The Business Owner Journal Private Label | The Business Owner. Online Community For Small Businesses Manta Raises $44M From Norwest Venture Partners. Manta, an online community dedicated entirely to small business, has raised $44 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to $61 million. With this investment NVP’s Jon Kossow and David Su have joined Manta’s board of directors, which includes previous investors Athenian Venture Partners and Reservoir Venture Partners. Manta is an online community meets social network for small business owners. The network aims to help these businesses easily gain an online presence, increased visibility with customers and prospects and ultimately increase sales.
“Our investment in Manta is in line with NVP’s strategy to invest in profitable, rapidly growing business leaders,” said David Su, vice president of Norwest. Currently, the company is seeing 3,000 business owners joining per day (up from 1,000 last year), and now has 2 million members. Business Audience Marketing Company Bizo Raises $10M. Bizo, a company offering technology to help advertisers reach a business audience, has raised $10 million in a Series B round of funding.
The company has now raised a total of $20 million. Crosslink Capital led the round, and the firm’s newest partner David Silverman is joining Bizo’s board of directors. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Venrock also participated. Bizo’s ad platform includes ad targeting and audience analytics, and it uses that platform to sell both brand display and direct response ads.
CEO Russell Glass says Bizo now reaches 80 percent of the business audience in the United States, whether they’re making purchase decisions in the office or at home. At the end of last year, Bizo claims it reached an annual revenue run rate of $18 million. Bizo has been working on new technologies too, Glass says, for example by investing social marketing and video tools. The company spun off from ZoomInfo. Community - Forums: Looking for investors or partners. NFIB - National Federation of Independent Business - Small Business Association.