Tag Archives: Steamboat Ventures
ValueClick Acquires In-Game Ad Company Greystripe For $70 Million
ValueClick, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCLK) has acquired online marketing company Greystripe for $70 million. Greystripe provides ads within video games. Greystripe said that their video game advertising network reaches over 30 million users. Greystripe was founded in 2005 and they have raised over $18 million in venture capital funding from Peacock Equity, Incubic Venture Fund, Steamboat Ventures, and Monitor Ventures. ValueClick said that this acquisition will increase their market share in the U.S. mobile ad market. [DMW]
Digital Marketing Company Baynote Raises $13 Million
Baynote is a personalization and marketing optimization company that has raised $13 million in Series C funding. The investment was led by SingTel Innov8. All of Baynote’s existing investors Hummer Winblad, Steamboat Ventures, and JK&B Capital also participated in this round. Baynote has raised a total of $28 million thus far. Full press release is below:
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Playdom Raises $33 Million From Multiple Investors
Playdom has raised $33 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and New World Ventures. No word yet on what Playdom plans to do with the funding, but I would not be surprised if it will be used for additional acquisitions. Playdom’s biggest competitor Zynga raised large sums of funding and launched a new game called FrontierVille. [paidContent]
FreeWheel Raises $16.8 Million From Steamboat, TBS, Battery Ventures, and Foundation Capital
FreeWheel is a video advertising company that has raised $16.8 million in funding from Steamboat Ventures, Turner Broadcasting Systems (TBS), Battery Ventures, and Foundation Capital. The company has raised a total of $30 million. FreeWheel was founded by former employees at DoubleClick in 2007. The company works with marketers and publishers to manage video ad campaigns. FreeWheel’s platform can produce inventory forecast for live and on-demand content. Some of their clients include TBS, VEVO, MLB.com, and CBS. Two new agreements FreeWheel has made includes partnerships between Discovery Communications and ESPN Internet Ventures. [TechCrunch]
Categories Battery Ventures, Foundation Capital, FreeWheel, Steamboat, Steamboat Ventures, TBS
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EdgeCast Raises $10 Million Series C
CDN network company EdgeCast has raised $10 million from several investors as part of a Series C investment. The lead investor was Menlo Ventures. Steamboat Ventures, Mark Amin, and Jon Feltheimer have also participated in venture capital rounds for EdgeCast.
As part of the deal Pravin Vazirani, managing director of Menlo Ventures will be joining the board of directors at EdgeCast. [TechCrunch]
News Roundup: Twitter Surpasses 1.2B Monthly Tweets and Hires Ali Rowghani, ComScore Buys ARSgroup, GameFly IPO, Scrapblog Raises $2.5M, MySpace CEO Natta Resigns
Twitter Surpasses 1B Monthly Tweets
Twitter has surpassed 1 billion tweets per month. About 1.2 billion tweets were sent out in the month of January, averaging to about 40 million per day [Pingdom]. Twitter has also hired a new CFO. Ali Rowghani will be coming to Twitter from Pixar where he served as CFO [Mashable].
ComScore Buys ARSgroup
COMSCORE, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) has acquired ARSgroup. ARSgroup is an ad research company. The financial details were undisclosed and the deal is expected to close in March. [paidContent]
GameFly IPO
GameFly is a Los Angeles based online video game rental company that has just filed a $50 million IPO on the NASDAQ Global Market. GameFly will trade under the symbol GFLY. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Piper Jaffray, Cowen and Company, and William Blair & Company are the companies underwriting the deal. GameFly’s investors include Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, and several other investors. The company launched in 2002. [SoCalTech]
Scrapblog Raises $2.5M
Scrapblog is a website where users can create online scrapbooks. The company has just raised $2.5 million from Steamboat Ventures, the VC firm owned by The Walt Disney Company. Scrapblog now has a total of $10 million in funding. [VentureBeat]
MySpace CEO Natta Resigns
MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta has resigned after about 10 months on the job. “While this may be a surprising turn of events for some of you, I am absolutely confident that this change is best for all parties involved and–most importantly–the MySpace business,” stated News Corp chief digital officer in an internal memo [WSJ].
NBC Invests $2 Million Into Mobile Ad Company Greystripe
Greystripe is a mobile advertising company that has recently raised $2 million from NBC’s Peacock Equity Fund. Peacock Equity Fund is a joint venture between GE and NBC Universal. This is Greystripe’s Series C round of funding. Greystripe now has about $17.6 in total venture funding.
Greystripe previously raised funding from Incubic Venture Capital, Steamboat Ventures, and Monitor Ventures. Greystripe will be powering the advertising on the applications for several media companies including Sci-Fi Channel, Bravo, and MSNBC.
Microsoft Corporation Invests In Move Networks, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has invested in Move Networks, Inc. to help support the company’s initiative to develop video technology using Microsoft Silverlight. The official announcement should be released soon on Microsoft PressPass.
Although it is not known how much was invested by Microsoft, a source claims that it was an add-on investment on a $46 million Series C that closed last summer. Other investors that participated in Move’s Series C includes Comcast, Cisco Systems, Benchmark Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Steamboat Ventures. Move is now valuated at around $150 million.
Related Link:
1. PEHub
PopularMedia Raises $8 Million In Third Round & Releases SocialNotes Widget
PopularMedia is a company that helps clients make content go viral. It is a similar concept as ACS SEO. However PopularMedia is a fully-funded social media company. To date, PopularMedia has raised over $12 million in funding across three rounds.
The latest round of funding was $8 million. VentureBeat reported that the funding was provided by DAG Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Steamboat Ventures. PopularMedia is run by CEO Jim Calhoun.
PopularMedia also released a new product called SocialNotes. SocialNotes is a widget that can be placed on blogs to get feedback. SocialNotes looks like a floating sticky note. The datasheet is available here.
Related Links:
1. PopularMedia.com
Categories DAG Ventures, PopularMedia, Sequoia Capital, Steamboat Ventures
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Passenger Rides the $12.5 Million (Series A+Series B) Train
Passenger is a Software-as-a-Service company that allows customers to interact with their customers and announced today that they have raised $8.3 million. in Series B. According to Dan Beldy of Steamboat Ventures, Passenger allows “companies redefine their customer relationships by fundamentally changing the way consumers are able to communicate with their brands.”
Some of Passenger’s clients include ABC, Coca-Cola, and Sara Lee. These clients pay Passenger to set up networks for them and get the users to sign up via email invitations or banner ads. According to Red Herring, ABC Studios used Passenger software to “gather viewer opinions on the plotlines of Ugly Betty and Lost.
The Series B funding was led by Steamboat Ventures, Shelter Capital Partners, and StarVest Partners. The Series A round of funding was $4.2 million and was provided by Shelter Capital Partners.
Passenger enables clients to set-up live sessions where users can engage in conversation with brand reps. Passenger also allows easy to setup Discussions, Polls, Activities, Message Centers (allows members to exchange files), client dashboards, and a social network.
References:
[1] Red Herring: Passenger on Board with $8.3M