Ideiasnet sells a stake in Spring Wireless. (Ideiasnet) May 4, 2012 – Ideiasnet announces the sale of its 4.1% stake in Spring Wireless, a Brazilian enterprise with company value of R$ 329 million, that offers end-to-end solutions in mobile technology platforms, to Industry Ventures Fund. Ideiasnet invested in the company in 2004, and with this transaction achieves an internal rate of return (IRR) of 19.6%, representing 2.6 times invested capital. A market leader in its segment, Spring Wireless operates globally and has AB InBev, Coca-Cola, Kellogg´s and L’Oreal in its customers portfolio, among others. The amount received by the sale represents nearly triple the invested capital, and an internal rate of return of 19.6% per year. The transaction values Spring Wireless at R$ 329 million. With a beginning position of 7% in Spring Wireless, this transaction represents Ideiasnet’s second round of divestment in the company.
The first, completed in December of 2011, divested a 2% stake. Ualaa! lança no Brasil conceito “One Day, One Deal” Um produto por dia, com desconto agressivo. Esse é o conceito do Ualaa! , novo site do Busca Descontos, portal que trouxe ao Brasil o Black Friday e Boxing Day (datas que em 2011 movimentaram mais de 158 milhões de reais em vendas em apenas dois dias). O modelo do Ualaa! É pioneiro no Brasil e inspirado no site norte-americano Woot, que nos Estados Unidos chega a faturar US$ 1 milhão por dia e foi comprado pela Amazon em junho de 2010.
Este modelo de negóciojá é consolidado nos EUA, onde é conhecido como One Day, One Deal (um dia, uma oferta). Para os grandes varejistas do e-commerce nacional, o Ualaa! Os usuários que se cadastrarem no primeiro mês no Ualaa! História do Ualaa! Google+ Fixar.me oferece quiz management automático nas mídias sociais e conta com empreendedor do Show de Ingressos como anjo. Texto: João Kepler Braga. Acabo de apoiar com meu investimento anjo a primeira plataforma automática de Quiz Management no Brasil. Trata-se do Fixar.Me, que tem foco no Engajamento Social através de Perguntas e Respostas Automáticas. A ideia é usar a relevância dos perfis no Twitter e no Facebook para engajamento de um produto, marca ou serviço utilizando mecanismos de Gameficação através de uma solução de Quiz Management. A interação através de Perguntas e Respostas Automáticas, seja com pesquisas de satisfação, seja com Quiz sobre uma marca, seja por uma ação para premiação, seja uma campanha para descontos, enfim, esse novo modelo que estamos chamando de Quiz Manager, pode representar uma nova forma inteligente e interessante para alcançar maior engajamento com os usuários nas Redes Sociais.
Uma coisa é certa, conquistar fãs e seguidores não é suficiente para ter engajamento em uma marca e converter vendas para um e-commerce, por exemplo. Engajamento inteligente. João Kepler Braga. [VIDEO] Kazsek va por las startups con visión regional y Sequoia VC desembarca en Brasil este julio. En este capítulo de mi serie favorita sobre emprendimientos tecnológico en proceso de aceleración, que arbitrariamente he llamado “La Cocina de Nxtplabs”, la atención se la llevan dos VC que buscan oportunidades de inversión en la región: Kaszek Ventures y Sequoia Venture Capital . Nicolás Szekasy: El foco es panregional Nicolás Szekasy es la persona para la que te preparas durante meses, quizás un año o dos, con la esperanza de que tu Elevator Pitch sea interesante y muestre el trabajo que has avanzado con tu emprendimiento. Kazsek, que tiene foco en los emprendimientos tecnológicos dirigidos a B2C, destaca el principal criterio de elegibilidad : “ Invertimos en emprendedores de cualquier país de América Latina, pero que estén dispuestos a expandirse por toda la región“, por lo tanto ve desechando los .ar, .ec, .cl anclados a tu modelo de negocio.
Algunas reglas de oro salidas del know-how de Nicolás para la administración de tu startup: 1. 3.- Modestia y cuidado por los recursos en general. YC Price Guide Startup Priceonomics Raises $1.5M Seed From Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel. How much should you pay for a used iPhone, TV, or bicycle? Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and more think you need to know, so they’ve invested $1.5 million into Priceonomics, a Y Combinator winter 2012 startup. The seed round that shall be announced later today (Update: here it is) will go towards hiring front-end developers and back-end engineers to make the site beautiful but simple and beef up its machine learning technology.
The site saw 250,000 page views in March and is still growing traffic by a brisk 65% every month. Investors see gold in possible business models built around the data Priceonomics crawls and ads shown to people about to make a purchase. Co-founder Rohin Dhar says the startup aims to beat general search engines by immediately knowing you’re looking to buy when you type in the name or maker of a laptop, appliance, camera, or stereo. Competitors it will have to fight off include Worth Monkey, but that tool’s just a search engine. Smart Education: How Lynda.com Hit $70M In Revenue Without A Penny From Investors.
As Ned Flanders would say, education in the U.S. is in “a dilly of a pickle.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the cost of education has become unsustainable. Student loan debt is over $1 trillion, unemployment remains high for the recently graduated, and non-traditional students — older people, single mothers, workers looking to re-train — are returning to academia and learning programs in droves, putting even more competitive pressure on already-scant on-site resources. Higher ed institutions struggle with the cost of expanding to meet demand. Yale, for example, recently decided to add 250 students to its incoming class, which came with a price tag of a quarter of a billion dollars. However, while these startups should be recognized for their mission-driven approaches, some of these startups evidence undercooked business models, obviously a problem for for-profit businesses when the funding (if there is any) dries up.
For more on Lynda.com, check them out at home here. Hootsuite Is Raising $50M At A $500M Valuation. It was just over a month ago that social media management platform HootSuite picked up $20 million in a secondary investment round that valued the company at $200 million. Now we have heard from multiple sources that the company is looking to better than double that: HootSuite is in the process of raising a $50 million round at a $500 million valuation.
And what’s making this even more interesting are the investors that are being mentioned in connection with the round: HootSuite is looking to have discussions with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google – a sign of how the surge in social media investments is also giving a lift to companies that are figuring out ways to harness that for third parties. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter were described by one source as all having a “great relationship” with HootSuite already, and that the company was looking to build a deal that would give them all “upside in Hootsuite’s success.” Engrade Grabs $3M From Wireless Generation Co-founder To Help Teachers Manage Their Classrooms. As a high school student in 2003, Bri Holt found himself increasingly frustrated by the fact that there was no easy way for he and his classmates to view their grades online. So, being familiar with the wizardry of web development, Holt decided to build his own, laying the foundations for what would become Engrade.
While Holt went on to other projects, over the next seven-odd years, his simple, free online gradebook slowly found increasing, organic adoption among teachers. In 2010, Holt returned to Engrade, brought in some help, and over the next 18 months, focused on turning the education tool into a more robust, enterprise education platform. Since 2003, Engrade has grown its user base to 4.5 million teachers, admins, parents, and students in all 50 states, and 150 countries, with institutional customers that include the New York City Department of Education and KIPP Charter Schools. For more, check out Engrade at home here, and let us know what you think. Evive Launches With $2M From Angels To Help Cure Our Addiction To Bottled Water. While we all need water to survive, colleges and universities across the U.S. are betting that their students can survive without water of the bottled variety. As Bloomberg recently reported, more than 90 universities, including Brown and Harvard, are banning or restricting the sale of plastic water bottles.
Considering that bottled water represents a $22 billion industry in the U.S. and that more than 9 billion gallons were sold last year, the actions of these universities aren’t likely to scare “Big Water,” as they represent just a fraction of sales. But it makes an important statement about bottled water nonetheless. And let’s be honest: Whether or not you’ve recently hugged a tree, buying branded tap water in a plastic bottle for $1.50+ a pop seems … well … completely #$%^&-ing ridiculous — unless of course your village has yet to secure a reliable source of potable water. In that case, we understand. That doesn’t sound that cool, says the 16-year-old cynic in you.
Harris: 20% Of US Consumers Buy Via Mobile; 62% Couldn’t Care Less. Mobile devices, by some estimates, will become a replacement for your wallet in the future, with NFC, dongles and sophisticated apps helping you buy things and manage the rest of your financial life, and with companies like Visa getting in on the action and eBay/PayPal expecting $8 billion in mobile transactions this year. But in reality, when it comes to using a mobile to buy something, most of us are not. A poll from Harris Interactive, commissioned by the location-based shopping alert provider Placecast, found that only one in five people — 20 percent — of adult mobile owners have used their devices in the last year to purchase goods and services, whether that is at a point of sale or via a mobile app or site.
As for how many consumers actually wanted purchasing functionality in their devices, 62 percent said it was “not at all important.” Research from Nielsen on mobile commerce found much higher numbers when considering owners of smartphones and tablets. WePay Raises $10 Million To Scale Its Online Payment Platform. Online payment platform WePay just announced that it has raised $10 million in a new financing round. This round was led by Ignition Partners. Two of the company’s existing investors, Highland Capital Partners and August Capital also participated in this round.
WePay, which bills itself as the “anti-PayPal,” is a Y Combinator alumni and was founded in 2008. The company raised a total of $9.15 million in two previous rounds over the last two years. While WePay doesn’t reveal its revenues, its CEO and co-founder Bill Clerico told our own Leena Rao that it grew revenue ten-fold in 2011. WePay currently offers a range of payment products that are mostly geared toward the small and medium online businesses.
WePay plans to launch its first mobile apps later this year, though the company remains mum about what exactly its mobile strategy will look like. Task-Based Marketplace Fiverr Raises $15M From Accel And Bessemer. Fiverr, a global marketplace offering tasks and services for as little as $5, has raised $15 million in funding from Accel Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $20 million. Merchants, entrepreneurs, contractors and more workers in more than 200 countries use Fiverr to monetize their skills, talents and resources. They can offer “Gigs”, ranging from web design, logo creation and market research, to personal greetings and video animation, in Fiverr. Customers can then access these jobs for services they need rendered. In January 2012, Fiverr launched Levels, a reputation-based promotion system to help entrepreneurs build their business and earn more revenue.
Currently tasks range from $5 to $150, and there are over 650,000 tasks and services listed on Fiverr. “Our vision is to turn Fiverr into the eBay for the service economy,” says Kaufman. The new funding will be used for global expansion, product development and hiring. Mobile Payments Startup Boku Launches Billing Partnership With Sprint. Fresh off a $35 million round of funding, mobile payments company Boku is announcing a direct carrier agreement with Sprint that will allow Sprint customers to charge online purchases to their Sprint wireless bill through a two-step authorization process.
The agreement was made possible via a partnership with mobile payments operator BillToMobile. As you may remember, Boku offers an online payments platform that allowed users to pay for online goods by charging the transaction to their mobile phone bill. When a user wants to purchase a virtual item, he can enter his cell phone number on a site, the site sends a text message to the phone, the user confirms the transaction with a short reply, and all the charges show up on his phone bill.
Direct carrier relationships are important because historically, mobile payments companies face the challenge of lofty carrier rates. Boku President Ron Hirson tells us the rates in the U.S. are in the “teens.” NetPlenish Raises $1.9M For Mobile Shopping Service That Finds Lowest Prices On Household Goods. A new mobile shopping service called NetPlenish is announcing today that it has closed a round of $1.9 million in seed funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Gold Hill Capital, BHV Capital, TEEC Angel Fund, Ludlow Ventures and several angel investors, including its founders.
The news was timed alongside the official launch of the company’s mobile application, available on both iPhone and Android. With the app, consumers are able to shop for everyday household items online which are sourced from trusted name merchants like Walmart, Target, Sears, K-Mart, Walgreens, Drugstore.com, Pets.com and Sephora. The interesting thing about the mobile experience in NetPlenish is that’s it’s aggregating the content from multiple merchants into one single application.
This is somewhat different from how a price comparison app may work – for example, ShopSavvy - which tells you what different things cost at different stores, both online and off. Khosla Leads $25M Round In Enterprise Cloud Storage Company Nirvanix. Enterprise cloud storage provider Nirvanix has raised $25 million in Series C funding round led by Khosla Ventures with previous investors Valhalla Partners, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures and Windward Ventures participating in the round.
The new investment brings Nirvanix’s total capital raised to $70M. Nirvanix is a fully-managed, enterprise cloud storage service capable of storing, delivering and processing storage requests. It’s an alternative to Amazon Web Services, or Box.net. The company specializes in storing amounts of large unstructured content files, and offers usage-based pricing across public, hybrid and private cloud storage deployments.
Scott Genereux, President and CEO of Nirvanix, tells us that the platform is specifically designed for millions of users, billions of files and exabytes of data, which helps differentiate its offering from other cloud storage providers. “We’ve architected cloud storage specifically for large, unconstructed data files. Visage Mobile Raises $8M From Motorola Solutions, Qualcomm To Help Companies Manage Employee Wireless Devices. Evernote Raises $70M At A $1B Valuation To Prep For An IPO, And The Next 100 Years. Newvem Raises $4M From Greylock, Eric Schmidt To Help AWS Customers Spend Less Money.
CareZone, A Service For Caregivers, Raises $13M From NEA, Catamount And Jonathan Schwartz. Castlight Lands A Whopping $100M D Round To Bring Transparency To Healthcare Costs. GREE Acquires Mobile-Social Game Developer Funzio For $210M. Yuri Milner, Dave Morin, SV Angel, CrunchFund And More Hook Up Pair With $4.2M. DataSift Raises $7.2M For Powerful Social Data Analysis And Business Intelligence Platform. Twilio Rising: Microsoft Inks Deal To Offer Voice, Messaging APIs To ‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of Azure Developers. Vungle Hustles Its Way Into $2M All-Star Seed Round For Mobile App Video Trailers Network. DIY Mobile Website Creator bMobilized Raises $1.5M Series A, Prepares To Take On DudaMobile.
ChowNow Launches As A Food Ordering Platform For Restaurants On Facebook And iOS. Mobile Security Provider Appthority Raises $6.25 Million From Venrock and US Venture Partners. Crowdstar Raises $11.5M To Double Down On Mobile Gaming, Has Layoffs As It Leaves Facebook Behind. Talent Crowdsourcing Startup Talenthouse Raises $4.1 Million From Director Brett Ratner, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Others. Zillow Reports Record Q1 Revenue Of $22.8M, Buys Rental Software Developer RentJuice For $40M. Engage:BDR Launches A Real-Time Bidding Platform With Direct Buying From Publishers. Princeton Review Founder Launches First Search, Recommendation Engine For Education. Marketplace For Customized Goods CustomMade Raises $4M From Google Ventures And Others.
Weathermob Nabs Funding To Make Sharing Weather Reports More Social. Wrapp Brings Social, Mobile Gifting Service To The U.S.; Partners With The Gap, H&M And Others. Just-Eat Just Raised Another $64M From Vitruvian, Index, Greylock For Online Food Ordering. Microsoft, Barnes & Noble Partner Up To Do Battle With Amazon And Apple In E-books.