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Posts Tagged ‘Valhalla Partners’

Funded: Coupons.com, $200M; Rally Software, $20M; App47, $1M; ADmantX, $2.8M

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Rally SoftwareFUNDINGS – Boulder, Colorado-based Rally Software, which has offices in Raleigh, has raised $20 million in new funding led by Meritech Capital Partners. Meritech also backs Facebook, Salesforce.com, Zipcar, Presidio, Broadsoft, and NetSuite, among other well known tech firms.

Rally sells Agile application lifestyle management. According to a study by QSM Associates, software-driven companies that rely on Rally’s Agile ALM products and services are 50 percent faster to market and 25 percent more productive than industry averages.

Rally acquired Raleigh, NC-based Sixth Sense Analytics in 2010 and is hiring to fill two engineering positions in the Raleigh office. It currently has 17 employees. Vice President of Products, Todd Olson is based in Raleigh.

Coupons.com nabs whopping $200M round

Mt. View, CA-based Coupons.com, which provides digital coupons, has raised $200 million in new equity backing. The company did not name investors, but they’ll show up sooner or later in an SEC filing. It says up to $100 million of the funding will facilitate liquidity for employees and early investors.

Obviously, with Groupon, LivingSocial and a hoard of daily discount deal sites raking in venture backing of well over $1 billion, investors love anything to do with online discounts.

CT-based AdmantX gets $2.8M for semantic page-level analysis

AdmantxADmantX has closed a $2.8 million in growth funding from Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno, the venture capital Fund of Intesa Sanpaolo, an Italian bank. ADmantX sells cookieless tracking technology.

ADmantX offers an advanced semantic page-level analysis that surfaces reader emotions, behaviors, motivations and intentions in order to match ads with similar emotional appeal, without using tracking cookies. This is the first outside funding since ADmantX was spun off last year from Expert System, the leading global provider of semantic software.

ADmantX says it goes beyond relevant SEO and flat keyword-based terms, ensuring brand protection against questionable content for publishers, ad networks and various buy- and sell-platforms. It also incorporates emotional intelligence into the mix, increasing campaign segmentation and targeting for better ad reach and success.

Reston, VA-based App47 tallies $1M first round for mobile app development tools

App47 has raised $1 million in first round funding from Valhalla Partners. It closed the funding in January.

App47 says it delivers enterprise Mobile Application Management tools and intelligence to optimize the mobile user experience and provides a powerful, integrated, lifecycle view of mobile applications and the entire mobile user experience-without compromising the privacy of enterprise data.

Their cloud-based Mobile Application Management solution can be deployed in minutes, providing key analytics and performance data to assist in design, deployment, configuration, and security of mobile applications.

Founders are Chris Schroeder, CEO, and Sean McDemott, who earlier created RealOps, the pioneer in enterprise management Run Book Automation solutions, which was acquired by BMC Software in July 2007.

Schroeder saiys, “Our solution focuses on managing mobile applications, not devices, allowing enterprises to manage and automate highly complex, multi-tired mobility workflows. With App47′s powerful, context-aware tools and deep application intelligence, enterprises can ensure the best possible user experience for the mobile applications and unleash their true business value.”

The way mobile apps are thriving with only a third or so of cell phone users having smartphones bodes well for growth in the industry. One thing that sets mobile apart from the way the Internet developed is that people have been willing to pay for mobile apps from the start. The real question, of course, is how mobile app makers can develop ongoing revenue streams.

Still, we’re betting firms related to mobile apps will be coming out of the proverbial woodwork for the next several years. Any firm that helps developers figure out what works and what doesn’t and why is likely to do well, we suspect.

VirtuOZ gets $7M for intelligent virtual agents

VirtuOz  Inc., s provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for online customer service, today announced that it has raised $7 million in additional funding from existing investors Mohr Davidow, Inventures Group and Galileo Partners to finance growth in the U.S. and E.U.

The company says its intelligent virtual agents offer companies a new channel for contemporary online customer service that delivers the best possible customer experience at one-tenth the cost of traditional channels.

The company processed over 144 million conversations on behalf of our customers in 2010 and with the largest number of live enterprise intelligent virtual agents for Global 2000 companies including eBay, SFR, H&R Block and L’Oreal.

San Diego-based Skinit secures $12M debt financing for customized electronic devices tech

Skinitwhich sells on-demand personalization of electronic devices, and home and automobile products, has closed a $12 million in debt financing from BlueCrest Capital Finance. The funds will be used to expand Skinit’s current initiatives for delivering personalization capabilities to consumers and support the company’s continued growth.

Skinit’s online ordering and customization tools allow consumers to create branded, designed, and personalized electronic device covers.

The growth strategy includes expansion of Skinit’s fully branded ecommerce partner sites and promotional landing pages, as well as wholesale, retail and B2B solutions. It already features an extensive library of licensed artwork from some of the most prominent brands in sports and entertainment including NFL skins and MLB skins, major colleges and universities, Disney, as well as original Skinit designs and works from independent artists.

Virginia-based Three Pillar Global gets $10M for mobile software development services

Fairfax, VA-based Three Pillar Global has received a $10 million investment from Texas-based Nestors Financial.

The company said it will use fhte funds to sclae its operations, expand its global footprint and possibly pursue acquisitions.

Three Pillar Global offers a  flexible approach for clients through its innovative Virtual Development Centers that deliver transformative levels of productivity. The company, founded in 2006, has respected and leading customers in media, healthcare, education and financial services

Baltimore’s TidalTV dials in $30M third round for online video ad platform

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

TidalTVBALTIMORE, MD – TidalTV, a video advertising, optimization, and yield management solutions provider, has raised more than $30 million in financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from other existing investors Comcast Interactive Capital and Valhalla Partners.

The company says the new funding will support the aggressive expansion of TidalTV’s technology into new global markets throughout 2011 and the deployment of its proprietary ad decisioning solutions into new multi-screen applications for advertisers, media agencies and publishers.

TidalTV launched as a technology platform in late 2007. It was founded by Advertising.com co-founder Scott Ferber.

The investment nearly doubles TidalTV’s last financing, allowing the company to build momentum in the rapidly growing video advertising category and to deliver advanced capabilities in targeting the right ad, to the right person, at the right time, across platforms.  eMarketer estimates that by 2015, 76% of internet users, or 195.5 million people will be watching online video each month.  In the same period, it predicts online video advertising spending will surge from $1.97 billion to $5.71 billion.

“Our focus on bringing math and science into the branded advertising space has been well received, and truly illustrates the demand for more efficiency and effectiveness in brand marketing,” said Ferber, chairman & CEO of TidalTV.

“I have never experienced such eagerness to invest into the growth of a company by existing investors, so much so that we could not accommodate all the demand.  This infusion of capital will advance TidalTV’s position as a leader in video-based advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers through investments in premier human capital, expansion into new global markets and the development of innovative product suites.”

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Atlanta’s SolidFire heats up with $11M first round for cloud storage

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

SolidFireATLANTA – SolidFire, a next-generation cloud computing storage platform,has closed $11 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with current investors Valhalla Partners and Novak Biddle Venture Partners participating.

NEA is a leading global venture capital firm with more than $11 billion in committed capital and a 30-year track record of successful investing including enterprise storage companies such as Data Domain, 3ware, and Fusion IO.

The funding, which follows a $1 million seed round, will be used to expand the company in preparation for launch later this year. As part of this expansion, SolidFire has opened an office in Boulder, Colorado and will be hiring for engineering, marketing, and sales roles.

NEA General Partner Harry Weller will join SolidFire’s Board of Directors alongside Valhalla General Partner Charles Curran and Novak Biddle General Partner Phil Bronner. Also joining the SolidFire board is former LeftHand Networks CEO Bill Chambers.

“SolidFire is attacking an incredibly difficult and important problem in cloud computing,” said Weller. “Offering reliable block storage as a service with consistent quality of service is a key requirement for supporting enterprise applications in both public and private clouds.”

SolidFire says its cloud-scale storage system provides reliable, high performance primary storage for demanding public cloud and enterprise private cloud environments. The company’s innovative solid state architecture independently virtualizes both capacity and performance, allowing complete flexibility in storage provisioning and management.

It says its solution allows cloud providers and enterprises to take advantage of the performance, reliability and energy efficiency advantages of solid state storage at a price point comparable to conventional spinning disk.

SolidFire lands $1M financing for solid state storage tech

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

SolidFireATLANTA – SolidFire, an Atlanta-based firm selling solid state storage for cloud providers, has raised $1 million from Valhalla Partners of Vienna, VA, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners of Bethesda, MD. The company says its technology is a next-generation storage platform for cloud computing providers and other enterprises that need scalable, reliable storage for thousands of servers.

The company says its platform is faster, more energy efficient, and more reliable solid state storage at a cost comparable to conventional disk storage.

Charles Curran, Valhalla general partner, and Phil Bronner, Novak Biddle general partner join the company’s board.

Greg Foster is joining the firm’s board of advisors.

“SolidFire virtually eliminates the cost tradeoff of using solid state storage in the cloud,” said Curran. “Valhalla is excited to be a part of a venture that will have an enormous impact on the cloud storage space.”

The company says its architecture has been designed to optimize the performance of solid state storage (SSD) to provide a significant increase in performance and capacity per storage dollar spent.

Dave Wright, founder and CEO of SolidFire, was previously founder and CEO of Jungle Disk, the first commercial cloud storage and backup service built on the Amazon S3 cloud storage platform. Jungle Disk was acquired by cloud computing provider Rackspace Hosting in 2008.

While the company did not disclose the amount of the raise in its press release, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that several sources pegged the amount at $1 million.