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By Nitasha Tiku 1/30/12 11:30am

Funding

Screen shot 2012-01-29 at 4.35.04 PM

Brooklyn-Based SocialGuide, a TV Guide for the Twitter Era, Is Raising a $500K. Debt Round

SocialGuide, a startup that determines what TV shows and movies are popular by combing Twitter and Facebook, is in the process of raising a $500,000 debt round, according to the company’s latest SEC filing via FormDs.com. The first sale of securities, which includes both “debt” and “option, warrant or other right to acquire another security,” was on January 17th. SocialGuide has already raised $400,000 from 10 investors towards the round, with $100,000 to go.

“We are in a position as a company where we’re looking to achieve profitability over the next two quarters,” CEO and founder Sean Casey told Betabeat by phone. “We decided to put together a note that will help us get there. It was just the right financing.”

The Brooklyn-based service, located at 68 Jay Street in Dumbo, bills itself as “the first real-time Social Programming Guide.” By ranking what’s popular on social networks, according to keywords counts, and then surfacing “the shows that your friends are talking about,” the company is able to recommend what’s worth watching. No more hearing about the “Downtown Abbey” Christmas special a week after everyone else tumbled their favorite Dowager Countess-isms. In September, SocialGuide, which previously went by the name Talkwit, introduced a similar service for movies, which is currently in beta.

But its real value may be in data it collects about the budding field of social TV. Read More

By Ben Popper 1/04/12 2:13pm

Funding

No actual footballs were harmed in making of this startup

Numberfire, Data Science for Fantasy Sports, Raises $650 K. Seed Round From RRE, David Tisch, Eliot Durbin

This is our second funding scoop of the day. Who wants to make it a hat trick?

Numberfire is a New York startup company taking an algorithmic approach to crunching data, helping fantasy sports nuts find the best players at the lowest prices. Founder and CEO Nik Bonaddio got his first $100,000 in seed capital from Regis Philbin, after starring in an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Nothing against Regis, but the company has now put together a slightly more tech savvy group of investors. Numberfire, a graduate of the recent ER Accelerator program, has raised a $650,000 seed round from investors that include RRE Ventures, Pennyblack’s Eliot Durbin and TechStars David Tisch. Read More

By Ben Popper 1/04/12 9:38am

Funding

$$$ in you inbox

DailyWorth, A DailyCandy For Money, Raises $2 M. From Joanne Wilson and Howard Lindzon

65 percent of women are the CFOs in their household, meaning they make the principal financial decisions. When serial entrpreneur Amanda Steinberg was looking to create an email business, she fixated on improving women’s financial smarts, something she had struggled with as a new mother buying a new home. And so DailyWorth, a sort of DailyCandy for money, was born.

The company has just raised $2 million from a group of angel investors led by Joanne Wilson and Stocktwits founder Howard Lindzon. Other investors include 500 Startups Dave McClure, TechStars Dave Cohen, networking artiste Peter Shankman and Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures. That brings its total funding to just over $3 million. “Amanda is an experienced entrepreneur and web developer. She’s got a great set of skills and is tapping into a big market,” said Ms. Wilson. Read More

By Ben Popper 12/21/11 2:00pm

Funding

Time to make Tracks

Tracks Lands $1 M. Seed Round From General Catalyst and Photobucket Founder Alex Welch

It’s been an interesting path for Tracks, a mobile photo sharing app that hopes to connect users around what it calls the “experience graph”. “We came out at TechCrunch disrupt in May,” says founder Vic Singh. ”But then we relaunched in September and found some real traction. That let us put together a seed round and it feels great to go into the new year with some momentum and capital,”

Today the company announced a $1 million seed round from General Catalyst, TMT Investments, Eniac Ventures (where Mr. Singh is a general partner), AppFund, BHV Ventures, Harbor Road Ventures, Atventure.us, and a handful of angels investors including Photobucket founder Alex Welch, who will be joining the company’s board. “It’s a big validation to us that Alex is so interested in the company, given his history in photos.” Read More

By Ben Popper 12/16/11 8:23am

Funding

Who dreams of electric sheep

Exclusive: Jake Lodwick Raises $1-2 M. To Build Elepath, a Software Studio

Vimeo co-founder and internet eccentric Jake Lodwick has just raised around $1.5 million from a gaggle of big name New York tech types including Chris Dixon, Lerer Ventures, David Karp, Bre Pettis and David Tisch. The interesting part is, he doesn’t have an idea for a product, at least not yet.

“I just don’t think it makes sense to have a product idea, THEN raise money, THEN build a team,” Mr. Lodwick told Betabeat over Gchat last night. “People need to trust each other and build up momentum as a team and once we have that, we can drop everything and focus on a great product idea.” Read More

By Ben Popper 12/15/11 1:45pm

Funding

Sportsvite Scores $4.35 M. In Funding For Online Athletics

According to a filing with the SEC, Park Avenue based Sportsvite has raised $4.35 million in a recent equity sale. The company lets users organize teams, manage leagues and find new players.

The company bills itself as a social network, but seems to have a variety of services. It’s League App is a tool for registration, payments and site creation.

We’ve reached out to the folks at Sportsvite and will update when we hear back. 

By Ben Popper 12/05/11 9:42am

Funding

Science!

NYC Startup Late Night Labs Raises $1.1 Million From Angels, Including Former Chancellor Harold Levy

The former chancellor of New York City’s public school system, Harold Levy, is now an early stage venture capital investor. Today Late Night Labs, an online education startup, announced it was raising $1.1 million from a group of angel investors including Mr. Levy.

Late Night Labs offers a virtual laboratory where students can conduct chemistry and biology experiments. At a time when schools around the country are being forced to make tough budget decisions, it provides a useful replacement for expensive “wet” labs that rely on real chemicals. Plus, there is way less chance one of the teachers will go rogue and start dealing meth.  Read More

By Ben Popper 12:42pm

Funding

Tumblr Raises $85 Million Series E

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. Read More