Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » VantagePoint Venture Partners

Michael Arrington Is Starting A Venture Capital Firm

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:45:39 +0000

Michael Arrington is best known for being the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a technology blog that sold to AOL for roughly $30 million. Now Arrington is planning on starting a venture capital company with Patrick Gallagher of VantagePoint Venture Partners. Their plan is to raise roughly $20 million and fund companies that are a seed or early stages. The company’s limited partner will be AOL. Several people believe that this will cause a major conflict of interest for companies written on the TechCrunch blog, but the the writers on that blog disclose all investment information if Arrington holds equity in the companies being profiled.

Arrington recently invested in companies that were started by Kevin Rose and Shawn Fanning. Arrington also became a limited partner in funds managed by Benchmark Capital and SoftTechVC. This was considered a violation in AOL’s code of conduct, but Arrington received an exemption.

[Fortune]

Cloud Communications Company IntelePeer Files $100 Million IPO

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:17:15 +0000

IntelePeer Inc. is a cloud-based communications company that has filed a $100 million IPO. IntelePeer helps businesses and phone companies manage voice and video connections. IntelePeer’s revenues last year was $111.5 million. Some of their customers include Sprint and Qwest Communications. VantagePoint Venture Partners and Kennet Partners Ltd. are IntelePeer’s largest shareholders. [Bloomberg]

ChaCha Raises $20 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:19:39 +0000

ChaCha is a mobile Q&A service that has raised $20 million. This brings the company’s total funding to about $72 million. This round of funding was led by Rho Ventures and VantagePoint. This money will be used for additional company growth. ChaCha receives about 15 million monthly unique visitors per month between their online and mobile platforms. [AllThingsD]

Online Marketing Company ReachLocal Files For IPO

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:39:11 +0000

ReachLocal is a Woodland Hills, California based online marketing company. ReachLocal has just filed a $100 million IPO paper. ReachLocal works with SMBs for help with retaining and gaining customers through the Internet. ReachLocal currently works with 17,600 campaigns across 14,500 advertising partners. Each of these partners spend about $500-$3,000 per month with ReachLocal.

ReachLocal made about $143 million in revenue during the first three quarters of 2009. The company made $100 million during the same period in 2008. The company made $11.66 million in profit in 2009 and had a loss of $4.47 million in 2008. ReachLocal raised about $68 million in total VC funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners, Rho Ventures, and Galleon Group.

Multiply “Digital Scrapbooks” Now At Premium Price Of $19.95/Year

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Multiply is a social network where users can upload videos, photos, blog, etc.Â Multiply now offers premium services, but is charging $19.95 per year for the extra “digital scrapbook” features.Â The premium feature allows users to upload unlimited high-resolution pictures and videos that go up to 20 minutes in length.

“This is the logical extension to our users, whose social networking revolves around an inclusive discussion and shared memories with their close friends and families, rather than a broadcast of transitory bits and pieces to the world,” stated Peter Pezaris, CEO of Multiply, Inc. “With Multiply Premium, our users can ensure that all their digital media and their memories are available, forever.”

The Numbers
The uploaded media will only be viewable to a user’s personal network and direct contacts if desired.Â Multiply has over 9 million users.Â And over 2 million photos are uploaded daily on the site across all of these users.Â About 19,000 videos and 55,000 blog posts are added posted daily as well.

Multiply uses an AutoUploader tool to make adding photos seamless.Â Photos can also be imported from Windows Live Spaces, Shutterfly, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Flickr, Photobucket, or from any other web page.

Multiply is based in Boca Raton, FL and has offices in San Francisco, CA and NYC, NY.Â The company blog is available at: http://multiply.multiply.com/.

Multiply was founded by Peter Pezaris and has over $21 million in total funding.Â Investors in Multiply include Trans Cosmos, Point Judith Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners.

Multiply.com Adds $16.6 Million To Its Funding Sum

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:57:38 +0000

Multiply.com is a social network that claims that it has 6 million members. The site also claims that 1.25 million and thirteen thousand videos are added per day. Hence the name, Multiply. The number of members isn’t the only variable that has been multiplied on Multiply, but so did the amount of funding that it has received recently. VantagePoint Venture Partners, Point Judith Capital, and Transcosmos Investments have invested $16.6 million into the company as announced on VentureBeat today.

Multiply gained some traction when they first started in 2003, but has been overshadowed by other social network websites like Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace. Yet Multiply was able to retain a vast number of unique visitors: 10 million unique this past August (2 million in the U.S.) and is growing at 10% per month.

The key ingredient of Multiply’s user retention is its message boards. The message boards keeps users updated about when friends update blogs, distribute photos and videos, and other information. This is similar to Facebook’s news feeds. Multiply’s average age is around 35.

Last month, Multiply launched an iPhone version of its platform. All of Multiply.com’s management team members were previously working Daedalus World Wide Corporation. The company was founded by Peter Pezaris. Multiply.com also announced plans to make a toolbar.

I believe that the company raised a total of $22.6 million in funding since its Series A. I read about the company’s Series A on Mashable.