2010 Spring Final Pitch Event
By · CommentsOn Friday, April 9, 2010, InSITE Fellows, Spring 2010 Companies, representatives from 6 venture funds and other guests gathered at the offices of Cooley Godward and Kronish for InSITE’s 2010 Spring Final Pitch Event.
InSITE’s Spring 2010 companies presenting were:
ProtEquity
Bandvest
modos
Klickable
Active Locations
A distinguished panel of senior venture capitalists and entrepreneurs provided invaluable feedback on each pitch. These included:
Jason Finger / Founder of Seamlessweb and EIR at Bessemer Venture Partners
Will Porteous / General Partner at RRE Ventures
Morgan Rodd / General Partner at Milestone Venture Partners
Other venture firms present were InSITE Sponsor Greenhill SAVP, Rose Tech Ventures and Tipping Point Partners.
InSITE is tremendously thankful to our sponsors for supporting us through another outstanding semester:
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati
Canaan Partners
Contour Venture Partners
DFJ Gotham
Investor Growth Capital
Greenhill SAVP
Kodiak Venture Partners
Milestone Venture Partners
RRE Ventures
InSITE also thanks Cooley, Godward and Kronish for hosting our Pitch Event for the fourth semester.
We captured brief interviews with several participants in this Klickable video:
InSITE Companies Raise > $215M
By · CommentsOn the 10th Anniversary of our companies raising funding after graduating InSITE, we have surveyed their accomplishments and found tremendous success in Angel and VC fundraising.
Since Spring of 2001, InSITE’s companies have raised a total of more than $215 million of disclosed funding and have enjoyed at least 6 successful exits. With 96 companies completing our program to date, that’s an average of $2.2 million raised per company – an impressive number, particularly considering the majority of start-ups do not receive funding.
The biggest raise by far was by RecycleBank, totaling $71.1 million dollars over 3 rounds. Even without RecycleBank’s funding success, each InSITE company raised $1.5M on average. That’s a tremendous amount of Angel/VC funding for startups based in the New York City area.
Filling out the top five raises are Silicon Alley Telecom (which became Eureka Broadband and is now part of Broadview Networks) ($44 million), Hycrete ($25 million), Vindigo ($22 million), and ON Networks ($16 million). Our most recent large success has been Organic Motion ($8.28 million), a 2006 and 2009 InSITE Company.
Top Angel/VC investors have been involved in these ventures, including RRE Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, Rose Tech Ventures, NGEN Partners, First Round Capital, Accel Partners, Kodiak Ventures, PKS Capital, SJF Ventures, Robin Hood Ventures, Foundry Group, Betaworks, and New York Angels.
To date, have been at least 6 successful exits including Klipmart, which is now Doubleclick’s Rich Media Ad serving tool, Motif. Others include:
Design2Launch, acquired by Kodak
EATS Media, acquired by Delivery.com
ASPEED Software, acquired by Simtone
PreClick, acquired by Smilebox
Mycrocept, acquired by Healthpoint
More information on InSITE’s companies is available here.
These numbers do not take into account undisclosed funding amounts. We know of at least 6 companies that have received seed funding, but the sizes were not publicly disclosed, including HopStop, MediaMerx, Frogtek and Catchafire.
Although InSITE doesn’t take full credit for the success of these companies, no one can dispute that the company selection teams each semester have successfully picked the best and brightest entrepreneurs in NYC.
InSITE teams work hard each semester with these companies to refine their pitches and presentations and put them in front of our Venture Capital Advisory Program Sponsors (VCAPS). InSITE congratulates 10 years of InSITE companies on terrific success in raising funding and building successful enterprises!
– Shirley Xu, 2009-2010 Special VP for Alumni Companies
Catchafire Closes Angel Round
By · CommentsInSITE alum company Catchafire just closed an angel round of funding and is building up staff in anticipation of its NYC Beta launch on June 28, 2010. Catchafire.org is a social venture start-up that will revolutionize the way people volunteer by matching professionals with nonprofits that need their skills.
Catchafire looks to register 1,000 volunteers by its late-June launch, so if you’re a professional who wants to volunteer what you are good at, sign up at www.catchafire.org.
The InSITE team that worked with founder Rachael Chong was struck by her vision, energy, and enthusiasm. About her InSITE experience, Rachael notes, “Working with my InSITE team was not only enjoyable and thought-provoking, but it also forced me to practice my pitch in the best possible way. To date, I still use the pitch we created together, and I often get comments on how clear and concise the deck is.”
Angel funding was used to hire a Head of Technology and a VP of Sales & Marketing in preparation for the NYC launch. Catchafire’s still looking for an “uber-creative social media/communications/PR/events expert” to work as a consultant over a 3-4 month period. If interested, contact rachael@catchafire.org.
For the latest on Catchafire, visit blog.catchafire.org
– Jennifer Gootman
[me] & goji Featured on Oprah.com
By · CommentsInSITE’s favorite custom cereal company, and Fall 2009 client alum, [me] & goji was recently featured on Oprah.com as one of their Favorite New Foods from Around the Web.
Advice from the Closing of TableXChange
By · CommentsI recently interviewed Will Geronimo, one of the co-founders of TableXChange, a Spring 2008 InSITE company. TableXChange.com served as the first and only online marketplace to buy and sell reservations to the hottest restaurants in New York City, San Francisco, and The Hamptons. As the economy worsened, however, even the best restaurants in these areas, which once boasted 30+ day waiting lists, began to have empty tables and the niche filled by ancillary services like TableXChange was no longer necessary. Here are some highlights from my interview with Will:
OH: Tell me about how and why TableXChange failed.
WG: The downward spiral was pretty quick. The bottom line was that the company didn’t make money. We thought that if we could get enough traction we could monetize our business model. But to be honest we never had a perfect understanding of what our business model was. One thing we did know was that if the marketplace for online reservations took off, we would be the first ones to make it big in that space. But our timing could not have been worse. The economy went into a downward spiral and our business, which was based on scarcity of tables, was no longer needed.
OH: Did anything besides the economy hurt your business?
WG: Although the primary reason was the scarcity of tables, it did not help that as the economy worsened we got increasingly negative feedback from the restaurant industry. It was never our intention to harm restaurants, but as our website kicked off, the restaurants began to approach us and say “the way that you are setting this website up is creating a lot of confusion with the hostesses, etc”. We ended up being portrayed as the bad guys, especially once the market for high-end restaurants slowed down. The negative press obviously did not help us.
OH: Do you have any advice for graduate students who are hoping to start their own ventures soon?
WG: Absolutely. I have started a few businesses in addition to TableXChange; I have had a couple of failures and a couple of successes. The most important thing I have learned is that partnership is HUGE. You want to pick partners with ancillary skill sets and complimentary skill sets. One of the problems with TableXChange is that Gabe and I had the same skill set—we were both finance guys and management guys. Dwight was the programmer, and he was the only one with the technical skills to put many of our ideas into action. In other words, we had two management guys and one technical guy when it should have been the other way around. My advice to students is to make sure to not bring too many people on your team with the same set of skills; and if you do, make sure those are programming or technical skills, which can be ancillary, rather than management skills.
– Omar Haroun, AVP Teams 2009-2010
Rentricity Awarded $25K by New York State
By · CommentsGovernor Paterson today announced $3 million of grants to a variety of projects throughout New York.
The funds are intended to strengthen and support the growth of New York’s clean energy economy by helping 18 Empire State companies commercialize clean energy technologies.
Amongst the recipients is InSITE Alumni Company Rentricity, with a grant of $25K to assess the energy recovery potential of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the State.
RecycleBank Secures $28M Series C Round
By · CommentsRecycleBank today announced it had added $28M more in funding from RRE, Sigma Partners, Kleiner Perkins, the Westly Group, and Generation Investment. It also announces a partnership with re-commerce company, Kashless.
Rentricity Aiding Green Economic Recovery
By · CommentsWith support of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Rentricity is installing one of its energy recovery generators at a New Hampshire-Based Water Utility’s Clean Energy Initiative.
PreClick Acquired by Smilebox
By · CommentsXconomy today reported that Smilebox has announced its acquisition of print-to-retail software firm and InSITE Alumni PreClick.
Rentricity Joins 160 Varick Street Incubator
By · CommentsMayor Michael Bloomberg today welcomed Rentricity as one of the first 27 businesses to the City-sponsored 160 Varick Street Incubator, part of the Administration’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan.