Deezer Launches in 35 Latin American Territories. Back in December, we reported that Spotify competitor Deezer was to begin rolling out in 200 countries (but not the USA). And it has taken a big step towards this goal today by launching in 35 Latin American territories. Deezer was launched in France in August 2007, and it reached agreements with the French copyright societies, major and independent labels between 2007 and 2009. Today, the music-streaming service has somewhere in the region of 20m users and offers 18m tracks. Back in August, we first reported that Deezer was planning to hit the UK and it eventually revealed its pricing structure there prior to launch in September, whilst a partnership with Orange was to gain traction in the country. However, when it announced its 200-country expansion, Deezer did mention that by January 31, 2012, Canada and Latin America (38 territories) would be added to its roster, with Australasia to follow the month after. 35 territories… So…what LatAm territories is it now available in, you ask?
Bedoo, um fast shopping baseado em comportamento do consumidor. O Bedoo, primeiro fast shopping do Brasil baseado em comportamento do consumidor, anuncia seu lançamento no mercado nacional. Por meio de um conceito inovador de fast shopping, o site identifica o perfil do usuário e suas necessidades através de três a cinco perguntas rápidas e dinâmicas. Dessa forma, o consumidor obtém três sugestões de produtos, em faixas de preços diferentes, todas relacionadas ao seu perfil, para que assim possa escolher aquela que melhor se enquadra ao seu orçamento.
A tecnologia criada pelo Bedoo, juntamente com os acordos comerciais que a empresa possui com as principais redes varejistas do País, oferecem o melhor valor de mercado para os produtos pesquisados. A empresa é uma aposta da incubadora da ESPM – Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing. “O Bedoo traz a figura do vendedor de uma loja física para a Internet. “O crescimento do e-commerce no Brasil é um assunto recorrente. Principais executivos Sobre o Bedoo. Nova versão da Conta Azul, startup catarinense de soluções para gestão empresarial que foi incubada no vale do Silício. A ContaAzul, startup brasileira que oferece solução de gestão on-line para micro e pequenas empresas,lança nova versão de sua plataforma financeira para o mercado brasileiro. O site auxilia os empresários em todos os processos administrativos e financeiros, já opera em versão beta desde 2008 e entre outubro de 2011 e fevereiro de 2012 esteve incubado na 500 Startups, em Mountain View.
O objetivo é que a solução aprimore as ações organizacionais destas empresas, de forma a diminuir o índice de que 58% delas fecham nos primeiros cinco anos, por falta de um bom planejamento operacional. Já foram emitidas mais de 7 mil notas fiscais pelo ContaAzul, que pretende alcançar 2 mil assinantes até o final deste ano. “Apesar de ser um grande e importante setor da economia, as MPE’s ainda enfrentam problemas com o excesso de demandas legais e a falta de orientação administrativa. Lições sobre design e experiência do usuário Google+ Engarte.com chega ao mercado com modelo de crowdsourcing na área de engenharia. O setor de construção civil, após um crescimento de 11,6% em 2010, quando ocorreu o “boom” do segmento, teve uma elevação de aproximadamente 5% em 2011, e deve manter a mesma projeção para esse ano.
Com esses números, o segmento está enquadrado no ConstruBusiness, que representa 13% do Produto Interno Brasileiro (PIB). Com esse panorama extremamente positivo, além da proximidade dos grandes eventos esportivos, a demanda exercida pelo mercado excede a oferta, acarretando em gargalos, principalmente nos pequenos escritórios de engenharia.
Para auxiliar no desenvolvimento desse segmento, chega a Engarte, uma plataforma de crowdsourcing para profissionais e empresas de engenharia. Criado pelo empreendedor Alan Meira, a plataforma nasceu com o objetivo de maximizar a capacidade produtiva dos escritórios do segmento. Contratação e gerenciamento A Engarte nasce com mais de mil projetistas na base de dados, contando desde especialistas em AutoCAD até engenheiros químicos e ambientais. Bebê Store Recebe Segunda Rodada de Investimentos do Atomico. A Bebê Store, e-commerce de produtos infantis, anuncia que recebeu uma segunda rodada de investimentos do Atomico, fundo liderado por Niklas Zennström, co-fundador do Skype. O novo aporte chega para dar sustentação aos planos de expansão da startup, que vem se consolidando como uma das líderes no comércio eletrônico direcionado para o segmento infantil no Brasil.
Esta segunda rodada impressiona, já que a startup recebeu investimento do fundo em Fevereiro deste ano. “Superamos em mais de 150% nossas previsões para o primeiro trimestre e, com isso, fechamos outra rodada em um período curto, menos de seis meses depois do primeiro acordo. Nosso objetivo é continuar a consolidação da Bebê Store como a maior, mais completa e eficiente loja online de produtos para bebês e mamães no Brasil”, assinala Leonardo Simão, co-fundador da Bebê Store. De acordo com o executivo, o valor do segundo aporte não pode ser divulgado, mas está na ordem das dezenas de milhões.
CellScope Nabs $1M From Khosla Ventures To Turn Your Smartphone Into A Microscope. Founded in the mobile microscopy lab at UC Berkeley, a young startup called CellScope is on a mission to turn your smart, mobile devices into a microscope, giving parents the ability to perform easy, at-home diagnoses. Graduating as part of Rock Health’s inaugural batch of startups, CellScope is preparing to launch its first product, an otoscope — that strange-looking device doctors use to look in your ears — that can be attached to smartphones to enable anyone and everyone to perform remote diagnoses of, say, pediatric ear infections. (Which, by the way, create 30 million doctor visits annually in the U.S.)
The startup has been developing its first product for over a year now, adding functionality that will give consumers the ability to share images of the eardrum with remote pediatricians for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. To help bring its device to shelves near you, CellScope is today announcing that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures. How Summit could bring some class to Rocket’s Westwing — European technology news. With iOS 6, The iPhone Even Becomes A Better Phone. Good news for those of you who actually use your iPhone to, oh, let’s say, make phone calls, perhaps? Apple just announced that the iPhone’s phone app is getting a major update with the new version of iOS 6, which will actually make the iPhone more useful as a telephone.
Imagine that! The phone app will receive new features including reminders, do not disturb settings, call screening and more. These features are going to particularly thrill business users to whom making phone calls, not texting and Facebooking, is still the most critical feature offered by their phone of choice. And the update brings many of the settings you would find in corporate phone systems today. If you’re in a meeting and see an incoming call, you can now slide a new control on the phone in order to set a reminder to call that person back later or send them a message. There are also buttons for quick replies like “call me later,” which you can use, too.
The new version of iOS 6 is due out this fall. Rewards To The Beat Of A Different Drum: Tango Card Gets $1.8M From Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, WTI. Tango Card, the Seattle startup looking to disrupt the loyalty/gift card space by acting as a low-cost aggregator and innovator on delivery formats, has picked up a couple of new dancing partners. Innovation Endeavors, Eric Schmidt’s early-stage investment firm; and Maurice Werdegar, CEO of WTI, the venture debt firm that has counted companies like Google and Facebook among its portfolio, are investing $1.8 million in the company.
The investment comes on the back of a strong period for three year-old Tango Card. The company is on track to reach 600,000 users by the end of this year, with key clients like FedEx, ShutterFly and Microsoft (more on that below) among those behind the growth in an overall industry projected to be worth $20 billion this year. David Leeds, the founder and CEO, says that the new funds — part of a Series A expansion — will be used to continue to build out Tango’s business, with specific focus on mobile technology and “the use of digital goods in retail.”
Wibbitz Raises $2.3M Series A For Technology That Turns Text Into Videos. Wibbitz, a company whose tagline once called it the “play button for the web” (it’s now just “text-to-video”) has closed a $2.3 million Series A round headed up by Horizons Ventures, the internet and technology investment fund belonging to Li Ka-shing. Also participating in the round were previous investors, Initial Capital and lool Ventures. The service is somewhat similar to former TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki, as it also automatically generates videos based on the content found on websites, but the twist is that it’s designed for use by publishers who want to offer quick, digestible video summaries of their articles’ content. (Disclosure: regular TechCrunch contributor Roi Carthy is a Managing Partner at Initial Capital). The company raised a seed round of approximately half a million back in September 2011, which included Initial Capital, lool Ventures, and Kima Ventures.
To implement Wibbitz on their websites, publishers only need to add a single line of JavaScript code. .Choice: With $100M+ Raised, Donuts Launches A Registry For New Top-Level Domain Names. Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a new initiative that is set to significantly expand the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), allowing companies, organizations, and anyone in between to buy their own domain name extensions — like .google, .rip, .ROFL, etc. ICANN recently closed its window for domain name applications, and last week, for example, Frederic covered Google’s announcement of the domains it has applied for (.google, .docs, .youtube, and .lol to name a few), which was yet another indication that it won’t be long before gTLDs of this ilk will be common on the Web.
ICANN expects to create between 300 and 1,000 new gTLDs each year, joining the 28 ubiquitous Top-Level Domains in play today, like .com, .org., .net, and so on. However, Google is far from being alone in its application for new TLDs — there are plenty more that see this is an opportunity. For more on Donuts, Inc., check them out at home here. Shoes Of Prey Lands $3 Million Series A To Scale Its Custom Footwear Design Site. Shoes Of Prey, a Sydney, Australia-based startup whose website lets women design and order customized footwear, has closed on $3 million in its first round of funding, the company is announcing today. Shoes Of Prey has been bootstrapped since its launch in 2009. This new funding, which serves as the company’s Series A round, comes from Crunchfund, longtime VC Bill Tai, and Atlassian founder (and native Ozzie) Mike Cannon-Brookes. The company says it will put the new money toward building out its social shopping features, broadening its retail presence, and expanding its product offerings.
The customization and service provided by Shoes Of Prey does not come cheap — a pair typically costs in the several hundreds of dollars — but you get exactly what you ask for, and for many people that is well worth it. The company has already attracted a loyal following of devotees (my super fashionable colleague Leslie is among them.) But those details don’t seem to bother everyone. Airtime Launches A Video Chat Network That’s The New Place To Hangout Online. Ready your arsenal of funny viral videos, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have just launched their video chat and sharing network Airtime.
Built on Facebook with a stunning $33.5 million in funding, Airtime puts you onstage with a friend or matches you with an interesting stranger. There’s no application to install, it works straight from your browser. [Update: And today at the celebrity-filled Airtime launch party, Parker told me that iOS and Android apps are "coming very soon".] You could call it a more fun version of Skype, a one-on-one Google+ Hangouts with your Facebook graph, or the evolution of Chat Roulette. But what you’re going to call it is fun. Pull in a favorite YouTube video or select one you’ve already shared to Facebook and instantly you’re watching together.
As I wrote this morning, Airtime will re-humanize the Internet. But Airtime doesn’t just reinforce your social network, it expands it. Where Airtime really shines, though, is in video sharing. Startup Launch As Celebrity Bonanza: Airtime’s Ritzy, Glitzy, Glitchy Debut. Once upon a time, a humble click of a button could send a web service live.
A couple of e-mails out or a post on a message board might be sufficient to draw the interest of a few early adopters. No longer. Somehow, somewhere along the line, certain startup launches and demo days have become more like celebrity-studded movie premieres or gallery openings. We all go and gawk. We might stay. We might leave. But we’re all there for a show. And nowhere is the shift of technology industry from mainstream culture’s periphery to its center more evident than in the story of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning — who are debuting their much-anticipated (and more family-friendly!) More than 15 years ago, Fanning and Parker were just teenagers trolling chat rooms. Today, their lives are a world apart. So sorry to leave the Airtime event early.
“They’re the Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren of the Internet,” Fallon said, bringing them on-stage. For more on Airtime, check out our coverage: Fast-Growing App Search Engine Quixey Raises $20 Million Series B. App search company Quixey is today announcing it has closed a $20 million round Series B funding. The round includes previous investors WI Harper Group, U.S. Venture Partners and Innovation Endeavors as well as new investors Atlantic Bridge, SK planet and Translink Capital, which the company says it chose with internationalization in mind.
The additional capital will be primarily used to help continue fund Quixey’s growth, and specifically to help it deal with its increasing overhead. The company has been hiring like crazy, going from 6 to 30 people over the past year, and it plans to pass 60 employees by year-end with new hires arriving on Quixey’s data, technical and research teams soon.
The company, whose main focus is on improving app discoverability through search, may not be as well-known as the app search service Chomp, which Apple acquired in February. One thing Kagan did credit Chomp with was drumming up interest in the app discovery market. With More Than 2M Downloads, HotelTonight Raises Another $23M From US Venture Partners. Last-minute hotel booking startup HotelTonight just announced that it raised a $23 million Series C round led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). The financing includes existing investors Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, and First Round Capital. In addition to the funding, HotelTongiht will be adding USVP general partner Rick Lewis to its board of directors. HotelTonight has rolled out a number of mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, which allow users to find low-priced, last-minute hotel accommodations on the fly.
That lets hotels sell unsold inventory, and gives users cheap options at high-quality locations in more than 40 cities in the U.S. The startup is growing quickly, and says it will use the funding to help expand its team as it moves beyond its home U.S. market. Last November, HotelTonight raised $13 million in a round led by Battery Ventures and Accel Partners. No Resumes, Just Skills: Smarterer Grabs $1.75M From True, Google Ventures; Tony Conrad Joins Board. Ringadoc Virtually Connects You With A Doctor Anytime, Raises $750K Seed From Founders Fund’s FF Angel. Loosecubes Secures $7.8M From NEA, Accel To Become The Airbnb For Shared Office Spa. Men’s Subscription Service Bespoke Post Partners With Details Mag, Grabs 500 Startups As Investor.
Stealthy Startup Gumhouse Raises $6M+ For A “Social Stream Video Shopping Network” Custom Jewelry Startup Gemvara Raises $25M In Oversubscribed Series D Round. Profitable San Francisco Financial Company Launches New Form Of Payment [TCTV] Acquire, Be Acquired, Or IPO: $15M From FTV Lets Social Marketer Shoutlet Choose Its Destiny. Movile Launches Zeewe TV, A New Social Video Service Aimed At The Latino Market. Webs.com Revamps Its DIY Site Creation Tools, Ditches Banner Ads For Free Users.
Behold, Facebook’s New App Center Leaks Into iOS. Card-Linked Customer Loyalty Company Cartera Commerce Raises $12.2M Series D, Readies Expansion Into Local Offers. Gamifying The Job Search: Identified Hits 10M Users, Nabs $21M In Series B Funding. Y Combinator Alum Flutter Raises $1.4 Million For Gesture Recognition Tech. LevelUp Grabs $12M From Highland, Google Ventures To Take Its Mobile Payment Solution National. Creative Market Nabs $1.3M From SV Angel, CrunchFund To Become An Etsy For Digital Design.
SocialFlow Lets Marketers Double-Down On Popular Tweets With Real-Time Analytics. Threadflip Raises $6.5M From Shasta, Chris Sacca And Others, Launches Mobile App. Eventster Brings Crowdsourced Event Discovery To iPhone & iPad. With A Focus On Childcare Centers, Mom Trusted Raises $1M+ For Its Early Education Marketplace. Wanelo Raises $2M … But Is Distilling Pinterest To Products The Right Idea? Like PhoneGap In The Cloud: Icenium Debuts A New Cross-Platform Mobile App Development Platform (Invites) Enterprise Cloud Security Firm Qualys Files For $100 Million IPO. Mobile Payments: A Trillion Dollar Industry… Once Everyone Can Actually Make A Payment.
With $20 Billion In Consumer Debt Under Management, Credit Sesame Closes $12 Million Series B. Gigya Grabs $15.3M From Benchmark, Adobe To “Socialize” Your Business. Big Data Analytics Startup Datameer Brings Hadoop To The Desktop. Social Maps App CityMaps Arrives Boston, Rolls Out Local Recommendations. More On Meebo: Price Is Around $100M, Product Team To Work On Google+ Publisher Tools, Layoffs Hit Sales. Meet The Next 10 Startups To Join NYC-Based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.
Clarizen Raises Another $12M For Project Management. New Social eBooks Retailer Zola Books Launches Private Beta, Raises $1M From Prominent Authors. MapMyFitness Works Out $9M From Austin, Milestone Ventures For Better Fitness Tracking. Accel-Backed Payments Gateway Provider Braintree Goes International With Expansion Into 30 New Countries.