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Tag: Funding

  • Nines Radiology Aims to Upend Radiology Using AI, Scores $16.5 Million In Funding

    Nines Radiology Aims to Upend Radiology Using AI, Scores $16.5 Million In Funding

    Nines Radiology has raised $16.5 million in Series A funding, according to a company press release.

    Nines Radiology was founded in 2017 by self-driving-car pioneer David Stavens and NYC radiologist Dr. Alexander Kagen. The unlikely partnership aims to use technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), to revolutionize how radiologists interact with patients. In the company’s press release detailing a successful round of funding, the company also unveiled their mission.

    “We have a fundamental belief that radiology reimagined with modern data science can significantly improve the lives of patients and clinicians alike,” said co-founder and CEO David Stavens. “We’re working to pioneer new approaches and innovations from clinical care, engineering and data science. Radiologists at Nines are care providers, innovators, builders, and thought leaders. Our radiologists provide the best patient care, while also working with our engineers to build the future.”

    The company is betting on the ability of technology and AI to help cut through the complexity modern radiologists face on a day-to-day basis.

    “Radiology exams are becoming ever more detailed and complex with advancements in imaging technology, which in turn increases the workload on radiologists,” said Dr. Kagen, who will serve as Chief Medical Officer for Nines in addition to his role at Mount Sinai. “Radiologists need to be at the forefront of reimagining the future of medicine. Nines is a place where radiologists are empowered to build technology that unlocks the next level of patient care.

    “The right solution for radiologists is the one that results in the right interpretation. We are combining technology and clinical expertise to help radiologists intelligently prioritize their ever-growing imaging worklists. Nines is designed to help radiologists adapt and build toward a near-term future where technology plays an increasingly larger role in improving patient outcomes.”

    Nines Radiology is yet another example of AI and machine learning being used to improve and revolutionize industries.

  • Uber Is Now a $50 Billion (Valued) Company

    Throw some more money on the Uber stacks. The on-demand car company has just raised another cool $1 billion, according to sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

    The $1 billion brings the total funding to $5. The company is now valued at just shy of $51 billion.

    This round was brought to you by Microsoft and Indian media company Bennett Coleman & Co.

    The WSJ has this interesting tidbit, showing just how fast Uber reached its $50 billion valuation:

    Uber’s valuation has now reached the high-water mark set by Facebook in 2011, when Goldman Sachs offered wealthy clients outside the U.S. shares of the social network that implied a $50 billion valuation, not including the money raised.

     

    At the time, Facebook was nearly seven years old. Uber just turned five.

    In other Uber and a billion dollars news, the company announced intentions to pump $1 billion into an expansion in India.

    “We are extremely bullish on the Indian market and see tremendous potential here,” Amit Jain, president of Uber India said in a statement on Friday. “Uber has grown exponentially in India.”

    China too.

  • Spotify Hits 20M Paid Users, Defends Artist Payouts

    Spotify has a message for Apple and its new Apple Music venture – you’re starting well in the hole.

    The streaming music company has just announced it has hit 20 million paid subscribers, and 75 million total active users (meaning 55 million free tier users).

    Year-over-year, that’s a 100 percent increase in paid users. In May of 2014, Spotify reported 10 million paid subscribers and 40 million total active users. In January, those numbers were 15 million and 60 million, respectively.

    The new figures mean something significant for Spotify – it’s the first time the ratio of paid subs vs total subs has increased in about two years.

    In a blog post, Spotify also pushed back at claims that it’s bad for artists. According to the company, it paid out over $300 million in royalties in the first three months of 2015.

    “More people listening on Spotify means more payouts to the creators of the music you love. As we grow, the amount of royalties we pay out to artists, songwriters and rights holders continues to climb faster than ever. We have now paid more than $3 billion USD in royalties, including more than $300 million in the first three months of 2015 alone. That’s good for music, good for music fans … and good for music makers,” says the company.

    Some would disagree.

    Still, Spotify says that payouts will dramatically increase over the next year – given its uptick in paid subscribers.

    Spotify has also closed a new round of funding that will put $526 million into its pockets, according to the Wall Street Journal. This will surely help the company battle the newly-announced Apple Music.

    Apple Music may have already forced Spotify’s hand a bit.

    While subscriber growth – especially the paid kind – is wonderful for Spotify, it’s not all sunshine and roses. As Peter Kafka at Re/code points out, “the flip side of Spotify’s user growth is that its losses continue to increase. The company says that in 2014 it lost $197 million, up 289 percent from a $68 million loss in 2013. In the same period, Spotify’s revenue was up 45 percent, to $1.3 billion.”

    Image via Spotify, Facebook

  • Should Entrepreneurs Seek Crowdfunding?

    Should Entrepreneurs Seek Crowdfunding?

    A lot of entrepreneurs in todays landscape must decide whether or not to go the crowdfunding route. If you ask multi-billionaire Richard Branson, you’re probably best off at least considering it.

    Branson has been an investor in popular crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, and in the UK, his Virgin StartUp has partnered with Crowdfunder to help entrepreneurs raise money for their projects.

    Branson participated in a panel discussing the topic in Chicago, which you can view below if you have an hour to kill.

    He also wrote a blog post about how crowdfunding “could change the world”.

    “The benefits of crowdfunding go way beyond the money,” he writes. “It brings market validation, access to new investors, promotion, community exposure, and real-time feedback. As well as the funds to start your business, it provides real connection with people who care about your business.”

    “There are lots of wonderful ideas that are now getting the exposure they need to secure bigger investments, which is tremendous for the new generation of entrepreneurs,” Branson says in the post. “Like most things in life, crowdfunding success is much more related to how willing you are to pour yourself into the project with your heart and soul. You’ve got to have a great product, and then you’ve got to stand out from the crowd.”

    You don’t have to look very hard to find champions of crowdfunding, but there are plenty of naysayers as well. It’s also not that simple. There are reasons why crowdfunding might work well for one business and not for another.

    According to Biz2Credit CEO, writing for Fox Business, reasons to avoid crowdfunding include: it works best for projects that require small amounts of capital; lack of prestige; negative impact on future financing options; limited value of shares sold to investors; speed; and potential lawsuits.

    “Kickstarter isn’t kickstarting businesses so much as it’s kickstarting relationships based on debt,” wrote David Banks at The Society Pages.

    “Statistical analysis by Professor Mollick of Wharton uncovered that 75% of all funded projects on Kickstarter shipped late,” wrote Version One founding partner and Andreessen Horowitz board partner Boris Wertz last year. “When consumers start to look at a crowdfunding site as the equivalent of an online store where they can buy new toys, there will be trouble (hence the Kickstarter blog post: “Kickstarter is not a store”). Delays in production/delivery are usually expected among investors, but even a few weeks delay can frustrate and anger this new class of ‘investor customers’ who are expecting the same smooth process as when they order something from Amazon. Their frustration ripples throughout the web, souring the entire industry.”

    A recent article from Shelly Banjo at Quartz says that while “once idealistic,’ Crowdfunding is “now an unholy hybrid of retail, investment, and risk.” Either way, it’s only growing more and more rapidly. Banjo shares this chart tracking its growth over the past few years:

    The Wall Street Journal appears to not only condone crowdfunding for small businesses, but encourages them to “go back for seconds”. It looks at data from Kickstarter showing that those that have already had a successfully funded project have nearly double the chance of success of reaching their next funding goal.

    Despite all the media coverage of crowdfunded projects and crowdfunding in general, small businesses have still been slow to embrace it, according to Forbes, which says it makes up just a “tiny fraction” of business loans.

    Images via Twitter, Quartz

  • Nextdoor, the Social Network for Neighbors, Now Valued at $1.1 Billion

    Nextdoor, the “private social network for you, your neighbors and your community”, just raised enough new funding to make it a billion-dollar company – in valuation, at least.

    The company has raised $110 million in venture capital from Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. This gives the company a $1.1 billion valuation.

    “None of this would have been possible without the overwhelming support from our incredible members, city partners, and employees. They inspire us every day with stories of how Nextdoor is used to improve their lives and their neighbors’ lives. Whether it’s finding a great babysitter, selling a used couch, or coming together in times of crisis – we are honored that Nextdoor has become an essential lifeline to the neighborhood,” says Nextdoor co-founder and CEO Nirav Tolia.

    Alongside the funding announcement, Nextdoor has also revealed that it’s up to 53,000 individual neighborhoods represented – approximately 35% of those in the US.

    “Over three years ago, we launched Nextdoor with a clear mission: to use the power of technology to build stronger and safer neighborhoods everywhere. The response has been incredible. People truly do want to bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood and we’re humbled to be a part of it,’ says Tolia.

    Nextdoor is a social network for people in the same community, and new users must verify their location and are then only able to interact with those in their neighborhood. Think of it as an always-on neighborhood newsletter, as the company touts some of its potential uses like “tracking down a trustworthy babysitter, finding out who does the best paint job in town, or asking for help keeping an eye out for a lost dog.”

    Image via Nextdoor, Facebook

  • Uber Continues to Raise Tons of Money

    Someone just gave Uber a bunch of money, again.

    Bloomberg reports that the on-demand car company has just raised $1.6 billion in convertible debt from Goldman Sachs’ wealth management clients.

    Bloomberg has the specifics on the deal:

    The bond Uber placed with Goldman Sachs’ private clients is a six-year bond that will convert into equity at a 20 percent to 30 percent discount to Uber’s valuation at the time of an initial public offering, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News last month.

    The convertible bond carries a coupon that increases over time if Uber hasn’t gone public within 4 years, the same people have said.

    Why wouldn’t these investors want to get it now?

    Barely more than a month ago, Uber raised $1.2 billion – and the company is apparently in talks to add another $600 million to that. This funding round valued the company at over $40 billion.

    Uber is in the process of playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with market share – so cash is needed. It’s looking to expand into more cities all across the world – if it can clear the legal hurdles. The sources who reported this new round of funding suggest that’s what it’ll be used for, along with R&D and “improving safety”.

    Uber just slashed fares in 48 cities across the US, a move that hurts the company’s bottom line, but helps them grab more of the market from competitors like Lyft. Uber’s playing the long game, and it’s currently working.

  • Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams Launches Obvious Ventures

    Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, is back with his third version of Obvious, the previous versions of which spawned Twitter, Medium, and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s Jelly and Super.

    This one is called Obvious Ventures, and running the show with Williams are investors James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth. The firm is what it sounds like – a venture capital fund, but it focuses on what they refer to as “wold positive” startups. A message on the Obvious Ventures website says:

    We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.

    Why should these companies work with us? We’re experienced investors, with several IPOs under our collective belt. But we’re product designers and company builders first, and we are on a mission to help fuel startups that combine profit and purpose. Startups that create new solutions to big world problems in a profitable and scalable way.

    Obivous Ventures has invested in eleven companies so far, but has only revealed nine of them. These are: Olly, which makes nutritional supplements; Beyond Meat, which makes meatless protein foods; Breezeworks, a business operations app; Flux, which makes architectural design tools; Loup, a ride service; Magic Leap, a screen interface developer; Miyoko’s Kitchen, which makes plant-based cheeses; Workpop, a work marketplace; and ZenPayroll, which makes payroll software.

    Image via Obvious Ventures

  • Uber Raises New $1.2 Billion Round Of Funding

    Uber is trying to put that whole PR fiasco it had to deal with last week behind it. The company is now dominating headlines for announcing that it has raised a new $1.2 billion round of funding, so it’s definitely moving forward in terms of storylines.

    The funding was expected, and previously reported, but is now confirmed.

    The company did at least acknowledge the unfortunate situation that led to the aforementioned week of bad press. Here’s a snippet from the announcement:

    This kind of continued growth requires investment. To that end, we have just raised a financing round of $1.2 billion, with additional capacity remaining for strategic investments. This financing will allow Uber to make substantial investments, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.

    This kind of growth has also come with significant growing pains. The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps. We are collaborating across the company and seeking counsel from those who have gone through similar challenges to allow us to refine and change where needed.

    Fortunately, taking swift action is where Uber shines, and we will be making changes in the months ahead. Done right, it will lead to a smarter and more humble company that sets new standards in data privacy, gives back more to the cities we serve and defines and refines our company culture effectively.

    In case you missed it, the company had come under fire after an executive made comments about digging up dirt on journalists who reported unfavorably about the company. The story was a lot more complex than that (and you can get a more detailed refresher here), but that’s the basic gist.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, new investors contributing to Uber’s funding include Qatar Investment Authority, Valiant Capital Partners, Lone Pine Capital, and New Enterprise Associates.

    The round has pushed Uber up to a $41 billion valuation.

    Image via Facebook

  • Uber Could Soon Be Valued at $40 Billion

    Uber could be valued at a staggering $35 to $40 billion after a new round of funding, according to a report.

    “T. Rowe Price Group Inc. is in discussions to be a new investor, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. Existing investor Fidelity Investments is also set to participate in the funding, they said. Uber is raising at least $1 billion, the people said,” according to Bloomberg.

    For some perspective, that would put Uber on par with companies like Delta Airlines and Kraft. In the transportation realm, Uber would outpace rental service Hertz by a factor of four.

    The last time Uber saw a pretty shocking valuation was this past summer, when a new round of funding valued the company at around $17 billion.

    This massive valuation would come at a time when Uber is fighting off some pretty bad press. Most recently, an Uber exec suggested that the company could, in theory dig up dirt on any journalists who painted the company with a negative light. Those comments were walked back faster than you can say ‘take a Lyft’.

    A few days later, it was revealed that another Uber exec had violated a journalist’s privacy by looking up ride records without cause.

    One foot-in-mouth investor later and we saw rival Lyft have its best week ever.

    All of this, of course, comes on the heels of various troubling reports of violent incidents between drivers and passengers.

    Image via Uber, Facebook

  • Square Reportedly Raises New $150M Round At $6B Valuation

    Square Reportedly Raises New $150M Round At $6B Valuation

    There has been no official announcement so far, but according to a report from The New York Times, Square has raised a new $150 million round of funding, valuing the company at $6 billion.

    The report cites a person briefed on the investment, who requested to remain anonymous because of a lack of authorization to speak on the matter. It says the round is led by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, a new investor, and includes participation from previous investors Goldman Sachs and Rizvi Traverse Management. The company confirmed a round of funding, but no details.

    The Times reported last month that Square had intended to raise at least $100 million, so the round isn’t a huge surprise.

    A couple weeks ago, reports emerged that Square will enable its Register service to accept more types of payments including Bitcoin and Apple Pay. The company announced in the summer plans to release a reader for chip cards.

    In August, Square announced a partnership with Victory Park Capital to extend hundreds of millions of dollars to independent businesses as part of its Square Capital program, which enables businesses to sell a specific amount of future card sales to Square in return for a lump sum payment.

    Image via Square, Twitter

  • Yahoo Is Reportedly Investing in Snapchat and Its Sky-High Valuation

    Yahoo is one of the backers that’s ready to throw out a funding round that values Snapchat at $10 billion, according to reports.

    The Wall Street Journal quotes the all-knowing and omnipresent “people familiar with the matter”, who claim that Yahoo and Snapchat have been talking and the former is set to invest an unknown amount in the latter.

    Snapchat’s next funding round, which we’ve discussed many times before, is said to value the company at $10 billion.

    If you’re counting that’s about nine Tumblrs (which Yahoo purchased for $1.1 billion last May). It’s also about 10 Instagrams, and five Oculuses.

    Yahoo definitely has some cash to spare, as last month’s Alibaba IPO made them a pretty penny. It appears that Yahoo’s trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice by taking a risk and investing in a company which they feel has huge potential.

    In other Yahoo and messaging news, the company just acquired mobile messaging app MessageMe – possibly for “double digit millions”.

  • Twitter Is Funding A New MIT Lab For ‘Social Machines’

    The MIT Media Lab announced that it has secured a five-year, $10 million investment from Twitter, which will provide access to its real-time, public steam of tweets as well as the archive of every tweet all the way back to the beginning.

    This will be used for a new laboratory for social machines, which aims to solve complex social problems by developing collaborative technologies.

    MIT explains, “The new initiative, based at the Media Lab, will focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social patterns across the broad span of public mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content. Pattern discovery and data visualization will be explored to reveal interaction patterns and shared interests in relevant social systems, while collaborative tools and mobile apps will be developed to enable new forms of public communication and social organization.”

    Twitter’s Mark Gillis discusses the endeavor on its engineering blog:

    This is an exciting step for all of us at Twitter as we continue to develop new ways to support the research community. Building on the success of the Twitter Data Grants program, which attracted more than 1,300 applications, we remain committed to making public Twitter data available to researchers, instructors and students. We’ve already seen Twitter data being used in everything from epidemiology to natural disaster response.

    The Laboratory for Social Machines anticipates using Twitter data to investigate the rapidly changing and intersecting worlds of news, government and collective action. The hope is that their research team will be able to understand how movements are started by better understanding how information spreads on Twitter.

    “The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can’t be solved manually or through automation alone,” says Deb Roy, an associate professor at the Media Lab who will lead the LSM. “Social feedback loops based on analysis of public media and data can be an effective catalyst for increasing accountability and transparency — creating mutual visibility among institutions and individuals.”

    Roy also holds the title of Twitter’s chief media scientist.

    Twitter CEO Dick Costolo adds “With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues.”

    The lab further discusses what it plans to build and deploy here.

    Image via MIT

  • Reddit Raises New $50 Million Round Of Funding

    Reddit Raises New $50 Million Round Of Funding

    Reddit said on Tuesday that it has closed a new $50 million round of outside funding led by Y Combinator President Sam Altman with participation from Sequoia Capital’s Alfred Lin and Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen.

    Other investors mentioned further down in the announcement include Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, Jared Leto, Jessica Livingston, Kevin and Julia Hartz, Mariam Naficy, Josh Kushner, Calvin Broadus Jr. (Get it, Snoop Dogg!), and CEO Yishan Wong.

    The company discusses its plans for the money on its blog:

    reddit has had a long and complex history, starting as one of the first Y Combinator companies, then as a division of Conde Nast, and three years ago spun out as an independent entity. During all of this time we have operated with a shoestring budget. This made us become efficient; it also meant that we were only able to work on essential features and were always understaffed. Even with the last year’s hiring (we’re 60+ strong now), we’ve found that there are still a lot more features you’ve been asking for that we haven’t always been able to get to as fast as we’d like.

    Thus, we’re planning to use this money to hire more staff for product development, expand our community management team, build out better moderation and community tools, work more closely with third party developers to expand our mobile offerings (try our new AMA app), improve our self-serve ad product, build out redditgifts marketplace, pay for our growing technical infrastructure, and all the many other things it takes to support a huge and growing global internet community.

    Interestingly, reddit says it has come up with a new way for its investors to give 10% of their shares back to the community.

    In a reddit post (via TechCrunch), Wong says they’re thinking about creating a cryptocurrency and making it backed by those shares of the company, and then distributing it to the community.

    Image via reddit

  • Google Capital Backs InnoLight, Its 9th Company

    Google Capital, along with Lightspeed China Partners, co-led a Series C round of funding totaling $38 million into InnoLight Technology, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

    This would be Google Capital’s first investment in China. InnoLight makes high-speed optical receivers used by computer servers.

    This marks the ninth investment by Google Capital, the growth-stage investment arm of Google announced back in February. Last month, Google announced it was leading a $100 million investment in Thumbtack.

    The Journal says, “Global investors are now vying for exposure to Chinese technology startups in the wake of e-commerce company Alibaba’s $25 billion initial public offering in the U.S. Competition for Chinese technology companies is even heating up among domestic strategic investors including Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent as they seek to acquire shares in smaller companies to supplement their own businesses.”

    I guess we shouldn’t be surprised if Google makes additional investments in the country.

    In addition to InnoLight and Thumbtack, Google Capital counts SurveyMonkey, LendingClub, Renaissance Learning, Auction.com, Credit Karma, Freshdesk, and MapR among its investments.

    Image via InnoLight

  • Snapchat’s $10 Billion Valuation ‘Not Absurd’ Says Twitter CEO

    Reacting to the news that ephemeral messaging app Snapchat was moving fast toward a $20 million investment from Kleiner Perkins at a $10 billion valuation, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is defending it – calling it “not absurd.”

    “Crazy growth, clear monetization path, & one of the best social product thinkers out there,” he tweeted.

    The Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the matter who say that not only is this new round of funding upcoming, but “DST Global, the Russian investment firm led by Yuri Milner, also invested in Snapchat earlier this year at a valuation of $7 billion.”

    There’s no denying that Snapchat may be the fastest-growing social app. It’s also inspired a comically pointless ripoff from a huge international company. It’s also so popular among teens that they aren’t sure how to survive without it.

    But $10 billion, some have asked For a company with no real revenue?

    That “clear monetization strategy” that Costolo refers to isn’t really that clear at this point. In-app purchases and traditional advertising both reportedly remain on the table.

    We first heard rumors of a new round of funding for Snapchat back in July, when it was reported that a variety of investors, including Alibaba, were looking to give the company the lofty $10 billion valuation.

    Image via Snapchat, Twitter

  • Google Capital Backs Thumbtack, Its 8th Company

    Google Capital is leading a $100 million series D round of funding in Thumbtack, a service that is described as helping people “accomplish the personal projects that are central to their lives”.

    Also contributing to the funding are past investors Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, and Javelin Venture Partners. Thumbtack has raised a total of $150 million to date.

    What Thumbtack actually does is introduce people to “qualified professionals” in over 700 categories throughout the U.S. to help them complete projects. Customers answer questions about their needs, and Thumbtack connects them with these professionals within hours.

    “First and foremost, Thumbtack is a great product. As a consumer, it’s the best product I’ve ever used to hire local professionals. The bigger story, however, is the potential for small businesses: Thumbtack has a real opportunity to transform how local professionals find new customers,” said David Lawee, General Partner at Google Capital. “The Thumbtack team is highly impressive and the opportunity in front of them is enormous. We’re excited to be a part of it.”

    “We were already a strong and well capitalized business, but David and Google Capital offer something truly special, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with them,” said Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta. “David brings years of experience working to help small businesses market themselves online, and the Google Capital financing and partnership allows us to think even bigger and further expand our business.”

    Thumbtack joins the following companies in Google Capital’s portfolio: SurveyMonkey, LendingClub, Renaissance Learning, Auction.com, Credit Karma, Freshdesk, and MapR.

    Image via Thumbtack

  • Snapchat Is Apparently Worth $10 Billion

    Snapchat Is Apparently Worth $10 Billion

    Snapchat has been reported as the fastest-growing social app. It’s inspired an absolutely pointless ripoff from a huge international company. It’s so popular among teens that it’s making them lose their frickin’ minds.

    But is it really worth $10 billion?

    Apparently, according to a new report from Bloomberg. They quote people familiar with the matter who say that Snapchat is in talks with a variety of investors, including Alibaba, for a new round of funding that would give the company that lofty valuation.

    Though Snapchat has always been cagey about definite user numbers, CEO Evan Spiegel did reveal that the company was handling over 700 million messages a day back in May. That’s roughly how many photos WhatsApp said they deal with every day a few months ago. For comparison, Facebook is currently acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion.

    Snapchat’s potentially huge valuation would make the decision to turn down Facebook’s $3 billion offer last year look pretty damn good.

    Bloomberg also points out that Snapchat, with a $10 billion valuation, would join the ranks of a couple of other high-profile companies to recently raise at top-tier levels – including Airbnb and Dropbox at $10 billion and Uber at $17 billion.

    Image via Snapchat, Facebook

  • Uber Is Now a $17B Company After Latest Funding

    On-demand car service Uber has just announced a massive $1.2 billion injection from “some of the leading investors in the world,” which values the company at $17 billion (not counting what they already have in the war chest).

    With that announcement, Uber now operates in 128 cities in 37 countries around the world and says that they are directly responsible for creating 20,000 new jobs every month.

    “With our growth and expansion, the company has evolved from being a scrappy Silicon Valley tech startup to being a way of life for millions of people in cities around the world. This ‘Uber’ way of life is really a reflection of our mission to turn ground transportation into a seamless service and to enable a transportation alternative in cities that makes car ownership a thing of the past,” says Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in a blog post.

    Uber says that their car service is “improving the environment, reducing DUI rates and fueling urban economic development.”

    With this new round of funding, Uber is now planted firmly in the big leagues – but it isn’t exactly smooth sailing for the company. For one, Uber (and other similar services like Lyft) are facing stiff resistance from the old guard – taxi companies. And that influence has trickled down into state-by-state politics, where they are facing probable fines in some areas for “illegal operations.”

    Just today, we learned the the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles sent Uber a cease and desist letter, demanding that Uber stop all operations in the state or face fines.

    Not only that, but Uber has also faced questions about the safety of its service – mainly a question of “just who the hell is driving me around?” An off-the-clock Uber driver has been accused of kidnapping a drunk woman, taking her to a hotel, and sexually assaulting her. The company is also currently embroiled in a wrongful death suit after the tragic accident that took the life of a six-year-old girl on New Year’s Eve.

    Still, Uber has confidence moving forward – and a whole lot of cash to boot.

    “We appreciate the confidence that investors, riders and partner drivers have shown in us and we intend to deliver,” says Kalanick.

    Image via Uber, Facebook

  • Here’s Why Pinterest’s New Funding Is Good News For Your Business

    Here’s Why Pinterest’s New Funding Is Good News For Your Business

    Pinterest has reportedly raised a new $200 million round of funding, valuing the company at $5 billion. Investors are apparently impressed with the direction the already popular visual social media site is taking, which includes new native ads and enhancements to the search experience.

    Is Pinterest search part of your business strategy? Will it be in the future? Let us know in the comments.

    Pinterest raised two separate rounds last year, totaling $425 million, and has now raised a grand total of $764 million.

    ReadWrite shares this statement from Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann:

    Pinterest has a vision of solving discovery and helping everyone find things they’ll love. This new investment gives us additional resources to realize our vision.

    “Solving discovery and helping everyone find things” makes it sound like search is going to continue to be the main focus.

    Improving Search

    Last month, the company launched Guided Search, which lets people find ideas for things like where to plan vacations, what to have for dinner, etc.

    “It’s made for exploring, whether you know exactly what you want, or you’re just starting to look around,” explained Hui Xu, head of the discovery team at Pinterest. “There are more than 750 million boards with 30 billion Pins hand-picked by travelers, foodies, and other Pinners, so the right idea is just a few taps away.”

    “Now when you search for something (road trips, running, summer BBQ), descriptive guides will help you sift through all the good ideas from other Pinners,” Xu added. “Scroll through the guides and tap any that look interesting to steer your search in the right direction. Say you’re looking for plants to green up your apartment, guides help you get more specific—indoors, shade, succulents—so you can hone in on the ones that suit your space. Or when it’s time for your next haircut, search by specific styles—for redheads, curly hair, layers—to find your next look.”

    Here’s a use case for plants:

    This was the second big search move by Pinterest this year. In January, it launched an improved recipe search experience, enabling users to search for ingredients (like whatever is in their refrigerators), to find collections of relevant recipes. It has filters like vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, paleo, etc.

    One can see where this type of thing could be expanded to more verticals. The feature is part of Pinterest’s “more useful Pins” initiative, which uses structured data (like ingredients, cook time, and servings) to display more info right on the pin.

    Promoted Pins

    Search is one of the most obvious ways of monetizing the site, and they’re starting to do that as well. Earlier this week, Pinterest announced that it is rolling out the next phase of its Promoted Pins ad product, which it began testing last fall.

    Promoted Pins

    The company currently counts ABC Family, Banana Republic, Expedia, GAP, General Mills, Kraft, Lullemon Athletica, Nestle (Purina, Dreyer’s/Edy’s Ice Cream, Nespresso), Old Navy, Target, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and Ziploc, among its advertisers.

    “During the test brands will work with Pinterest to help ensure the pins are tasteful, transparent, relevant and improved based on feedback from the Pinterest community,” a Pinterest spokesperson told WebProNews in an email.

    “Tens of millions of people have added more than 30 billion Pins to Pinterest and brands are a big part of this,” said head of partnerships Joanne Bradford. “Brands help people find inspiration and discover things they care about, whether it’s ideas for dinner, places to go or gifts to buy. We hope Promoted Pins give businesses of all sizes a chance to connect with more Pinners.”

    The company will use this early group of advertisements to collect feedback, and will then open up them up to more businesses later this year.

    AdAge reported a couple months back that Pinterest was looking for spending commitments of between one and two million dollars.

    Later, Digiday shared a pitch deck from the company indicating that CPMs would be about $30, and that the company is seeking six-month commitments at roughly $150K per month ($900,000 total). Ads targeted upon search keywords will be priced on a CPC basis, it indicated, while those placed in “Everything & Popular Feeds” will be on a CPM basis. Promoted Pins can be placed in 32 different categories, according to that, and advertisers will be able to target US-only, the user’s location and the “metro-city level”. The ads will also be targeted based on device. Age will not be a targeting option initially, but apparently will become one later.

    Traffic To Your Site

    Promoted Pins might be out of your business’ reach for now, but there’s plenty of opportunity for some good old organic traffic. We recently looked at a report from Shareaholic on social media traffic referrals, which showed that Facebook referrals are growing significantly, with the social network leading all social sites. Guess what number 2 is.

    Pinterest may be significantly behind Facebook in this department, but look how much further ahead it is than all the rest, and look at the growth curve compared to the rest. Now consider that they’re only starting to make drastic search improvements. The site stands to only increase traffic referral potential.

    If you haven’t been using Pinterest for business, you may be unaware that it also recently added a new way for businesses to track their pinned links with support for Google Analytics UTM variables.

    “If you’re already using Google Analytics, it’s easy to see how your Pins are performing by tagging your Pin links with the correct UTM parameters,” explained Pinterest’s Jason Costa. “If you’ve already got UTM tracking on your Pin links, you’ll start to see more activity on your campaign and source tracking on Google Analytics.”

    Pinterest has suggested using humor, using quotes, going “behind-the-scenes,” including fans, highlighting products and spaces, offering exclusive content and “sneak peeks,” and helping users lived “inspired lives” as ways to generate more engagement and referrals.

    Keep in mind that Pinterest so far hasn’t been the greatest social channel for engagement after the click. Another recent Shareaholic report found it to be near the bottom of the list in the average time on site (your site) metric, and not all that great for the pages/visit metric either. But if you’re looking to get people to a specific page, you could do a lot worse.

    Pinterest Users Are Shoppers

    Rest assured, Pinterest users want to buy things.

    A new report out from Ahalogy finds that 52% of daily users are opening the app in stores. Mobile Marketer shares some commentary:

    “Pinterest is becoming a universal in-store shopping list,” said Bob Gilbreath, co-founder and president of Ahalogy, Cincinnati, OH. “Many Pinterest users claim to pin items at home and then pull up the app in store, for example, to remember that dress from Nordstrom that she pinned, or find the ingredients for a recipe that she pinned.

    “We’ve now got data to prove this is a common task: 28 percent of users claim to pull up the Pinterest app on their smartphones while shopping, and 52 percent of daily Pinterest users do this,” he said.

    “Only 27 percent of active Pinterest users claim to be following any brand on Pinterest, yet most believe that marketers can add value to the platform. Too many brands have been on the sidelines of Pinterest.”

    As Pinterest turns into more of a search destination, brands aren’t going to necessarily need to gain large follower counts for the channel to be effective. That is if they can gain visibility in the results. It’s only going to get more competitive.

    Are you getting significant traffic and/or conversions from Pinterest? Do you expect to going forward? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Pinterest, Shareaholic

  • Imgur CEO Talks Plans For New Funding, Relationship With Reddit [Exclusive]

    Imgur CEO Talks Plans For New Funding, Relationship With Reddit [Exclusive]

    Imgur announced this morning that it has raised $40 million in a series A round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. General partner, Lars Dalgaard will take a Board of Directors seat with the company.

    Reddit, which gives Imgur more exposure than anywhere else on the web, also contributed to the round. The company calls this “an appropriate nod to founder Alan Schaaf originally building Imgur as a ‘simple image sharer’ for the Reddit community.”

    “Imgur was originally launched on reddit, and we are honored that the reddit community have chosen Imgur to be their de facto image sharer,” Schaaf, who is also the company’s CEO, tells WebProNews. “Until now there was no formal business relationship but now there is, and we are really excited to work closer with reddit to bring some new exciting mutually beneficial features to members of both communities.”

    Read our discussion with Schaaf last year about Imgur’s relationship with reddit here.

    The company says it will use the funding to accelerate its internal growth, drive continued product development and innovation, and to grow its community worldwide.

    “We will be growing our teams and hiring for some key roles in engineering, sales, marketing, HR, and finance,” Schaaf tells us. “We want to make sure that we hire engineers as fast as possible to continue to build and improve our product and grow our community, first and foremost. The business will continue to follow that growth.”

    When asked about new product features we can expect down the road, Schaaf tell us they can’t discuss too much about plans for upcoming features, but they are “hoping to release a new feature that improves content discoverability in the next month or so.”

    He would not disclose how much reddit is contributing to the funding.

    “As a company that bootstrapped our way to profitability and had a blast doing it, we really weren’t out looking for money at all,” he said in the announcement. “That said, as soon as we started talking with Marc and Lars, we knew this was a great fit. Lars completely gets what we’re trying to accomplish, and has pledged to help us conquer the Internet. The only sad part is that we won’t be eligible for any more Best Bootstrapped Startup Crunchies.”

    “We’ve been watching Imgur for years, and the way Alan and his team have committed to building for the community is truly impressive,” said Dalgaard. “It’s rare to see a company so committed to preserving an excellent user experience, and it’s no accident that this community has flourished. We hope to provide resources and guidance to help Imgur continue down this path, with the freedom to do even more to accelerate product innovation and community growth.”

    Last year, Imgur finally launched its mobile apps and a meme generator tool. In September, the company announced that it had reached 100,000,000 unique monthly visitors. The apps had seen hundreds of thousands of downloads in the first months of availability.

    Earlier this year, it launched a mobile app for the meme generator, as well as an analytics feature to let users track the viral success of their images.

    Image via Imgur

  • Jeff Bezos And Others Give Business Insider $12 Million

    Business Insider announced on Wednesday that it has raised a new $12 million round of funding from existing investors including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Others include IVP, RRE, and Gordon Crovitz.

    According to CEO Henry Blodget, Business Insider will use the money to create “more great digital journalism (including long-form narratives and investigations),” more photography, more video, more data and graphics, more design and product development, more technology (including faster speed and better personalization), more subscription services (deep news and analysis for industry professionals) and a UK-based Europe edition.

    “And, of course, we’ll also be buying a foosball table to go with our ping-pong table. And maybe a jet. (Kidding),” he writes. “You’ll see a lot of the site and service improvements over the course of this year and next.”

    The Wall Street Journal reports that the investment from Bezos is through his Bezos Expeditions firm, which has previously invested in Business Insider, as well as companies like Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, and Makerbot, to name a few.

    Last year, of course, Bezos bought The Washington Post.

    Business Insider has now raised a total of $30 million.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons