Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » The Founders Fund

Smartphone Medical App Company Azumio Raises $2.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:31:42 +0000

A couple of years ago Bojan Bostjancic and Peter Kuhar started building Instant Heart Rate, an iPhone app that measures the heart rate of a user through the smartphone camera. Users would hold their finger over the camera for 10 seconds and the app would be able to detect and measure their heart rate. This app has hit 8 million downloads in 9 months between iPhone and Android.

Bostjancic and Kuhar formed the company Azumio as the app continue to succeed. Now Azumio has raised $2.5 million in funding from Founders Fund, Accel Partners, and Felicis Ventures. The company will be using the funding to expand their product line going forward. Two of the company’s newest apps include Stress Check and Stress Doctor.

“Mobile technology is fundamentally changing everything, including our approach to health,” stated Bostjancic. “We realized this would happen with this technology built into smartphones, and we decided we wanted to provide a simple solution for bigger health problems.” Bostjancic previously sold WiMAX hardware company Telsima to Harris Stratex for $12 million in 2009.

[GigaOM]

Quid Raises $10 Million In Series C

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:53:58 +0000

Quid is a quantitive analysis startup company that has raised $10 million in Series C funding from Atomico Ventures, SV Angel (Ron Conway’s investor fund), Founders Fund, Endeavour Vision, Infocomm Investments, and Charles Lho. PayPal co-founder Max Levchin joined Quid’s board of directors.

Quid previously raised $4 million from Founders Fund, Charles Lho, Max Levchin, Gordon Crovitz, Allen Morgan, James Hong, and Niko Dounchis.

“We are generating more information each year then the rest of human history put together,” stated Quid CEO Bob Goodson. “Data is one of the most important trends of the time we live in. Imagine the insights in the world that are now possible with this information, which hasn’t been available before? We’re building the tools to mine these insights, and help people make more informed decisions.”

MindJolt Acquires Social Gaming Network and Hallpass Media

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:25:03 +0000

MindJolt is a gaming company that is run by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe left MySpace a few years after News Corporation acquired the social network company.

MindJolt appears to be in a better spot than MySpace right now. MySpace is continuing to lose money and MindJolt is profitable with $20 million in revenue. MindJolt has also recently acquired Social Gaming Network (SGN) and Hallpass Media. This acquisition doubles MindJolt’s staff to about 80 employees.

When MySpace’s revenue fell in 2009, DeWolfe who was CEO at the time was basically kicked out. Facebook started really dominating in 2009. Currently MySpace is being shopped around and it is rumored that buyers are not willing to spend higher than $100 million for it. DeWolfe is rumored to be involved as one of the buyers. This is a huge difference from the $856 million revenues that MySpace posted in 2008 and the $580 million price that News Corp. spent to buy the social network in 2005.

Hallpass Media is a gaming portal website that receives about four million monthly visitors. Hallpass Media also has 1,500 web based games that will be added to MindJolt’s portfolio. Social Gaming Network (SGN) creates iPhone and Android games that have a total of about 30 million downloads.

“Initially, a lot of energy was spent on games on the Web, through platforms like Facebook,” stated SGN founder and executive chairman Shervin Pishevar. “But over the past year, what we’ve seen is that a lot of that activity is going into mobile. We’ve reached a tipping point.”

SGN raised about $18 million in venture capital funding from Felicis Ventures, Greylock Partners, The Founders Fund, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, and Lars Hinrichs.

[NYT]

Topsy Raises $15 Million In Third Round

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:50:49 +0000

Topsy is a real-time search engine that has raised $15 million in a third round of funding. Topsy allows users to search for real-time content on Facebook and Twitter. Topsy recently launched Topsy Social Modules, which lets publishers add real-time content to their websites. Social Modules are being used by websites such as Discovery Communications and The Huffington Post. Western Technology Investments, BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund, and Scott Banister invested in this round. This puts Topsy at a total of $30 million in funding. [VentureBeat]

Yammer Raises $25 Million In Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:35:56 +0000

Yammer, the micro-blogging service for enterprises, has raised $25 million in funding. The funding was led by U.S. Venture Partners. Emergence Capital, Charles River Ventures, and the Founders Fund had participated in this round. Yammer’s total funding is at $40 million. U.S. Ventures’ Mamoon Hamid will join the Yammer board of directors.

Yammer has been dubbed as the “Twitter for businesses” and developed a platform for social networking within enterprises. Yammer added applications to their platform that increases the functionality of the service. Some of the applications include chat, polls, Q&As, etc. Yammer has about 1.5 million verified corporate users. They have seized 80% of the Fortune 500 to use their platform. Their revenue is doubling every year as well. Yammer plans to open offices in Australia and Europe.

Yammer has been expanding their executive team with the hiring of former director at Playdom David Stewart and former Clarium Capital managing director Mark Woolway. Stewart is now the Yammer VP of product management and Woolway is the VP of corporate affairs.

[TechCrunch]

Topguest Raises $2 Million And Adds Peter Thiel As An Advisor

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:23:33 +0000

Topguest is a mobile check-in loyalty service that was founded five months ago. The service has raised $2 million in Series A funding and has added Peter Thiel as an advisor. The investors in this round of funding include Founders Fund, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Jeff Clavier, and Naval Ravikant. Topguest is also exiting beta today.

Some of Topguest’s partners include Hilton hotels, Wyndham Worldwide, Virgin America, etc. Topguest encourages you to “check-in” when using some the services by their partners to get loyalty program rewards. Through the Topguest application, you can check-in using existing services such as Foursquare, Facebook Places, and Gowalla.

[AllThingsD]

Prominent Investors Plug $9 Million In Funding For Causes.com

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:39:01 +0000

Causes is an online philanthropy service that was started by Joe Green and Sean Parker. Causes recently raised $9 million in Series C funding from Founders Fund, Marc Benioff, Dustin Moskovitz, Karl Jacob, Keith Rabois, and Ron Conway. Scott Sandell will also be joining as an observer on the Causes board of directors. Green said that the company plans to use the funding for building their team.

Causes primarily grew as a Facebook application, but now they are focusing on the Causes.com website. Causes has been able to raise about $40,000 donations per day to spread across multiple charities. Causes gift cards are now selling at Safeway grocery stores and Vons in California. Causes keeps about 10% of profits and gives the rest to charities specified by users. Causes has about 119 million application installs on Facebook and has about 25 million monthly active users. Causes has $16 million in total funding.

[TechCrunch]

Bit.ly Raises $8.9 Million In Series B Financing

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:48:42 +0000

Popular URL shortening and analytics service Bit.ly has raised $8.9 million in Series B financing. This round of funding was led by AOL Ventures and RRE Ventures. Existing investors include Betaworks, O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, Founders Fund, and SV Angel. Every day about 200 million Bit.ly short links are clicked on through Twitter and other services. Even though Bit.ly is no longer the default URL shortening service for Twitter, the traffic continues to grow for the service.

Bit.ly currently has 17 employees and their first source of revenues came from Bit.ly Pro accounts. They signed up about 3,000 companies and 1,000 power Twitter users. Bit.ly is working with The New York Times on a project called News.me, which is expected to launch soon. [TechCrunch]

Quantcast Raises $27.5 Million From Cisco, Polaris, Founders Fund, and Revolution

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:16:58 +0000

Quantcast, a website that monitors stats for websites announced earlier this week that they have raised $27.5 million. Cisco Systems is the leader investor in Quantcast. Quantcast competes with Alexa and Compete.com. Quantcast plans to use the funding to expand their advertising platform.

“Quantcast’s approach and technology for delivering high-value, targeted advertising aligns with the needs of Cisco’s customers, from service providers to media companies and ultimately consumers,” stated Cisco SVP and general manager of Media Solutions Group Dan Scheinman. Other investors include Polaris Venture Partners, The Founders Fund, and Revolution Ventures.

Gowalla Raises $8.4 Million From Greylock and Several Angel Investors

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:04:12 +0000

Gowalla is a location based social networking website that has raised $8.4 million in funding. Greylock Partners was the lead investor and the company plans to use the funding to strengthen their development capabilities. Thus far Gowalla has raised over $10 million since they started in 2007.

“Gowalla has rapidly attracted a passionate user base by creating an innovative, useful service that is also a lot of fun,” stated Greylock’s David Thacker. “It’s exciting to discover new places and earn stamps for your passport from places as diverse as Buckingham Palace and the Sydney Opera House to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the coffee shop down the street. Gowalla also connects you with your friends, letting you share your travels and meet up with others in real time.” Thacker has joined the Gowalla Board of Directors as part of the investment.

LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman also joined Gowalla’s board of directors as an observer.

Other investors in Gowalla include Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose, Maples Investments, Shasta Ventures, Ron Conway, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, and Chris Sacca. Previous investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund also participated in this round.