Hunch, the company whose mission is to build the ‘taste graph’ of the web which would map every person on the web to every entity on the web (be that a hotel, or a tennis racket, poet, cookbook, etc.), has raised an additional $12 million in funding according to PaidContent.
On her blog, Hunch Co-founder Caterina Fake said that while the company had enough cash to last almost another year, “there was a lot of enthusiasm for our financing and we decided it was time to go turbo.”
Congratulations Caterina, Chris and the Hunch team!
Techcrunch is reporting that content analysis startup NStein Technologies has been acquired for $34 million (which is about twice the market cap at NStein’s stock price immediately prior to the acquisition).
The acquirer, Open Text, seems entirely enterprise focused — of the hundreds of customers listed on their website I didn’t see a single media company — so NStein seems like a very complementary asset in terms of both technology and client base.
Earlier this month Quantcast announced a Series C funding round of $27.5m (led by Cisco Systems and also including existing investors Polaris Venture Partners, Founders Fund and Revolution Ventures), increasing total investment in Quantcast to around $50m.
Today, Techcrunch is reporting that NuConomy is being acquired by LivePerson for around $3m.
Although they take different approaches, both of these companies are focused on making online analytics more useful and actionable for sites and advertisers - it is great to see investment activity in this space.
Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) is buying social shopping site StyleFeeder to add more e-commerce to its magazine mix, starting with InStyle.com. No terms were disclosed, although a source tells the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal, that the price ran “well into eight figures.”
StyleFeeder has raised $3.5 million in funding since its 2005 debut, including a round of $500,000 last May from existing investors Highland Capital Partners and Schooner Capital. At the time, StyleFeeder’s founder Philip Jacob claimed that the site was profitable.
Faced with a continuing struggle for ad dollars, publishers are increasingly looking for ways to add e-commerce to their sites. Over the past year, publishers like Conde Nast and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S have struck deals with invitation shopping site operators like Gilt Groupe and Rue La La.
Time Inc.‘s addition of StyleFeeder will be limited to the publisher’s fashion titles, which haven’t performed as badly as magazines in the financial and news areas. Fran Hauser, president of Digital, Style & Entertainment Group at Time Inc., says that StyleFeeder will help influence the creation of new retail products by working alongside its existing properties. It will become integrated with fashion magazine InStyle’s site. Eventually, it could also be closely aligned with other titles, such as Essence and People en Español.
Some very interesting tweets by James Haft from the Venture Summit East 2009 about Microsoft’s investment strategies in the tech sector:
Microsoft buys about 20 companies a year, averaging about $100mm per deal. #vseast09 #vc
Microsoft Acquisition criteria: people, technology, fit with MSFT. Usually adding on to existing biz. Spend $9bn on R&D. #vseast09 #vc
MSFT doesn’t use DCF to value acquisitions…Yipee! #vseast09 #vc
MSFT: Division VP can approve deal $200mm #vseast09 #vc
if MSFT hasn’t heard of your company, they assume you are not worth acquiring…make sure they know who you are!! #vseast09 #vc
It seems Diigo has bought Web Page Clipping Service Furl From LookSmart (Story here: http://twurl.nl/65lrhf).
Interesting. I can’t see an independent Furl service lasting as there would be very
little point running two almost identical services (and functionality-wise Diigo is superior to Furl). I expect to see Furl users transitioned over to Diigo over the coming months.
You don’t need a business plan. You don’t need to have an MBA. All you need is a great idea. Anything is possible and you can accomplish it.
- Ron Conway
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1 year ago
