A Q&A with Avenue 65 CEO J.D. Begin. The Montreal–based company was founded in Fall of 2011 and recently had its official public launch—starting with the Montreal market.

SUB: Please describe what Avenue 65 is, and the value proposition you offer to diners and restaurants.

Begin: Avenue 65 is a web destination providing diners a curated list of fine dining establishments, online reservations and exclusive deals. The deals vary according to the occupancy rate of restaurants.

Our value proposition to diners is threefold. First, we ease the process of selecting a restaurant by providing a curated list of fine dining establishments. Second, we provide easy and convenient online reservations. Third, we offer exclusive deals to diners upon their visit to the restaurant, without requiring the purchase of a coupon.

For restaurants, the occupancy rate is the most important factor in a restaurant’s profitability. Yet, all restaurants have excess table capacity outside of peak times. We provide them with a profitable way to fill this excess capacity with quality diners.

Web/Content

Crowdfunding startup Crowdtilt gets its own investment (via VentureBeat)

Education

Quipper Raises $3.6m For Its Fun Take On E-Learning (via TechCrunch)

More funding news…

Social Media

Rakuten Leads Investment in Pinterest

Web/Devices

A Q&A with WeVideo founder and CEO Jostein Svendsen. The Sunnyvale, California–based company was founded in 2011 and recently raised $19.1 million in Series A funding. Investors include Crest Capital Ventures.

SUB: Please describe what WeVideo is, and the value proposition you bring to online video and video editing.

Svendsen: WeVideo is an online video editing platform enabling people to fast and easy produce broadcast quality video in on any device—personal computers, tablets and smartphones. You can think of us as Google Docs for video editing, empowering anyone to collaborate with friends, family and colleagues to easily create great videos and still have secure storage and easy access from the cloud.

SUB: Who are your target users?

Web/Content

TechStars alum Mocavo grabs $4M to help you find your ancestors (via VentureBeat)

Lenddo Raises $8M To Use Online Reputation For Lending In Emerging Markets (via TechCrunch)

More funding and acquisitions news…

Company: Agent Ace

Website: www.agentace.com

Founder: Mazen Fawaz

Headquarters: Los Angeles

Year Founded: 2011

Twitter: @agentace_com

Brief Company Description: Agent Ace is a free service for connecting homebuyers and sellers to the highest performing real estate agent in their area.

By Mazen Fawaz, Founder

Our free, web-based service for referring agents was built in response to an inconsistency we saw in the real estate industry. When compared to other industries (retail, travel, automobile), we noticed that real estate was lagging in terms of the tools people have for decision making. When looking for a flight or a new car consumers use online services to find the best deal, but when looking for an agent, the web offered no system for comparing and making an informed decision. When we started looking at historical home sales data we noticed a disparity between average and top performing agents (top agents simply sell more homes in less time), and we knew that a service that connected homebuyers and sellers to these top agents would be valuable. With this in mind, we set out to build a smarter, performance based service for connecting people with the top agent in their area. For free!

Healthcare

Simplee Secures $6 Million Series A Led by The Social+Capital Partnership

Web/Content

Personalized Music Video Service Cull TV Acquired By Twitvid, CEO Departs (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

A Q&A with Appthority co-founder and President Domingo Guerra. The San Francisco–based company was founded in June of 2011 and recently raised $6.25 million in Series A funding.

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

Guerra: Appthority is a San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses implement mobile app risk management. The Appthority platform is a cloud-based system that measures the enterprise risk of mobile apps and feeds this information—also called app reputation—to mobile device management, mobile app management, enterprise app stores, and enterprise app developers to enable a safer enterprise mobile experience. 

The main enterprise security pain point we address comes from answering the following question IT departments are struggling with everyday: ‘How do I implement mobile policy if I don't know what apps do?’ Traditional enterprise software came from established companies like Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. With millions of apps invading the enterprise from all kinds of developers, IT departments need a way to automate the app review and approval process as well as identify the risks hidden in mobile apps.

Web/Content

After 5 Years Of Bootstrapping, Behance Nabs $6.5M From USV, Jeff Bezos, Dave Morin & More (via TechCrunch)

Gaming

Zynga acquires Wild Needle casual game maker for an estimated $3.8M (via VentureBeat)

Enterprise

SaaS For SMBs: InsightSquared Picks Up $4.5M From Atlas, Bessemer, Salesforce and NextView (via TechCrunch)

A Q&A with Orderbird co-founder and CMO Patrick Brienen. The German company was founded in Spring of 2011 and recently raised $3.5 million in new funding. Investors include Alstin, which is a holding company led by German financier Carsten Maschmeyer, along with angels and existing strategic investors. The startup is a new entry in the competitive restaurant order and payment automation market. Brienen’s fellow co-founders are Jakob Schreyer, CEO, Bastian Schmidtke, Product Manager, Artur Hasselbach, CFO, and Steven Reinisch, Senior Developer. Orderbird is based in Berlin.

SUB: What is Orderbird?

Brienen: Orderbird is the order platform for gastronomy. We digitalize orders from guests, waiters and other services the restaurateur might use to run his or her business. 

SUB: What is the value proposition you bring to the restaurant business as well as the dining experience for consumers?

Web/Content

Pandora Competitor Senzari Raises $1 Million From 500 Startups & Angels To Fund Global Expansion (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Twitter Buys Personalized Email Marketer RestEngine To Deliver Best Tweet Digests (via TechCrunch)

More funding news…

A Q&A with Vungle co-founder Jack Smith. The London and San Francisco–based company was founded in January of 2011 and offers an innovative technology to mobile app developers. Its platform enables app makers to easily and cost-effectively embed ‘how it works’ video trailers in other apps, adding a new level of dynamism to app marketing and consumer discovery.

Smith’s co-founder is Zain Jaffer, who also serves as CEO. At the start of this month, Vungle raised $2 million in Seed funding from an all-star group of VCs and Angels that include Google Ventures, Aol Ventures, Crosslink Capital, SV Angel, 500 Startups, SoftTech VC, Tim Draper, Maynard Webb and Scott McNealy.

SUB: Please describe what Vungle is, and the value proposition you bring to the mobile apps market.

Smith: The problem Vungle wants to solve for app developers is two-fold: getting a video ad made, and then getting it seen by prospective users by distributing it inside of other mobile apps.

SUB: Who are your target users?

Advertising/Marketing

Ex-AdMobbers nab $6.5M to build cross-platform cookies (via gigaom)

Web/Content

Mozilla & Knight Foundation Invest $1M In Crowdsourced Translation Startup Amara (via TechCrunch)

Samsung buys streaming startup mSpot to take on iCloud and Google Play (via VentureBeat)

More funding and acquisitions news... 

A Q&A with Citrus Lane CEO Mauria Finley. The Mountain View, California–based company was founded in 2011 and recently raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. Investors include GGV Capital and Greylock Partners.

SUB: Please describe what Citrus Lane is, and the value proposition you offer to families with infants and toddlers.

Finley: We offer parents and their kids a curated selection of products each month, to help make parenting a little less stressful and a little more fun. Each month a subscriber gets a box full of goodies for their baby, each selected especially for their child’s age and stage of development.

SUB: Who are your target users?