Web/Content

Pedestrian Map App, Lumatic, Raises $800K From Joi Ito And 500 Startups (via TechCrunch)

Social Ridesharing Pioneer Ridejoy Receives $1.3 Million in Seed Funding

Mobile

Mobeam Adds $1.5M To Series A Following Partnership With P&G (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

With $50M raised, Nicira disrupts Cisco and Juniper with network virtualization (via VentureBeat)

Ecommerce

Ticket aggregator TiqIQ raises $1.7M as it goes head to head with rival SeatGeek (via VentureBeat)

Stylistpick scores £11m in funding (via Econsultancy)

Enterprise

Sales Automation Company, Leads360, Secures $15M in Funding

Web/Content

Evernote’s First Institutional Investor Troika Sells Stake To Sequoia For Over 10X Return (via TechCrunch)

 

A Q&A with David Koretz, CEO of Mykonos Software. The San Francisco–based company was founded in 2009 and recently raised $4 million in Series A funding.

SUB: Please describe what Mykonos is, and the value proposition you bring to web security.

Koretz: Mykonos is the smartest way to secure websites and web applications against hackers, fraud and theft. Our Web Intrusion Prevention System uses deception to detect, track, profile and prevent hackers in real-time. Unlike legacy signature-based approaches, Mykonos is the first technology that inserts thousands of detection points to proactively identify attackers before they do damage—without any false positives.

SUB: What are your target markets?

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Koretz: We are the first web intrusion prevention system. We compete with other technologies that are concerned with protecting websites like web application firewalls.

SUB: What differentiates Mykonos from the competition?

Koretz: Mykonos uses deception to detect, track, profile and prevent hackers in real-time. Unlike legacy signature-based approaches, Mykonos is the first technology that inserts thousands of detection points to proactively identify attackers before they do damage—without any false positives.

SUB: When was the company founded?

Koretz: Mykonos Software was founded in 2009.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Mykonos? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Koretz: The company’s genesis came from employees working at a SaaS company that was on the receiving end of hacks. In researching the market to protect the web application from hacks, there were two options available. First option was to scan the code and fix the vulnerabilities which is theoretically good but very difficult in practice. Second option was install a web application firewall which is a signature-based solution that can only defend against known attacks and is useless against unknown zero day attacks. Mykonos was built from the need to protect web applications and detect and prevent the behavior that leads to an attack.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Koretz: Building a product and company with limited resources.

SUB: You recently raised $4 million in Series A funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Koretz: The new funds will be used to improve the product by expanding security and engineering capabilities and increasing investment in sales and marketing.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?

Koretz: We will consider all options to strategically move the company forward.

SUB: What are your goals for Mykonos over the next year or so.

Koretz: 2012 will be focused on creating great customer experiences.

Mykonos – www.mykonossoftware.com

Ex-Amazon.com manager lands $3M to bring late-night infomercial products to the Web (via GeekWire)

Little Black Bag Raises $2.75M From GRP, Chamath P., David Tisch And Others (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Social Rewards Closes $600,000 Seed Round, Exceeds Financing Goals

Gaming

Flaregames raises $7.9M from Accel for free-to-play mobile games (exclusive) (via VentureBeat)

Enterprise

ShoreTel Acquires Hosted Unified Communications Pioneer M5 Networks

A Q&A with Adzuna co-founder Doug Monro. The London–based company was founded in 2010.

SUB: Please describe what Adzuna is, and the value proposition you bring to the job search.

Monro: Adzuna is a next generation search engine for jobs. We help you find the perfect job, by bringing together all the vacancies on the web in one simple search engine, and then overlaying useful, unique features like social network integrations, that help you get hired with a little help from your friends, and salary stats and company reviews that help you zero in on the right place for your skills.

SUB: What are your target markets?

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition? 

Monro: In jobs, our competition comes from other vertical search engines like Indeed, Jobrapido or Trovit, that also aggregate ads in one place.

SUB: What differentiates Adzuna from the competition?

Monro: Two main things: social and data.

By connecting to Adzuna with LinkedIn or Facebook, we allow you to find jobs at your friends companies, and get the inside scoop on the opportunity or even a referral from your first or second degree connections. This is a hugely powerful feature that connects the power of a full database of jobs—and your social graph—with the real, offline behavior of finding jobs through your network.

On data, we’re able to help people find the right jobs for them by using the information we gain from analyzing our large database of jobs to show statistics and trends on vacancies and salaries in their local job market—plus user added content on company interviews and ratings. This content really empowers users to make better decisions.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Adzuna? When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Monro: The idea came about in late 2010. Andrew Hunter, my co-founder, I worked together previously at Gumtree, the UK’s equivalent of Craigslist, and were chatting in a London pub one evening about classifieds search and how broken it was...and from there we started to think about how it could be made better and whether we could do that. Over the next couple of months we developed our ideas, then involved our lead developer George and coding—and seed fundraising—began in earnest in early 2011. 

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Monro: Finding great engineering talent is always challenging, but we can’t complain as we have managed to get together a great small team of developers, split between London and Athens. Working with a distributed team has been surprisingly easy, thanks partly to tools like Skype, Dropbox, Jira, etc.

Building a critical mass of users on a shoestring budget is also hard to do in the early days of any startup, but we have experience of how to do this from previous companies and so far so good.

SUB: You recently raised (approximately) $800K in Series A funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Monro: Yes, we recently raised 500K GBP—about $800K USD—from Index Ventures and others. We’re very pleased to have such experienced and successful investors involved. We plan to invest the funds in further product innovation around social and data, and expansion into new verticals and countries.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?

Monro: We have no current plans to raise more outside funding, but if we see profitable expansion opportunities that call for it we would certainly reconsider. 

SUB: What are your goals for Adzuna over the next year or so?

Monro: We aim to grow from hundreds of thousands to millions of monthly visitors, and to keep developing our product and bringing to market innovations that make it the best place to search for jobs—and other classified ads—by far. We want to build a proven model in terms of product, user engagement and revenue that we can roll out rapidly into other markets. And we want to have fun and build a great company we can all be proud of along the way.

Adzuna – www.adzuna.co.uk

Ecommerce

Vegas startup Rumgr raises $500K for a better, prettier Craigslist app (via VentureBeat)

Web/Content

Videoplaza pockets $12M for monetizing online video (via VatorNews)

Social Media

Bday Launches Gift Finder on Facebook, Announces $2 Million in Funding

Enterprise

Business intelligence startup Domo pulls in another $20M (via VentureBeat)

Education

StormWind Secures $4 Million in Series Preferred Funding to Grow HD Video eLearning

Enterprise

AlienVault Lands $8 Million Series B Funding Round Led By Trident Capital

Ecommerce

 

A Q&A with Tealium co-founder Ali Behnam. The San Diego, California–based company was founded in 2008.

SUB: Please describe what Tealium is, and the value proposition you offer to the enterprise.

Behnam: Tealium is a provider of tag management solutions for the enterprise. Over the last decade, as online marketing has matured, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of web page tags that digital marketing vendors—web analytics providers, affiliate marketing companies, etc.—require customers to embed on their web sites. Over time, these tags have grown out of control. The average enterprise web site today has 30-to-40 different vendor tags on their web properties. Deploying and managing these tags have become a huge burden both for marketing and IT. Tealium provides marketers with a simple way to add, modify and edit these tags on their own through an easy-to-use web interface. No longer do they have to rely on overburdened IT departments to implement their online campaigns. The benefits are huge across the organization: reduced IT costs, increased marketing agility and performance, improved site speed, and better privacy protection. 

SUB: What are your target markets?

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Behnam: The number of tag management players has really increased over the last year as people begin to understand the real benefits of tag management. Here in the U.S., our competition is primarily TagMan and BrightTag. Oversees, we see competition mostly from local companies such as TagCommander in France and ExactTag in Germany.

SUB: What differentiates Tealium from the competition?

Behnam: We understand that enterprises today are serving a global market. As a result, we’ve invested in a platform that’s truly global and is optimized to handle website visitors worldwide, not just in any given region. For example, if a site visitor is from Belgium, we make sure that our application is running from a server farm in Belgium or at least close by. Our differentiators are our massive scale, high performance, a deep feature set and an intuitive user interface that is designed specifically for marketers.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Behnam: Tealium was founded in 2008. We have a background in web analytics consultancy. It was during several consulting engagements that we realized the tremendous pain that many enterprises had when it came to tagging. One of our early customers was in the process of deploying Omniture SiteCatalyst on their web site and the internal cost estimate just to add the Omniture page tag amounted to 12 months. We built an early prototype of our solution for the customer and deployed them in two weeks via a single universal tag. That was the genesis of our product and entry into the market.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Tealium? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Behnam: We knew there was a tremendous pain point among companies actively engaged in digital marketing and analytics. When we saw how much time and value our solution provided, we knew we had something special. Today, the tag management market is in full swing. We expect 2012 to be the year that tag management really captures the attention of online marketers and ecommerce professionals. It’s become one of those solutions that makes a lot of sense to everyone across the organization.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Behnam: As with any business, finding talented people who can contribute right away is always a top priority. We have been fortunate in that respect. A big challenge really has been educating the market. Tag management is new and at first, people really didn’t believe it. Now, we get a lot of people coming to us and so the education process has become easier. 

SUB: You recently raised $1.1 million in Series A funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Behnam: The funds will be used in several areas: product development, account management, and sales and marketing.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?

Behnam: We have no immediate plans for additional funding.

SUB: What are your goals for Tealium over the next year or so?

Behnam: The market for tag management is red hot and still relatively new. Enterprises are starting to see the great value that our solution delivers across the organization. Our goals have not really changed from last year: to create the best tag management solution possible for marketers and business users. Measurement is a marketing function whereas up to now, tagging has been owned by IT. We plan to help eliminate that disconnect and continue our success into the new year.

Tealium – www.tealium.com

Healthcare

Glooko Raises $3.5M To Connect Glucose Meters To iPhones For Tracking Diabetes (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

SnagFilms Closes New Financing Round

GetHired Nabs $1.75 Million To Launch Its Video-Centric Recruiting Platform & Job Board (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

Solera Networks Raises $20 Million in Series D Funding Led by Intel Capital

Cloud

Cloud-Based Legal Management Platform Clio Raises $6 Million in Series B Funding

Polar Mobile – $6 million

BuzzDoes – $750K

Fantasy Shopper – $3.3 million

Mykonos – $4 million

OneSchool – $750K

Endorse – $4.25 million

955 Dreams – $3.25 million

drchrono – $2.8 million

Shoply – Undisclosed

Ecommerce

Shoply Aims To Socialize Ecommerce, Raises Seed Funding From Top Notch Investors (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

A Q&A with LockerDome co-founder and CEO Gabe Lozano. The St Louis, Missouri–based company was founded in 2008.

SUB: What are your target markets?

Lozano: Our bread and butter is still the 6-18U club program sports market. We work directly with the program directors of the best club programs in the country, who then evangelize their program’s LockerDome network directly to their athletes, coaches and parents. For example, we work with over 50 of the top 100 amateur soccer programs in the U.S. and nearly 500 major programs nationwide. We additionally work with professional athletes to launch celebrity athlete networks, where their fan base can interact with them.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

SUB: What differentiates LockerDome from the competition?

Lozano: LockerDome is the first company in club sports to successfully demonstrate the value in a strong hyperlocal play within a global community. On a global level, individuals create a single profile that encapsulates their entire sports life—from the age of five to when they first experience the joy of sports competition to their parenthood when they vicariously relive the experience through their kids—and far beyond. Further, we’re the only dedicated sports site thus far that has successfully brought together little league athletes, parents, and coaches side-by-side with professional athletes.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Lozano: In 2008, but it’s only been the last few months that we’ve begun to move with serious velocity. We wasted a lot of time working on a huge business plan and other areas that equated mostly to non-productive motion. Additionally, it’s a tough market to crack, so we’ve done a lot of tweaking our approach, working to get the implementation right. There were two things initially we really needed to prove out before taking the next steps: how we were going to get the best athletes to care, and demonstrate that our platform is valuable enough for someone to swipe a credit card. Through a succession of directional tweaks, we accomplished both goals at once with the introduction of LockerDome Networks.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for LockerDome? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?

Lozano: Our goal from day one has remained the same—we want to be the de facto identity layer for a person’s sports persona. Instead of a single “aha” moment, it’s been a gradual evolution of an idea that first originated from being involved in competitive baseball for 17 years. In particular, I was highly frustrated that 100 percent of the content and communication in sports happens in complete silos. Even though it’s been a haul, we’ve stuck with this market because sports have two key facets that make them particularly unique and valuable—people are more passionate about sports than anything I’ve ever seen and sports are one of the only things that completely transcend international borders. The passion and global appeal—combined with a huge market that is prime for disruption—make for an incredibly interesting opportunity.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?

Lozano: Raising capital and building a strong team for a consumer web company in the Midwest has been significant challenge. We’ve been fortunate enough to locally recruit a fantastic team and attract the financial resources needed to take meaningful steps forward.

SUB: You recently raised $750K in Angel funding. What are your plans for the funds?

Lozano: Continue to expand our team and further ramp up our marketing efforts.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more outside funding in the near future?

Lozano: Absolutely. We’ve already received significant inbound interest from investors based on recent progress. We will be opening up another formal raise in the near future.

SUB: What are your goals for LockerDome over the next year or so?

Lozano: Grow.

LockerDome – www.lockerdome.com

Web/Content

HelloWallet Raises $12 Million in Series B Funding from Morningstar, TD Fund, & Others to Accelerate Growth

955 Dreams gets $3.25M to re-imagine mobile publishing (via gigaom)

Social Media

House Party Raises $5.3 Million in Series C Funding to Accelerate Business Growth

Healthcare

drchrono Closes New Funding Round Led by Yuri Milner; Google's Matt Cutts Joins as New Investor

Mobile

Skyfire gets $8M to stream mobile videos without any wait (via VentureBeat)

Social Media

33Across Acquires Social Publishing Giant Tynt

Ecommerce

Mobile

500 Startups Grad OneSchool Raises $750K For College Student-Focused App (via TechCrunch)

Onavo’s Data-Compressing Mobile App Raises $10 Million Series B From Horizons, Motorola Ventures (via TechCrunch)

Web/Content

Fitbit Closes $12M in Series C Funding Led by Foundry Group and True Ventures

CouchSurfing gets more cash as Point Nine Capital becomes its first European investor (via TechCrunch Europe)

Social Media