Agente Imóvel: sueco lança site que permite pagar online o aluguel de imóveis por temporada, além de reservar para compra. Para impulsionar o mercado, empreendedor sueco lança no Brasil o Agente Imóvel, primeiro site a realizar a reserva e efetuar o pagamento online para casos de locação por temporada. O site aposta em sistema de inteligência de busca para levar a melhor opção de imóvel para quem procura, seja para compra, aluguel ou apenas temporada. O site conta com parcerias e apoios de Cielo, Amex, Braspag, clientes especializados em comercialização e consultoria de imóveis como Lopes, BrasilBrokers, Leardi e Apolar, e 300 mil usuários já acessaram os 170 mil imóveis disponibilizados. Segundo pesquisa da Associação de Investidores Estrangeiros no Setor Imobiliário (Afire), o Brasil assumiu a segunda posição como melhor mercado imobiliário do mundo, ficando apenas atrás dos Estados Unidos, com 18,6% dos especialistas indicando que o país oferece as melhores oportunidades de retorno de investimentos no setor imobiliário.
Reserva e pagamento online Inteligência de mercado Força nas parcerias e clientes Google+ With $1.3M In New Funding, CodeGuard Launches Its Free Website Backup, Monitoring Service. At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last May, the unanimous winner of the “Audience Choice” award was a young, Atlanta-based startup called CodeGuard. The startup caught the audience’s attention based on a simple value proposition: To become a “time machine for your website.” In other words, CodeGuard’s free service allows any site owner to back up their website and revert to earlier versions, while monitoring for infections.
After months of tweaking and beta testing, today CodeGuard is officially pulling back the curtain on a new-and-improved service, backed by a fresh $1.3 million in funding from Imlay Investments and a host of angel investors, including Palaniswamy Rajan, Bert Ellis, Tom Noonan, Matt Chanoff, and Merrick Furst. The new funding adds to the $500K the startup raised back in June of last year from Imlay and others. All of CodeGuard’s seed investors have returned to re-up their investments and give the startup the fuel it needs to expand — now just under $2 million total.
Doxo Now Lets You Receive & Pay Bills From Your Mobile Device. Since launching in mid-2011, doxo has been on a mission to make your life paperless. With its “digital filing cabinet” software, the Seattle-based startup aims to create a single place for users to manage their bills, be they phone, cable, or credit card. Of course, the world is quickly going mobile, and payment solutions are going right along with it. So, in an effort to close the loop between web and mobile services, Doxo is today launching a new mobile payment and management solution, along with a new Android app, to finally allow users to both receive and pay bills from their mobile devices.
Doxo’s new Android app complements the updated iOS app the startup launched last summer so that the pair of apps now allow users to take advantage of mobile bill payment and management on top of its flagship “digital file cabinet” and secure backup offerings. That being said, Doxo has the potential to significantly mitigate a huge pain in the ass for consumers. ComparaOnline.com Raises US$5M, Receives Investment from Kaszek Ventures (en español) (ComparaOnline.com) May 28, 2012 – ComparaOnline.com, a platform that compares insurance, financial and telecommunications products, received a significant investment from Kaszek Ventures, a Latin American venture capital firm focused on supporting technology startups. With the support of Kaszek, ComparaOnline.com completed a US$5M round of financing that also included investments from six private investors and angels. The capital will be used to fund the company’s expansion plans. ComparaOnline.com levanta USD 5 millones para financiar plan de crecimiento (ComparaOnline.com) 28 de mayo de 2012 – ComparaOnline.com –comparador de seguros, productos financieros y de telecomunicaciones– recibió una importante inversión de Kaszek Ventures, la principal firma de venture capital de la región, enfocada en apoyar startups de tecnología que cuenten con un alto potencial de desarrollo.
Interactive Outdoor Ad Startup smartDIGITAL Raises $2.7M. SmartDIGITAL, a startup that makes interactive ad displays, has raised $2.7 million in a Series A round of funding. smartDIGITAL displays are already available in Chicago and Miami, says co-founder and CEO George Burciaga, with plans to roll them out to 10 markets over the next 36 months. They’re essentially large kiosks with multi-touch screens that allow consumers to interact with an ad rather than simply staring at it as they walk or drive by. The goal, Burciaga says, is to “inspire them to do something” — whether it’s sharing a photo, purchasing a Groupon deal (yes, Groupon is a partner), or emailing something to their phone.
That means the consumer is more engaged, and it also means the advertiser has a better idea about whether their ads are actually working. And the early results are impressive. The round was led by Advantage Capital Partners. Badgeville Levels Up With $25M From InterWest & More To Gamify Enterprise. When Badgeville launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco back in 2010 and took home the “Audience Choice Award,” its mission to help companies big and small leverage gamification elements like leaderboards, badges, leveling-up, experience points, etc. to increase customer engagement seemed intriguing — if not a little gimmicky.
Fast forward to today, and some may still cringe at the word (and its overuse), gamification is reaching the tipping point. As Mayfield Fund Managing Director Tim Chang recently wrote in a must-read post, gamification is now moving beyond its early adopting verticals, like media and fitness, and is no longer content to just play in the realm of consumers and end users. It’s ready to play in enterprise. Badgeville’s vision of a web and business experience being re-shaped by game dynamics is not only being validated by the media, but by investors, too. So why all the hubbub? For more on Badgeville, check ‘em out at home here. Junar raises $1.2M from Aurus, Austral Capital, Angel Investors. (Junar) May 29, 2012 – Chile-based Junar, a leader in open data platforms, announced that it has raised $1.2 million in initial funding. The round was led by Aurus, Austral Capital and top angel investors from Latin America and the US. To view this press release in Spanish please click here.
Full press release:JUNAR RAISES $1.2 MILLION AND LAUNCHES THE EASIEST-TO-USE OPEN DATA PLATFORM TO POWER THE DATA ECONOMY Palo Alto, California – May 29, 2012 – Junar, the Open Data platform leader for the Data Economy, today unveiled the Junar Open Data Platform, a next generation data management system. Its cloud-based platform enables businesses, governments, and other organizations to take the complexity and guesswork out of having to develop their own proprietary open data software and makes it easy to unlock the hidden value of Big Data. The company also announced over 200 organizations participated in its early access program and it has raised initial funding of $1.2 million. iPad Only No More: Inkling Debuts HTML5-Powered E-Book App For The Web. Inkling, the San Francisco-based startup that’s known for making super slick interactive digital versions of college textbooks and other educational titles for the iPad, has debuted its first ever platform for the web browser.
‘Inkling for Web’ requires no Flash or other plug-ins, and is powered entirely by technologies such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript, Inkling CEO Matt McInnis said in an interview this week. This means that Inkling titles, which had previously been viewable only through Inkling’s native iPad app, can now be viewed on any up-to-date webkit-based browser such as Chrome or Safari by anyone with an Inkling account. All current and future Inkling titles are now available through the new web interface — with things such as 3-D graphics, videos and audio features fully included. Every part of each title will have its own unique URL so that instructors can send out links to certain sections. Increasing Its Potential Market By 10X — In A Snap The Open Web: Pros Outweigh The Cons. Here’s Johnny! SkySQL Raises Another $2.5m To Give Oracle Nightmares. SkySQL plans to be something of a thorn in Oracle’s side. As you’ll recall MySQL, which as a free database platform annoyed Oracle, was sold to Sun and then Oracle bought Sun.
That was supposed to keep a lid on things. Now with MySQL under its wing, Oracle plans to move those MySQL users over to Oracle databases in due course. But it can’t push things too hard due to EU competition rules in place for the next five years. So guess what? That gives SkySQL – backed previously by the former founders of MySQL – a window to come back and start re-supporting all those dedicated die-hard Sun/MySQL fans. They’re baaack….. And to do it they’ve raised an additional €2 million in Series A funding from California Technology Ventures, LLC (CTV).
At the same time they’ve brought in Patrik Sallner as new CEO, who was previously VP of Professional Services at F-Secure Corporation which delivered cloud storage solutions to large telcos. This is one to watch. Site Consulta Remédios Recebe Investimento. O Consulta Remédios é um site de utilidade pública com mais de 8 milhões de páginas vistas todo mês, entre busca de medicamentos e comparação de preços.
Recentemente, grande parte do negócio foi adquirido pelo Grupo Codal, de Curitiba. Com uma nova estratégia, o site está sendo completamente reformulado e deve ser relançado ainda no mês de Junho. O Grupo Codal já investiu em diversos setores, como imóveis, precatórios, comunicação e agora está apostando em startups. “A tecnologia aliada a um bom serviço está fazendo a diferença no mercado e na vida das pessoas. A ideia do Consulta Remédios surgiu há muitos anos.
O serviço, que começou atraindo profissionais de farmácia e de toda a área de saúde, caiu no gosto do consumidor e cresceu muito durante os anos. 1M Students Strong, Echo360 Secures $31M From Steve Case, Ted Leonsis To Flip Higher Ed. As the old school gives way to the new, technology has begun to play an increasingly active role in the learning process — from primary to higher education. This has given rise to “blended learning,” or the strategic blending of face-to-face instruction with learning environments mediated by technology — be that by way of digital textbooks, video, learning management systems, social networking, and more. Another enabler of this shift to blended learning comes in the shape of “lecture capture” solutions, which allow educational institutions to convert their professors’ lectures into digital media so that students can later have access to that content, on desktops and mobile devices. Last week, The Washington Post reported that one of the leaders in this area of blended learning, the Washington D.C.
-based Echo360, had taken on a big chunk of capital to fuel an ambitious mission to “reach 50 percent of U.S. college students in the next five years,” said CEO Fred Singer. Death To Powerpoint! Piccsy Rethinks The Pitchdeck, Gets Tons Of Pageviews. Your Powerpoint pitchdeck is so boring. So. Freaking. Boring. Although tech bloggers aren’t sent startup’s actual pitchdecks as often as investors are (thankfully), we’re still walked through them on dreadful, “let me read to you from my Powerpoint” phone calls more often than should be socially acceptable. That’s why when image aggregator Piccsy, which is simultaneously a competitor to Pinterest as well as a top 20 content source for the site, pinged us to take a look at its pitch deck, we were pleasantly surprised.
A pitchdeck that’s actually fun to read? Piccsy.com/investors hosts the company’s public pitchdeck, and it’s a striking, visual representation of the data that would be typically found in bullet-pointed slideshows. “We began with a problem (how to get investors to see our deck) and came up with a solution (create something unique, beautiful, informative, and easy to share), as opposed to going with the status quo,” Eckler explains. The screenshot above is just a snippet. Zillow Completes Its $40M RentJuice Acquisition.
Zillow, the popular online real estate search engine, just announced that it has closed its previously announced (and rumored) $40 million acquisition of RentJuice. With RentJuice, Zillow now owns a rental relationship management service for landlords, property managers and rental brokers that helps them market their inventory and client relationships. RentJuice is currently being used to manage one million rental units and their rental listings. As the U.S. real estate market slowed down over the last few years, Zillow started to focus more on rentals, too. Now, Zillow considers rentals to be one of its three core businesses besides real estate and mortgages. The market for rental listings is, says Zillow, still highly fragmented. Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff argues that he sees “a huge market opportunity in rentals.
RentJuice launched in 2009. Gartner: Over $172B In Mobile Payments In 2012 With 212M Users; SMS, Web Most Popular Transaction Methods. No, NFC still hasn’t come to the iPhone — or many other devices, for that matter. But this does not appear to be stopping the momentum in the world of mobile payments. Research out today from Gartner says that this year will see more than $171.5 billion in mobile payment transactions — a rise of over 60 percent on 2011′s $105.9 billion — with 212.2 million people (up 32 percent from 160.5m in 2011) using some form of mobile payment service.
And what’s fuelling the rise? Despite the rise of smartphones, it’s legacy-based services like SMS and web-based transactions. Longer term, Gartner believes that transactions will reach a volume of $617 billion by 2016 — with average growth slightly slowing down to around 42 percent — with 448 million users using such services. Her prediction: NFC will be used but not for payments: “Tticketing, rather than retail payment, will drive NFC transactions,” she says. Other notable points from the research: – Fragmentation. . – Who is in the driving seat? HoozTrippin Helps You Find Travel Buddies. If you’ve got a vacation coming up, a startup called HoozTrippin is aiming to make it more fun by connecting you with other travelers. Co-founder and CEO Steven Oh (who was formerly the head of product at Rotten Tomatoes and Movielink), describes the site as “Match.com for travelers,” except broader: “We don’t limit ourselves to just singles.” In some ways, it sounds like a complement to a service like Triptrotting, which connects travelers to locals.
Local guides can make for a better trip, for sure, but so can hanging out with fellow travelers — for example, that’s one of the big reasons many of my friends prefer staying in hostels. So when you enter your trip information into HoozTrippin, you can see a list of other members who are going to be in the same location at the same time. If you enter the specific hotel, you can even see who else has said they’re going to stay there. Then you can send those other travelers a message or a “wink”. HoozTrippin is self-funded. With $5.5M From Google Ventures, Opus, Crittercism Launches An App Performance Management Solution. YC Alum/Construction Disruptor PlanGrid Nails $1.1M Seed Funding From Box, 500 Startups, And More.
Emotion Measurement Platform Affectiva Wins $500K NSF Grant. Dropcanvas Offers Up Free, Dead Simple File Sharing, But Can It Last? MongoDB Developer 10gen Raises $42 Million Round Led By New Enterprise Associates. Ace Metrix Raises $8M For Smarter TV Ad Testing. Appsplit Is Crowdfunding For Apps. Salesforce Lines Up Against Oracle On Social Push; Buys Buddy Media For $689M. Diffbot Raises $2 Million Angel Round For Web Content Extraction Technology. Datahero Wants To Democratize Data Visualization And Analysis, Raises $1M Round Led By Foundry Group. A/B Tester Optimizely Raises Funding From Battery And Google Ventures, Plans Mobile Launch. Marketplace For Event Venues ‘Eventup’ Brings In $1.8M From Lightbank, NEA And More. Flikdate Announces The World’s First Mobile Live Video Dating Service. SEO Was Yesterday. 500 Startups’ PostRocket Fires Up $610K For Facebook News Feed Optimization. Solar Mosaic Raises $2.5 Million Series A To Be The “Kickstarter For Solar”
Big Data For Higher Ed: With $4.1M From First Round, Floodgate, Former Kaplan Exec Launches Civitas Learning. UK Daily Deals Aggregator Coupobox Sells Up To DealCollector In Another Sign Of Consolidation. MoneySupermarket To Acquire MoneySavingExpert For £87 million. First Impressions On Fluent, The Startup Promising “The Future Of Email” Business-Focused Ad Startup Bizo Launches Self-Serve Retargeting. More Cloud Investment: Sonian Picks Up $13.6M For Cloud Archiving And Search. YC-Backed GoCardless Launches PayLinks, A Bitly For Payments. IT Services Consolidation: CGI To Buy Logica For $2.6B (And Crashes Logica’s Site In Process) Educational App Maker Mindshapes Picks Up $4M Round Led By Index; Adds Big 5 Publishers To Magic Town.