Betabeat » new money

Booting Up: One BILLION Users

Jessica Roy — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:10:53 -0400

(Photo: The Social Network)

Accel has closed a $475 million fund that they plan to use for Series A startups mainly in Israel and Europe. [TechCrunch]

Yesterday was Twitter's 7th birthday and it celebrated by hitting the 200 million users milestone. That's great and all but... [The Verge]

...YouTube announced they have one billion monthly users. You know what's cool? [San Jose Mercury News]

The influx of new money from this round of billion dollar startups has undeniably changed the Valley. But is it for the better? [East Bay Express]

Turns out Starbucks baristas actually have no idea how to use that Square thing. [Fast Company]

Loosecubes Raises $7.8M Round Led by New Enterprise Associates and Revolution Ventures

Kelly Faircloth — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:03:12 -0400

Welcome, welcome. (flickr.com/ajleon)

New York-based office sharing startup Loosecubes has raised a $7.8 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates and Revolution Ventures. Including funds from an August 2012 seed round with Accel Partners and Battery Ventures, that brings the company's total raised to $9 million.

Besides the funding, the company is also launching booking with real-time availability, and the company's newly optimized mobile site will now show users nearby available spaces. As we are perpetually planless, we can imagine coming in handy. To celebrate, members can rent any of Loosecubes' spaces for free for the rest of June.

Said founder and CEO Campbell McKellar in a statement:

When we started two years ago, I was a remote worker in need of a convenient, productive place to work. There are now over 1,000 Loosecubes available in 236 cities available for real-time, instant booking, and they’re all free for the month of June.... I’m excited to foster productive coworking using our beautiful new mobile site. Our hosts have more ability than ever to control their experience using our sharp new privacy controls.

Besides the cash, board members now include Tige Savage of Revolution Ventures and Alex Kinnier of NEA, and NEA's Greg Papadopoulos is a board observer.

Tumblr Raises $85 Million Series E

Ben Popper — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:42:54 -0400

New York-based blogging platform Tumblr has raised an $85 million round of funding, the company's fifth funding round overall and their third since April of 2010. In total the company has now banked $125 million in venture backing. According to Jenna Wortham at the New York Times, who broke the story this morning, "the round was led by Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners, and the Chernin Group, Richard Branson, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital also contributed."

The NYT story makes no mention of the company's financials, focusing instead on its explosive pageview growth. So far Tumblr has little revenue to speak of, but its investors are not worried. "They will succeed in working through that over the next months and years," John Lilly, a partner at Greylock Partners, told Reuters, saying that high levels of user engagement led Greylock to make its investment

Tumblr said it is home to 30 million blogs, inspiring 13 billion page-views a month. As Fred Wilson, an Tumblr investor, said last week, the company is now one of the top properties when it comes to users' attention, ranking among the big boys like Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Tumblr's user growth is also accelerating, unlike Facebook, which has more or less saturated the U.S. market.

Commenters in the NYT's typically sanguine tech section offered some harsh criticism of Tumblr and its new money.

JHL - Boston:

Investors hoping to cash in on the notion that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. $125MM into a company and concept that offers nothing new and continues the self absorption inherent in vanity license plates and self publishing.

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Fletcher Hanks - NYC:

Other than an eventual sale to a larger media-based company, is there a business model here?

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LovelyVelocity - Washington, DC:

I love Tumblr but wish they'd make their designs more customizable and monetizable, too. Tumblr ads?