. This round of funding was led by Spark Capital and followed on by Lightbank. Yuri Milner, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Betaworks, Morado, Eniac Ventures, and Thrive Capital also participated in this round.
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Spark Capital Reneged On Lauren Leto’s Start-Up Bnter [RUMOR]
When Sarah Lacy interviewed Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet about the danger of venture capital firms investing in similar companies, she indirectly found out about some drama between Tumblr and BNTER after doing some follow-up investigation. Lacy found out from three sources that Spark Capital had reneged on a term sheet that was offered to BNTER, a start-up based in New York founded by Lauren Leto.
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Mobile Consumer Surveys Company Txteagle Raises $8.5 Million
Txteagle is a mobile consumer surveys company that has raised $8.5 million in venture capital led by Spark Capital. Txteagle was founded in 2009 and is based in Boston. They have gathered data from 2.1 billion consumers. Txteagle’s software allows consumers to send and receive survey messages to them for free. Those who participate in the surveys are given free airtime if the mobile operators are affiliated with Txteagle. [DMWMedia]
Categories Spark Capital, Txteagle
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Adap.tv Raises $20 Million
Adap.tv has raised $20 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, Redpoint Ventures, and Spark Capital. Adap.tv has raised a total of $43 million thus far. Adap.tv’s platform lets advertising companies manage their online video ads. Publishers use Adap.tv to monetize their websites with the video content. Adap.tv currently sees about 60 million unique visitors and they deliver about 1.8 billion video ad views per month. [TechCrunch]
Mobile Messaging Startup Kik Interactive Raises $8 Million In Series A
Mobile messaging startup company Kik Interactive has raised $8 million in Series A funding from RRE Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Spark Capital. Fred Wilson (Union Square) and Adam Ludwin (RRE) are joining the Kik board of directors as a result of the funding. Kik Messenger launched in October 2010 and it works similarly as the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). After downloading Kik, the app will scan your contacts and let you know which of your friends have Kik. Kik hit about 1 million users within the first 15 days of launching to the public. Today Kik has over 3 million users. [Kik Press Release]
Stack Overflow Raises $12 Million
Question and answer website Stack Overflow has raised $12 million in funding and has launched a career website. The $12 million Series B funding round was provided from new investors Index Ventures and Spark Capital. Union Square Ventures also participated. Stack Overflow has also been renamed to Stack Exchange Inc. [GigaOM]
White Label Group Buying Platform Group Commerce Raises $8 Million
Group Commerice Inc. has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, and Bob Pittman. Group Commerce is a white-label group buying platform company that was founded in 2010. Essentially they help websites launch their own daily deal services. Some of their newest clients include Dailycandy, Thrillist, and The New York Times. Group Commerce was founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt, and Andrew Glenn. Group Commerce is based in New York.