WebMiles.com

Aug 30, 2023

VC Buzz New in the News $2.161 Billion Month to Date $30.680 Billion Year to Date Deal News NetVendor Secures $52 Million ATLANTA -- NetVendor, a provider of e-Channel solutions that enable suppliers to establish Internet sales channels and integrate into multiple e-marketplaces, secured $52 million in its third round of private funding. The transaction was led by Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE ), an investor in NetVendor in both its first and second rounds , followed by Wheatley Partners, RRE Ventures, CSFB Private Equity and Bluevector. NetVendor's business-to-business e-commerce solutions allow companies to support multiple electronic distribution channels with their trading partners and to interact within trading exchanges. OneMediaPlace Closes $42 Million in New Venture Financing SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK-- OneMediaPlace - formerly Adauction.com - secured commitments for $42 million in new private investment financing led by several major media companies. Primedia (NYSE: PRM ), Liberty Media (Nasdaq: LMGA ), and French investor Artemis joined CMGI @Ventures and others to complete the company's $67 million Series E Preferred Stock financing. A $25 million portion of the round committed by CMGI @Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI ), was previously announced . OneMediaPlace is a single-source Internet solution for the advertising industry that combines a comprehensive resource destination with a global, media marketplace operating system. SAN FRANCISCO -- Salesforce.com, an online sales force automation product, closed $35 million in financing. Including previous investments , total funding for salesforce.com is now $52 million. New investors include Credit Suisse First Boston, WR Hambrecht & Co., Ted Waitt and Stratton Sclavos. Original investors in salesforce.com include Marc R. Benioff, Larry Ellison, Halsey Minor, Magdalena Yesil, William Hambrecht, Patrick McGovern, John Friedenrich, Bob Anderson and Igor Sill. Salesforce.com incorporates online content such as news, stock and financial updates, and services including gift giving, directions and restaurant listings, within a single Web destination so sales people have up-to-date account information and relevant business services to help close deals. WebMiles Secures $34 Million in Second Round Financing SANDY, Utah -- WebMiles, a company that offers an unrestricted, free travel rewards program to help businesses attract and retain long-term customers, secured $34 million in its second round of funding from investors including Patricof & Co. Ventures, Maritz Inc., NBC, Sequel Ventures, Utah Ventures, Svoboda Collins, Star Vest, CMS, @WorkVentures and Staenberg Private Capital. Prior to securing this latest round of funding, WebMiles raised $1.8 million in the seed round of financing and $5 million in the first round of funding from Utah Ventures, Portage Partners and Sequel Ventures. WebMiles provides online and offline businesses with WebMile rewards -- similar to airline miles -- that are redeemable for free travel on all airlines, all flights at any time with no blackout dates or seat restrictions. Consumers earn WebMiles rewards for engaging in a variety of behaviors including shopping, joining programs, referring friends, etc., within the WebMiles partner network. DEDHAM, Mass.-- Commerce.TV ended its second round of financing, totaling $19 million. OpenTV (Nasdaq: OPTV ) and Insight Communications (Nasdaq: ICCI ) each made $5 million strategic investments in Commerce.TV. In addition, Commerce.TV's latest investors include Sandler Capital Management, which invested $4 million, and Citicorp, which agreed to invest $3 million. First round investor New England Partners made a follow-up investment of $750,000. Commerce.TV's Control Network is comprised of application servers and relational databases that combine product information with television schedules and local channel lineups to present targeted purchasing and advertising opportunities to subscribers. The network forwards orders electronically to merchants using a standard, two-way XML interface. In a December 1999 closing, first round investors in Commerce.TV included Westfield Capital, Private Equity Finance, New England Partners and Keene Partners. In addition, members of Commerce.TV's founding team have contributed $6 million in seed capital. Kinecta Secures Second Round Venture Funding SAN FRANCISCO-- Kinecta Corp. (formerly ShiftKey Inc.), a developer of distributed information management solutions, raised more than $12 million in the company's second round of private venture and strategic financing. New investors include Canaan Partners, Fidelity Investments, Reuters Greenhouse Fund and several notable angel investors, including Doug Alexander, Jin Byun and Stephen Messer. Previous seed investor iMinds Ventures also participated. The company named Deepak Kamra, general partner of Canaan Partners; and Carl Nichols, managing partner of iMinds Ventures, to its board of directors. The company's Java-based Kinecta Interact platform empowers companies to exchange, manage and transform digital content, including HTML, XML, graphical files, database records, streaming media and most document types. Home Account Closes $10 Million Funding Round EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Home Account closed its second round of funding for $10 million, bringing total financing to $26 million since the company merged with First Data Corp.'s Direct Banking division in June 1999. The funding was led by First Data Resources (a division of First Data Corp. (NYSE: FDC )), New Enterprise Associates, Marsh &McLennan Capital, Oak Investment Partners and Mobius Management Systems. The latter four firms were first round investors in the 1999 funding. Home Account's products include: Canopy Central, a full-service online financial hub service; Canopy First, a family of outsourced, scalable and brandable Internet banking solutions for financial institutions, card issuers and brokerages; Canopy Server, an Open Financial Exchange financial services platform that allows distribution of services through multiple channels; Canopy Advisor, a strategic financial planning system for use by individuals and financial professionals; Canopy Business, Internet-based cash management services for business customers; and CardSolutions, Internet account access programs for card issuers. CoolBoard.com Closes $10 Million Series B Financing SAN FRANCISCO-- CoolBoard.com, a developer of syndicated Web communities and a provider of hosted discussion solutions for Web businesses, closed a $10 million Series B round of financing led by US Venture Partners and the Roda Group with additional investment from other investors. New investors include Dave Duffield, Peggy Taylor and the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Investment Fund. Original investors include Draper Richards, Angel Investors LP, Thomas Layton, Ariel Poler and Venture Frogs. USVP general partner Jason Green and Roger Strauch, chairman of the Roda Group, will join the board of directors. CoolBoard.com provides sites with highly integrated hosted message board services as well as the ability to tap into a network of over 60,000 Web sites and 800,000 users per month using the community services. iDini Secures $10M in First Round Financing for Wireless Data Solutions SAN JOSE, Calif.-- iDini Corp., a provider of infrastructure solutions for wireless data services, raised a first round of financing equaling $10 million. H&Q Asia Pacific led the round with Sycamore Ventures. Other investors include BayStar Capital, Merchants Capital Partners, Focus Capital, and several high net worth individuals. The company's Mobile Desktop Service is the first in a series of services available for wireless operators and other service providers offering their users enhanced wireless data services. The Mobile Desktop Service runs on iDini's Wireless Data System, a turnkey platform consisting of hardware, software and support. ViAir Raises $8 Million in Series A KIRKLAND, Wash.-- ViAir Inc., a wireless web start-up, received nearly $8 million in Series A funding from The Barksdale Group and angel investors, Mike Volpi, Stratton Sclavos and Rob Guyton. ViAir aims to provide services that will enable companies to quickly and easily build a Wireless Web presence. ViAir's management team includes Sung Rhee, CEO and president; Justin Webb, chief strategist; John Herrema, vice president of business development; Brett Marl, vice president of engineering; Carolyn Pearon, vice president of finance. Peter Currie, partner at The Barksdale Group and former CFO and EVP at Netscape, joined ViAir's board of directors. SingleSourceIT Raises $7M in New Funding COLUMBUS, Ohio -- SingleSourceIT, a business solution provider of Web-based IT supply chain services, completed its Series A prime funding and second round of equity financing. In this round, the company raised nearly $7 million of equity from its current shareholders and added two new investors, TIBCO Software (Nasdaq: TIBX) and Levensohn Capital. The closing of this latest round, along with earlier investments from Mayfield Fund and McCown DeLeeuw & Co., brings the total equity raised for SingleSourceIT to $19 million. SingleSourceIT's offering enables customers to research, acquire, manage and liquidate IT products from one, customized Web-based solution. UBUBU Closes Second Round SAN FRANCISCO-- UBUBU closed a second round of financing of $7 million to accelerate the momentum of its debut product, UBUBU Universe. Arts Alliance and Advanced Technology Ventures led the investment. Angel investors included over twenty-five entertainment industry executives, producers, writers, and celebrities. In addition, all first round angel investors with pro-rata rights exercised their options to reinvest. UBUBU has received a total of $9 million in financing to date. UBUBU's first product, UBUBU Universe, allows users to visually map anything on the Web or personal computer onto customizable 3D Planets. Users populate Planets with artful Objects that link to Web favorites, email, applications, or computer files. The Beta version of UBUBU Universe is currently available for free on the company's Web site. UBUBU expects to release the consumer version of the product later this quarter. Jumpcut and ImageDirect Merge, Receive $7 Million Investment NEW YORK-- Jumpcut, a webcast solutions provider, and ImageDirect, a provider of digital photography solutions to entertainment, fashion and corporate clients, have merged. The new company, which will be known as Jumpcut, received a $7 million round of financing from Atlas Venture. ImageDirect will continue as the digital imaging division of Jumpcut Inc. Jumpcut's new offices in New York and Los Angeles will include digital broadcast studios which will produce customer content and serve as a hub for convergence programming development. The state of the art studios will be capable of broadcasting TV and internet content simultaneously as well as supporting interactive video chat, immersive imaging and digital photography production. eturn.com Raises $6.5 Million in Private Financing SUNNYVALE, Calif.-- eturn.com raised $6.5 million from private international investors, for a total funding of over $11 million since the company was founded in January 1999. eturn.com offers global business professionals and organizations a new, automatic contact update service. By obtaining an eturn Link-ID and linking with others, users can maintain up-to-date contact information securely, effortlessly and instantaneously. eturn provides secure synchronization with popular personal information managers such as Microsoft's Outlook, Palm Desktop, ACT!, Goldmine, and Lotus Organizer, and is accessible through a variety of wired and wireless devices. Log-On Data Receives $5 Million ORANGE, Calif.-- Log-On Data Corp., a provider of Internet content management solutions, received $5 million in private venture capital from a group of investors spearheaded by The Darwin Group. The Darwin Group led the purchase of $5 million in LDC stock and will fill two of the five seats on the company's board of directors, including the chair. Log-On provides filtering and blocking products to businesses, ISPs and schools. Front Porch Communications Receives $5 Million in Funding SONORA, Calif.-- Front Porch Communications, a provider of dial-up and high-bandwidth solutions for the worldwide communications industry, received a $5 million investment from Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM ). Front Porch's PorchLight technology delivers a package of tools and services enabling ISPs to deliver customized service messages to subscribers, generate revenue through the display of targeted Internet advertising, and direct subscribers to pre-determined Web sites. DENVER-- Makepeace Capital Corp. (OTCBB: MKPC ), an owner of Internet and service-related companies, exercised its options to increase its equity stake in HomeCaravan.com, a home mortgage, auto loan, and credit card web site provider. Makepeace also received options that will enable additional purchases of HomeCaravan stock. Launched in March 2000, Pasadena, Calif.-based HomeCaravan operates a web site that assists home buyers in locating properties listed for sale in specific regions, or specific price ranges, and in applying for and receiving a mortgage loan. SupplyAccess Receives Investment From SAP Ventures LOS ANGELES-- SupplyAccess, a national provider of business-to-business e-procurement solutions, received an investment from SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP ). Previous investors in SupplyAccess include En Pointe Technologies (Nasdaq: ENPT ), Peregrine Systems (Nasdaq: PRGN ), AAS Technologies (Nasdaq: AIRS ), TMCT Ventures and Avalon Investments. The SupplyAccess network automates MRO and IT product acquisition from a company's approved, contracted suppliers. Through its Intelligent Purchasing functionality, it executes real-time bids on a line item basis. The process starts from end-user requisitioning and approval workflow, through electronic product procurement and delivery tracking. Craftopia.com Forms Partnership With Southern Progress WEST CHESTER, Pa.-- Craftopia.com, an online destination for crafting supplies and project ideas, made a strategic partnership with Southern Progress Corp., a wholly owned publishing subsidiary of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ). The partnership includes a substantial financial investment in Craftopia.com by Southern Progress and a commercial agreement that combines the craft content and expertise of Southern Progress with a major craft resource on the Internet. eCompanies Venture Group is a previous investor inCraftopia.com. Calico Commerce Makes Strategic Investment In NewChannel REDWOOD CITY, Calif.-- NewChannel, a provider of online customer acquisition and e-sales services, received a strategic investment from Calico Commerce (Nasdaq: CLIC ), a provider of eBusiness applications that enable companies to sell over the web. Calico and NewChannel are partnering to expand Calico's eBusiness application offering by providing NewChannel customer acquisition functionality which enables corporations to qualify Web site visitors and proactively consult with them in real time. NewChannel recently raised $39 million in financing.