It’s that time again: 500 Startups just put on demo day for its ninth batch of companies at Microsoft’s conference building in sunny Mountain View, Calif. The seed stage investor and startup incubator showed off 29 products and services that range from making it easier to get a home loan to a marketplace for 3D printed knick-knacks.
n 1957, eight entrepreneurs decided to do something that seemed crazy. They launched a new tech company called Fairchild Semiconductor in a small town south of San Francisco. The entrepreneurs had a difficult start, but Fairchild eventually became the first major computer chip company in the region.
Two of the biggest online real estate companies are joining forces.
Zillow announced today that it’s buying rival Trulia for $3.5 billion in stock. The two companies will maintain their separate brands, but Trulia CEO Pete Flint will report to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. The deal is expected to close in 2015.
Silicon Valley tech startup Sviral has raised an estimated $20 million in an unusual transaction aimed at boosting its solution for creating distributed data centers.
Sviral takes unused computing power from household devices and uses it to build a power-efficient, distributed data center.
Home buying and apartment rental company Urban Compass just raised $40 million from investors, bringing its total valuation to $360 million, reports Bloomberg.
Urban Compass streamlines the apartment renting process. Prospective renters and home buyers can search listings and arrange viewings on the website and mobile app. Its brokers also don’t work on commission, which means they’re more inclined to find the right apartment for you rather than pressing you to sign a lease.
Instacart, currently the most well funded and fastest growing startup in the emerging food space, is an anomaly. The evolution in food startups – from the scheduled warehouse deliveries of the past decade to the highly curated, on-demand prepared food companies currently proliferating the Bay Area – seems to have bypassed Instacart’s elementary appearance as an un-curated, broad, digital grocery store. But drill deeper and Instacart holds the potential to be the most powerful consumer-facing food ecosystem in the market.
There's a cyclicality to fundraising. Certain sectors rise quickly and become competitive while others decline. I've been wondering about the state of the market. First, which sectors are in vogue now in Seed investing and Series A investing? Second, is there a delay between the sectors attracting seed capital and Series A capital? In other words, do seed investors see trends before VCs do?
The chart above shows the trends in the seed investment market. This data is Crunchbase data filtered for the largest 20 or so sectors from 2010-2013. Each graph shows the fraction of relevant seeds in a particular segment over time.
nterprises really dig customer research. At least, they dig it enough to pour money into the effort.
Cloud-based customer intelligence platform Vision Critical just raised an additional $16 million in a round led by Georgian Partners, who now has an equity position in the company.
Hyperice has officially launched a campaign to bring their latest and most exciting fitness and recovery innovation to reality through Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing platform that funds thousands of creative projects, business ideas and new products. The recovery technology company is offering exclusive rewards featuring their lineup of superstar athletes-Blake Griffin, Lindsey Vonn, Troy Polamalu and Adrian Peterson-to help fund the development and production of one of the most innovative new products in fitness and human performance, the “VYPER.”
