Untitled. Contatei Soraya Hossain, uma das responsáveis pelo projeto PagoTanto, desenvolvido no final de semana passado em Porto Alegre dentro do Startup Weekend. Em que estado o projeto se encontra? “Publicamos uma landing page e temos um canal no facebook e twitter. Em breve queremos colocar o MVP desenvolvido no SWPOA no ar publicamente”, adianta Soraya. Sobre o produto, ela descreve: ”o PagoTanto vai dar mais poder ao consumidor na hora de comprar passagens aéreas, dando-lhe a oportunidade de informar o preço que deseja pagar.
A partir das informações de tarifas das diversas companhias, o sistema buscará e apresentará as passagens adequadas ao usuário. Quando não existirem passagens que caibam dentro do orçamento estipulado pelo usuário, o sistema se oferecerá para acompanhar as tarifas continuamente, notificando o usuário quando a passagem ocorrer alguma baixa no preço”. Interessante. Os integrantes do PagoTanto Google+ Estonian Accelerator Startup Wise Guys Announces First Startups. The new Estonian accelerator program Startup Wise Guys, backed by the Estonian government-owned Estonian Development Fund and some former engineers from Skype, has just announced the seven teams it will be working with. Two of them from Estonia and one from Croatia, Ukraine, Germany, The Netherlands and UK. Wise Guys received over 200 applications, and will provide the shortlisted projects with an extensive startup developing program.
The projects will be supported by a squad of international mentors. The program starts on April 23 and includes three steps: shaping (3 weeks), building (4 weeks) and selling (3 weeks), supported by Wise Guys mentors. Startup Wise Guys, launched few months ago, is a joint effort of the players in Estonian startup ecosystem to bring international mentors to Estonia and attract talent across Eastern Europe and CIS countries. The first members of the new Startup Wise Guys family are: Monolith (Croatia) Moojoo (Germany) Like A Local Guide (Estonia) 1Knows (Estonia) Resultado da pesquisa mostra o panorama das startups brasileiras. Veja os slides. A Luz Loja de Consultoria, que já lançou ebook analisando as incubadoras brasileiras e outro analisando modelos de negócios brasileiros e internacionais, lançou recentemente o resultado da pesquisa sobre o panorama das startups brasileiras. Os números e constatações são bastane interessantes. Veja os slides.
Google+ Diego Remus Editor-chefe e Sócio-Diretor do Startupi.com.br. Co-autor do livro "Empreendedorismo Inovador" (Ed. Clicks Be Gone: AdTech Disrupter Moat Raises $12M Series B From Mayfield, Others. Ad-tech may not be the most obvious face of digital advertising, but in a world in which the role of big data is getting ever more essential to how things work, it is taking up an increasingly important role. One sign of that comes from the funding that ad-tech players are getting in this space: today, ad-tech startup Moat announced that it has picked up a $12 million investment led by the Mayfield Fund and including existing investors. The Series B investment takes the total amount invested in the company to $16.5 million with past investors including Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Founders Fund, Vast Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, and First Round Capital; as well as the WGI Group, an investment vehicle from Moat’s founders, Right Media ex-CEO Mike Walrath and brothers Jonah and Noah Goodhart.
As a result of the deal, Mayfield partner Tim Chang will join the board of Moat. What might be the next area to disrupt? [Image: Jim Mead, Flickr] All-Star Cast Invests 750K In Ben Huh And Matt Galligan’s Mobile News Startup Circa. SimpleGeo’s Matt Galligan and Icanhascheezburger’s Ben Huh have teamed up to change the way people consume news via mobile. Their startup Circa, which boasts a newsworthy list of advisors like former Digg CEO Jay Adelson, has just raised 750K in seed funding from eonCapital, Quotidian Ventures, Techstars’ David Cohen and David Tisch, Tumblr’s David Karp, Eric Norlin’s SK Ventures, Manesh Arora, Pedro Torres-Picon, Rick Webb, Scott Belsky and Soraya Darabi. “40% of our current funding is provided by Davids,” Galligan jokes. As to what Circa will actually be when the product finally launches? Well, the company is keeping many details under wraps. “A lot of what we’re doing is entirely new and I don’t say that lightly,” Galligan explains, revealing that the startup is committed to solving the information overload problem, “There are no sacred cows in this.”
PriceGrabber, ShoeDazzle, Legalzoom & Shopzilla Founders Back Online Social Platform For Retailers, Social Annex. Social Annex, a retail-focused social platform that’s been in stealth mode for the past two years, is today announcing having gained the attention (and the investment) of some big backers of e-commerce, just in time for its public debut.
In addition to Kamran Pourzanjani, the former CEO and founder of PriceGrabber, and Brian S. Lee co-founder of ShoeDazzle, Legalzoom, and Honest.com, Social Annex is now seeing investment from Jody Mulkey, CIO and SVP of Technology at Shopzilla, and Lawrence Ng, the co-founder of Oversee.net. Terms of the investments were not disclosed. However, according to founder and Head of Client Services Al Lalani, bringing in these backers was less about raising funding and more about bringing their expertise and involvement to Social Annex. “Social Annex has a unique all-in-one approach for managing social marketing for online retailers and ensuring social engagement and customer success,” says Pourzanjani. The Wearable Computing Startup From Agamatrix’s Founders, Former Apple CEO John Sculley, Raised $7.6M.
Google Glass isn’t the only game in town. Misfit Wearables, a wearable computing startup from the founding team of mobile health company Agamatrix and former Apple chief executive John Sculley, just raised $7.6 million in a round co-led by Founders Fund. The other notable firm in the deal isn’t disclosed, but we hear through a source that it’s Khosla Ventures. Misfit isn’t saying too much about what it’s working on, except to say that the next generation of wearable devices shouldn’t compete with fashion, has to be ambient and has to have functions outside of sensing. It has to be the kind of thing a consumer wouldn’t need to remember to wear and ideally, it would be something that’s so critical that a person would go back home if they left it there. “Wearables from the 1.0 era make people look like Iron Man,” said chief executive Sonny Vu. “It was a real shame we never got them together after John’s departure from Apple, so we decided to name the company in honor of Steve,” Vu said.
Fashion Retail And Styling Platform JustFab Seeing Over $100M In Revenue, Expanding Internationally. JustFab, a fashion retail and styling platform, is announcing a number of new metrics today, including over $100 million in 2012 revenue as well as international expansion. JustFab was incubated by Intelligent Beauty in March 2010 and has since grown to over 6 million members. Similar to sites like ShoeDazzle and BeachMint, JustFab operates a monthly distribution model. Users sign up for JustFab.com, input their style preferences and each month, will receive a personalized boutique of shoes and handbags that have been chosen to fit their individual style. With each offering, members receive styling advice and outfit recommendations to complete their look from head to toe. Each item is $39.95, new styles are added monthly, and all items are actually created and branded by JustFab. As we wrote last Fall, JustFab raised $33 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners with co-investment from Technology Crossover Ventures and fashion mogul and TV star, Kimora Lee Simmons.
Viddy Is Raising $30M At A $370M Valuation. AHAlife Raises $10.1M To Curate And Sell Hard-To-Find, Luxury Products From Around The World. AHAlife, an e-commerce site for hard-to-find and exclusive luxury lifestyle products, has raised $10.1 million in Series B funding, led by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, with DCM and FirstMark Capital also participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to $19.1 million. As we wrote in our review of the site, AHAlife introduces one new product a day in editorial format through its email list, tells the story about how the product was made, who made it, and where it came from while allowing you to also purchase the product. Products span fashion, food, beauty, travel, accessories, home décor, tech, and travel experiences. What makes the site compelling is the blend of content, commerce, and curation in AHAlife’s platform. Celebrity curators on the site include Tim Gunn, Wendi Murdoch, Donna Karan Daniel Boulud, Cynthia Rowley, and Tina Brown.
Intuit Acquires Marketing SaaS Company Demandforce For $423.5M In Cash. Intuit has just acquired marketing SaaS company Demandforce for $423.5 million in cash. Demandforce’s SaaS application automates internet marketing and communications, so customers can focus on running their day-to-day operations. The startup, which is profitable, has thousands of customers across service verticals that include dental care, automotive repair, spas, salons, chiropractors, and others.
The SaaS was designed to help customers to grow revenue, retain clients, maintain online reputation, and manage operations more effectively. Demandforce focuses primarily on small to medium sized businesses, offering email, mobile and social tools to help SMBs communicate with their customers and drive higher retention and growth in their businesses. “Demandforce sits at the sweet spot of Intuit’s SMB customer base and is consistent with our goal to help our customers save time and make money,” said Kiran Patel, executive vice president and general manager, Intuit Small Business Group. With $1.5M From Adecco, Path.To Wants To Be The EHarmony For Jobs In Silicon Valley And Beyond. The job-hunting market today is getting a little more social: Path.to, a kind of About.me-meets-LinkedIn service that lets people create image-filled, sleek professional profiles for themselves online, is today relaunching itself as a network to connect those professionals with job openings. And taking a pro-tip from the matchmaking site eHarmony, Path.to has developed an algorithm to create “compatibility” scores between job seekers and job vacancies using data from social media sites as part of the mix.
It says it is the first online job service to offer this feature. It is also today announcing a $1.5 million round of strategic funding from HR giant Adecco to help it along the way. Started in August 2011 by Cliqset founder Darren Bounds, Path.to went dark in March in preparation for this newest version of itself. The first wave of jobs features openings from more than 100 companies, including Eventbrite, Evernote, Lytro and Uber.
Google Ventures-Backed Copious Debuts A More Personalized, Social Marketplace For Fashion. Last year, we wrote about Copious, an eBay-like marketplace that leveraged your social graph on Facebook. The site aimed to use your social graph from Facebook to make the marketplace experience that you’d find on Amazon or eBay more social, allowing buyers and sellers to see if friends in common, previous purchases, social reviews and more. Today, the company is launching a new version of its marketplace, focused exclusively on fashion and with a number of new personalization features. Copious now asks shoppers who join the site to connect through Facebook or Twitter and to follow five trends that fit their style, everything from color-blocking and vintage wear.
You’ll also be suggested people to follow on the site that match your chosen trends. By following trends and people, shoppers will get a more socially curated experience every time they visit. In addition, Copious will used this information to give users suggestions of products sold on the site that match their personal style. Customer Service Support SaaS Freshdesk Raises $5M From Tiger Global And Accel. Freshdesk, an Indian startup that offers a cloud-based customer support platform, has raised $5 million in financing led by Tiger Global Management with previous investor Accel Partners participating.
Freshdesk, which competes with Zendesk, offers a simple, online help desk and support ticketing application that supports customers through email, phone, Facebook and Twitter. Customer service agents can support, update and assign projects directly from an email client, without needing to log in or use a mobile app. Agents simply email or forward a request to a Freshdesk unique email address and the request will be added to Freshdesk’s interface. Freshdesk automatically processes the command, makes the update, and sends the rest of the email to the appropriate customer. The startup, which launched last year, currently has over 700 customers.
Ancestry.com Acquires Archives.com For $100 Million. Utah-based genealogy site Ancestry.com just announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Silicon Valley-based startup Inflection to acquire its competitor Archives.com for $100 million in cash and assumed liabilities. Inflection’s other products, people search site PeopleSmart and Identity.com, are not part of this acquisition. A number of Archive.com’s employees, including some of its key product and engineering executives, will join the Ancestry.com team after the acquisition closes. Similar to Ancestry.com, Archives.com focuses on helping its users discover their family history. The service’s archive of 2.1 billion historical records includes photos, newspapers and vital records. Just recently, Archives.com made news when it partnered with the U.S. Ancestry.com, which also operates a wide variety of secondary sites like Genealogy.com, Fold3.com Rootsweb.com and Footnote.com, is a publicly traded company and had just under $400 million in revenue in 2011.
Bee Media Acquires Adcentricity To Unite Location-Based Advertising & Mobile Shopping. Bee Media, the makers of a mobile shopping platform that serves location-specific offers and info to mobile devices, today announced that it has acquired Adcentricity, a similarly location-focued digital media startup. Under the terms of the acquisition, Bee Media secures rights to the Adcentricity name and will operate as Adcentricity going forward. Doug Woolridge, the current CEO of Bee Media will take the helm of the joint venture as its new CEO, while Adcentricity CEO Rob Gorrie will become a senior strategic advisor. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
So, why did the two companies agree to enter into the deal? Gorrie explains that there is a plethora of companies currently targeting different pieces of the shopping pie, whether it be local, marketing, mobile, in-store radio and video networks, all of which has led to a fractured landscape that limits their ability to grab the attention of (and find adoption by) big brands. For more, check out Adcentricity here. OnSports Raises $2M Led By Floodgate To Be The Mobile Watercooler For Sports Fanatics.
Another Crowdfunding Player Enters The Fray: Apps Genius Launches GetFunded.com. Shape Security: Kleiner Perkins & TomorrowVentures Lead $6M Round In Stealth Security Startup. Ditto Picks Up $3 Million From August Capital, Others For Its Virtual, 3D Eyeglasses Sales Site. With $3M In Hand, Gopogo Launches To Let You Create, Share & Discover Location-Based Stories. ShopLocket Promises Customers They Can Sell Anything, Anywhere. Ark People Search Raised $4.2 Million Seed Round Instead of a Series A to “Keep Complete Control”
Vodafone Buys Cable & Wireless For $1.7B, Gives Mobile Carrier Bigger Window On Enterprise, Broadband. Citrus Lane Lands $5.1M Series A Funding For Subscription Baby Goods Delivery Service. Workout Spots Wants To Be The OpenTable For Fitness. Enterprise Cloud Storage And Peer-To-Peer Backup Service Symform Raises $11M. With $1.3M From Voyager & More, Chirpify Brings Direct Music, Ticket Sales To Twitter. Data-Focused Locu Raises $4M Series A From General Catalyst, Lowercase, Lightbank & SV Angel. TA Associates Invests In Q&A Site Answers.com. Andreessen Horowitz Made $78M Off $250,000 Investment in Instagram.