Sonicswap offers a personalized music recommendation service that integrates with iTunes and various other music services.

Sonicswap

Undisclosed Angel Investors

Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) provides digital music-streaming services. It offers access to songs on devices, computers, mobiles, tablets, and home entertainment systems and allows subscribers to search and discover music collections of friends, artists, and celebrities, build a personal collection playlist, share music, and more. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) manufactures a wide range of consumer and industrial electronic equipment and products such as semiconductors, personal computers, peripherals, monitors, televisions, and home appliances including air conditioners and microwave ovens. It also produces internet access network systems and telecommunications equipment including mobile phones. The company was founded in 1969 and is based in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.

Muyeedur Rahman

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Kuli Kuli Sprouts Its Own Seed Round Pitching A New Superfood
It looks like Tapulous founder Bart Decrem is ready for his next act, as the gaming exec appears to have raised some money for a new venture called “Hobby.”
In the mobile gaming world, you can’t do much better than Decrem. He was the founder of Tapulous, the company behind the ultra-addictive Tap Tap Revenge series which got acquired by Disney back in 2010. Since the acquisition, he had led that company’s gaming studio as SVP and GM, as it released its own series of hits, including those in the Where’s My Water series, as well as some Temple Run titles. All in all, he’s had 25 #1 hits on the Apple App Store since it opened up in 2008. Prior to Tapulous, Decrem was also one of the founders of early social browser Flock, which eventually sold to Zynga (long after he left ). Decrem announced that he was leaving Disney in January, after about four years with the company. On his LinkedIn page , Decrem says he’s currently an “in between entrepreneur” and taking time off to think about what he wants to do next… But apparently he didn’t take too much time off. According to an SEC filing , Decrem has raised $920,000 for what appears to be his next venture. Along with Decrem, Scale VP managing director Rob Theis is listed as a director in the company. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as Theis was one of Tapulous’ investors. Before founding Tapulous, Decrem had also served as an EIR at DCM, Theis’ former firm. Also listed is Anthony McCusker, who seems to be a pretty well-regarded tech attorney as part of Goodwin Procter LLP . Frankly we don’t know anything more about Hobby, except for what’s in that filing. (Good luck Googling the word Hobby! ) But I’ve reached out to Decrem and Theis to see if they’re willing to share more. Will let you know if I hear back!

Tapulous Founder Bart Decrem Has Raised About $1M For His New ‘Hobby’

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Chartboost Is Building The Next Gaming Platform To Watch, And They’re Expanding To Europe
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Newly Redesigned Cluster Makes Photo Sharing Among Small Groups Simpler, More Personal
Five years ago from their native city of Barcelona, Maria Alegre used to watch old Stanford Technology Ventures Program videos from entrepreneurs sharing their founding stories. Intrigued by what she heard, she picked up and moved to the Valley, where Alegre dug into mobile gaming at early developer Tapulous, which went on to be acquired by Disney . Fast forward to today, Alegre is running one of the fastest-growing game discovery platforms and mobile ad networks in Silicon Valley — one that we’ve heard from three separate sources grossed about $50 million last year. (The company doesn’t comment on revenue figures). Her company Chartboost is quietly sucking in talent from an older generation of mobile ad networks and gaming studios like Google’s AdMob, DeNA’s Ngmoco and EA’s Popcap. They also picked up $19 million in funding led by storied VC firm Sequoia earlier this year. “It’s kind of crazy. This all happened in four years,” she said. “Anyone can do it. People running these companies are not super humans. They are just people like you and me.”
Today Chartboost is opening its first office abroad in Europe , led by Ilja Goossens, who founded Gamundo and Virtual Fairground. The new location in Amsterdam is meant to strengthen the company’s relationships with the biggest game developers across the continent. Europe is having something of a Renaissance in mobile gaming right now with players like Finland’s Supercell ( which made $104 million in profit with just 100 people last quarter ), Berlin’s Wooga and London’s King. While other competing startups with mobile advertising products were less focused, Chartboost wedged itself into the gaming world where it built an early platform for developers to trade advertising inventory. Because games are the biggest category for apps in terms of time spent on iOS and Android, it was the ideal place to build a focused business. Chartboost earns revenue through excess inventory, which can be sold in an exchange. Chartboost now has 16,000 games in its network and 8 billion ad impressions per month and has grown 30 percent since January. Instead of the old banner ads, which had poor clickthrough rates, Chartboost instead focused on creating interstitials that looked and felt like they belonged in a game. At first, it wasn’t easy, however. Alegre said that when she and her co-founder Sean Fannan were starting out, they did 30 phone pitches to potential investors in a week. In late 2011, they picked up a small round from TransLink Capital, SK Telecom Ventures and XG Ventures. But after the business starting gaining momentum, it was very different with the second round. Jim Goetz, the Sequoia partner who led the firm’s investment in earlier mobile advertising network AdMob, got Chartboost’s model right away and invested quickly in the company. “We were more picky with who to talk to,” she said. “The numbers don’t lie.”
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Chartboost Is Building The Next Gaming Platform To Watch, And They're Expanding To Europe

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Bing Rolls Out New Image Search With Better Search Suggestions, Filters And Bigger Thumbnails
Chartboost , a San Francisco-based gaming and ad platform, just poached Google Admob’s head of mobile platform and partnership strategy Clay Kellogg to be its chief revenue officer. Chartboost, which was founded by some alums of an early mobile gaming company that Disney acquired called Tapulous , is a platform where mobile developers can cross-promote their work. Gaming studios will usually do a direct advertising trade where they’ll market their titles in other developers’ games. Chartboost’s platform has grown to incorporate 4,000 app developers with 2 billion game sessions per month between them. The company has gained traction at a time when the cost of acquiring users on mobile platforms has risen dramatically. Direct advertising trades give developers some of the benefits of having a large network of players, even if they’re still tiny. The company offers direct advertising trades for free, but developers can pay to promote their app in the company’s network on a cost-per-click or cost-per-install basis. Maria Alegre, Chartboost’s chief executive, said the company had courted Kellogg for about two months. They had known each other for years though. Kellogg became part of Admob when it was just 30 people, well before it was sold to Google for $750 million in 2009. Overall, Chartboost has 24 people and has  raised funding from Translink Capital , SK Telecom Ventures, and XG Ventures. “We’re not raising any more funding any time soon,” Alegre said. “We’re still profitable and we need to be focused on our business.”
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Chartboost Poaches Clay Kellogg From Google Admob, Passes 2B Game Sessions A Month

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Bonfire.im Brings IM Chat To Twitter, Know If Your Friends Are Online
The new direct-deals mobile advertising marketplace  Chartboost is announcing today that it has raised $2 million in Series A funding, after having just launched at the beginning of the October. Investors in this rounded included TransLink Capital, SK Telecom Ventures and XG Ventures, the latter a former investor in Tapulous before its Disney acquisition . Chartboost, too, has a Tapulous connection, given that it was created by former Tapulous employees, Maria Alegre, now Chartboost CEO, and Sean Fannan, CTO. The service they built is not just another ad network but a technology platform providing free ad-serving technology. Developers use the Chartboost  SDK  to serve ads promoting other publishers’ apps – ads which were typically set up as direct deals. But instead of mediating these direct deals through an ad network, Chartboost publishers get a 100% revenue share on the ads. Chartboost itself operates under a freemium model: the ad-server technology is free when used for direct deals or internal cross-promotion, but the  opt-in ad network  offers revenue sharing with publishers. The network allows publishers to maximize the unsold direct-deals ad inventory. Notable Chartboost publishers currently include TinyCo, Storm8, Pocket Gems, Gameview Studios, The Playforge, Funzio, OMGPOP, Com2us, Fluik Entertainment, Sunstorm Interactive, Ace Viral, Camigo Media, Neon Play, Lakoo and Devsisters. Alegre says that the new funding will help Chartboost to scale and reach more publishers worldwide, but the company is already profitable. 0

Chartboost Raises $2 Million In Series A Funding, Already Profitable

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Groupon’s IPO Valuation Could End Up Being Less Than $6 Billion
New direct-deal advertising marketplace Chartboost launches today, allowing mobile game developers to use cross-promotion techniques to increase the size of their game’s user base, and therefore, its revenues. The company was created by former Tapulous employees, Maria Alegre, now Chartboost CEO, and Sean Fannan, CTO. After Disney’s acquisition of Tapulous , the Chartboost founders decided to help start a platform to give other game publishers the same ability to maximize their distribution power, something that they felt was Tapulous’ most valuable asset. Previously Alegre worked a business and revenue associate at Tapulous. She later became head of Tapulous Labs Studio under Disney, where she was responsible for monetization and launch strategies, project management and game design. Fannan was a senior software engineer at Tapulous, where he built and managed the original server architecture, helped with scaling and coordinated the engineering of marketing deals with brands like Microsoft, Groupon, Disney and Fox. Chartboost is not an ad network, the company explains, it’s a technology platform. It provides free ad-serving technology for direct deals and cross-promotions via the Chartboost SDK . Instead of mediating direct-deals through an ad network, Chartboost publishers get a 100% revenue share on these deals. Included in the platform are white-labeled fullscreen interstitials, which publishers can use to promote their other titles. When they’re not being used internally, those spaces can be sold directly to other publishers and used to generate revenue. Also, says Chartboost, because the interstitials are promoting recommended games, they’re not perceived by end users as if they were ads. Chartboost also offers in-depth metrics that allow publishers to track the direct deals and cross-promotions and manage their inventory accordingly. The analytics show impressions, clicks, installs, CPC, CPI and eCPM for each app. An API to track UDIDs is available, too. The company currently operates under a freemium model: the ad-server technology is free when used for direct deals or internal cross-promotion. Meanwhile, the opt-in ad network  offers revenue sharing with publishers, allowing them to maximize the unsold inventory that’s not used internally for cross-promotion or in direct deals. Those campaigns use metrics like Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost per Install (CPI) to determine pricing. At launch, notable Chartboost publishers include TinyCo, Storm8, Pocket Gems, Gameview Studios, The Playforge, Funzio, OMGPOP, Com2us, Fluik Entertainment, Sunstorm Interactive, Ace Viral, Camigo Media, Neon Play, Lakoo, and Devsisters. Several of these are leading publishers in their own markets, and many are top 100 app makers. As of August 31st, self-funded Chartboost says it’s a profitable company. The platform is live on iOS and will launch on Android soon. 0

Chartboost Launches New Direct-Deal Marketplace For Mobile Game Publishers

Tapulous

Lebara

Zaptravel

Walt Disney Enterprises

MobSmith

McKinsey & Company

Amazon

Acquired

Seed VC

Tapulous develops mobile games and social applications for the iPhone and android platforms. It offers applications including Tap Tap Revenge, Twinkle, and Collage (a real-time collaborative photo-sharing application). The company was founded in 2008 and is based in Palo Alto, California. In July 2010, Tapulous was acquired by The Walt Disney Company.

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