Weekly August 27, 2011

Brazil:

·         Dualtec Cloud Solutions, Brazil’s first cloud services broker, has received an investment from Brazilian VC firm, Astella Investimentos.  The funds will be used to accelerate its growth. This increases Astella’s portfolio to five companies and positions Dualtec to reach its goal of a 36% increase in sales.

o   http://bit.ly/nITZ6p

·         The Brazilian government is going to allocate R$ 2 billion for FINEP, a government development agency, to increase the release of funds for business innovation projects.  The funds will be released through BNDES, the national development bank, through the Investment Support Program at rates of 4%-5% per year.

o   http://bit.ly/qU2onk

·         O2 Games, a Brazilian online social gaming company, has received a new investment from Bossa Nova, a group led by business angel, Pierre Schurmann.  The funds will be used to strengthen the business, keep it in Belo Horizonte, and then increase its market share through new games.

o   http://bit.ly/pJ2zCE

·         Latin America’s largest group buying site, Peixe Urbano, has announced that it will sponsor start-ups participating in incubator, Startup Farm, that try to create some sort of solution using its API.

o   http://bit.ly/ni4NEJ

·         In keeping with its internet expansion movement, the federal government will penalize internet operators and internet providers that limit the access of certain internet services.  Essentially, the government is imposing net neutrality.

o   http://bit.ly/o5kQAG

United States:

·         Silicon Valley based social enterprising company Jive files its S-1 this week. Jive’s IPO is expected to be at $100M. Their software combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured social networks for businesses.

o   http://tcrn.ch/qka2mY

·         Tel Aviv based cloud-supported music service, Mecanto launched an affordable streaming and storage service.  The service promises unlimited music streaming and storage to listeners all over the world without the price of competitors.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oMTBYo

·         Auto industry digital marketing platform Dealer.com raises $30M led by Accel Partners. Based in Burlington, VT, Dealer.com sells a SaaS application that manages auto dealers’ web presence from start to finish.

o   http://tcrn.ch/rlVVsJ

·         Revenue performance management company Eloqua Limited files for an initial public offering estimated at $100M. Eloqua’s software solution is a SaaS platform that provides its clients with analytics to help predict revenue performance.

o   http://bit.ly/mXgBux

·         Online gaming veterans Chris Chung and Rick Lambright have formed Motiga, a startup dedicated to making cloud-based mobile games. In addition, the company has created a scalable cloud-based mobile game server technology.

o   http://bit.ly/pjAx6m

American VC/Industry:

·         Y Combinator startup, MarketBrief, launched last week.  The startup aims to process SEC filings and create a simplified version of the filing document.  The startup plans to include FCA, FCC, and other agency documents as it matures.  The company will operate on a freemium model.

o   http://bit.ly/o9OaOa

·         Technology company incubator YouWeb has raised $2MM from its existing investors.  The funds will be used to help expand the incubator in both its program size and personnel.

o   http://bit.ly/pWJyiD

·         OpenFeint, the mobile social gaming network, has announced that it will allow third-party app developers to use its own identification code in response to Apple’s earlier announcement of its exluding unique device identifier numbers in future Apple projects.

o   http://bit.ly/nOShD2

·         Venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, is raising a new growth fund and principals fund.  The amounts being sought have not yet been disclosed.

o   http://bit.ly/re6RwM

Weekly News August 13, 2011

Brazil:

·         Following a Brazilian courts injunction against Vostu in the Zynga vs. Vostu lawsuit, an American Judge said that the Brazilian Court cannot shut down the Brazilian startup. This is due to Zynga’s decision to use the US courts as its first forum.

o   http://tcrn.ch/piGRk6

·         Brazilian accelerator, Startup Farm, has announced three scholarships for women.  One will be a complete scholarship with the other two covering 50% of costs.  The goal is to increase the amount of woman participants given their low representation.

o   http://goo.gl/mtuAP

·         Sao Paulo-based startup Ledface has launched its beta of what it calls “the collective brain,” which is essentially a crowdsourcing platform. The Brazilian startup is a platform that aims to harness collective intelligence to answer questions.

o   http://tnw.co/ow77OD

·         Start-Up Lab, as presented by Artemisia Neogicos Socias and The Hub, is hosting a pitch session event in Rio de Janeiro at August 25th. This is a part of a week of programs that cover a variety of topics from August 21-August 28^th.

o   http://bit.ly/pGuoJk

·         American VC fund, Redpoint Ventures, will be hosting office hours in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro on August 15^th (SP) and August 18^th (RJ).  Redpoint will select 30 companies to participate in this event.

o   http://goo.gl/10R9z

United States:

·         Foodspotting, a service built around sharing photos of meals with the goal of food discovery, attained 100M users this week. In response to this the startup is adding a new “Follow” tab in order to augment the social aspect of the app.

o   http://tcrn.ch/rkE4mJ

·         Facebook released mobile messaging app, Facebook Messenger. The new app merges the technology from the company’s acquisition of group messaging service, Beluga, and a revamped Messages product.

o   http://tcrn.ch/qw8L6r

·         Google+ has launched its own games section that features titles from Facebook game companies such as Zynga and others.  More importantly, Google is undercutting Facebook by charging a 5% revenue fee versus Facebook’s 30%.

o   http://goo.gl/Je5C2

·         In a new partnership with Foursquare, DVD rental service RedBox is now offering discounts when customers check-in with the location based service. This comes as the latest push to encourage Redbox users to connect the kiosks to their mobile devices.

o   http://on.mash.to/n8XolE

·         In order to circumvent Apple’s new in-app subscription rules, Amazon has launched a new HTML5 app called Kindle Cloud Reader that allows you to read Kindle books in your browser both online and offline.

o   http://on.mash.to/mXfcQk

·         URL shortening service Bit.ly acquired social publishing tool, Twitterfeed. The social tool automatically publishes RSS feeds to social networks with a title and shortened Bit.ly link.

o   http://on.mash.to/oZ3pEO

·         Zulily, a daily deals site that specializes in toys and children’s clothes closes a $43M fundraising round led by Meritech Capital Partners. No plans were announced for the new

funds.

o   http://tinyurl.com/3k5r4oq

American VC/Industry:

·         Gaming giant Zynga filed an amended S-1 for their IPO, slightly altering their previous filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, Zynga confirmed that it now has a $1B credit facility, as well as an increase in employees.

o   http://bit.ly/o7nJoT

·         Rovio, the company behind the smash game Angry Birds is in the process of fundraising a round that would value the company at over $1.2B.

o   http://bit.ly/oRK7Xs

·         Visa has announced that it will deploy dual-mode chips to pave the way for NFC based mobile payments.  Furthermore, Visa has announced a 3 year, 3 step plan that will induce merchant-credit card companies infrastructure changes.

o   http://goo.gl/Rf22N

Weekly News August 6, 2011

Brazil:

·         Zynga has now sued Vostu in Brazil where a judge has granted a preliminary injunction against Vostu.  Vostu and Orkut must now remove four games within two days or incure $13K in daily fines.

o   http://tcrn.ch/nmJ3zo

·         IDC Institute has found that Apple’s iPhone dominates Brazilian phone sales, gaining 19% of the market.  This level of market share represents an increase of 140% over the previous year. Apple’s rise  is in stark contracts to Nokia’s 30% fall.

o   http://bit.ly/n9RvD6

·         Buscape Challenge has selected four winners in its business plan contest. The winners: Urbanizo (an internet real estate site), HotMart (a platform for operating and distributing digital content), Anuncie La (a social virtual marketplace), and Meu Carrinho (a mobile app for grocery store prices) will receive R$1MM from Buscape and other qualitative aid.

o   http://bit.ly/poWZ1l

·         Brazilian incubator Aceleradora has selected five startups for its 2011 mentoring cycle.  The companies: AcessoZero (online social city guide), Anuncie.La (a social virtual marketplace), Crowdtest (crowdsourced testing service) EuDecido (reverse group buying system), and Vozis (call routing platform) will receive constant mentoring sessions and even small capital investments if needed.

o   http://tnw.co/raoRL5

United States:

·         Social gaming company Kixeye raised $18M in a series C round led by Jafco Ventures. The company focuses on “games for gamers” and with the new funds looks to expand in both personnel and titles.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oF9zK4

·         American Express has teamed up with Verizon Wireless to support AmEx’s Serve digital wallet platform.  Under the agreement, Verizon customers will be able to use Serve to make payments for transactions done on their smartphones.

o   http://bit.ly/ql7qko

·         Educational gaming startup Airy Labs, which creates social learning games for children that are compatible with mobile, tablet and browser, raised $1.5M in seed funding from Google Ventures among others.

o   http://tcrn.ch/qiYo99

·         Social gaming company Zynga launched Words With Friends for Facebook. The new version of the game offers continuous play; meaning if you start a game on your mobile device, you can continue it on Facebook and vice-versa. 

o   http://on.mash.to/prm0AE

·         Kinvey, a startup that helps mobile developers build apps faster, raised $2MM in a seed round.  The seed money will be used to hire more employees and add new features.

o   http://bit.ly/rcXiGR

·         WhosHere, an iOS app for location-based social networking, has raised $1.25MM in its first round.  The company plans to scale the business and expand its team with West Coast developers and East Coast operations personnel.

o   http://bit.ly/oPRyBK

·         ChoozOn, a coupon aggregator, raised $3.2MM in angel funding.  The company is currently In beta testing.  With the new funds ChoozOn intends to grow from 40 employees to 50 employees.

o   http://bit.ly/qfYLnV

·         Quirky, a social network for product development, has raised $16M in a Series B led by Norwest Venture Partners. The crowdsourcing site plans to use the new funds for talent hires, specifically in the product development and design areas.

o   http://tcrn.ch/qaNfLg

VC/Industry:

·         A study by PlaySpan and VG Market Study found that a third of online gamers buy virtual goods. Furthermore, it was found that women are three times more likely than men to use Facebook credits to purchase virtual goods.

o   http://bit.ly/rnh9NJ

·         Startup incubator AngelPad has decided to offer applicants an additional $100K in funding. The funding is from two VC firms and does not have major diluting effects.

o   http://bit.ly/p4iFZD

·         McKinsey has published a research article in which the population of heavy users of digital activities has almost tripled.  Nonetheless, a quarter of the population still does not own a smartphone or engage in digital activities and lacks an intention to do so.

o   http://rww.to/q3PcTW

Weekly News July 30, 2011

Brazil:

·       Challenge: Brazil hosts its final competitions in Belo Horizonte and Campinas August 5^th-8^th.  The competing groups will be evaluated by VCs and entrepreneurs with the winners moving on to the national competition. The event is open to the public.

o   http://bit.ly/pwMw6A

·       Airbnb, a vacation rentals site, has raised $112MM in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1.3B valuation. The new funds will be used for international expansion with Brazil as a priority market.

o   http://bit.ly/qMGnVY

·       Innovation Institute has launched StartupFarm, an unpublished acceleration program for digital entrepreneurism. The program promises to accelerate digital startups in 30 days. Applications for the Sao Paulo program are open.

o  http://bit.ly/qfAxtZ

·       Daniel Capobianco of the Center of Entrepreneurialism and New Business of FGV has started “Estagio em Startup”.  This program facilitates start-ups to find and hire interns from FGV.

o   http://bit.ly/pAT0u9

·       Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo believes that with the beginning of the federal government’s broadband plan internet costs will drop.  Furthermore, he stated that the government plans to construct another submarine international communications cable.

o   http://bit.ly/n2gCRO

United States:

·       New York City based advertising company Yext just closed a $10M series D round led by WGI Group. Yext’s main service is  pay-per-call ads for local businesses. The new funds will be used to integrate 100 more local sites and apps.

o   http://tcrn.ch/q9KCTi

·       Hearsay Social, an SaaS dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage social madia pages, has raised $18MM from NEA and Sequoia Capital. The company will add more features to the program including a hierarchal structure.

o   http://tcrn.ch/ptzkHP

·       Thinknear, a New York startup that uses mobile banner ads to create hyper-targeted daily deal offers for local merchants raised $1.6 M in a series A round led by IA and Google Ventures.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oH4olh

·       Google acquired facial recognition service PittPatt, as it begins to explore opportunities with the new technology. 

o   http://tcrn.ch/ohB2Go

·       In an effort to court advertisers, Facebook has introduced a new site called Facebook for Business. According to a company rep, the site “provides step-by-step guidance for how to best use Facebook’s marketing tools.”

o   http://on.mash.to/pRXzDY

·       Tokyo-based DeNA, and its subsidiary, ngmoco, launch new social networking platform, mobage. Using the Adroid OS, the services allows developers to deploy their games so that they can be discovered and shared by gamers.

o   http://bit.ly/nZRHdM

·       Zynga has teamed up with Jordanian payment hub, Gate2play, to bring their games and services to Africa and the Middle East without credit cards.The partnership creates prepaid Zynga Game Cards.

o   http://bit.ly/nIjJGJ

VC/Industry:

·       According to a recent report from Nielsen, based on June data, Android now controls 39% of the smartphone market. Apple has 28% of the market, while RIM is down to 20%.

o   http://on.mash.to/prNDe5

·       Smartphone (phones that support app creation) sales are expected to reach 420MM units this year or 28% of the total phone market.  IMS expects this figure to reach 1B units by 2016.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oPpIzN

·       New York based RRE Ventures is raising a $250MM tech-focused fund with a $300MM hard cap.  This is the early-stage firm’s fifth fund.

o   http://bit.ly/poTAg5

·       Professor Mark Cannice of the University of San Francisco has published a VC confidence survey that shows a drop in confidence by venture capitalists. He attributes this drop to macro concerns, capital availability, and inflated valuations.

o   http://on.wsj.com/qq7iJn

·        Softbank Capital has announced a series of fund updates that include a shift in investment focus toward seed and early series A rounds and in smaller doses.  Moreover, more investments are being made in New York City based startups.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pGNEvh

Weekly News July 24, 2011

Brazil:

·       Brazilian gaming company, Vostu, has published a defensive statement against Zynga’s massive lawsuit from last month.  Vostu’s defense includes numerous illustrations of how Zynga has copied other games repeatedly over the years.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oUyuKc

·       Peixe Urbano, a Latin American daily deals company announces this week that it has signed a deal to use Message Systems’ digital messaging platform to handle its massive daily email needs.

o   http://bit.ly/q1biOg

·       Brazilian singer songwriter Gil Gilberto announces the release of a new app for the iPod and iPad. The app allows users to listen to his complete discography, scan his biography, read news and create playlists with their favorite songs.

o   http://bit.ly/pw5sZl

United States:

·       Music licensing and technology company, Audiosocket, launches a new platform called Music as a Service (MaaS). The new platform will give developers a way to offer users the ability to license music for applications.

o   http://tcrn.ch/nJ1cNL

·       In a partnership with Facebook, American Express launches a new deals platform where merchants will be able to target deals at American Express cardholders on the Facebook platform.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pcDc4   

Google announces this week that they will launch Google data sourced version of virus detection. The interesting security addition from Google will use its own data to detect viruses and will be using Google Search results pages to warn users if their computers are infected with a specific form of malware.

o   http://tcrn.ch/n8gCu0

·       Viber, an iPhone application that lets iPhone users call and send messages to contacts over 3G and WiFi, free of charge, launches its application for the Android this week. Following this debut, Viber announces their MAU at 12M.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pfYPGI

·       Apple unveils new OS X Lion this week. The highly anticipated arrival of the new and innovative operating system comes on the heels of record earnings in Q3 for Apple. OS X Lion will be available in the Mac App Store only.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pRhaBP

     Shares of online real estate service Zillow, more than double this week at its IPO, continuing the trend of mega IPO’s for similar tech companies in recent weeks. This opening surge values Zillow at more than $1 billion.

o   http://on.mash.to/okp2Tk

Isis, an operator led mobile wallet service announces partnerships with four major American payment networks: Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. Isis uses technology called NFC, that enables people to use their phones to pay for transactions just by tapping or waving their phone.

o   http://rww.to/qwf76J

·       Los Angeles-based social gaming platform Diversion raises a significant amount of seed funding from from Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, Hearst Corporation and Eisner’s The Tornante Company.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pS7ZN1

American VC/ Industry:

·       Tango, a video-calling service announces that it has raised $42 million in a second round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  The service allows smartphone and tablet users to make video calls with other Tango users.

o   http://bit.ly/mVQmLG

·       Accel Partners has been making numerous sizeable investments in online payment companies. These include, Wonga, e-payments company Yapstone, and most recently, online payments company Braintree.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oEPLxA

Weekly News July 17, 2011

Brazil:

·         In the wake of Google+’s launch, Google has confirmed that Orkut will stay online and continue to receive updates. However, Google has left open the possibility of integrating the two social networks.

o   http://bit.ly/nztElE

·         Newly formed capital fund, Initial Capital is entering the Brazilian market. The Israeli fund is partnering with Brazilian Daniel Carneiro, former CEO of Softcorp. Initial Capital will generally make investments of $100K-$300K.

o   http://bit.ly/qS50Dq

·         The first MongoDB event, (MongoDB is an open-source document oriented database written in C++), will be in Sao Paulo on July 22^nd. The event will feature lectures from the MongoDB community and 10gen, the business supporting the app.

o   http://bit.ly/pPTGPB

·         Kekanto, a group buying site, has received an influx of capital from Florian Otto (CEO of Groupon) and others.  The funds will be used to refine its tools, such as its mobile app, and to develop new resources, such as its Dynamic Search. 

o   http://bit.ly/p7AdXS

·         Brazil rose thirteen places in Insead’s annual Global Innovation Index.  Currently, Brazil ranks 47^th in innovation as determined through seven factors selected by the business education firm. The factors range from infrastructure to human capital.

o   http://bit.ly/qeei8K

·         American research firm Pyramid Research stated that the market for Brazilian geo-location tools will reach $10.3B by 2015, a jump over its current value of $2.8B.

United States:

·         Social gaming company Zynga acquired Five Mobile, a Canadian mobile app development company. Five Mobile specializes in multi-platform development and under the terms of the deal will become Zynga Toronto.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pYv87D

·         Apica, a load-testing and performance monitoring solution for cloud and mobile apps, has raised $2B from ALMI Invest and others.  The funds will be used to move the company to its new Palo Alto headquarters.

o   http://bit.ly/pmcBOR

·         Crittercism, a startup that provides support infrastructure for mobile apps, has raised $1.2M in its seed round from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and others. Its platform enables developers to diagnose mobile app crashes and provide customer support.

o   http://bit.ly/qV6tZR

·         Badgeville has raised $12MM in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners and El Dorado Ventures.  The company adds game-like features to non-game applications. The funding will help accelerate the company’s growth in a crowded market.

o   http://bit.ly/qTlM7h

·         Localmind, a location-based Q&A platform has raised $600K in angel funding from Granite Ventures and others. The platform uniquely sits on top of existing check-in services. The funds will be used for hiring and product development.

o   http://tcrn.ch/nTROjG

·         Foursquare is adding a new marketing component to its mobile apps that will soon incorporate daily deals from partners such as Groupon, LivingSocial, and Gilt Groupe.

o   http://on.mash.to/qfneWM

·         Organization web service company, Evernote, raised $50MM from Sequoia Capital and Morgenthaler Ventures.  The funds will be used for future acquisitions and other growth measures.

o   http://tcrn.ch/naynAl

American VC/Industry:

·         Early stage venture firm Shasta Ventures has raised a $200MM fund.  The growth fund’s purpose is to support start-ups.

o   http://bit.ly/ozCQUH

·         CrowdStar, a social gaming company, and YouWeb, Peter Relan’s incubator, have launched a $10MM fund to invest in mobile social game developers.  The fund will initially invest up to $250K for developers.

o   http://bit.ly/pHaNj3

·         KPMG released a study that shows that 46 percent of executives see mainstream mobile payment use possible by 2013 and 83% see it as possible by 2015.

o   http://bit.ly/o8MMkH

·         Moolah Media, a recently launched mobile ad network that uses a cost per action and cost per lead model, has launched a $3MM developer fund.  The fund will offer an additional 33% payout for all new publishers and developers that use the new formats.

o   http://tcrn.ch/oWXkPY

Weekly News July 8, 2011

Brazil:

·         On July 12^th SEBRAE-SP (Brazilian Support Center for Small and Medium Size Businesses) and ASESSPRO-SP (Association of Information Technology Businesses) will host an event for small and micro businesses in the Information Technology and Communications sectors.  The event’s lectures will focus on lines of credit and capacity. 

o   http://bit.ly/jwGxYh

·         Google blocked Migrakut, the application that transfers photos hosted on Orkut to Facebook.  This followed Facebook’s blockage of an app aimed at exporting Facebook contacts to Gmail, and subsequently Google+.

o   http://bit.ly/pCAwHT

·         A research report from Ibope Nielsen Online reveals that home internet access grew 30% in the last year. Furthermore, the time spent online by Brazilians increased 6.4%. As a result, Brazil leads the world in time spent online.

o   http://bit.ly/o7YQWm

·         Tim Merel of VentureBeat labeled Brazil as a volume market for the gaming sector, with value still lacking.  This is attributed due to an absence of traditional gaming industries and an emphasis on “free to play” social and mobile gaming business models.

o   http://bit.ly/rpNf6T

United States:

·         Facebook launched a new video-calling service with Skype. The service will initially start with one-to-one calling, but group calling can be expected in the future given its presence on Google+.

o   http://tcrn.ch/ozEfui 

·         A version of Google + geared towards businesses is in development. The new Google+ experience will emphasize the relationship between consumers and brands and will include a thorough analytics program. 

o   http://on.mash.to/mS0z2n

·         eBay has acquired mobile payment company Zong for $240 million. The acquistion is meant to bolster the presence and force of eBay’s online payment service, Paypal.

o   http://bit.ly/o1rFKH 

·         Intel Capital and others invested $10MM in Virtustream’s Series B.  Virtustream provides strategy, integration and managed services utilizing virtualization technologies, and xStream, a cloud provisioning platform.  The new funds are for branding, marketing, and for further xStream product development.

o   http://tcrn.ch/nnhCLw

·         Twitter is raising $400MM at an $8B valuation, a 116.2% increase from its last valuation.  The round will be led by Yuri Milner of DST.

o   http://bit.ly/rezWWG

·         Sequoia Capital participated in a $10MM round for CloudShare, a service that allows companies to demo software in the cloud.  The funds will be used for sales expansion and product development.

o   http://tcrn.ch/pIuOwQ

·         Tapjoy, an app marketing and monetization company, has raised $30MM in a round led by J.P. Morgan.  The funds will be used to further scale the business. 

o   http://bit.ly/q3d9Su

VC/Industry:

·         According to a report by Nielsen, mobile games are the most popular type of apps amongst smartphone users (64% of downloaded apps). Furthermore, the report showed that smartphone users are more likely to pay for a gaming app over any other kind.

o   http://on.mash.to/pcYmIc 

·         According to Chetan Sharma Consulting group, the mobile market makes up 2% of the world’s GDP ($1.3T). Of the $1.3T, about $300 billion is expected to be from data revenues, indicating higher data usage in BRIC and other developing markets.

o   http://rww.to/p3Kbl4

·         The SeedSummit group, a group of 21 early-stage European VC firms, has produced two standardized term sheets templates.  The templates are expected to increase deal efficiency and transparency in Europe.

o   http://bit.ly/qmNqBS 

·         Juniper Research reports that the transaction value of mobile payments will reach $670B by 2015.  $268B will be from digital goods payments and 75% of all mobile payments activity will be from Western Europe, North America, and East Asia.

o   http://tcrn.ch/j3Y69U

·         According to ComScore, a third of all U.S. mobile phones are smartphones. The report also noted that Apple has surpassed RIM in smartphone market share, ranking in second place.

o   http://tcrn.ch/mieRds

Weekly News June 24, 2011

Brazil:

·         Brazilian mobile services company, Movile, has launched HTML5 Mobile Web App Social APIs.  These products are available on Zeewe, Movile’s mobile app store, and make it easy for web app developers to add leaderboards and social features to their mobile web apps. 

o   http://rww.to/l4eKBh

·         On July 7^th the first Campinas TECH Meetup will occur at Unicamp. The main angel investors in Brazil will be in attendance to discuss  the topic of investments. Based on submitted interests, entrepreneurs will be seated with angel investors in their sectors.

o   http://bit.ly/lXg3N0

·         Regrupe, a secondary group coupon market, and ApontaOfertas, a deal aggregator, are merging. The two companies believe that combining the daily deals secondary market with the primary market further evolves the group deals business.

o   http://bit.ly/mNTdSJ

·         Registration for the Idea to Product Latin America competition is now open and closes July 29^th.  Participants must be regularly enrolled in a Latin American university and have a unique idea/technology to develop.  The winner of the competition will compete in the finals in Sweden and will receive consulting services from FGVcenn.

o   http://bit.ly/lvC5T3

·         Telebras, a telecom company, has admitted to being open to partnering with other investors in order to carry out the National Broadband Plan (dispersion of fiber optic connections throughout the country) by 2014. Telebras is attempting to reach its goals with a reduced staff and limited capital, thereby prompting the need for outside partners.

o   http://bit.ly/l6y4LV

·         Startup Weekend Rio de Janeiro is June 24-June 26.  Key attendees are Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Yuri Gitahi of Aceleradora, and Gustavo Guida Reis of HelpSaude. A series of networking, speeches, and pitches  composes the event’s schedule.

o   http://bit.ly/k2Rhgn

United States:

·         Shazam, a mobile music app, raised $32MM in a round led by Kleiner Perkins. Shazam will use the funds to double its staff and accelerate product development as it works towards adding more television to its music offering. 

o   http://bit.ly/lCmRqC

·         Foursquare has officially made a partnership deal with American Express. American Express will offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their mobile phone at certain shops and restaurants.

o   http://nyti.ms/ja5FbD

·         PopCap Games, a mobile gaming company, is expected to be bought by Electronic Arts, a traditional gaming company. The acquisition price is thought to be around $1B and motivated by EA’s desire to move into the new social and mobile gaming sectors.

o   http://tcrn.ch/kJu0Qb

·         Ringleadr has raised $500K in seed funding.  These funds will be used to build mobile apps and to forge partnerships. Ringleadr allows users to create their own group deals. Once a deal is created, shared, and pre-ordered, the local business has 15 days to approve, deny, or modify the deal according to their standards.

o   http://tcrn.ch/lUpdzp

·         Bromium raised $9.2MM in a series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz.  Bromium is a security platform company that focuses on cloud security. Bromium’s product should debut in the second half of 2011.

o   http://tcrn.ch/liINAW

·         Softbank Capital, SV Angel, and Peter Thiel have invested a combined $600K in BestVendor.  BestVendor aims to help SMBs make purchasing decisions through social recommendations, i.e. it is a Yelp for B2B.

o   http://tcrn.ch/jpiCxP

·         DealsGoRound, a secondary daily deals marketplace, has launched a free virtual wallet service. Using this, users can import, safely store, and manage their daily deal purchases across deal providers.

o   http://tcrn.ch/m7X1sd

·         Earbits, an online radio startup, raised $605K from Y Combinator and others.  Earbits is like Pandora, but from the musicians’ side, not the listener’s.  In July Earbits plans on taking bids from musicians in order to offer streaming time. These bids will supplant ads.

o   http://tcrn.ch/isigaA

VC/Industry:

·         The market for geo-location based tools ought to grow to $10.3B by 2015 (an increase of 368%) according to a report released by Pyramid Research.  The consistent and rising use of GPS equipment and smartphones is credited for the increase.

o   http://bit.ly/mdVyOR

·         According to Bytemobile, a network management and video optimization firm, mobile video accounts for 40% to 60% of total mobile data traffic. Furthermore, iPhone users use more video data traffic than Android and laptop users.

o   http://rww.to/jamr9j

·         True Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, is raising a $200MM third fund. Through its first two funds of $155MM (1^st) and $213MM (2^nd) True Ventures has invested in 74 tech startups.

o   http://bit.ly/mvI4yZ

Weekly News June 18, 2011

Weekly News June 10, 2011