Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Steamboat Ventures

ValueClick Acquires In-Game Ad Company Greystripe For $70 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:36:28 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:21:17 +0000

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:

Baynote Closes $13 Million Investment Led by SingTel Innov8

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Baynote, a leader in personalization and digital marketing optimization, announced today that it has closed $13 million in Series C financing. The investment was led by SingTel Innov8, the corporate venture arm of the SingTel Group, Asia’s leading communications group with 368 million(1) mobile customers across Asia and Africa. All existing investors, including Hummer Winblad, Steamboat Ventures and JK&B Capital also participated in the round. Concurrently, Baynote announced that former SAP executive Doug Merritt has been named president and CEO to lead the company through its next phase of investment and growth (see press release for additional details: http://www.baynote.com/?p=2889).

Both announcements come on the heels of 2010 being another record year for Baynote as the company grew year over year revenues by approximately 75 percent. This momentum drove the board’s decision to invest in several functional areas that will allow the company to scale with heightened demand for its adaptive web solutions among digital marketing and e-commerce executives at Global 2000 organizations. The new capital, which brings total funding for Baynote to more than $28 million, will be used primarily to advance the company’s entrance into new high-growth industries, such as telecommunications and financial services, and accelerate product innovation. Funds will also be used to more aggressively expand Baynote’s brand exposure worldwide.
“Through SingTel Innov8′s investment, we hope to tap into the SingTel Group’s expansive markets and capabilities to help take Baynote and our technology for digital and e-commerce professionals to the next level,” said Jack Jia, founder and chairman, Baynote.

“We believe Baynote’s thought leadership around the adaptive web and its disruptive collective intelligence technology for digital marketers and merchandisers will continue to fuel the company’s growth in an area which is becoming more important for enhancing customer experience,” said Yvonne Kwek, CEO of SingTel Innov8. “With Doug’s appointment to CEO and the latest financing, Baynote is now poised for what we expect will be a period of very explosive growth for the company worldwide.”

“Baynote has done an excellent job growing between 70 and 120 percent each year since the company was founded in 2005,” said Doug Merritt, Baynote’s newly appointed president and CEO. “Based on the founding team’s incredible success to date and the increasingly strong reception to our technology among digital marketers, the board and management team expect our growth rate to be multiple times higher by the end of 2012. We’ll use the funding to be more aggressive in product innovation, marketing, and channel development to scale with this exciting opportunity.”
About SingTel Innov8

SingTel Innov8, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SingTel Group, is a corporate venture capital fund with its own set of decision making, approval and funding processes. It has an initial fund size of $200 million. SingTel Innov8 focuses its investments on technologies and solutions that lead to quantum changes in network capabilities, next generation devices, digital content services and enablers to enhance customer experience. It works closely with the ecosystem of leading innovators, developers, government agencies, R&D and capital providers to bring cutting-edge technologies and solutions to the various markets the SingTel Group operates in.

About SingTel Group
SingTel is Asia’s leading communications group providing a portfolio of services including voice and data solutions over fixed, wireless and Internet platforms as well as infocomm technology and pay TV. The Group has presence in Asia and Africa reaching 368 million mobile customers in 25 countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. It also has a network of 36 offices in 19 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States.

About Baynote
Baynote provides personalization and digital marketing optimization solutions that power the adaptive web, an emerging standard in customer experience that is always personal, relevant and convenient. By observing engagement patterns among like-minded individuals to understand user intent, the Baynote Adaptive Web Suite™ automatically optimizes and adapts the online experience, leading to increased conversions, revenue and loyalty. Baynote’s customers include: AT&T, CA, Dell, Expedia, Intuit, Fox, Urban Outfitters and VEVO. The company is based in San Jose, Calif. with additional offices in the U.K. and Germany. For more information, please visit www.baynote.com.

(1) As of September 30, 2010

SOURCE Baynote

Playdom Raises $33 Million From Multiple Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:20:17 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:22:08 +0000

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]

EdgeCast Raises $10 Million Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:34:31 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:21:41 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:05:58 +0000

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.

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:40:37 +0000

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

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:35:37 +0000

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

Passenger Rides the $12.5 Million (Series A+Series B) Train

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 02:20:11 +0000

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