By Ben Popper 8/09/11 8:10am

Metro Tech

Challenge: Good AC on the A/C please

ChallengePost, Kickstarter for Problems, Raises $4 M.

Crowdsourced fund raising platforms are in vogue right now. We’ve written a lot about the growing success of Kickstarter and yesterday we posted about Quirky raising a $16 million B round. Today Peter Kafka reports that ChallengePost has raised $4 million.

In a way a ChallengePost is an inversion of the Kickstarter model. The two year old start-up helps companies and non-profits run “challenges” that pay prizes to the crowd for solving problems. Investors include betaworks, Delicious’ Joshua Schachter and Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis. Read More

By Ben Popper 8/08/11 5:19pm

Makers Get Made

Ben-Kaufman-Quirky

Like We Said, Raise That Paper Now. Quirky Closes $16 M. B Round

Quirky founder Ben Kaufman prefers not to give out quotes when raising new funds, focusing instead on the details of what Quirky has been up to.

But he sure does like to raise fresh capital. It raised $6 million A round last April led by RRE and, according to Venture Wire, just closed a $16 million B round led by Norwest Venture Partners with RRE participating again.

As Betabeat has written recently, start-ups are rushing to close their financing, fearful that a tanking stock market will scare off potential investors or, at the very least, drive the valuations they can negotiate way down. Read More