alarm:clock

White Label Facebook App Maker LolApps Raises $4.5M

BT — 2008-09-05T13:47:45-05:00

Still in stealth mode, San Francisco-based LolApps has closed $4.5M from Polaris Ventures says PeHub. LolApps has done the inevitable to Facebook apps by creating white label versions of popular apps. Its first two products out the gate are a white label gift maker and a survey tool. We understand that the startup is already profitable (based on ad revenue) and has 20M users. LolApps' chairman is Ariel Polar who is involved with more startups that we can keep tracking from including TextMarks, Speeddate, and StumbleUpon. View - gift app on Facebook View - site...

We're Not Sold On Salesforce.com Right Now

BT — 2008-09-04T19:31:50-05:00

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 340 points. Why? Take your pick: weak job data, dismal retail data, or the looming threat of a housing collapse. Any and all could explain why investors fled the market today but ultimately it should make investors a little more cautious about putting money into the market. While the housing crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, the staff at tech:stocker would like to see the unemployment statistics embark on a downward trend and possibly another round of stimulus checks before we forgo our current conservative investment strategy. Since we are still thinking about yesterday's buy recommendation for Chordiant Software (CHRD:NASDAQ), we decided to take a looking at the true leader of CRM software, Salesforce.com (CRM:NYSE). Seldom do we hear anything bad about Salesforce.com and its product offerings. Everyone we know that employs one or more of Salesforce.com's product offerings thinks it has the features and flexibility to work with most businesses, regardless of their size. That says a lot. And with several pricing models making it affordable for almost anyone who has a business, it's initially hard to say Salesforce.com can't help your business. We're also big fans of...

My Good Name Protector ReputationDefender Raises $2.6M In 1st Round

BT — 2008-09-04T00:50:38-05:00

Redwood City's ReputationDefender has raised $2.6M in 1st-round funding. The startup aims to sell online name-monitoring and protection services. The idea is that with all the social networks, blogs, etc. it is getting more and more common to find pictures or comments of oneself on the net. ReputationDefender pitches plans to get such comments taken down. ReputationDefender says it made $1.2M in revenue in 2007. It sells four versions of its web reputation management services: MyChild, MyReputation, MyPrivacy and MyEdge. Services include a monthly report on what is said about a customer on the Internet and they can pay to have ReputationDefender help take negative items down or put up positive information. The company is led by Owen Tripp who was Founder, User Behavior Intelligence at eBay. Backers are European Founders Fund, Maples Investments and RP/JA Investments. ReputationDefender was originally founded in Louisville, KY in 2006 but moved to California later that year. The company raised less than $1M in angel-backed seed money before this round. View - site...

Fashion's Stylesight Raises $16M In 1st Round

BT — 2008-09-04T00:29:33-05:00

NYC's Stylesight has raised $16M in a first round from Fidelity Ventures. The site is meant to be a hub for fashion designers and marketers to congregate and communicate about their fashion lines and trends. What is a bit shocking is how much coverage has been lent to this endeavor and yet nobody gets it. What is the model here? The startup was founded back in 2004 so while this is a first round, the company must be pulling in revenues and a shot at profitability. The management team certainly doesn't stand out as being a tech savvy bunch - mostly folks who come out of the fashion biz. View - site...

Click-To-Chat Ads' LiveMarkets Bought By Traffic Marketplace

BT — 2008-09-03T23:30:13-05:00

Growing performance-based ad network Traffic Marketplace has bought LiveMarkets, a startup that has focused on an ad unit that opens a chat window so that browsers can interact with the seller. Instead of clicking on the banner ad, and taken to a web site, users are invited to click on the banner ad and bring up a chat window. A live person from the advertiser’s staff answers any queries via a typed, live chat session. It is in this chat window that advertisers are able to customize this advertising experience with there customers on a one to one level. If its 3AM and there are no reps to man the chat, the link goes to the site. Neither company is saying how much the deal is valued at. Clearly there is not a huge amount of technology here that any other ad network could not duplicate but Traffic Marketplace does have big distribution and this is something that that they can quickly push out to their advertisers to differentiate. View - site...

Chordiant: The Positives Outweigh The Negatives

BT — 2008-09-03T17:52:36-05:00

Saying September is a lousy month for investing is an understatement. We at tech:stocker highly recommend a conservative approach to any new investments this month while not overreacting to the dips that normally happen. With the Fed's gloomy outlook for the near future, we don't see them lowering interest rates anytime soon and that's not good. The next wave of foreclosures, which we have predicted for the end of this month or the beginning of October, is going to hit a little harder than we originally predicted. It's going to be ugly so increase your cash reserves until the wave retreats. Keeping with a conservative approach, we decided to take a look at Chordiant (CHRD:NASDAQ), a provider of customer experience software and services (aka CRM). On the surface, Chordiant has several issues that make us pause before hitting the "place order" button. In this economy, companies are looking to trim IT expenses and software packages like Chordiant's usually don't survive the manager's axe and savvy investors know this all to well. Back in 2000 CRM software was considered a "must own" but so many companies have openly wondered about its effectiveness and have a hard time justifying the cost...

Oracle Buys App Performance's ClearApp

BT — 2008-09-03T12:22:05-05:00

Oracle is buying Sunnyvale-based ClearApp for an undisclosed amount. The startup, which sells application performance management automation for portal, J2EE and SOA applications. ClearApp had raised around $25M in venture capital and venture debt from Sierra Ventures, 3i Group, Partech International and TriplePoint Capital. The acquisition also marks the third application management software vendor that Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) has made in less than a year. In December, Oracle bought Dutch firm Moniforce. Oracle also bought a small, Indian firm called Auptyma. Since its purchase, Auptyma's flagship Java Application Monitor has been renamed Oracle Application Diagnostics for Java. Elevator Pitch View - site...

Tech:gigger - Online Ad Sales A Candidate's Market

BT — 2008-09-02T01:36:14-05:00

Regardless of whether or not you believe that the U.S. is in a recession, it has become increasingly difficult to hire online advertising salespeople over the past year. Why? There are many factors contributing to this dichotomy, which has led to a candidate-driven market. There has been a consistent source of capital from venture capital firms looking to exploit the paradigm shift of content and its respective advertising shifting online. Start-ups in the video, mobile, and social networking space are rapidly growing their respective businesses and aggressively hiring to ensure speedy monetization of their products and services. On the other hand, major media conglomerates are experiencing decreasing revenue in traditional advertising mediums (newspaper, print, radio, television), yet seeing single to double-digit revenue growth in their digital divisions. Naturally, they too are scrambling to build and scale their digital businesses. Candidates want the safety of going to well established companies, and the VC backed companies are well aware of what they need to do to secure top talent. They are offering higher compensation packages to alleviate candidate’s desires to work at more established brands. By offering candidates higher base salaries and more aggressive commission structures, they can ensure that the...

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More Huge Solar Deals: AVA Solar Raises $104M.

BT — 2008-09-01T18:22:47-05:00

Ft. Collins' AVA Solar has raised $104M in 2nd-round funding led by DCM witg Technology Partners, GLG Partners, Bohemian Cos. and return backers Invus. The company plans to use the funds to finish building its first production facility which it says will have the capacity to produce 200 megawatts of thin film photovoltaic modules each year. AVA's bosses acknowledge that its technology is not unique, however, it boasts that its production methods are. It has in fact filed for patents on production. The patents cover a system whereby multiple, high-speed, automated production lines can mass-produce the solar panels. The startup came out of The Colorado State University's mechanical engineering laboratory. The company is now saying that they got up to a 9 month jump over previous launch plans thanks to a lease agreement with Applied Films that will allow AVA to not have to build a plant from the ground up. CNN interviews AVA Solar's founder Meanwhile, over in San Jose AVASolar competitor in the thin film photovoltaic space, Nanosolar, has raised $300M (the round was just disclosed but actually closed in March.) Investors are AES, The Carlyle Group, EDS, Energy Capital Partners, Riverstone Holdings, EDF Renewables, Lone Pine...

Not Even Rambo Could Save Rambus From Their Problems

BT — 2008-08-29T11:29:03-05:00

Today's gains in the market provided the staff at tech:stocker with some brief comfort but Dell's (DELL:NASDAQ) lackluster earnings report took away any solace we might have been experiencing. It's not that Dell's earnings announcement came as a surprise to us, we haven't liked Dell for quite some time and we'll happily detail the reasons next week. Instead, what makes us nervous is that Dell is seen as a bellwether stock for the tech industry. Back in 2000, we definitely would have looked at Dell for clues about the tech industry. In 2008, we are getting more accurate information on the tech market from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ-NYSE), IBM (IBM:NYSE), and even Apple (AAPL:NASDAQ). But because other investors are still looking at Dell for guidance in the tech industry, we are concerned that some of our favorite tech stocks will be innocent victims of Dell's ineptitude. Staying with the theme of incompetence, we decided to examine a company in the Silicon Valley that makes Dell look like a victorious warrior, Rambus (RMBS:NASDAQ), a technology licensing company that specializes in the invention and design of high-speed memory architectures. Our first problem with Rambus is that they are not profitable and from what...

Email/Calendering's PostPath Bought By Cisco For $215M

BT — 2008-08-29T11:12:47-05:00

Cisco Systems is paying Mountain View-based PostPath for $215M., a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of email and calendaring software. PostPath raised $23M in VC funding, from Worldview Technology Partners, Matrix Partners and Jafco Ventures. The idea is to integrate PostPath with Cisco's WebEx Connect platform. We wrote about PostPath in 2007 when we noted: "Hats off to the engineers at PostPath. Management told them that they could not survive creating a Linux version of MSFT Exchange rather Postpath would have to work seamlessly with their existing MSFT Exchange infrastructure, which meant engineers would need to hack Exchange without help and documentation from Redmond, which must have been a nightmare." PostPath competes with the likes of Zimbra which was bought by Yahoo as well as with Google's Ajax-based email and calendering apps. Who has the edge? We have to give it to Google in this market. We just don't think that Webex has the mind-share to convince people to being to use them for email and calendering. View - site...

Swedish Gaming Firm NYX Interactive Raises €5M

BT — 2008-08-28T01:46:04-05:00

We haven't seen much action in the wagering field for some time. But here's one from Scandinavia. NYX Interactive has raised €5M from Nordic Venture Partners. The firm makes software for all the fun stuff: bingo, lottery, keno, casino, poker and other betting games. NYC has done deals with the government-owned lottery company in Sweden. Bingo! View - site...

GSI Technology Is Synonymous With Profits

BT — 2008-08-27T23:20:44-05:00

Today's slight increase in the market is what we expected for the entire month. Get a little gain, give a little of the gain back. While the folks at tech:stocker would have liked a little more strength in today's market up tick, small gains are still better than losses. We were also happy to see the management changes at Fannie Mae (FNM:NYSE) and Freddie Mac (FRE:NYSE). Hopefully this will give investors a little more confidence in the financial services industry as these giants try to steady themselves after their recent fall. Until the financial stocks like AIG (AIG:NYSE), Washington Mutual (WM:NYSE), and Merrill Lynch (MER:NYSE) prove they can return to their profitable ways, investors are going to show some restraint towards many companies in this industry. Today's stock grabbing our attention, GSI Technology (GSIT:NASDAQ) shouldn't worry potential investors as it has many similar attributes of tech companies that we have recently discussed. Devoting any time discussing the spartan Web site, minimalist press releases, and perfunctory management team would only detract from what this company does extremely well: posting profits. According to their latest earnings release, GSI is on a profit roll that many other tech companies can only dream...

Ad Network Band Plays On With Brand.net and Jumptap

BT — 2008-08-27T01:16:36-05:00

Mobile Advertising's Jumptap Raised $26M while Brand.net raised $10M, continuing the theme that digital advertising remains one of the favorite themes for venture investors. Cambridge, MA-based JumpTap raised its Series D funding led by AllianceBernstein led the round, and with return backers General Catalyst Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Summerhill Venture Partners, Valhalla Partners and WPP. The company has now raised $73M in total VC funding. This deal comes days after a story in the Wall Street Journal that Medio Systems, the heavily-funded Seattle mobile search startup, could be part a new partnership between Google and Verizon whereby Google would provide the ads. That's stiff competition but this is of course a huge potential market. Jumptap commercial Brand.nets Series B round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with reinvestment from InterWest Partners. Founded in 2007 and based in San Mateo, Brand.com makes the BS statement that it "is the first online advertising network focused exclusively on Brand advertising." Are you kidding? Such a bogus statement tells us that Brand.net doesn't have any differentiation so its making it up. Brand.net is led by some Yahoo refugees....

Andreessen Runs Money For Mobile Video Broadcasting's Qik

BT — 2008-08-27T00:54:23-05:00

We wouldn't have thought a few years back that Mark Andreessen would be in the position that he is in today as an active fixture in Silicon Valley but here he is steering Ning, on the Board at Facebook and making angel investments. Mobile video broadcasting's QIK has raised an undisclosed amount from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Loudcloud). It had previously raised a $3 Qik is a mobile blogging tool that competes with the likes of Kyte. Qik has integrated with Twitter and users can stream videos from their phones to YouTube, MySpace, Orkut, and Justin.tv. CEO Ramu Sankaru was VP Real-Time Communication and Collaboration Products at Oracle. He has hired a good number of other Oracle folks. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong demos QIK View - site...