Providence, R.I.-based Teespring, a Y Combinator-backed startup that allows anyone to outsource the production and distribution costs involved with selling their own custom T-shirts, has raised $20 million in new funding in a round entirely led by Andreessen Horowitz. The funding, which closed around a month ago, will also see the firm’s Lars Dalgaard joining Teespring’s board.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
Why do investors seem to care about “billion dollar exits”? Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies. Plus, traditional venture funds have grown in size, requiring larger “exits” to deliver acceptable returns. For example – to return just the initial capital of a $400 million venture fund, that might mean needing to own 20 percent of two different $1 billion companies, or 20 percent of a $2 billion company when the company is acquired or goes public.
Venga, a DC-based startup, has raised $1 million in Series A financing to help restaurants create profiles of their customers by whipping reservation data, point-of-sale, and other basic information into a soufflé of delicious CRM.
Militello Capital led the round and a number of major restaurant groups and angels also invested. Think Food Group, Bill and Pat Anton, and Cornell’s Big Red Ventures were also on the menu.
With new technologies making it easier than ever before to share and distribute quality learning content, businesses are rushing to take advantage. Plus, with the pace that technology changes these days, companies want to help keep their employees up to speed and familiar with the latest version of Salesforce, Excel or whatever the case may be.
Piqora, a company that began its life as a Pinterest-centric company once called Pinfluencer has over the past year expanded further into the visual web space with marketing tools for Tumblr and Instagram, as well.
Today, the company is giving a peek inside its business, and announcing it’s now generating revenue in the single digit millions, with monthly recurring revenue up 600% in 2013. In addition, the company is also publicly disclosing a $2.1 million round of venture financing from last April, which comes on top of a previous seed round of $1.4 million.
We’re pleased to announce the 2014 Hardware Battlefield finalists, a group of international hardware startups from eleven countries that are about to take the world by storm with some amazing technology, great ideas, and unique business models. Up for grabs is a $50,000 prize, the first ever Hardware Battlefield trophy, a wealth of press exposure and new open doors.
Nest Labs, the Palo Alto, California-based smart home device startup, is about to raise $150 million in funding at a valuation of $2 billion, according to the tech news site ReCode.
Who knew fancy thermostats could be such big business?
Ambarella is launching new MotorVu video chips for 360-degree views for car video cameras.
Car crash videos have become a phenomenon on YouTube, in part because of the heavy use of dashboard video cameras in Asia and Russia. Those dashboard video cameras are expected to spread to the U.S. and other countries as the need to document extraordinary events becomes more common.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ambarella makes low-power chips for digital still cameras and video cameras. It is unveiling its new products at the 2014 International CES is Las Vegas this week.
How much money is there in smart thermostats and smoke alarms? Try more than $2 billion.
Nest, the smart home gadget startup, is reportedly in the midst of raising a huge round of funding — between $150 million and $200 million – reports Re/Code (the site founded by the AllThingsD team). That range puts Nest’s future valuation somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion, sources say.
While it sounds like investors are still actively trying to get in on the new round, sources tell Re/Code that Yuri Milner’s DST Global investment firm has scored the leading role.
Venture capital investing in Washington state started out with a whimper in 2013, but it is ending with a bang.
After the slow start, as evidenced by the chart above from CB Insights in which just $100 million was invested in the first quarter, things roared to life in the fourth quarter buoyed in part by one blockbuster biotech deal.
