Startups

Adly, a startup that connects advertisers with celebrities willing to post promoted messages on social networks, recently raised $2 million in additional funding. The new funding came from previous backer GRP Partners and new investor Siemer Ventures. Adly has now raised a total of $7.5 million. The company also launched a new product this week. It’s the first thing you’ll see if you go to the Adly website — a button that says “Match Me Up!” which allows Adly to analyze a business’ existing content and followers, then find publishers who are a good match to “amplify” their content. For example, when I signed in with my personal Twitter account, Adly said it found six celebrity publishers who, collectively, could increase my reach 61x and my engagement 31x. They include a blogger/entrepreneur with 103,000 followers, an analyst with 180,000 followers, and a podcaster with 199,000 followers. (I also tried to analyze TechCrunch’s account, but we have too many followers.) Who are these people? Well, you don’t actually get to find out until you actually start a campaign with Adly. Walter Delph, who became Adly’s CEO a little more than a year ago, said this is part of his larger strategy. One of Adly’s big selling points is the fact advertisers aren’t just getting access to a lot of eyeballs. By enlisting celebrity endorsers, they’re hopefully prompting lots of conversation and engagement, i.e., reach that’s “earned” rather than paid for. The company’s next step is building more tools to ensure that the conversation and engagement is happening. To that end, Adly has been adding analytics to track the results of each campaign — the full reach of the message, the replies, the shares, and the clicks. That dashboard, however, is really about looking back at a campaign (though customers get the data in real-time, so they could adjust their spending accordingly). On the other hand, Delph said the celebrity matching tool is all about looking forward — it’s a way to get people started with Adly campaigns. He added that we can expect more features to come that take advantage of the company’s “reams and reams of data.” By the way, even though Adly is known as a celebrity endorsement network, it’s actually broader than that. The company has relationships with 75,000 influencers, and Delph estimated that only about 2,000 of them are celebrities in the traditional sense — “By celebrity, what I mean is, if you walked down the street you would recognize them.” The other 73,000 aren’t at that level, but they have influence that’s valuable to advertisers (at least when it comes to certain topics).

Pandora took some heat after placing a 40-hour listening cap on its power users back in February, but the move seems to have created some positive results. During Pandora’s fiscal year 2014 Q1 earnings report, the company revealed that it added over 700,000 new subscribers to its paid Pandora One service. The company now has 2.5 million paid subscribers total, and the increase for the quarter is more than it added during the entire previous year. Pandora attributes the subscriber growth largely both the listening hour cap and Android enabling in-app purchasing of Pandora One on mobile devices. The subscription growth is  interesting because it seemed like the listening cap, which was put in place to help Pandora control its content licensing costs, would sent some of its users into the arms of competitors. For instance, Slacker Radio told us it saw a huge boost in new user registrations since Pandora’s 40-hour cap began. But having heard outgoing CEO Joe Kennedy’s explanation on the earnings call, I can understand Pandora’s logic for the cap. The average Pandora user listens to about 20 hours of music per week, and is far more valuable from an advertising revenue standpoint than the users who consumed twice that amount of music. Regardless of the paid subscriber boost, the company said it’s still firmly committed to focusing on its free, ad-supported service. “We don’t look at [Pandora One] purely as a subscription service but rather as a paid option for our users that’s almost like a feature addition instead of a business line,” Kennedy said during the earnings call. “We will thinking a lot about in-app purchasing behavior, especially on Android. It’s changed the dynamic of how people look at paid listening as a preferred option.” Pandora also reported a record number of listener hours at 4.2 billion for the quarter (a 35 percent increased over the same period last year), a 55 percent YOY increase in revenue to $125.5 million, and a larger share of all U.S. radio listening to 7.83 percent (compared to 5.86 percent last year). Investors responded positively to the earnings, too –  pushing the stock price up nearly 9 percent to $18.68 a share in after hours trading. Photo by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat Filed under: Business, Media

No longer just an oddly flavored potato chip, the Limon is also a new sexy-time vibrator from a startup called Minna. The company is looking for backers for its “couples’ vibrator”, which just so happens to look like a pink lime-lemon hybrid. However, the Limon is no lemon or lime. It’s an ultra-powerful bullet vibrator that is controlled by how hard you squeeze it. That is, the harder you squeeze the lime part of the Limon, the harder the lemon-style tip will vibrate. Minna claims that it’s the strongest vibrator of its type in the world, thanks to the fact that they squeezed a motor made for larger toys into a lime-sized bullet vibrator. Of course, I’m sure the Jimmyjane Form 6 or the Hitachi Magic Wand beg to differ. The Limon also has a customizable memory, meaning that you can record and playback the vibration levels exactly how you did before. Interesting, right? Consider the scenario: Two lovers are chilling with their Limon and one has to go away for a week on some business trip. They can use the Limon the night before, and the lonesome lady will then have a recording of her partner giving her the good stuff. Sexy. Minna Life – Limon Couples Vibrator from BENT LENS Productions on Vimeo. The Limon battery will last anywhere between 90 minutes and three hours, depending on how aggressive you are. It’s waterproof, charges by USB cable and comes in both teal and pink. Of course, we’ll have to conduct a complete review, lest we shamefully leave these claims unverified. But for now, the Limon is looking for backers so that it can be made into a reality. It’s expected to go for $120, but donations start at $25. Want in?

Pink mustaches attracted a whopping $60 million today as Lyft closed a funding round to fuel growth. It seems like mustaches, like ride-sharing, is a trend that is here to stay. I bet a lot of fist bumps were happening in Lyft’s offices today as they continue spreading the dogma of the ‘stache across the country. I may try to grow one myself. Lyft team gets $60M more; now it must prove ride-sharing can go global Ride-sharing startup Lyft has closed a $60 million funding round led by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, the company announced on its blog. The startup with the tagline, “your friend with a car,” has developed an iPhone and Android app that lets you order a ride from a stranger in a matter of minutes. Lyft has seen some impressive traction since it launched. The company announced today that it is now facilitating 30,000 rides each week. For this reason, it’s attracted significant attention from investors; Lyft today confirmed that the $15 million fundraise led by Founders Fund reported by TechCrunch in January 2013 (closed in October 2012) is accurate. Zimmer said that Lyft intends to spread across the country — and eventually across the world — by the end of next year. With the new boost in capital, it will focus on building out the team. Read more on VentureBeat. Loyal3 helps consumers put their money where their mouth is Loyal3 has raised $18 million to  make buying stock more social and accessible for people who don’t have much experience with the stock market. In three steps, you can invest as little as $10 in well-known companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Starbucks, Disney, Google, Coca Cola, Walmart etc…DNS-L3, LLC, an entity owned by Michael and Gigi Pritzker Pucker, led this round, along with existing investors Cris Kelly (former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook) and Barry Schneider, Loyal3′s CEO. This is the company’s third round of financing. Loyal3 is based in San Francisco. Read more on VentureBeat. Wibidata raises $15M so small businesses can compete using Big Data Big data is a big trend right now, and Wibidata has raised $15 million to help businesses take advantage of it. Wibidata builds and sells big data applications that companies can use to uncover consumer insights and react in real-time. This technology enables companies to gather data from a range of sources and deploy apps that incorporate content personalization, search relevance, predictive recommendations, and anomaly detection.Canaan Partners led this second round with participation from existing investors NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. This brings Wibidata’s total capital raised to $20 million. Read more on VentureBeat. Messaging app Imo.im chats its way into $13M, updates iOS & Android apps Multi-platform messaging service Imo.im has raised $13 million in second-round funding and updated its iOS and Android apps with a new feature called “Broadcasts.” Palo Alto, Calif.-based Imo.im offers web, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps for communicating with friends and family.Imo.im claims that its apps have been downloaded more than 7 million times and that its 750,000 unique daily visitors send 50 million messages per day. The new funding was led by Imo.im co-founder Georges Harik, who is also known for being one of Google’s first 10 employees. Read more on VentureBeat. Slyce slices into $3.75M   Slyce, a startup that provides a “point of interest purchasing platform” has closed its seed round at $3.75 million. Slyce’s technology allows users to identify an object when they see it using visual recognition technology, as well as video and audio recognition, QR and barcode scanning, and NFC. Once an item is scanned, consumers can instantly purchase the item online or be directed to the nearest retail location. Product discovieres can be shared on social media and receive commission when a friend also buys. SimpleRelevance r

It’s almost impossible for the average computer to mine Bitcoins in any efficient way, hence the rise of Bitcoin mining machines so tuned to their specific purpose that they barely resemble PCs. To wit: the Cryonic Bitcoin FrostBit machine is a PC in name only and contains a liquid nitrogen generator, special ASIC chips, and a price tag that would make the Winklevii twins think twice. “It’s the first time a ‘PC’ has been built for consumers with built-in liquid nitrogen generators. We use helium compression technology to super-cool condensers that in turn condense nitrogen air into its liquid form. There’s nothing even remotely similar available to the consumers,” said CEO of Cryoniks, Inc. Fahad Koumaiha. “By sustaining cryonic temperatures we were able to achieve superconductivity with our custom designed ASIC processors. Not only do we get a huge boost in speed, but we cut down power consumption to around 2800W per unit; significantly less than anything on the market today.” The PC hits a peak of 2800W – the average PC hits 200W on a bad day – but the device can perform 1000 Gigahashes a second. To put that in perspective a strong PC with good graphics card can hit about 100 GH/S and in my experience I haven’t been able to get any my machines to hit higher than 50 GH/S. What are you going to pay for this ridiculous machine? Try a cool $15,000, which, sadly, you can’t pay for in BTC. Can this thing really pay for itself? Probably, but not immediately. There are some BTC fans who believe a $10,000 BTC isn’t too far off and if that happens the potential benefits of this machine far outweighs the cost. They are planning on shipping this monster in July so if you’re seriously into mining, it may be worth a look. Everyone else? Be satisfied with your low GH/S. It’s a cryonic, nitrogen-cooled world out there and we’re just visiting.

Lyft lifts a stunning $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz. Yahoo makes its second acquisition this week. For young analysts, it’s college to investment bank to buyout fund, in just a few months. Why iPhone repair costs have soared. When hedge fund managers advertise, performance dips. Activist investor Carl Icahn is hustling to line up $7 billion in loans to back a proposed recap of Dell. Sears looks into transforming its shuttered stores into datacenters. 12 disruptive technologies that are changing the world. Anthony Weiner is staging a political comeback. How bad will the puns be this time? Image: Investor Carl Icahn speaks at the Wall Street Journal Deals & Deal Makers conference, held at the New York Stock Exchange, in this June 27, 2007, file photo. Credit: Reuters/Chip East/Files The post peHUB Second Opinion 5.23 appeared first on peHUB.

After acquiring FabKids earlier this year, JustFab announced today the acquisition of another “Fab” brand – The Fab shoes – for an undisclosed amount. The Fab Shoes is a European-based e-commerce shoe club with over 500,000 members in France and Spain. And that fits well with JustFab’s plans. With its newest acquisition, the subscription-based online store from California adds fuel to its European expansion blueprint. It launched operations in Germany and U.K. last year, and this deal provides it a way into Spain and France. “With our success in Germany and the U.K., we were ready to take JustFab into new territories. After getting to know the team at The Fab Shoes, we saw a natural fit for the businesses; it enables JustFab to quickly extend its European reach and gives The Fab Shoes a new way to distribute quality products to customers through our flexible subscription plan,” noted Don Ressler, a cofounder and co-chief executive of JustFab, in a statement. JustFab has quickly grown its European presence to 1.5 million members, and it is adding more than 100,000 new customers every month. The Fab Shoes will take this toll to well over the 2 million customer mark. Its competitors include companies such as H&M and Forever 21. JustFab has raised $109 million in venture capital from Matrix Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, Rho Capital Partners, and Intelligent Beauty. After accomplishing $100 million in revenue for the year, the e-commerce website is looking at 2013 as “another high-growth year.” “We continue to surpass our goals, month after month,” said Adam Goldenberg, the other cofounder and co-chief executive, Adam of JustFab. “With more than 13 million members in the U.S. and Europe growing at such a fast pace, we are on track to reach $250 million in revenue by the end of this year.” Image Credit: JustFab Filed under: Deals

LoyalBlocks announced today that it had raised $9 million in its first round of funding. The loyalty marketing solutions company plans on using the capital injection to expand U.S. operations and continue developing its platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded in 2011 by Ido Gaver and Eran Kirshenboim and is headquartered in both New York City and Tel Aviv. LoyalBlocks has two main products that complement one another. The first is their merchant-focused loyalty marketing solution, which enables brick-and-mortar businesses to build an app, set up a base station in their store, and select rewards programs to offer customers. The second product is an app targeted at mobile phone wielding consumers. The base station set up in the business automatically sends rewards to the customer as soon as they walk in the door. The platform also provides for Facebook integration and smart punch cards that clients can access on customers’ mobile phones. As with other services, the smart punch cards are automatically “stamped” as the customer with the LoyalBlocks app installed on their phone walks into the store. “We have taken mobile loyalty to the next level by making it easy for merchants to give their clients more, automatically. From a business perspective, it is an incremental layer of marketing that leverages their day-to-day activities. It is a simple, innovative and effortless way of generating more business and establishing long term customer loyalty,” said Ido Gaver, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a press release. General Catalyst Partners led the series A investment round, with participation from Founder Collective and previous investor Gemini Israel Ventures. The company also announced three additions to its board of directors: General Catalyst Partners managing director Adam Valkin, Gemini Israel Ventures managing partner Yossi Sela, and mySupermarket chief executive Allon Bloch. Photo credit: LoyalBlocks Filed under: Business, Deals, Enterprise, Lifestyle, Mobile, New York, Small Biz

As great as the web is, I still haven’t been able to kick my habit for buying fashion and lifestyle magazines off the newsstand. One of the things I love the most about monthly glossies are features like Vanity Fair’s My Stuff and Us Weekly’s What’s In My Bag, in which notable people reveal the exact products that they actually buy and use (celebrity chef David Chang uses Sensodyne toothpaste and wears Levi’s jeans, FYI.) It’s just compelling to find out more about people through their stuff. The folks at New York-based startup Vaunte think so too, and in fact, they think this kind of voyeuristic editorial approach could be the next generation of luxury e-commerce. Vaunte has created a web platform where notable people (think starlets, fashionable executives, designers, and socialites) show off the stuff in their closets — and put things up for sale. Vaunte started off as purely a consignment market that takes 30 percent commission for photographing and shipping seller’s items, but it has since expanded to also sell new versions of the items people show off. Though Vaunte has made a splash in the fashion news space since its November 2012 launch, it has flown under the radar in the tech and business press. But now for the first time, the company is revealing a bit more on the corporate side. TechCrunch sat down this week with Gilt Groupe veteran Leah Park and engineer/entrepreneur Andy Shin, two of Vaunte’s three co-founders — the third, ex Gilt Grouper Christian Leone, was in Los Angeles working on a Vaunte photoshoot — to talk a bit more about what Vaunte is and what’s in its future (video embedded below.) A Vaunte closet profileFirst, some numbers: Vaunte has raised $1.125 million in seed funding from Maveron, Battery Ventures, and fashion and retail mogul Christopher Burch. The company has a staff of nine, but is set to expand as it moves into a 6,000 square foot space in Manhattan that will serve as office space and inventory storage. Based on just word of mouth and a few press mentions, Vaunte has grown to 60,000 members and done more than half a million dollars in transactional revenue since launching in November. The big news going forward is that with the launch of its upcoming mobile app scheduled for this summer, Vaunte is set to open up its platform to let anyone display and sell their clothing and accessories on the site. These users will be charged less of a commission than the higher-profile sellers, since they will be responsible for taking their own photos. There is a significant amount of additional technology that Vaunte’s team had to build to make this app scalable to taking items from the general public — quality control on the photos that are taken and having to verify that luxury items are genuine, for example. It’s an expansion that will put Vaunte in an interesting intersection in the existing e-commerce market — its competitors will now range from Net-a-Porter to The RealReal to Poshmark to Threadflip and more. Personally, I’m excited to see what Vaunte has in store for its future. The first time I opened the site this week, I had one thought: “Uh oh. I am going to spend so much money here.” I’d imagine that I’m not alone. Park and Shin stopped by the TechCrunch TV studio to discuss Vaunte’s vision and give us an early look at the new mobile experience. Check it all out below:

Compared to sizable companies, small to medium sized businesses (SMB) seem to be less concerned with mobile security because they feel too “unimportant” to be attacked. This, of course, is not true. In the first half of 2012, small businesses accounted for 36 percent of all targeted cyber attacks, up from 18 percent at the end of 2011, according to Symantec data. These SMBs are becoming more frequent victims of mobile cyber attacks due to their lack of device defenses and their position as “gateways” to larger firms’ or consumer data. And while many SMBs deem security a major priority, most aren’t taking the proper precautions. Fifty-five percent of small businesses classify security as a major mobile risk, but only 16 percent have a mobility policy in place, according to CompTIA’s Second Annual Trends in Enterprise Mobility report published in April. Many have mobility policies that don’t cover critical security areas like personal device use, transmission and storage of data, and public Wi-Fi accessibility. Even more disconcerting: 37 percent of policies don’t include a protocol for lost devices, even though almost half of businesses identified device loss as their most common mobile security incident. Security breaches can cost thousands or millions of dollars in damage and put a business down for months at a time, but many SMB cyber-crimes are preventable. The IT channel is full of firms that offer ways to create or strengthen preventative and disaster recovery plans for businesses of all sizes. Whether your enterprise mobility policy and solutions are outsourced or managed internally, there are passcode and encryption strategies, software, and monitoring tools that can help prevent damaging data breaches from happening, or lessen the blow of those that do. Here are a few tips for developing a more effective SMB mobility policy: Leave room to grow: For organizations writing their inaugural mobility policy, it’s OK to start small. Include even the most basic protocol for setting device passcodes and downloading third-party apps, but understand that these areas are subject to change and will evolve over time. At first, your policy might mandate all app downloads be approved by an IT manager, but if you build an internal app store in a year or two, that process will need modification. Security and data deserve their own treatment: When writing a mobility policy, it’s easy to use “security” as an umbrella term to include both physical device threats like jailbreaking and data vulnerabilities. Data, however, can be a beast of its own and should be treated as such in a company policy. Data spans across mobile devices, desktops, office networks, and personal networks. To keep information safe outside of a business’s walls, it demands constant monitoring (either internal or outsourced), a Data Loss Prevention platform, and end-user awareness of data safety best practices. Engage your business leaders (not just IT): At smaller firms especially, where IT staff may be limited, it is important to get mobility policy buy-in and guidance from the management team. Understanding that mobile security is a strategic business issue, not just a technology problem, builds the right foundation for a more sound, comprehensive policy. Designate control: One of the biggest decisions for SMBs is whether or not to outsource the mobile management process. Regardless of who holds the keys to device and data maintenance, make sure that they have access to all necessary information and the ability to make updates or quick fixes without disturbing staff productivity. If the proposed security measures can’t coexist seamlessly with your day-to-day operations, then your strategy may need tweaking. As mobile technology continues to evolve, SMBs must be proactive in implementing cohesive processes to combat imminent threats. Prioritizing security and letting go of the misconception that SMBs are immune takes time and effort, but it can help keep an organiza