Alastair Goldfisher

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Swipp, a new startup that wants to challenge the “social media status quo," has raised $3.5 million in funding from Old Willow Partners in its first round of funding. As part of its launch – to be rolled out in stages over the next several months – Swipp says it will invite users around the world to try its product.

Bitcasa, a Mountain View, Calif.-based cloud storage company, has raised $7 million in its Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $9 million. Pelion Venture Partners, an existing investor, and Horizons Ventures, a new investor, co-led the round, with Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, CrunchFund and Samsung Ventures also participating.

Akkadian Ventures announced today it has raised $22 million for Akkadian Ventures II to purchase stock in private companies from entrepreneurs, employees and angel investors. Known as secondary or private exchange sales, such stock purchases have gained notoriety in recent years, thanks to the pre-IPO trading acvtivities of Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. PRESS  RELEASE Akkadian […]

Online travel site Hipmunk announced on its blog today that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The round was led by  Institutional Venture Partners and includes Series A investor Ignition Partners. Hipmunk was founded in September 2010 by Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman, founder of reddit, (which was acquired by Conde Nast in […]

Foundry Group releases its first batch of its Foundry Group beer, and a label featuring the bobbleheads of the four managing directors.

San Francisco- based Ringadoc raised $750,000 in seed funding led by the Founders Fund and including Ryan Howard, CEO and founder of fasting growing physician-patient community Practice Fusion, who has joined the board of the startup. The company, founded in 2010, currently employs about 100 doctors to answer patient calls and diagnosis symptons over the […]

Shoutlet has raised $15 million in Series C funding from FTV Capital. The company raised a $6 million Series B round in December from American Family Insurance, Origin Ventures and Leo Capital Holdings. Madison, Wisc.-based Shoutlet provides an enterprise-focused social media platform to help companies conduct marketing campaigns through social media and then track their […]

Smarterer, an online site which  tests and scores people on their skills, raised a $1.75 million Series A round, CEO Jennifer Fremont-Smith announced on the company blog today. The Boston-based company raised the round from True Ventures (which led the funding), Google Ventures and a dozen angel investors, including Shikhar Ghosh, Russ Fradin, Mark Gerson […]

I read a story recently online in SearchDataManagement that reported “big data” has become an annoying and overused buzzword among data managers. Well, if so, prepared to get annoyed some more by the catch-all phrase. VCs have big love for big data, and I don’t see any end in sight for the love affair. In […]

Grubwithus has raised $5 million in Series A funding from GRP Partners and Lebanese entrepreneur Michel Daher, known for Daher Foods. The Y Combinator funded company previously raised about $1.6 million in seed stage funding from actor Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Start Fund, SV Angel and individual entrepreneurs Yuri Milner, Matt […]