U.K. startup receives $28 million for push into mobile TV

"Frontier Silicon Ltd., a fabless chip company that has produced digital audio broadcast and digital terrestrial television receiver chips, has closed a $28 million venture capital investment round, one of the largest ever secured by a U.K. based chip company.
The money is set to be used to develop a position in mobile digital television, and further develop Frontier's digital radio products, the company said. Frontier claims to have 70 percent of the market for DAB digital radio receiver chips.

ACT Venture Capital is a new investor and led the latest round supported by existing investors including funds advised by Apax Partners, Alta Berkeley and BlueRun Ventures, formerly known as Nokia Venture Partners, and new investor Quilvest. "

Comms IC maker Solarflare gains $48 million in new funding

"Solarflare Communications Inc., developer of physical layer chips for 10-Gbit/s Ethernet over copper, has completed a second round of venture funding totaling $48 million.
Pushing total funding of $78 million, the current round is one of the largest for any semiconductor or systems company since the end of the recession. "

Sonim Names New CEO

"Sonim Technologies, the leader in enabling today's wireless data networks to deliver high-margin VoIP applications including Push-to-Talk, today named Bob Plaschke as chief executive officer. His promotion completes a transition by management and its board of directors to expand the company's mission to encompass the emerging mobile voice over IP market and ensuing convergence with wireless LAN and land-line networks. "


[Unstrung]

A Proxy War For Mobile Data Dominance

Two mobile video game companies, Sorrent and Digital Chocolate, are at a similar point in development. Each is taking a very different strategy to win over the market. It may be a perfect case study in understanding what works with mobile data.

[The Feature]

Start-ups offer blog and e-mail monitoring

"I’m just back from the annual Demo conference, this year held in Scottsdale, Ariz. If you’re not familiar with this 15-year-old event, the audience is usually a mixture of venture capitalists, the investment arms of high-tech companies, and the media. Every six minutes, representatives from a different company — mostly startups — appear on stage offering a new product or product idea that they hope will capture the notice of those in attendance. More than any one particular product, though, I typically find that the kind of products shown is a leading indicator of what business buyers are looking for. "

[Infoworld / Ephraim Schwartz]

Indeed.com

"Indeed was founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan. Paul and Rony previously founded and managed Jobsinthemoney, the leading jobsite dedicated to finance professionals."

Searching 2,369,517 jobs from the last 30 days

Market: Search to get Vertical

SearchViews reports that vertical search is where it's at.

Weblog Tools Market

Elise Bauer provides a thorough analysis of the weblogs tools market.

This is an interesting table:

Friendster Dead?

Hardly. With recent discussion board, chat functionality, enhanced search functionality added to the new and stable friendster site, usage has spiked. Friendster has also started emailing weekly updates to its userbase of friends that have updated their profiles, thus increasing number of return visitors back to the site.

Check out the 2 year graph. Alexa ranks them #58 in traffic.



Also, check out the graph of Friendster vs. Mypsace . Seems like both are coexisting after it was thought that myspace would take over friendster.

Tech IPOs: Here Comes The Next Wave

Tellme, Vonage and a slew of other hot tech ipos are in the pipeline.

"Since September 11, venture firms have pumped lots of capital into security technologies. Those investments have produced promising IPO candidates, such as Fortinet, CipherTrust, and ArcSight. Sunnyvale (Calif.)-based Fortinet, which aims to turn profitable in the third quarter, would like to go public later this year at a valuation of $750 million to $900 million, or five to six times its projected 2006 revenues, says Chief Financial Officer Harold Covert."

[Business Week]

Mobile TV Goes Nowhere Fast

Review of V Cast:

"Mobile TV is finally here -- sort of. Starting on Feb. 1, Verizon Wireless began rolling out its new V Cast service, which lets users stream 1-minute video clips from several TV channels, download music videos and movie trailers, and play new "3D" video games, which Verizon says is on par with the graphics of a PlayStation One. V Cast costs an additional $15 a month, on top of whatever you're already paying for wireless service."

"Watching sluggish video delivered by the V Cast service on a clumsily designed UTStarcom/Audiovox CDM 8940 cell phone is hardly thrilling"

[Business Week]

Flickr, Yahoo Deal Rumored

"Om Malik reports:

Rumors are flying thick and fast in Silicon Valley: Yahoo is all set to buy Ludicorp, the company behind the hot photo blogging web service Flickr, for an undisclosed amount of money. Its not the first time rumors of these talks have made the rounds. Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake told my colleague Michael Copeland, that they had received buyout offers from both Google and Yahoo."

[business2blog]

Who in the world is David Chu?

I don't know either but he's being sold on ebay and he's more popular than the infamous Mark Jen.

Sequans Communications

"WiMax chipset minnow Sequans Communications has snagged a further $7 million (US$9.26 million) in VC investment as it attempts to battle larger rivals in the 802.16 silicon market.

The French startup today announced its latest cash injection, taking total investment to approximately $9 million ($11.9 million). The round was led by Add Partners and Vision Capital, and included SGAM (the investment arm of French bank Societe Generale) as well as previous investors I-Source Gestion and CapDecisif."

Very competitive space and likely to be only a few winners (e.g. 802.11 and Atheros)

[Unstrung]

ProfitLine Receives Additional Funding

"ProfitLine, the premier provider of outsourced telecom expense management services, today announced that the company has received an extension of its Series A financing from its current
investor Menlo Ventures, bringing the total investment in ProfitLine to $17 million. The funding will be used to expand the company's sales and marketing, enhance ProfitLine's proprietary Web application, MyTelcoManager, and for targeted acquisitions."

Amicus

"U.K. wireless vehicle-tracking company 3DiS Ltd. has
raised between EUR300,000 and EUR2 million in its
Series A round of funding for product development as
the start-up adds commercial trucking and other sectors
to its customer list and pushes out globally.

The exact amount of the funding isn't being disclosed.
The round was provided entirely by Siemens Mobile
Acceleration, or SMAC, a venture unit of German
industrial and electronics concern Siemens AG. 3DiS was
previously funded by capital from its founders."

Company lists between 100 and 300 customers and is expanding in the US and Europe.

With Qualcomm, @road, and the other 50 or so fleet management startups out there, how many more companies do we need in that space?

[VentureWire]

SiNett unveils first unified access chip

"SiNett Corporation, a US-based start-up promoted by Indian entrepreneurs, Thursday unveiled the world's first unified access chip named OneEdge for enterprise networks.

Claimed to be the only purpose-built chip processor for unified access of switch and controller in enterprise networks, the product enables wireless and wired integration at multiple levels in network hierarchy."

Company raised a $15M round Maty 04 from Clearstone, Matrix, and Alliance. Total raise is $24.5M
[IANS]

vFinance.com

"Thanks to vFinance.com, entrepreneurs and small businesses are matching their ideas and business plans with investors online. VFinance.com -- started in 1997 when Timothy Mahoney and a partner bought the Web site from its original owner -- offers an inexpensive and relatively simple way for start-ups to find venture capital."

[NY Times / Log-in required]

Ethertouch

A new player has joined the quest for the ultimate data entry device. Ethertouch says it has developed a 3D sensing technology that reduces data entry on virtually any device to hand movements and finger pointing.

[Tom's Hardware Guide]

TREND: Podcasting

NYTimes has an interesting piece on podcasting.

Google Calendar?

B2Blog reports that GoogleLabs will be releasing a Google Calendar tool soon.

Bodog

"Founded in 1995, Bodog.com is the global leader in safe and secure online wagering. A trusted source of sports betting information by such organizations as ESPN and CNN, Bodog is the most respected brand in the business."

The lines are just OK, but the site is reliable and pays out quickly. Poker tables begin at $0.05 / $.10 NL all the way up to $15 / $20 Fixed. Bodog is the way to go for beginning poker players not willing to shell out the $.50 / $1.00 NL hands of PartyPoker

As consolidation in the online gambling space continues (and acquisitions have been quite accretive - see Paradise Poker / Sportingbet in Nov 04), look for Bodog to be acquired by one of the larger players in the space - PartyGaming, Sportsbet - at a high multiple.

Business.com Gets $6.5 Million

Paid Content reports Business.com's $6.5M round of financing led by IVP. Company also raised a $10M round only a few months ago (November) led by Benchmark. No valuation on the past 2 rounds, but the round done in Sept. 11, 2000 was done at a bubble esque $176M post ($61M raised). This latest round was most likely done at a higher valuation.

Interestingly Business.com has added people search, an area where Google has not entered and others like Lycos have (w/ a partnership with Eliyon, who by the way lists Google and Yahoo as HR customers.)

Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 beta available

jkOnTheRun reports the availability of Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 beta.

Techdirt: $164 Million For Typo Squatters?

"This is scary if true, but Slashdot reports that an online marketing firm has paid $164 million for a typo squatting company that owns 100,000 domains chock full of advertising. Not only that, but the vast majority of the deal was in cash. The company in question registers tons of typo domains, generic domains and also snaps up domains that expire in the hopes of catching excess traffic. 1998 must be jealous. This is a bubble era style deal if there ever was one. "

[TechDirt]

China's VC growth

"Venture capitalists stormed into China in 2004, investing $1.27 billion, almost 29 percent more than the previous year, according to Zero2IPO, a Beijing-based VC research firm.

Yet most of the capital is foreign, and most of the investments were driven by market opportunity, not new technology. Though China’s fabled 1.3 billion consumers may hold huge potential returns for both local and distant VCs, the IT venture market there still has some growing up to do."

[Red Herring]

Mirra hires new CEO and CFO

This announcement doesn't sound like the company is doing well. Mirra has positioned these new hires as "enhancing team leadership and preparing for the next phase of growth".

The Mirra product is marginally better than other current products in the space -- Maxtor One Touch -- and sells at a much higher price point.

Staples founder goes VC

"Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of office retail chain Staples, joined Highland Capital Partners as a venture partner Tuesday.

Mr. Stemberg founded Staples in 1986, took the company public four years later, and over the next 12 years grew profits of more than $250 million and market capitalization to over $10 billion."

Read more about Tom here

[Red Herring]

ChoiceStream collects $7M

"ChoiceStream Inc., a developer of personalized software services for online shopping, searching, electronic retailing and interactive television, has raised $7 million in a Series A round of financing.

General Catalyst Partners led the round, and ChoiceStream says the money will be used to pay for a ramp-up of engineering and development at the Cambridge-based company.

With competition increasing, the shift in online retailing in 2005 will be toward content, ads and technologies that speak to individuals or certain groups, said Geoff Ramsey, head of N.Y.-based analyst firm e-Marketer.

ChoiceStream’s patent-pending technology is used by America Online and other Web portal developers to determine user preferences."

This company looks much more interesting than Become.com

[Mass High Tech]

More on Flickr

Interesting post from Paul Kedrosky on how "Flikr F***-ed Up":

"...Flickr had "screwed up", at least according to conventional wisdom in VC and punditry circles:

- It got attractive early buyout offers and didn't take them

- It got term sheets offers from marquee VCs and didn't take them

- It has a husband-and-wife founder team

- It is run by technologists"


Sounds a bit like friendster...

Become.com Shopping Search To Launch

Search Engine Watch reports that Become.com, a shopping search engine is set to launch. The founders are previously of MySimon, which was acquired for $741M in CNET stock back in 2/00. Become's website says they are venture-backed but does not list VCs. MySimon raised over $25M and investors included Brentwood VC (Redpoint), Sprout Group (CSFB), Marquette VP, Intel, Citigroup.

According to Search Engine Lowdown: "Become.com has been 9-months in development and is currently in beta, pending its formal coming-out party (late February). Become is the first search engine for product and shopping information. Utilizing intelligent crawling and patented next generation ranking technologies, Become provides highly relevant and unbiased search results focused on product information: reviews, buying guides, forums, specs, etc."

Yawn.

BlogBinders.com (Turn your blog into reality.)

Blogbinders.com helps you turn your blog into a bound book - great as a gift, an archive, or even to sell to your readers!

Company currently supports most all types of blogs including MoveableType, LiveJournal, Typepad, blogger, etc. For a 30 page, saddle stitch binding it will cost you about $10.30.

Interesting model but the space will likely become competitive and margins on the books, as a result, will be driven down. Company competes with Kinko's and likely will compete with micro book publishing companies that may enter the space.

If anyone gets one of these done, let me know. I'm itching to have all my blogs in a book to sell at the next PTA event.

Facialized: thefacebook's first year anniversary

"Since February 4, 2004, thefacebook has changed the way college students communicate.

The site allows users to create profiles, connect with people in their classes and even reunite with friends from high school. To date, thefacebook has managed to take 370 colleges by storm. "

thefacebook has over 1.6 million members, many of whom find themselves addicted to the site."

Pretty impressive growth rate and subscription metrics. Question is whether the company can scale its user growth and monetize the community.

More on Liquidnet

"Technology Crossover Ventures and Summit Partners have agreed to acquire a significant minority position in Liquidnet Inc., a New York-based operator of an electronic institutional trading platform. The transaction was first reported by The Deal, and is worth between $200 million and $300 million, which would partially buy out company founders and initial backer TH Lee Putnam Ventures. A formal press release announcing the deal is expected to come later today. Liquidnet last raised venture capital in 2000, when it raised $10 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of approximately $200 million. www.liquidnet.com"

[Private Equity Week]

Art.com raises $30M

"With a Web site address that was once worth $200 million, Art.com reaches five million unique visitors each month. A decade on from its founding, the seller of posters, original art and custom-framed art has raised $30 million in a first funding round from Polaris Venture Partners, typically an early stage investor, and Southern Capitol Ventures.

Art.com has been profitable since 1999, but thought it needed another push for the next step, which may well be an IPO. The company started out as AllWall.com, acquiring its current address from Getty Images Inc. for a substantially smaller figure than the $200 million that Getty paid for it earlier. Art.com mainly competes with AllPosters.com Inc., a Benchmark Capital portfolio company.

Polaris is expected to play an important role in taking Art.com public, though a time frame hasn't been set yet. Among Polaris' successful public exits are Akamai Technologies, provider of Internet content delivery services, and distance-learning software maker Centra Software."

More on Art.com from newsobserver.com

[Venturewire Alert]

Dolby IPO Sounds Good to Investors

Dolby Laboratories Inc.'s shares rose 35 percent in their stock market debut Thursday as investors pounced on their first opportunity to buy a stake in a 40-year-old company that has become synonymous with high-quality sound.

The San Francisco-based company's shares gained $6.30 to close at $24.30 on the New York Stock Exchange. Dolby priced its initial public offering of stock at $18 per share, up from a projected range of $13.50 to $15.50 set shortly after the company filed its plans to go public under the ticker symbol, "DLB."

[Forbes]

Big pop for Dolby Labs

"Shares of Dolby Laboratories Inc. rose 35% to close at $24.30 Thursday, Feb. 17, handing the newly public audio technology pioneer the biggest first-day gain of the year.

Dolby Labs on Wednesday priced 27.5 million shares at $18 each, the high end of a range already revised upwards from an initial $13.50 to $15.50 range. It raised $495 million in the initial public offering."

[The Deal]

WSJ.com - In Silicon Valley, A Tech Legend Lays Big Plans

"Andy Bechtolsheim has a knack for spotting big ideas early.

As a Stanford University graduate student in 1981, he designed computer workstation that helped create Sun Microsystems Inc. and a multibillion-dollar industry. Seventeen years later, two other Stanford graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, approached Mr. Bechtolsheim about an idea for a Web search engine. His $100,000 check helped bankroll Google Inc., an investment now valued at about $670 million following a 7% jump in that company's stock yesterday.

Now, after stints at Cisco Systems Inc. and two start-up companies, the legendary hardware designer is back at Sun pursuing another big idea -- one that could create wrenching changes for the industry as well as provide growth opportunities. "Billions of dollars of dislocation is going to happen," Mr. Bechtolsheim predicts.

The cause: technology advances that allow the same basic chip technology used in personal computers to power the very largest systems, too."

[WSJ / Log-in required]

Shopping search firm IM2 gets $8 mln in funding

IM2 Inc., the developer of a new shopping search engine for ticket searches called FatLens, said on Thursday it had received $8M in first-round funding from Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Cambrian Ventures.

A test version of the site, available at www.fatlens.com"

Site works well. It's likely that one of the larger search guys will target this space eventually and build it themselves. Or they'll just buy the company.

Typing in "WWE Wrestling" produces 8,000 from about 5.5M tickets in the database.

[Reuters]

Market: High stakes on your handset

U.S. mobile carriers watch from the sidelines as the rest of the world starts cashing in on mobile gambling.

"UK-based Juniper Research predicts that worldwide revenues for mobile gambling, which is comprised of casino-style games, sports betting, and lotteries, will reach $19.3 billion by 2009. Windsor Holden, author of the Juniper report, says that mobile gambling will make up roughly a third of the entire estimated $60-billion mobile entertainment market for that year. Mobile gambling already hit $468 million in 2004, and is projected to be a $2.07-billion business by the end of 2005. " [I would haircut Juniper's market sizing by at least 30% because their numbers tend to be on the high side.]

There's no doubt online gaming and mobile gambling will take off -- it's just a matter of when and how big. Europe and Asia are typically ahead of the curve in terms of adoption of such services and user growth (and stickiness) has been phenomenal. The question everyone seems to want to know is when, if ever, US lawmakers will allow online and mobile gaming in the US. The UK and off-shore based online gaming companies, Sportingbet and PartyGaming, are likely to take a considerable chunk of revenue, down the road, from mainstream casinos. Who would want to make a trip to Vegas when they could stay home in the luxury of their home and gamble - fewer crowds, more open tables, gambler friendly benefits (free bodog chipsets, poker tournament points, etc.).


[Red Herring]

Business Report - Online UK gambling firms' shares soar on prospect of mergers

"London - Shares of UK companies that own online gambling sites had soared this year on speculation of mergers and acquisitions and the profit potential of online poker, said Dresdner Bank analyst Andrew Lee.

The businesses were "hugely cash-generative in an explosive growth market", said Lee. "The market is finally rerating them to reflect their organic and acquisitive growth prospects."

The internet poker market is worth $1.5 billion (R9.3 billion), according to Sportingbet, which in October bought Paradise Poker, the biggest provider of poker sites on the Web, for $297.5 million.

The stock has surged 88 percent since then. Shares of Gaming Corporation, the owner of Playcasino.co.uk, have more than doubled this year."

TREND: Online gambling sites expect big payoffs - 02/15/05

"After years of escalating growth, it's poised for its biggest year. That reflects a growing obsession with poker, advances in broadband and wireless technology, and the temptation to strike it rich from a PC. More than 2,000 gambling Web sites this year will rake in nearly $10 billion in revenue, most from U.S. consumers. That's up 40 percent from 2004. That makes gambling one of the Net's largest moneymakers, although it is illegal. Poker revenue is expected to double to more than $2 billion and attract 1 million players a month. Americans play at 266 Web sites, up from 53 in June 2003, says gaming site CasinoCity ( www.casinocity.com)."

[Detroit News]

TH Lee Putnam profits from Liquidnet

Printer Friendly Article: TH Lee Putnam profits from Liquidnet:

"Institutional Investor Magazine, which first reported that Liquidnet was looking to sell a minority stake in itself, put the company's valuation at around $1 billion. Sources familiar with current negotiations said that valuation range was accurate. "

Wright Express IPO prices below expected range

Wright Express Corp.'s initial public offering priced below the expected range late Tuesday.

The Cendant Corp. (CD: news, chart, profile) spin-off's IPO of 40 million shares priced at $18 late Tuesday, raising $720 million.

The pricing came in below the expected $19 to $21 range.

View their S-1

[CBS Marketwatch]

DEMO@15 Companies

Good list of Demo companies including:

Adomo, AutoXray, Digital Monkey, Pluck, Satori Labs, Teleo, among others.

TREND: Online Poker - Virtual Gambling, Real Profits

"This year's hottest hand may be held by an American lawyer named Ruth Parasol, who used to run an adult-entertainment business and is now on the verge of cashing in her online poker chips.

Parasol is the principal owner of Party Gaming, a company based in Gibraltar that has cornered about 55% of the world's $2 billion online poker business. The company is flush with cash and, according to CEO Richard Segal, is contemplating a public offering in London. "It is definitely one of our options," says Segal, who joined the company last year after a stint running Britain's Odeon Cinemas."

Online gambling and gambling in China are two very high growth areas that are likely to receive increased attention from investors. From the online gambling bent, an investor could pick up some Sportingbet PLC, which trades in London. From a China play, one could pick up Las Vegas Sands , which IPO'd just last year and has an amazing Sands Macau property.

Kayak.com announces official launch

"Kayak.com, the new online travel site created by the co-founders of Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia, is delighted to announce our official launch!

We appreciate your help as one of our 45,000 registered beta testers. What's new at www.kayak.com?

More content! With just one click, Kayak.com's travel search engine now offers travel-related information from over 100 travel websites, providing real-time prices and itineraries for more than 550 airlines and 85,000 hotels. We'll continue to add more sites each week."

[via email]

Cypress acquires SMaL Camera Technologies

Cypress Semiconductor (NYSE: CY) has agreed to acquire SMaL Camera Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass.-based provider of digital imaging solutions. The deal is valued at $42.5 million in cash, but could grow thanks to a performance-based earnout plan. SMaL Camera has raised over $21 million in venture funding from firms like The Carlyle Group, Wasserstein Ventures, Stata Venture Partners and Yokogawa Electric.

Online ad company AzoogleAds raises a round

"Online advertising company AzoogleAds is at a much later stage operationally, but it just picked up its first round of outside funding led by private equity firm TA Associates, which typically invests sizable amounts of capital in late-stage companies. Although the amount of the round wasn't disclosed, TA Associates Vice President Vivian Wu says her firm's investment fits in with TA's criteria of investing $30 million to $300 million in profitable and growing companies. AzoogleAds, founded in 2000, seems to be making headway in a very cluttered online advertising space; the company is already profitable with $63.5 million in revenue last year through its cost-per-action ad model. "Infrastructure-wise, we're early stage, but revenue-wise, we are middle to later stage, within online advertising," the company's CEO said. "

[Venturewire Alert]

Thanks to Cellphones, TV Screens Get Smaller

"V Cast, which began its service on Feb. 7, is the most ambitious wireless video offering in the United States to date. The network gives subscribers access to some 300 video clips, most from two to three minutes long. There are CNN news updates, ESPN sports briefs, music videos and jokes from the previous night's edition of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

Cingular and Sprint currently offer video as well. The primary source of their content is a service called MobiTV, costing $9.99 a month, which makes more than 20 channels of television, including NBC News, Fox Sports and C-Span, accessible from compatible handsets. But Verizon's content is pushed through a significantly faster and more robust third-generation network known as EV-DO. That means the video on V Cast runs at closer to 30 frames per second, the same as broadcast television. Cingular and Sprint have both announced plans to upgrade their networks and begin selling EV-DO enabled handsets starting later this year."

[NY Times / log-in required]

Geek.com: Yahoo! doesn't like Xfire

"Yahoo! has sued a start-up company named Xfire for allegedly infringing on patents owned by the Web portal company. According to court documents filed last week, Yahoo! owns the rights to a U.S. Patent Number 6,699,125, which documents the invention of an instant messenger system that is specifically geared toward gamers. Yahoo's GameProwler chat service is based on this technology."

Xfire(TM) Launches Free, Lightning-Fast File Download System

Xfire, Inc., the fastest growing online gaming platform and community, today announced the launch of its revolutionary file download system at the DEMO@15! conference in Scottsdale, AZ. Xfire's free download system is seamlessly integrated into the existing Xfire architecture and will deliver patches, mods, demos, trailers, and other files to users via a closed peer-to-peer distribution system.

WSJ.com - Baseball League Buys Tickets.com

"The online arm of Major League Baseball today is expected to announce it has reached an agreement to acquire most of the shares of online ticket seller Tickets.com Inc., a bet on the increasing importance of the Internet for spurring attendance to ballgames and other events, according to people familiar with the matter.

These people said investors holding 82% of Tickets.com's shares have committed to selling their stock to Major League Baseball Advanced Media L.P. of New York. MLB Advanced Media plans to launch a tender offer for the remaining 18% of Tickets.com's stock at an offer price of $1.10 a share for an estimated deal value of $66 million, these people said."

[WSJ]

Wired News: Gambling Sites Hedging Bets

Wired News: Gambling Sites Hedging Bets:

"Online gambling was, and still is, an industry ripe for the picking and extortion attempts like these are fairly common, not just around the Super Bowl. According to gaming analysts River City Group, estimated 2004 revenues for online gambling reached more than $7 billion. About 350 companies run at least 1,700 gaming sites. It's also a largely unregulated industry -- many of these companies are headquartered offshore in countries without ample law enforcement resources to pursue hackers thousands of miles away, so the site operators often feel the pressure to pay. "

Online retailer SmartBargains withdraws IPO

"SmartBargains, an online retailer of discounted excess merchandise, withdrew its filing for an initial public offering on Friday. The company had originally filed to go public in July of 2004 to be traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker SBAR. Merrill Lynch was the lead underwriter on the proposed deal."


Employees 106
Founded 2000
Revenues $92.2M (FY 04)
Net Income ($2)

With the recent poor performance of e-tailing stocks (AMZN, ECST), it seems like a smart idea for Smart Bargains to hold back and wait for the IPO market to open back up.

View their S-1

Browster

"The company is in very early stages with its product, but the idea is at least intriguing.

Browster is an application that's uploaded to your computer. Why upload this application? It aids the browsing experience by accelerating the time it takes to look at Web pages. Essentially, if a cursor is put over a link, a preview pane pops up. This avoids having to click onto the page, which can often take time to open. Anyone who's tried the Mozilla Firefox browser -- a faster browser than Microsoft's IE -- would be able to distinguish and appreciate a faster browsing experience."

[CBS Marketwatch]

Forbes Midas List

The Midas List seeks to identify individuals who deploy venture capital to create wealth for their investors and build valuable, long-lasting companies. Here's the article and here's the list

The Top Ten:
L. John Doerr
Michael Moritz
Lawrence Sonsini
Andreas von Bechtolsheim
Michael Grimes
Ram Shriram
David Cheriton
Promod Haque
Vinod Khosla
J. Peter Wagner

Skype Sets Its Sights on Cell Phones

More on the announcement:
"Skype Technologies' VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software will now come installed on mobile handsets from Carrier Devices' i-mate brand that are equipped with Wi-Fi as well as cellular capability.

Newly manufactured i-mate PDA2 and PDA2K Pocket PC phones will come with Skype's software for making calls over the Internet. The handsets will be equipped out of the box for users to start making Skype calls, Skype said in a statement this week."

[PC World]

Skype signs agreement with Motorola

"Luxembourg-based Skype said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Motorola, the world's third-largest handset maker, with the aim of pre-loading Skype software on some Motorola Wi-fi or third-generation mobile phones in the future."

[Reuters]

PREDICTION: The Greatest Test of Open Source: Beating Google

"In the last couple of years one of the greatest software engineering projects has surfaced and become a household name. Google. One thing powers its greatness. Software.

The open source world prides itself rightly on its incredible successes. Apache Server, Linux, all email software worth mentioning, and recently Firefox. These are, have been, and will forever be marvelous feats."

[Steve Mallet / O'Reilly]

Mobile gaming field shrinks as Kayak, Synergenix merge

"The mobile gaming field continued to shrink this week as California-based start-up Kayak Interactive announced it is joining forces with Swedish publisher Synergenix Interactive.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed."


[RCR Wireless]

Call center automation company Voxify gets $10 million in 2nd round funding

"Voxify, developer of automated response units for call centers, has raised $10 million in an oversubscribed second round of institutional funding. The funding was led by Sigma Partners. Previous investors El Dorado Ventures and Palomar Ventures also participated. "

Company has raised approximately $15.6M since 8/03. Investors include El Dorado, Palomar, and Sigma Ventures who led this current round of financing.

Good list of customers including: DreamWorks SKG, Canadian North Airlines, WorldChoiceTravel.com, travelocity.com, and CanJet Airlines.

Does the world really need another call center software company?

[InternetRetailer.com]

Should Yahoo Buy Six Apart?

"When fourth-place search service Ask Jeeves (Quote, Chart) this week bought Bloglines, a feed aggregator and provider of blog search and creation tools, eyes turned again to Six Apart as the last free-standing blogging service.

Should it be? Can Six Apart survive on a mix of hosting fees and contextual ads? And is Yahoo (Quote, Chart) missing the boat by not offering users tools and blogs?"

[InternetNews.com

Six Apart May Be Acquisition Target

"The article quotes David Hornik, a Six Apart board member and a partner in August Capital, saying, 'Six Apart is not in conversations about being acquired by anyone.' Last October, Six Apart received $10 million in Series B funding from August Capital. "

Either one of the CRM guys or internet portals will acquire them.

AdBrite: A dot-com rascal is back and gunning for Google - 2005-02-07 - San Francisco Business Times

AdBrite: A dot-com rascal is back and gunning for Google - 2005-02-07 - San Francisco Business Times

"AdBrite: A dot-com rascal is back and gunning for Google"

Thefacebook

Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.

You can use Thefacebook to:
• Search for people at your school
• Find out who is in your classes
• Look up your friends' friends
• See a visualization of your social network

The college facebook site idea is back. What thefacebook.com has done, and where others failed, is make a simple, fun, fast (most of the times), and very user friendly community site. There seems to be good user growth around the site. According to Alexa.com, the site is #747 on the web. Check out user growth patterns:

.

Like all the other social networking sites, success of the company will likely depend on the community of users and their usage patterns. Business model will still be ad or subscriber based.

PlayStation 3 Cell chip aims high | Tech News on ZDNet

"Engineers from Sony, IBM and Toshiba are set to provide fresh details on the Cell processor that will power the next version of Sony's PlayStation video game machine, but at least one analyst already has a pretty clear idea of what's coming. "

"Tom Halfhill of the Microprocessor Report sees a number of chip breakthroughs likely to dramatically boost computing power in everything from game machines to cell phones."

[ZDnet]

Crunkie

Neat LBS wireless data app from WaveMarket: Crunkie is a unique mobile social networking tool that uses GPS technology to bring both cell-phone and internet users together.

They currently support only a number of phones. It'll be interesting to see how this community site develops and how they differ from other moblog related sites like Dodgeball, Flickr.

Friendster - Friendster Chat Beta

Friendster has just launched a chat feature to their site. It works fairly well. Good UI and load times are quick. Just a guess, but look for them to incorporate voice, relevant search (feedster), party promotion, groups, and other enhanced services soon.

"Friendster Chat lets you chat real-time with your friends and other members who are logged in to Friendster. With Friendster Chat, you can easily manage your contacts, see who's online, and set your preferences to control who can and cannot contact you."

WebSideStory To Acquire Atomz and Launch Active Marketing Suite

"WebSideStory is acquiring Atomz for approximately 3.1 million shares of common stock and $4.3 million in cash. WebSideStory's flagship analytics service, HBX Analytics, is used by more than 700 enterprises worldwide. Atomz serves more than 300 enterprise customers with three hosted solutions: site search, commerce search and web content management. "

WebSideStory was one of the more successful IPOs last year. The stock has been trading near its 52-week high.

LVL7 Raises $21M Series C

LVL7 Systems, Inc., the leading provider of production-ready networking software to communication system manufacturers around the world, has completed a $21M capital expansion. Leading the oversubscribed Series C financing was USVP. The funding round also included participation from Lighthouse Capital Partners and LVL7's previous investors: The Carlyle Group, Gabriel Venture Partners, H.I.G. Ventures, and Research Triangle Ventures.

According to Venturewire alert: "It sells to 48 customers, mainly system manufacturers in the communications industry that include Netgear Inc., RadiSys Corp., Radstone Technology and Matisse Networks. The company's revenue grew 100% two years in row; it is expected to double again this year. It is aggressively hiring engineers."

Previous investors include Gabriel VP, Carlyle, Accton, HIG Ventures. Company has raised over $55M since November 99.

AOL Looking To Buy Xdrive

AOL Archives: PaidContent.org

According to PaidContent.org, "AOL is trying to buy an online media/files storage company, and is the front runner at this point...other companies in the race include the usual suspects."

Company was previously backed by Goldman, Dawntreader, J&W, NEC, Softbank Japan, Veritas, CNET, among others. Apparently it seems the company ceased operations (6/02 according to venturesource) and then rose back up from the dead

Google blogger has left the building | CNET News.com

"Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. "

He not only sparked controversy last month, but he pre-reported Google's blow out Q1 earnings. His cached blog was also seen on the front page of Information Week, Cnet and other sources.

Ouch. Microsoft needs to re-hire him. Not.

CommsDesign - Broadband access gear maker Actelis raises a further $23 million

LONDON — Broadband access equipment maker Actelis Networks has completed a $23 million Series D funding round, bringing the total venture capital raised by the Fremont, California based company to nearly $ 100 million.

In addition to strengthening carrier alliances, the additional capital will be used to extend worldwide sales and deployments of Actelis' high-speed access systems.

These enable service providers and private network operators to use the existing copper infrastructure to deploy ultra fast broadband on demand at distances up to 18kft (5.5km) and beyond from central offices or remote terminals.

Microsoft Buying Sybari Software

Microsoft agreed to acquire Sybari Software Tuesday, pre-empting an initial offering that had been expected this week from the antivirus software provider.

The price wasn't disclosed. Sybari previously estimated its IPO price at $16 a share and expected to have 11.6 million shares outstanding after the deal, implying a market cap of about $185 million. The company did $38.3 million in total sales in 2003.

That would imply a 4.8x multiple.

O'Reilly Network: Flickr CEO Interview

Richard Koman (his blog) has a very interesting interview with Flikr's CEO:

"As of this writing, Flickr boasts 270,000 users, four million photos, 30 percent monthly growth in users, and 50 percent monthly growth in photos. (As a datapoint, when I interviewed Stewart about ten days ago, those numbers were 240,000 users and 3.5 million photos.) And these numbers don't even begin to tell the story. Flickr is a phenomenon, a fundamentally different way of using digital photography and the Internet. "

Rackable Systems files for an initial public offering

"Rackable Systems, which provides high-density compute servers and high-capacity storage systems, filed for an initial public offering on Friday. Lehman Brothers is the lead manager on the deal. The company has filed to list its stock on the NASDAQ under the ticker RACK. Pricing terms were not disclosed in the initial filing."

Revenues were $20M in '01, $26M in '02, $52M in '03. Parthenon Capital and affiliated entities own 61.2% of the company.

See their S-1

Bloglines acquired by AskJeeves (leaked by bloggers)

"If there's any question how Web logs and the Internet have changed the news business, talk with executives at Ask Jeeves Inc.

Chances are they spent the weekend trying to figure out how to stage their expected announcement that the company has acquired Bloglines, perhaps the most popular way to keep up with Web log postings and RSS feeds online.

Word of the buyout was passed along Friday by Mary Hodder, on her Weblog, Napsterization.org. She said the deal was done and pointed out that a new "official" Ask Jeeves (ASKJ: news, chart, profile) blog featured tabs to find the most popular Web blogs was linked to Bloglines. She said the deal was to be announced Tuesday."

Who's going to acquire Newsgator??

Mobilitec Completes $12.1 Million Series C Funding

Mobiletec completes $12.1M third round

Mobiletec completed $12.1 million in third round funding. The round was led by Canaan Partners with participation from new investor Duchossois Technology Ventures and previous investors AIG Orion and Lucent Venture Partners. Mobiletec provides integrated software products that enable carriers and service providers to deliver mobile content. The company has partnerships with several carriers, including Vodafone.

Company had been bridged since April 04 w/ $3M capital. Sun was also an early investor when the company raised a $10.5M round at a $31.5M post (when the product was still in beta).

Webroot latches on to $108 million in VC funding

Webroot Software is expected to announce Monday that it received a whopping $108 million round of venture funding--another sign that venture capitalists are laying down big bets on security technology.

Webroot, an antispyware developer, received its venture round from Accel Partners, Mayfield and Technology Crossover Venture Partners. The funding round far exceeds the $45 million raised by e-mail security appliance vendor IronPort, which ranked among the top VC investments last year.

[ZDnet]

Techdirt: VCs Turn On Epinions Lawsuit Participant

More drama in the Ongoing Epinions lawsuit. From techdirt:

"The venture capital industry is known for being a bit clubby, but a bit of dirty laundry is airing out these days. We'd already covered the slightly odd lawsuit filed by some Epinions founders against their investors. It seems like an odd sort of lawsuit -- especially from a bunch of guys who claimed they knew the ins and outs of Silicon Valley (that was part of their early 'story'). Anyway, a couple of the people participating in the lawsuit are now venture capitalists themselves, and the clubby community appears to be turning against them. Silicon Beat points to a story saying that one of the lawsuit participants has been kicked out of the VC firm he worked for, and it includes quotes from others basically saying that he'll never get or work in VC again. That seems a bit extreme, but it's interesting to see how quickly the VC community is responding. "

Wispry Raises $6M

Blueprint Ventures Partners led the round, which included investments from Roseville-based American River Ventures and San Diego-based Shepherd Ventures.

The money is set to go toward development and production of Wispry’s products, a spokeswoman said.

The company’s initial product is set to be a line of radio frequency switches that allow for improved antenna reception and more efficient energy usage, according to Wispry.

Wispry is developing low-cost high-performance components and modules for radio frequency (RF) system manufacturers. Based on the company's core competencies in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology and manufacturing, Wispry’s products will enable system designers to achieve the architectural innovation required for the growing diversity of mobile and fixed applications and networks.

Is Juniper out shopping?

Analysts expect Juniper to acquire companies this year to deepen its reach into the enterprise market - specifically in hot segments such as VoIP and WLANs. Of those, the urgency to enter the WLAN market was heightened after Cisco's $450 million acquisition of Airespace. Even if Cisco did not acquire Airespace, any company with enterprise aspirations would need a wireless offering, analysts say.

[Network World Fusion]

Colubris Plots Bigger Box

Wireless LAN startup Colubris Networks Inc. will soon announce a centralized wireless LAN overlay architecture to take on the 802.11 switch players in the enterprise market.

Company closed a $13.4M round of financing early last year (2004) led by GrandBanks Capital. BDC VC, Prism VP are listed as other investors. They will likely be raising a round of financing soon.

[Unstrung]

Flikr

Why it's good to be Flickr?

"The forecast for entrepreneurs during the next few months? It'll be raining -- cash. Consider Flickr, a popular photo-sharing-meets-social-networking site based in Vancouver, British Columbia. When it went live a year ago, it attracted plenty of notice and even pulled in a few angel investors, such as Excite co-founder Joe Kraus. But that's nothing compared with the torrent of offers it's entertaining now. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) want to buy it outright, while venture capital firms are flooding it with all kinds of creative proposals. "We get four or five calls a week from VCs," says Stewart Butterfield, who co-founded Flickr with his wife, Caterina Fake. "We even had a health-care fund call recently. I guess they wanted in on the excitement."

[Business 2.0]

TREND: Ultra WideBand turf battle begins

"After almost three years of waiting, the two groups fighting over a new technology standard for Ultra WideBand, which allows information to be transmitted wirelessly at fast speeds and with very low power consumption, have agreed to disagree.

That means the launch of competing UWB products is about to begin — either followed or preceded by a swift round of consolidation among mostly venture capital-backed UWB chip companies."

Dust Networks snags $22M second round

"Wireless sensor node mesh networking firm Dust Networks secured $22 million in second round financing. Crescendo Ventures led the round with participation from Cargill Ventures along with previous investors Foundation Capital and Institutional Ventures Partners. Dust Networks develops low-power wireless mesh networking systems for enterprise-grade remote monitoring and control applications. The company has raised $30 million to date."

Very strong technology from UC Berkeley. Company competes w/ Ember. $1M listed revs for 2003. Are they and other wireless sensor players too early to market (e.g. rfid, web services)?