January 09, 2008
Earth Class Mail Raises $13.3M First Round And Gets Its Own Reality Show
We have been boosters of Earth Class Mail and we are not surprised to see that investors are too. The Seattle-based startup has just closed a $13.3M Series A round led by Ignition Partners. Angel groups contributed about half the round. Earth Class Mail previously broke the record as the startup that has raised the most cash from the the Keiretsu Forum.
We also think its cool that Earth Class Mail will be the subject of a reality TV show called "Start-up Junkies" on MOJO HD (a channel that we get1). The show is scheduled to begin Thursday night, January 24 at 10 pm.
What's neat about Earth Class Mail is that it allows you to get rid of your mail box and its junk mail. This is particularly useful for road warriors or people with two homes who don't want to miss valuable snail mail. Users can choose to have the mail shredded, forwarded to a physical address or opened and viewed electronically in a PDF format. Rates start at $10 per month.
Check this recent CNBC interview with Earth Class Mail's CEO
View - site
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December 03, 2007
Private Image Hosting Service Drop.io Raises $1.25M
We had thought that when word came out from Google that it would offer hosting that this would give investors pause from backing more image hosting startups Not so. NYC-based Drop.io has raised $1.25M in a Series A round of funding led by RRE Ventures.
For sure Drop.io gives us a new twist on hosting, as its set up for temporary, private use. Let's say your want to have some photos hosted that you want to share with some friends but you don't want the world to see. You can go to Drop.io and share with others using a temporary URL. Centernetworks points out that is particularly helpful for people like agencies who don't want people to see their media assets.
Drop.io was founded in the summer of 2007 by Sam Lessin and Darshan Somashekar. The two, who met at Harvard, explain that the idea hit them that they both maintained basic FTP sites just to move stuff around privately.
See this CenterNetworks Review/Walk-through
BTW - if you like the .io , '.io' is the top level domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory.
View - site
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October 25, 2007
Webshots Packs Its Suit Case Again As CNET Sells It To American Greetings
CNET Networks has sold its Webshots subsidiary to American Greetings for $45M in cash. CNET has bought iin August 2004 Webshots for $70M. Webshots launched in 1996 as a professional photo screensaver/wallpaper site, but expanded into photo sharing in 1999. Excite@Home bought Webshots in 1999. Two years later Webshots' management team bought Webshots back from Excite for pennies on the dollar and then subsequently sold it to CNET for another big gain in 2004.
Why would CNET sell Webshots at this point and at a loss? Because CNET is the New York Knicks of online media. Webshots is one unit at CNET that has been showing success, with traffic up 25% from last year to 7.2M uniques in September. Hang on to Webshots at least another year and at least CNET doesn't take a loss on it. What's more CNET doesn't need the money. It just closed a $200M credit line. CNET's CEO says it was a tough decision and hints at upcoming strategic changes which will become apparent to us. Still we can't imagine they can give us a reason for panic selling on Webshots.
Read - anouncement
Posted at 05:44 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 26, 2007
iPhotoMeasure: Take Roofing Measurements With Just A Photo
Measuring tapes are cool but sometimes a measurement has too many turns or is too long for a tape. iPhotoMeasure has developed software that allows you to take measurements using a photo of the subject area. The software costs $100-$120.
Tarzana, CA-based iPhotoMeasure has raised $400K in seed funding.
View - site
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August 08, 2007
Scripps Buys Photo Sharing Site Pickle
During what seemed like the height of the photo sharing startup boom last year a common reaction was what will become of all these sites, especially the funded ones that require liquidity? There are only so many Googles and Yahoos. Well the number of buyers has surprised us with companies like HP, Adobe, and now newspaper publisher and broadcaster Scripps doing M&A deals to buy photo sharing software.
Today Scrips announced that it has bought Pickle. The price hasn’t been disclosed although PaidContent reports the price is $4.7M. For Scripps, this its its second recent digital deal - last month, Scripps bought recipe site Recipezaar.
Pickle enables uploads of photos and videos from computers, mobile phones or digital cameras to any Web site. Scripps plans to use the technology to encourage photo-based community around its sites like HGTV, DIYNetwork and Food Network.
Launched in June 2006, Pickle was bootstrapped by its founders who say they sold a their Internet consulting firm to CMGI in the 1990's. It then raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Delmag Ventures and others.
Read - announcement
Posted at 06:47 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 24, 2007
Nokia Pays Close To $100M For Photo Sharing's Twango
Launched in October 2006 by Microsoft execs, photo sharing site Twango was today bought by Nokia for $96.8M. 21 Ventures and Garage Investors backed Twango. The Wall Street Journal reports that Nokia will launch a paid content addition to Twango's ad supported model. Twango had launched wireless upload functionality before the deal.
Read - announcement
Read - WSJ report
Posted at 02:49 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 23, 2007
Google Shores Up Maps With ImageAmerica Buyout
These are glory days for cartographers thanks to Google and its rivals race to deliver the best in maps. Today, Google bought ImageAmerica, an aerial camera maker, for an undisclosed amount.
Google gets a lot of marketing mileage from Google Earth and Maps. Every TV news program it seems uss Google Earth images boasting the Google brand. So even if Google is not able to earn significant revenues from its maps, this effort to have more impressive map technology than its rivals ads to Google's prestige.
Read - announcement
Posted at 01:18 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 20, 2007
Mojo Watch: Fotolog Gets Google Partnership
This deal actually sounds like a bigger win for Google than for Fotolog, but photo blogging site Fotolog gives us some impressive numbers in the announcement. The photo sharing site is based in New York but is apparently strong in Europe and Latin America.
+ The site has 15M unique users and 3.5B page views per month.
+ Fotolog is close to reaching 10M registered users. 4M new members joined the site in the first half of 2007.
This looks like there were some revenue guarantees in here from Google. Google will deliver search functionality and advertising on Fotolog's network under a three-year agreement. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Fotolog is backed by several angel investors as well as BV Capital and 3i.
Read - WebProNews post
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June 28, 2007
Shutterfly Buys Custom Children's Book Publisher Make It About Me!
Make It About Me/now Shutterfly will sell you this custom made book with your child's photos embedded for $40.
Shutterfly (NASDAQ:SFLY) has bought out Make it About Me!, a publishing company that makes customized children’s books including My Adventure on Sesame Street and My Amazing Alphabet Adventures.
Read - announcement
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June 19, 2007
Qualcomm Invests In Cell Phone Camera Picture Compression's Pixsense
PixSense looks like it is going to be a big background player. The startup sells compression tools to wireless carriers that it claims reduces the file size of photos and videos up to 90% while and optimizes network transmission with no loss in media quality. Thus PixSense decreases operating costs for wireless carriers so that they can offer rich-media services to mobile subscribers. An ongoing problem with wireless social networking is that it can take ages to upload photos. When you get your bill you can't believe you spent $5 to upload a few pictures. Pixsense raised a seed round in March 2006 with $425K.
Read - announcement
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June 18, 2007
3D CAD Software Maker SpaceClaim Raises $13M+
Having assembled a CAD dream team, SpaceClaim has raised another round of funding. Investors are saying that SpaceClaim is pushing CAD innovation like nobody else in the past two decades. SpaceClaim is positioned as both a front end tool for conceptual mechanical design and a downstream tool for working with 3D design models. Among SpaceClaim's founders is Mike Payne, co-founder of PTC and SolidWorks.
Reviewers have been blown away by SpaceClaim
SpaceClaim has closed $13.5M in Series B funding led by existing investors, North Bridge Venture Partners and Kodiak Venture Partners, which co-led Series A funding of $7.5M. Also participating in the financing round are returning investor Borealis Ventures and Needham Capital Partners.
View - site
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May 22, 2007
Custom Gift Card Printer Arroweye Raises $14M
When Cardways.com (unit of Chicago-based Arroweye Solutions) first offered consumers the option of adding photos to greeting cards five years ago about 15% used the feature, compared to around 45% today. The company has been pushing this angle and now has deals with 20 retailers that let consumers put a picture of their pet, children, vacation or anything else on two-thirds of the gift card. The other third of the card displays the retailer's logo. Those retailers include Overstock.com, Linens 'n Things and Circuit City.
Cardways.com also has a deal that will allow users who upload their pictures to Yahoo! Photos to add those images to gift cards. Cardways.com charges the consumer $4.50 above the value on the gift card to customize the card, and the retailer gets 28% of that fee.
Today, Arroweye Solutions has raised $14M in Series C funding. Baird Venture Partners led the deal, and was joined by Adams Street Partners.
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May 10, 2007
Web 1.0 Photo Biz Sequoia Media Ekes Out Funds
There is so much innovation going on in online photo and multimedia. Many of these companies were just founded in the past 6 months. Here we have a company that was founded in 2003 that is clearly unable to keep up with the fireworks created by newer companies.
Sequoia Media Group closed an $8.8M round of funding today with its current equity partner Amerivon. Sequoia's aVinci is a tool to create multi-media productions using personal photos and videos.
Nothing against the folks at Seqouia and their investors and we know that the online photo and multimedia sector is hot, but we don't see them having the stuff to compete against the newcomers. Time to sell or to buy a small startup that has talent.
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Posted at 12:03 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 09, 2007
Mixercast Launches With $2.6M
San Mateo-based Mixercast (aka Nanocast) has launched in Alpha. The attractive site and UI allows users to mix personal photos and videos with professional photos, videos and music from ABC, National Geographic and others. Widgets can be applied to MySpace and Facebook pages and blogs.
Mixercast was co-founded by CEO Jennifer Cooper, who is a former Yahoo executive who managed the company's broadband video content strategy and left in December. The startup raised $2.6M in funding from ComVentures. She claims to have some top Flash talent on board and we don't doubt it.
Mixercast plans to share advertising revenue with users when they incorporate ad-sponsored images and videos in their Mixercast creations. There are so many companies doing photo slide-shows
and multimedia it is bewildering. Thanks to great reviews, Mixercast will get in front of powerusers, but it will need to do some good partnering and marketing to branch out to the masses.
Read - Exclusive: Former Top Yahoo exec leads MixerCast out of stealth mode (Silicon Valley Watcher)
Read - Mixercast review
Posted at 10:38 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 08, 2007
Analysis: The New Math - How Did MySpace Value PhotoBucket
If we had a dollar for every time we see someone roll their eyes about the return of the "bubble." Folks don't want to see companies get bought at valuations that are stretched thin. They don't want to see another Mark Cuban created. Why? Because the bubble aftermath sucked. We all knew the bubble was nuts at the time but Blodgett, Meeker and Co. told us to chill.
With that in mind, we think the discussions over the valuation of PhotoBucket and other big deals are somewhat important. If the deal is officially confirmed at $300M, that is 50x trailing revenue and over $17 per monthly unique visitor.
Mike Arrington calls the $300M (with earnout) that MySpace paid for PhotoBucket a steal. His logic is that:
+ Google paid $1.65B for YouTube. By the time the deal closed, the Google stock was worth nearly $1.8B.
MySpace paid 1/5 of that. YouTube had little revenue, while PhotoBuckets projects it will make $25M in 2007. Photobucket has 80% of the visitors that YouTube had when it was acquired.
+ MySpace got a discount when it cut off PhotoBucket's users before the deal to show who wears the pants.
+ In a more recent post, he hedges, however, that PhotoBucket and MySpace might have 100% user overlap, so for $250M its gets no new users.
+ Valleywag accuses TechCrunch of being a shill for PhotoBucket's iBankers Lehman Brothers. We don't have any way of assessing this information.
Henry Blodget takes the case even further, arguing that PhotoBucket could barely give itself away, a dramatic statement he agrees.
Counterpoint is Microsoft's Don Dodge who instructs Blodget and Arrington to come to their senses:
"At some point the end user of all these free services is the same user and they can't be monetized any further no matter how many new services are added. Advertisers will eventually figure this out. Ad rates will drop. Revenues will drop...and stock prices will drop. It is all about the stock price. No one cares about real revenues and earnings as long as the stock price is high.When stock prices drop everyone along the chain starts to rethink their assumptions about value and ROI. The changes ripple all the way back up the food chain. The individual stockholders get more conservative and move out of bubble stocks. The Internet companies stop acquiring because their stock price has deflated. The entrepreneurs stop agreeing to acquisitions because the rewards are less. The VCs stop funding new startups because the risk/reward ratio doesn't work.
We have seen this before. It was the nuclear winter that lasted from 2000 to 2003. It is amazing how quickly we forget. As I always say "fear is temporary...greed is permanent"
HipMojo joins the naysers arguing that PhotoBucket is no YouTube. His point here is that Photobucket is just a utility and does not command attention.
Posted at 04:13 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 07, 2007
Report: MySpace Buys Photobucket
UPDATE: The story has legs with a couple of other sites claiming that they have confirmed the deal in the $250M range, with earn-outs up to $50M.
In the never ending race to get the scoop, we are finding a torrent of reports on deals that often do not come to pass. So we take today's report that MySpace has bought PhotoBucket with a grain of salt as neither company has confirmed the deal at the time of this post.
ValleyWag reports that MySpace has bought Photobucket. It sounds plausible given reports that PhotoBucket had hired Lehman Bros. to find someone willing to pay $300M. Moreover, MySpace had recently made a point to Photobucket my blocking Photobucket access points. Photobucket is backed by Trinity Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. MySpace has a competing service, but its users overwhelmingly show that they prefer Photobucket.
We would be very surprised if PhotoBucket was able to get anything like $300M given that the company only made $6.3M last year and operates at a loss due to high bandwidth costs.
Read - PhotoBucket Goes To MySpace (ValleyWag)
Posted at 02:01 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Angel Funded Phanfare Takes On Photobucket
Given the heightened interest over Photobucket, it is timely to look at some competitors and Phanfare is definitely one to watch.
No doubt about it, Doubleclick had some good people on-board years ago but over-extended itself with M&A deals. Phanfare CEO/founder Andrew Erlichson came to Doubleclick as CEO & co-founder of Flashbase, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2000. At DoubleClick, he was VP of Technology for the Research and Development Group.
After leaving DoubleClick he went on to found Phanfare in 2004. Phanfare costs: $7 per month, $55 per year or $300 to be a lifetime member. The company offers both a downloadable client and web-based service. And it does both photos and video. The company says it has over 5K users, 80% of which pay the annual subscription. So that $275K in revenues per year, well behind Photobucket but not shameful.
CEO Erlichson' boss at DoubleClick, Dwight Merriman, is an investor. Other angel investors in Phanfare include: Fabrice Grinda who is founder & CEO of ringtone startup Zingy and Acadia Woods Partners' Jeff Samberg.
In addition to Photobucket, Phanfare also competes with Fotki, Pbase, Smugmug, and CNET Webshots.
Posted at 01:27 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 03, 2007
Adobe Buys Rich Media Hosting's Scene7
Adobe has acquired Sence7 for an undisclosed amount. Scene7's investors Investors include: QVC, Liberty Media, Steelpoint Capital Partners, Rhodes Partners, and Hearst.
Scene7 sells rich-media hosting services, specifically for delivering images to Web sites. Scene7 recently indicated that it is powering photo uploads for Zillow.com. It does a lot of work with online catalogs and eCommerce sites and claims ROI improvements.
Scene7 is based in Novato, California and was founded in 2002 by a Broderbund software exec. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The move continues Adobe's expansion, headlined by its buyout of Macromedia, into the Web multimedia software.
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May 02, 2007
Getty Buys Punchstock
Getty Images announced the latest in a series of acquisitions, by buying PunchStock. We don't yet know how much Getty paid. Based in Madison, WI, PunchStock, adds a third stock image unit to the company. There is Getty's original business, iStockphoto which Getty acquired in 2006 and now PunchStock.
Getty is feeling it. The company reported record quarterly revenues of $212.6M, up 6% compared to $200.9M in the first quarter of 2006. The amount exceeded Getty's forecast and Wall Street estimates.
Punchstock has an absurd number of photos in its flirting category
Posted at 01:31 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
PDF Search Tech Startup Tizra Raises Half a Million
We hate PDF, but maybe Tizra can make it suck less. Rhode Island-based Tizra is meant to ease searching of PDFs and make it easier to distribute and sell data from PDFs. Today, Tizra has closed on a $500K from Slater Technology Fund. Our first impression is that Tizra needs help with its marketing. The site doesn't impress and lacks clarity. But again, we're biased because we hate PDF.
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Posted at 01:13 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 12, 2007
OnRequest Images Raises $9M
Seattle's OnRequest Images has raised $9M from Menlo Ventures and current investors Maveron and Frazier Technology Ventures. OnRequest is an odd bird investment. The company sells a range of photo management services to corporations to help them manage their brands.
It claims to employ a global network of more than 1,600 photographers, combines that with pre-and-post production services, and Web-based image management, licensing and rights management services, and brand imagery consulting, OnRequest Images empowers brands to develop the right visual approach based on culture, ethnicity, and demographics.
OnRequest claims to give companies original photos that other companies can't use. It points to two advertisers that used the same stock photograph of a man in their ads -- Met Life and Viagra. Do viewers notice? Who knows.
Posted at 02:27 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 03, 2007
Founder Invests $15M In Custom Book Publisher SharedBook
NYC-based SharedBook has created a custom book publishing platform that allows users to create birthday books, yearbooks, or other photo albums. SharedBook products are sold directly to consumers as well as via private label deals. So far, Sharedbook has announced deals with:
+ Legacy.com, online obituary publisher solutions for the newspaper industry.
+ CarePages, an Internet service that builds community among family and friends when someone is receiving care.
+ 30 Minute Photos which is dedicated to scanning large quantities of photos.
+ Sportography, a sports year book publisher.
This book will set you back $27 but what price for memories?
SharedBook has received $15M in private funding to date from a single investor group led by Yossie Hollander.
Prior to SharedBook, Mr. Hollander founded New Dimension Software, where he was chairman and CEO, and took it public in 1992. The company was sold to BMC Software in 1999 for $650M. In 1990, he founded Jacada [NASDAQ: JCDA], another enterprise software firm, and is currently serving as its chairman.
Competitors include Blurb and QOOP.
Posted at 07:09 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 02, 2007
Scrapblog Launches. Raises Funds
Coral Gables, FL-based Scrapblog has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Longworth Venture Partners. PEHub reports that amount of funding may be $2.5M.
Scrapblog is a platform for users to mix their photos, videos, audio, text and other creative elements to create multimedia scrapbooks. Users can aggregate content from their disks or their social media sites like YouTube, Photobucket, or Flickr. Scrapblog supports direct publishing to Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook and other social networking platforms.
Scrapblog has enough competitors to make a full scrapbook of, and many of them have raised funding. They include Photobucket, along with two newer players, RockYou, Slide, Tabblo (bought by HP), and OneTrueMedia is
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March 22, 2007
HP Buys Photo Startup Tabblo
Launched in May of last year in Beta, Tabblo was bought today by HP for an undisclosed amount. Cambridge, MA-based Tabblo has raised a $5M A-round from from Matrix partners. USA Today describes Tabblo: "Throw in one part social networking, such as Flickr, add blogging tools such as Google's Blogger and the visuals of a coffee-table art book, and you've got Tabblo....The idea isn't just to dump a bunch of pictures into a gallery, but to turn it into an online portfolio of your work."
Tabblo says it will not be merged with Snapfish, another photo startup that was bought by HP.
Tabblo's closest competitors OurStory and Snapjot may start to feel some heat to sell and get big quicker. OurStory is backed by El Dorado Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures and Venrock. Former 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou is on the board. It raised $6.3M last January. SnapJot has raised $1.5M from Ron Conway and about a dozen other angels.
View - Tabblo site
Posted at 12:42 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 14, 2007
Israel's Advasense Gets $14M For Cellphone Cameras
Advasense has raised $14M in its 3rd financing round led by Genesis Partners and Taiwan’s VentureTech Alliance.
Advasense was founded in 2004, and develops CMOS image sensors for mobile phones. Advasense says the sensors make the picture quality of cellphone cameras the equal of regular digital cameras. The sensors have ten times the light sensitivity of ordinary image sensors, and include a mechanism for stabilizing pictures against vibrations.
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March 12, 2007
Getty Images Buys Citizen Photo-Journalism Site Scoopt
Getty Images has paid an undisclosed amount for Glasgow Scotland-based startup Scoopt. Since the founding of Scoopt in 2005, the site has supplied the mediawith imagery from major world events such as the Manhattan plane crash that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle that were captured by a bystander.
Scoopt's contract has been to pay contributors 50% of the first sale and 75% of subsequent sales. Scoopt has recent competion from US-based Spy Media. Scoopt has got into the blog syndication game, but its not clear if it will continue that now that it has been bought.
Read - Getty Images Acquires Scoopt With Vision of Making Citizen Photojournalism More Accessible to the Mainstream Media (Release)
Posted at 11:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 07, 2007
Weird Bed Fellows: Photo Sharing Mojungle Bought Insurance Software Co.
Los Angeles-based Mojungle, which gets nice reviews for its mobile media sharing application and virtual photo and video sharing online community, has been bought by Ohio-based Peak Performance Solutions. Peaks says it will merge the Mojungle technology into its products. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Mojungle was founded in early 2006 and has established a large user base in a short time period. Mojungle in December aborted plans to auction itself on eBay after the company received zero bids. The company reportedly hoped to get an offer of $250K; instead Mojungle failed to secure even the $60K opening bid.
Given that Peak Performance sells insurance and risk management business applications we don't get it. Steve Isaac, CEO of Peak Performance Solutions, states: "Mojungle is a highly innovative solution that will allow cellular telephone technology capabilities to be incorporated into core insurance and risk management business application functions. At Peak, we see the potential for significant improvements in the ease of conducting business between customers, employers, suppliers, regulators, and insurance administrators. The Mojungle technology will be used to report claims when they happen. This technology will also support other critical functions such as underwriting, claims, and loss control. Mojungle represents a new model for the industry."
In December Mojungle rival Fotodunk was bought by iLike for a rumored $5M.
Posted at 02:29 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 23, 2007
Getty Images Buys Paparazzi Licensor WireImage For $200M
Getty Images [NYSE: GYI]is buying NYC-based WireImage for approximately $200M in cash. The deal also will include MediaVast, the owner of WireImage, and sub-brands FilmMagic and Contour Photos.
Getty estimates, on a preliminary basis, that the acquisition will be neutral to earnings per share, excluding amortization, in 2007 and accretive to earnings per share on a GAAP basis in 2008.
Launched in January 2001, WireImage's portfolio includes an online archive of over 8.5M images, which it licenses online. We have worked with the company in the past and can vouch that it is a well run show. The company has about 230 employees.
Wireimage was founded by two guys whose careers seemed tied at the hip. CEO Jason Nevader is a UC Berkeley grad who spent five years in investment banking at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and Salomon Brothers, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. The same can be said of President and co-founder Josh Tang.
Read - Getty Images Agrees to Acquire WireImage, a Renowned Brand in Entertainment, Event and Celebrity Imagery (Release)
Posted at 06:34 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 16, 2007
Photo Private Labeller Preclick Funded by Angels
Philly's Preclick closed its Series A financing round of $1.6M from investors LORE Associates, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Robin Hood Ventures, and SJFVentures. Preclick private labels photo services for WalMart, HP Costco, 3M, Sandisk, DotPhoto and others.
This is a pretty amazing stat: With WalMart and Costco distribution, Preclick photo software reaches 40% of US retail photo customers.
Preclick's latest product is a photo sharing IM application
View - release
Posted at 01:18 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
In Pix: Imagespan Funded. Corbis Breaks $250M In Revenues
Privately-held Corbis, the digital image company owned by Bill Gates put out a press release saying that revenue increased by 11% to $251M last year. When oh when is this thing going to IPO?
Meanwhile a much smaller business partner to Corbis, Sausalito, CA-based digital photo licensing startup ImageSpan raised series A financing from Alan Patricof of Greycroft Partners and Ron Conway of Angel Investors. It helps buyers and sellers of digital photos to buy and legally settle royalty payments.
View - Corbis release
View - Imagespan site
Posted at 01:02 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 05, 2007
Israel's Gigya Raises $4M From Benchmark For Rich Email
E-mail start-up Gigya has raised $4N from Benchmark Capital in its first round. Gigya was founded in November 2006 by several former employees of big league adware company Hotbar, which was bought by 180solutions. At this point, we don't know if this will be adware supported or banner ad supported. We are guessing the latter.
Gigya's software inserts games, video clips and graphics into e-mails in a way similar to Hotbar’s product. Users can include personal pages from MySpace in e-mails. To get started, Gigya imports your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, etc.
width="878" height="441" />
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Posted at 12:11 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Pro Photo Marketplace Digital Railroad Raises $10M
Digital Railroad closed a $10M Series B investment round led by London-based venture firm DN Capital, with existing investors Morgenthaler Ventures and Venrock Associates. The company plans to use the money to open offices internationally, staring in Milan.
NYC-based Digital Railroad is used by pro photographers and agencies to buy and sell photos. It charges $500-$700 per year to photographers.
Their online applications allow photographers to build and manage their archives
Read - DIGITAL RAILROAD SECURES $10M TO ACCELERATE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND EXPAND INTERNATIONALLY (Press release)
Posted at 10:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 25, 2007
Geneology Site The Family Post IPOs in Reverse Merger
OTC listed firm Homassist said today that it will acquire The Family Post and its parent company DigitalPost Interactive. Homeassist will be renamed to DigitalPost Interactive in the reverse merger. The Family Post provides an online service used by families for sharing photos and information.
The Family Post's Founder/CEO is Michael Sawtel who was President and COO of Interchange Corporation (now Local.com / NASDAQ-LOCM), which does Internet advertising and local search, from 2000 - 2005 and he did an IPO in October of 2004.
Creation of a Family Photo site costs from $5.95 to $15.95 per month. We don't think that the Family Post offers anything that you can't find for free on other photo sharing sites, however, they are aggressive in marketing with in-store kiosks and even a TV campaign.
Read - The Family Post Acquired By Firm In Reverse Merger (SocalTech)
Posted at 12:03 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 09, 2007
Private Label Net Photo Printer EZ Prints Gets $8M
Norcross, GA-based EZ Prints has closed on $8M from General Catalyst Partners - it has raised $18M in total to date. EZ Prints is the private label power for photo prints, personalized photo books, calendars and other products for Target and Yahoo! In fact, Yahoo! has a partnership with Target that allows photo prints to be picked up an hour after they were purchased on Yahoo!.
View - EZprint site
Posted at 07:56 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 08, 2007
DigitalGlobe Buys GlobeXplorer
Thanks to Google Earth, images from space are all the rage. Lou Dobbs had it right back in the dot.com days when left CNN to found Space.com, but he might have been early.
Today, Longmont, CO-based DigitalGlobe, which sells high resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, bought GlobeXplore from Stewart REI Group [NYSE:STC]. Digitalglobe is an interesting company that actually owns a picture taking satellite - its set to launch its second and third birds this year and next. It currently sells over two hundred million square kilometers of global imagery. It makes money by licensing access to its imagery to any manner of business - from real estate developers to oil explorers. DigitalGlobe images in fact power GoogleEarth and can also be bought on GettyImages as well as GlobeXplorer.
View DigitalGlobe and GlobeXplorer
Read - DigitalGlobe Acquires GlobeExplorer (Press release)
Posted at 02:24 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 04, 2007
Picateers Funded For Fund Raising School Photo Site
There seems to be no end to the number of biz models based on online photos. Picateers' web site combines photo sharing and photo products with school fund raising, whereby a 25% of revenues go to the school. They claim to be "well funded" by Norwest Venture Partners, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firms, along with Hollywood and Silicon Valley execs.
Picateers offers more than 30 products that can be personalized with photos or artwork including mugs, mousepads and greeting cards. They will also create product books to help schools to market their stuff.
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Posted at 02:34 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 18, 2006
More Photo Fundings - Snapjot And ImageLoop
A relative is consulting for a traditional scrap-book company where a consultant visits houses to collect memorabilia and assembles it in a scrap-book. We can't believe they are able to make a business of it without making it digital. Now at least one net start-up is making a run at this crafts business. SnapJot has raised $1.5M from Ron Conway and about a dozen other angels to launch its online service.
The 7 person start-up sells a service that allows groups to collaborate on publishing scrapbooks. It allows a group of people to share photos, comments and ideas to publish books that sell for $7 to $50 each and contain 20 to 100 pages of photos and text.
Snapjot's secret sauce is an auto-clustering, or PowerSorter, technology aimed at automatically taking a collection of photos and grouping them into jots so users don’t have to do that manually. Aside from traditional scrap book companies, Snapjot competes with Picaboo, MyPublisher, and Shutterfly among others.
Snapjot CEO Steve Douty
Meanwhile, over in Germany, as our sister site the a:c euro reports, that photo slide-show start-up ImageLoop has raised €1M. The company’s new investors include Dr. Andreas Weigend, who is former Chief Scientist with Amazon.com, the private-equity firm Otto Wolff GmbH, Bernd Schlobohm and Gerd Eickers (founders of German broadband provider QSC) and internet business angel Mehrdad Piroozram.
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Read - Biz Angels Backing German Slide.com Clone Imageloop (the a:c euro)
Posted at 11:37 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 11, 2006
Photo Album Site SmugMug Family Backed
Family businesses often like to let customers know that they can expect more passionate service than they can expect from corporate goons. The family business dares to stand up against the Walmart. That goes for SmugMug, a photo album site founded by the father/son duo of Chris and Don MacAskill.
SmugMug has grown in a crowded field, primarily by charging for service that others give away for free. In exchange, SmugMug gives users an ad free album. The start-up lays claim to 150K paying customers.
MacAskill got his start with BigWords, a popular for geeks book-store that he sold to Barnes and Noble.
The SmugMug Crew
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Posted at 04:48 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 15, 2006
Google Turns to SoCal Again For Photo M&A
Google has acquired Neven Vision, a 3 year old start-up that develops photo recognition software which is currently used in mobile phones, along with biometric applications by the US government and law enforcement agencies.
Google says it plans to use the technology to improve Picasa (another SoCal photo start-up acquired by Google) , its free photo organization application. Neven competes with VC-backed startup Riya, which is building its business around similar photo recognition functionality, enabling users to upload and sort their pictures by themes such as who and what is pictured.
Neven also has a product called iScout that may fit with Google's strategy announced today of offering digital store coupons. iScout allows users to take pictures of brands, upload to Neven and get coupons in return.
Neven's VC backers are Anthem Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Third Wave Ventures. On the board of advisers is Virtual Reality god-father Jarod Lanier.
While financial terms were not disclosed, we suspect that Google acquired Neven on the cheap. The company's competitor Riya apparently rebuffed buy-out offers whereas Neven seems to be scrambling for a business model. Google gets technology and will figure out a business model if any.
Posted at 05:06 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 24, 2006
ImageKind Funded And Set To Launch Any Day Now
With the exception of a couple of eCommerce sites that sell posters for dorms like Art.com, the online art market has been kind of a bust.
Seattle-based Curious Office Partners are incubating a new startup called ImageKind -- which as set out to create the "world's largest online art community." More specifically, it plans to allow users to more easily create large format photo prints and then to sell those prints on the site. The company is expecting a full release some time this month. "a self service platform for creating, buying or selling art."
Read - Customizing T-shirts and the launch of ImageKind (Seatte PI)
Posted at 04:23 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Blogger Meets Carnival Cruises Start-up PanRaven Funded Again
Cambridge, MA-based Panraven has yet to launch but is already on Series B. It has secured $1.75M of a $2.5M Series B round.
Panraven's idea is to partner with tour companies to create co-marketed travel picture and blog diaries for tourists. Reading between the lines, the target audience seems to be seniors who take cruises and the like and who aren't likely to know about Flickr or Blogger.
Series A Round investors included Tim Draper (Draper, Fisher VC), Manny Fernandez (formerly CEO of Gartner Group) David Flaschen (formerly CEO of R.H. Donnelly and Thompson Financial, and the Chairman and CEO of one a tour company).