Posts Tagged ‘Greylock Partners’
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
 Sean Parker Former Facebook President and Spotify investory Sean Parker told the Web 2.o Summit that power users are leaving Facebook for Google+ and Twitter, according to Mashable.
Parker said power users are leaving Facebook because it doesn’t provide enough ways to manage the information glut.
In a somewhat weird exchange during an interview with John Battelle of Federated Media, Parker was asked what he thinks about those who say Facebook is a little “creepy.” Parker said, “Look, there is good creepy and there’s bad creepy. Today’s creepy is tomorrow’s necessity.”
“H’mmm, now that’s a bit creepy all by itself.
Dropbox nabs $250M second round of funding
Dropbox, a service that lets people bring their documents, photos and videos everywhere and share them easily, has completed a $250 million Series B financing. The company will use the funds to accelerate its rapid growth, make acquisitions, pursue strategic partnerships, and grow the team. Dropbox has more than 45 million users saving one billion files every three days, and is on track to triple its user base in 2011.
The financing was led by Index Ventures and includes participation from new investors Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners, and Valiant Capital Partners. Early investors Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Hadi and Ali Partovi also participated. Dropbox has received a total of $257.2 million in funding.
We use Dropbox, which is the simplest program for sharing files we’ve encountered. You put a document or file in your shared Dropbox folders and the people you share it with can access it. The company did experience a security glitch earlier this year that did not seem to have any major repercussions.
Shopify rings up $15 B round
Shopify, an eommerce platform used to create and power online stores, has closed a $15 million Series B growth investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Georgian Partners. This new investment adds to the $7 million of Series A funding received last year, providing a sizable balance to fund continued growth.
Tobias Lütke, Shopify’s CEO and co-founder, launched the company in 2006 after he discovered how difficult it was to create a professional online store. Today, over 15,000 active online stores in 80 countries are powered by Shopify. Individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses use Shopify to setup and power their online stores.
Tags: Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Dropbox, facebook, Facebook power users leaving, Felicis Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Georgian Partners., Goldman Sachs, Google Plus, Greylock Partners, Hadi and Ali Partovi, Institutional Venture Partners, online stores, RIT Capital Partners, Sean Parker, Sequoia Capital, Shopify, twitter, Valiant Capital Partners, Web 2.0 conference
Posted in Events, Facebook, Google, Internet/New Media, IT, Money, social media | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
 Apple's iPad2 Can Amazon’s new tablet computer, reportedly a souped up version of its popular Kindle e-reader, compete with Apple’s iPad? Thus far, would-be tablet competitors have not fared well against Apple brand power and the iPad.
Motorola, Acer, and Blackberry maker Research in Motion all tried to grab a piece of the tasty looking tablet computer market, but their efforts failed to make a real dent in Apple’s iPad share. Motorola did manage to see off its TouchPads, the most recent entry in the market, at fire sale prices of $99 each (and may make more available next month).
But the New York Times says a competitor is on the verge of introducing “the best-placed challenger of all: Amazon.com.” Quoting analysts, the Times says the Amazon tablet will undercut Apple’s price by about half and sell for around $250. It will have a 7 inch touch screen, with a bigger screen model coming in a year.
The Amazon device, while possibly not quite as powerful as an iPad, will handle the uses most people want from a tablet computer, easy access to email and the Web, and to Amazon’s vast store of books, music, and videos. It is the only Apple rival with the later advantage.
Whether it is a serious iPad competitor or not, it will certainly give Barnes & Noble’s color Nook some grief in the marketplace. B&N is striving to switch to digital before it ends up in the same place as its competitor, Borders, which will soon be completely gone.
One analyst quoted by the Times expects the Amazon tablets to sell as many as five million devices initially.
TechMediaNetwork nabs $33M financing to broaden reach
-TechMediaNetwork Inc. a technology media company that produces news and reviews in the technology and science verticals, today announced a $33 million Series B financing from ABS Capital Partners, a leading growth equity investor. Existing investors Village Ventures and Highway 12 Ventures also participated in the round.
TMN will use the funds to increase its acquisition program, further expand its growing news organization, enhance its monetization strategies and increase the distribution of its content. As a result of the financing, ABS Capital General Partner Ralph Terkowitz and Principal Paul Mariani will join TMN’s board of directors.
“Both organically and through complementary acquisitions, we are constantly looking to strengthen and broaden our expansion in the technology news market,” said Jerry Ropelato, CEO and founder of TechMediaNetwork. “The increased reach and influence of our network will continue to deliver more value to our readers, affiliates and advertising partners.”
TechMediaNetwork delivers technology news and product reviews across its 16 different web properties, featuring such flagship sites as LAPTOP, SPACE.com, TopTenREVIEWS and TechNewsDaily. TMN connects consumers, small publishers, advertisers and ecommerce vendors through a network of trusted information, revenue opportunities and audience reach. T
The Company has syndication partners, including Yahoo!, MSNBC.com and the websites of Fox News and CBS News, and advertisers such as American Express, AT&T, Canon, General Motors, HP, Kodak, Sony, Symantec, Toyota and Warner Bros.
Tumblr cranks the wheel on $85M funding
Tumblr, the blogging platform that soared from 2 billion page views a month earlier this year to $13 billion now, and boasts 30 million blogs generating 40 million posts a day, has raised a massive $85 million funding.
Led by Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners, the round included The Chernin Group, Sir Richard Branson, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital.
WordPress, by comparison, supplies the platform for more than 59 million websites.
Tumblr also surpasses both Wikipedia and Twitter in pageviews and does about half as many as AOL and Craigslist, according to TechCrunch.
More than 299 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month on WordPress.com, according to the site’s own statistics page.
Do you know why Tumblr generates so many pageviews? It’s because they make it easy to connect to other blogs and bloggers and scroll rapidly through page after page of posts. I sometimes look at 100 pages in half an hour. — Allan Maurer
Tags: ABS Capital Partners, Amazon Kindle, American Express, Apple iPad, AT&T, Barnes & Noble Color Nook, Greylock Partners, Highway 12 Ventures, HP, Insight Venture Partners, New York Times, Sir Richard Branson, Sony, Spark Capital, Symantec, TechMediaNetwork, The Chernin Group, Toyota, Tumblr funded, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital., Village Ventures, Warner Bro.
Posted in Amazon, Blogging, Internet/New Media, IT, Money, social media | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
 Fred Wilson has the top PeekScore among U.S. venture capitalists What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.
TechJournal South asked PeekYou to do a PeekScore on the 20 most powerful venture capitalists. Top score would be 10.
Here they are:
Tags: Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Bob Goodman, David Skok, David Sze, Douglas Leone, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, Fred Wilson, General Catalyst Partners, Greylock Partners, Herry Weller, Highland Capital Partners, Jeremy Levine, Jim Breyer, Joel Cutler, Josh Kpelman, Kevin Efrusy, Marc Andreessen, Matrix Partners, Micael Moritz, New Enterprise Associates, PeekScore, PeekYou, Peter Baris, Peter Fenton, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Scott Sandell, Sean Dalton, Sequoia Capital, Terry McGuire, top U.S. venture firms, Union Square Ventures, who are the top U.S. venture capitalists
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, People, venture capital report | No Comments »
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