They'll also STING YOUR FACE OFF. (Photo: Flickr, Garrett Rooney)

Biz Stone's mysterious new startup, Jelly, has just closed a Series A.

An announcement on the company's Tumblr didn't disclose the total amount raise, but revealed that Spark Capital raised the round, with SV Angel piling on, as well.

Also participating are several individual investors who, we can only assume, were rounded up in the parking lot of last year's TED conference: Jack Dorsey, Bono, Al Gore, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Where Good Ideas Come From author Steven Johnson, Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, House (?!) director Greg Yaitanes, and Afghan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.

It's still not clear what the company does. The announcement hints vaguely, "As mobile devices have taken an increasingly central role in our lives, humanity has grown more connected than ever—herein lies massive opportunity." Elsewhere, Mr. Stone has explained the name: "We are inspired by this particular animal because neurologically, its brain is more 'we' than 'me.' Also, for the past 700 million years, this decentralized structure has been wildly successful." Today's post about the fund raise was titled, "Business is 'Blooming.'"

So, maybe it's a goofy metaphor consultancy?

Dwolla founder Ben Milne. (Photo: Twitter)

Dwolla*, the Des Moines-based payment platform that has a strong presence in NYC, announced today that it has received a $16.5 million Series C investment led by venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz, with contributions from NYC firms Thrive Capital* and Union Square Ventures. The fresh funding will allow Dwolla to double its staff of 40 to 80 and open a third office in San Francisco, according to The Next Web. Andreessen partner Scott Weiss will be joining Dwolla's board.

Dwolla is a payment network that allows users to transfer money back and forth for free for transactions under $10 and a flat rate fee of $0.25 for those over $10. The platform hooks directly up to your bank account and offers transfer fees lower than what banks or credit card companies typically charge, positioning it as a legitimate competitor to conglomerates like Visa and Mastercard (not to mention that rumored deal with Square).

But the company also appears to have PayPal in its sights. In October, Dwolla announced a new MassPay feature that competes with PayPal's "Mass Payment" function; MassPay allows users to send out payments to up to 2,000 people at once with just a few clicks. It's worth noting that Jeff Jordan, the former President of PayPal, is a partner at Andreessen.

This is one of the largest investmens Andreessen has made in a payment services startup, though it's made smaller bets on Stripe, a payment system for developers, and Balanced.

Mr. Weiss, who led the investment, explained on his blog why the firm chose to make such a big bet on Dwolla:

• Founder/market fit: Ben is one of the most determined and scrappy entrepreneurs we’ve met and has a deep knowledge of the entire payment network.

• Ridiculous market size: Dwolla’s FiSync is taking on ACH and FedWire, a combined $730+ trillion market with real-time transactions, new revenue streams and incentives for key players in the payment process.

• A snowball of traction: Its annual processing run rate has moved from the hundreds of millions to billions and its business development pipeline is chock full of opportunities.

Mr. Weiss signed off: "I am excited to be joining Dwolla’s board of directors and look forward to helping Ben build the next multi-billion dollar payment company!" Enjoy all that dough, boys.

*Disclosure

(Photo: Imgur)

Bang With Friends, the popular app that helps facilitate one-night stands with your Facebook friends, is reportedly raising a ~$1 million seed round, according to Business Insider. The app was a hit at SXSW, where Betabeat cornered its anonymous blonde cofounder and forced him to eat grilled cheese with us.

Bangs With Friends collects photos of your Facebook friends into an easily browsable stream. When you see one you'd totally do, you hit "Down to Bang." If the person reciprocates your feelings, you'll get a notification that they're also down to bang--no flirting or drink buying required. Last month, when we spoke with the BWF cofounder, he said 750,000 users have hit the “down to bang” button 16 million times.

That number is expected to grow--Business Insider says it's already ballooned to 820,000 users--which explains why investors are reportedly clamoring to fund the sex app. Business Insider reports that Tim Draper and Great Oaks Venture Capital have already invested, and the company is looking to take on more investors to reach its ~$1 million goal.

Of course, BWF isn't exactly the next Google: other investor sources also told Business Insider that the round is "curious" and "kinda stupid." We assume they just have a poor "Bangability" quotient.

(Screenshot: HeTexted.com)

We could all use a little dating advice sometimes, but what if that advice comes from thousands of Internet strangers? HeTexted, a dating Q&A service that went viral last October, is a relationship-themed Quora-type site that allows women to submit screenshots of text messages they've received from men and lets anonymous users vote on whether or not he's into them. Users can also ask a smattering of "bros" relationship questions. It's crowdsourced dating advice for the digital age, even if the texts are often kind of depressing.

Now, according to documents published to FormDs.com, the New York-based company is raising a seed round. The form states that the company is seeking $500,000 and has already raised $365,000 of that. A representative for the company confirmed it's raising $500,000 and that they have reached $425,000, which they will file a form on by the end of the week. The rep also stated that the company is looking to close the round by the end of the month, but declined to elaborate further.

It's unclear how exactly HeTexted will use its funding to grow beyond an entertaining single-serving site, though there's always the option of a "SheTexted" sister site. Guess we'll have to wait and see whether or not investors are just that into them.

(Photo: Sound Ctrl)

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Foursquare, the New York-based check-in and recommendations app that was the breakout darling of SXSW 2009.

Former Square COO Keith Rabois recently engaged in a very public dustup with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley on Twitter, tweeting that only a "Hail Mary Bebo-style acquisition will bail you out." In January, data and research company PrivCo predicted that the startup will fail by the end of the year, eventually surrendering to an acquisition price of no more than $50 million (though the analysis didn't account for mobile traffic). In November of last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that investors were "cooling" on Foursquare. "The company claims more than 25 million registered users, but only about 8 million of them use the app at least once a month," it wrote.

Now, Businessweek reports that Foursquare has raised $41 million in loans and convertible debt from Silver Lake Partners, a private equity fund, as well as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and others. The influx of capital, Businessweek notes, will allow Foursquare time to grow as it tussles with low revenue (a source tells BW that the company only made $2 million last year) and works to launch a new ad program that will allow all of its merchants to serve mobile ads.

Foursquare's latest update to its iOS app brought search and recommendations to the forefront; sources also told Betabeat that the company has toyed with the idea of a recommendations app not equipped with check-ins, which speaks volumes about where the value of the app lies. A new mobile ad strategy, which would most likely serve ads to users based on their location, could help to greatly increase revenue at the company.

Taking on debt instead of raising a new round also helps Foursquare avoid a dreaded down round and what would undoubtedly be a fierce public debate about its valuation. The Series C in 2011 brought the company's total capital to $71 million at a valuation of $600 million, but the novelty of a check-in app seems to have worn off since then, and that coupled with thin yearly revenues could lead to a lower valuation.

One source told Betabeat that the company is “frustrated with lack of hype/momentum/growth," and that company culture has transitioned from “uplifting” to “oh shit."

Investors in this debt round are patient, allowing Mr. Crowley the time he needs to expand the business. But others, like Greylock's John Lilly, declined to participate--according to BW, he simply thinks Foursquare's $600 million valuation is too high.

Ms. Darabi.

Looks like Foodspotting cofounder and roaming angel investor Soraya Darabi is back! She's been working on something stealth, but it seems that bane of the startup world (paperwork!) has now tipped her hand. A Form D for a company called Zady, which has raised a $1,350,000 round of financing, has appeared with Ms. Darabi's name on it.

Unfortunately, there's precious little detail about the company itself. The Form D requires you select an industry, but the team has chosen "other." There's a website, but it's little more than a placeholder that gives off a faint whiff of ecommerce. A womenswear-themed Pinterest account was promptly deleted when we emailed the cofounders for comment, but it hadn't posted for months.

The current placeholder homepage of Zady.com. (Photo: Screencap)

Locals have been wondering what Ms. Darabi, who made a name for herself getting Nick Kristof (and the rest of the New York Times) more Twitter followers, might be up to. She stepped away from her daily duties as Foodspotting evangelist in chief all the way back in August 2011. Since then she's taken on a slew of advisory roles at companies from Contently to the new New Republic and given plenty of talks to the digerati, but the peripatetic Ms. Darabi has remained stealth about "the next hot thing."

The other woman listed on the Form D, Maxine Kaye, describes herself as the cofounder of a new, unnamed company on her LinkedIn profile. She's also listed as the cofounder of The Bootstrap Project, a non-profit social enterprise site. Ms. Darabi has tweeted about being a board member of the company and posted about the startup's December party at the Wooly on her Tumblr.

Ms. Darabi declined to comment, and Ms. Kaye did not return requests for comment.

Ms. Levine

Conventional wisdom has it that ecommerce companies are losing favor almost as quickly as Series A rounds and that New York City investors weigh too heavily toward early stage startups. So we were surprised to hear that Lightbank, a Chicago-based venture capital firm, is eager to buck all three trends.

"Oh god, so I’m a rebel?" Lightbank principal Vicki Levine told Betabeat over the phone. Ms. Levine will be heading up a new office the firm is opening in the Flatiron District in order to invest in Series A rounds of East Coast startups in ecommerce, as well as health and media.

"There’s just a ton of stuff going on in New York, so we wanted to have a team on the ground to get embedded in the community, get to know the community, and start investing more," she said, noting political support for the startup sector, as well as the preponderance of hackathons, coworking spaces, and accelerators.

Lightbank was launched by Groupon cofounders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell who made headlines when they used a funding round to cash out shares worth $451 million, funneling that back into Lightbank. (Mr. Lefkofsky, a dotcom veteran, has sold shares early in previous companies as well.) Ms. Levine said Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell are the primary limited partners of the fund: "It’s Eric's and Brad’s money, so we’re able to invest in what we like and feel much closer to the businesses because it’s our money rather than LP’s money." The firm's partners and principals, some of whom are already doing deals in the area, will also be actively involved in the New York office.

Twenty percent of the firm's portfolio is already in New York City startups, including OnSwipe, Contently, Centzy, Bevel, and Ovuline.

Ms. Levine didn't seem bothered by the beating ecommerce investments have been taking in the press. "The thing about ecommerce is these companies sell products and they make money. It’s very cut and dry," she said. "If we look at commerce in general, it’s a huge market and you look at the disparity between offline to online and then you actually see the effect of mobile. So it’s not ecommerce, it’s mobile commerce. I still think that there is a lot of opportunity there. We do it a little more systematically in the sense of looking at different verticals within commerce and saying which one makes sense," she added, pointing to Frank & Oak, an online shop for men.

Lightbank looks at factors like what percentage of a niche is offline versus online and what large incumbents are doing in a space to find promising investments. "Commerce is here to stay. It’s a transactional model and the prospects are very easy to get your head around, so I don’t think we’ll be changing that at all," she said.

Mr. Lefkofsky expressed similar faith in a recent blogpost. After hearing "a well known New York investor" say that their firm rules out ecommerce investments, he questioned Lightbank's strategy, "But that was only for a nanosecond."

As for the notion that New York's Series A market is already crowded, Ms. Levine pegged that more to the seed and angel stage and the shifting definition of Series A. Nowadays a $750,000 to $1.5 million is considered seed stage, but startups trying to raise $3 million to $5 million, "that’s where we’re seeing fewer investors," and that's where Lightbank will put its focus, she said. "There’s a lot of angel money still, but then getting to that next point is probably harder because people are really looking at the metrics of the business."

With that, Ms. Levine, who has been based out in San Francisco, got off the phone to prepare for a cross-country trip to New York to spare her dog a plane ride. "She’s now 12 and needs to be close to people. The thought of putting her on an airplane just sounds so sad."

Mr. Hippeau. (Photo: David Yellen via Ad Age)

When we last spoke with Eric Hippeau, the Huffington Post mafioso was discussing Lerer Ventures' new $36 million fund. Today, the early-stage investment firm is announcing two new hires to help it manage and grow its considerable portfolio.

Max Stoller, a recent NYU graduate whose hackathon apps we've covered in the past, will be joining Lerer Ventures as an analyst. Mr. Stoller, a HackNY veteran, worked as an engineer at Hyperpublic--a company founded by LV managing director Jordan Cooper and sold to Groupon--as well as on the platform team at Foursquare, both while in school. And, yes, if that makes you  wonder, you probably did college wrong.

LV also brought on Nicola Korzenko as portfolio support manager before the holidays, coordinating help for LV's startups. Ms. Korzenko previously worked at Signpost, which is backed by Google Ventures and Spark Capital, and Creative Artists Agency.

"Max is someone that we’ve known for quite a while, and he’s well known in New York," Mr. Hippeau told Betabeat when we mentioned running into him at a hackathon or two. "His job is outreach into the marketplace to make sure that we know all the budding entrepreneurs, specifically the younger ones--that they know who we are, that we understand what people are doing," he added. Mr. Stoller will focus on the emerging entrepreneurs coming out of school or doing hackathons. "He knows the young people to know much better than we do," Mr. Hippeau added.

LV began investing the new fund in October and has made about eight different commitments thus far, Mr. Hippeau said. Not all of those are public, but the firm grabbed headlines last week when it participated in a $19.3 million Series D for BuzzFeed only a year after investing in BuzzFeed's $15.5 million Series C.

BuzzFeed reportedly expected to bring in $20 million in revenue last year. So was there any truth to the rumor that investors expect them to triple that in 2013? "Oh my God, no! I don’t think anybody expects it to triple," Mr. Hippeau said. "That would be pressure!" He wouldn't confirm the $20 million figure, but said investors do "expect them to be on a strong growth path, which they are."

Naturally, the path Mr. Hippeau was referring to is paved with that new media cure-all: social advertising. "As you know, [BuzzFeed has] always turned back any kind of monetization that relies on banner or traditional display. They had plenty of opportunities to sell a lot of that. Now they found a model which scales, which is attractive to large brands, and they’re just at the very beginning of trying to take advantage of that," he said.

Do BuzzFeed's sponsored stories count as "native advertising?" we asked. "I never quite understood the definition of native advertising," Mr. Hippeau admitted. But the reason social ads are extremely attractive to brand marketers, he explained, is because it mimics the same narrative opportunity they have in TV advertising. "The reason why there’s still a lot of advertising on television, even though the audience has moved on, is because it’s still one of the few mediums where advertisers can tell a story. They try to grab you emotionally, they try to make it funny. That’s not something you can do in display." Tumblr's revenue consultant Rick Webb recently drew a similar comparison between TV advertising that can still delight you and native ads.

And what about reports that investors are expecting BuzzFeed, which has raised a total of $46.3 million, to sell for at least $300 million, but ideally closer to $600 million? "I never put a price expectation on our companies. That sounds like a crazy analyst," Mr. Hippeau said. "Look, what you’re trying to do is build a scalable, reliable business, and if you can do that, which is tough, then when the time is right, when it’s time for the company to go public or be sold, then the right thing is going to get done. Then people understand the value that’s being built, and the fair value will be made at the time. What that value is, you can’t tell today."

Mr. Hippeau said LV opted to invest in BuzzFeed again so soon for a number of reasons. "It’s a combination of how excited we are about the company and how confident we are that the company is on the right path. And how confident that the last money we put in is going to get a VC-like return." Whether a "VC-like return" is closer to 5x or 10x, he didn't say.

The eye-popping sum, for what the media likes to call "that teen sexting app," is noteworthy because the deal is reportedly being done by Facebook mafioso Matt Cohler, who was also responsible for Benchmark's investment in Instagram, which made the firm about $180 million after the sale to Facebook. This would be Mr. Cohler's first investment in 2012.

Sand Hill Road investors are eager to get in on the next big thing before late-stage investments that come with a hefty price tag. And Snapchat, which claimed last month that it's being used 30 million times a day, would seem to offer just that. But as Betabeat--and many, many others-- has pointed out, Snapchat's best-known use case (sexting) is a no good, very bad idea.

There's the ability to screenshot a pic, and public profiles that show who you Snapchat the most often, with potentially ruinous features bubbling up as the app, which is currently No. 5 for free apps in the iTunes, gains traction. For instance, Betabeat recently discovered that since there's no verification for the phone number you associate with an account, you can easily enter someone else's phone number. Then, when users are searching for friends from their contact list, that screen name shows up as linked to the person's phone. Sounds like a Mean Girls prank just waiting to happen.

We maintain the app is still makes an excellent anti-Instagram, ideal for opting out of the personal brand curation in favor of sharing goofy photos. But as our dinner companion, who kindly requested we stop talking about Snapchat, remarked last night, silliness has a short shelf life. "Any app that's just for fun, you're like: That's fun ... and now I'm done!"

Some sweet lamps you got there.

The ecommerce company One Kings Lane has just raised a $50 million Series D, led by Institutional Ventures Partners and with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Greylock Partners, Tiger Global Management and Scripps Networks Interactive. While headquartered in San Francisco, the company has large New York office handling much of its merch and marketing.

The company certainly seems to be in a period of rapid growth. When Betabeat visited the New York outpost back in August, desks were crammed into every spare inch of space and contractors were already preparing the space next door for expansion.

The numbers are telling, as well: The company expects to hit $200 million in annualized revenue for 2012. The site pushes 3,000 new products to its 6 million members every day. A quarter of revenue every month comes from mobile sales, and 50 percent of traffic on Thanksgiving was mobile.

In a statement released today, CEO Doug Mack called the investment "further validation" of the company's business model, adding, "this additional funding will allow us to continue to deliver the best online shopping experience in the home market.”

The round brings the company's total raised to $117 million. According to the announcement, the new cash will go to "to deliver strong customer satisfaction, new member acquisition, superior merchandising and technology innovation, along with business model expansion."