By Myles Tanzer 10/17/12 2:16pm

startup rundown

Jon Carin rocks (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Startup News: Braintree Gets a $35 M. Boost, TED Gets Trippy, and Real Estate Gets Gamified

Brain Boost This morning, Braintree, a Chicago-based online payments company announced, a $35 million series B round of funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). By investing in Braintree, new investors join Accel Partners and others and the company’s total funding is now set at $70 million.

Braintree acquired the beloved bill splitting app, Venmo, back in August and has kept it independent so far. Braintree allows businesses to accept payments from costumers, but Venmo allows consumers to make payments to anyone. It’s a natural fit for both parties.

Braintree’s client list includes fast-growing startups like Uber, Fab.com, Airbnb, who use it, “through periods of rapid growth without disruption to their ability to accept payments,” the company said in an email to Betabeat. They also name-checked competitors like Stripe and PayPal, noting that one “big difference is that merchants receive their funds typically in two days with Braintree, vs. seven days with Stripe.” Read More

By Jessica Roy 9/26/12 9:02am

Social Media Strat

Mr. Watson (Photo: Social Media Forum)

Hootsuite Launches New Internal Collaboration Tool, Hootsuite Conversations

Hootsuite, the social media management platform for individuals and enterprise businesses, launched Hootsuite Conversations today, a new tool that allows internal collaboration for teams managing various social media accounts.

Hootsuite Conversations is an internal conversation tool built on top of the already-existing Hootsuite platform that allows community and brand managers to collaborate and provide feedback on content like tweets and status updates before publishing them. It also allows users to have conversations surrounding specific tweets or updates, a potentially useful feature for customer service reps managing social media accounts. Read More