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InSITE company BRANCH closes $2M round

InSITE — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:02:49 +0000

On March 6th, former InSITE company Branch (previously Roundtable) announced that they had closed a $2M round led by Obvious Corp, Lerer Ventures and SV Angel. As part of the deal, Obvious will “join forces [with Branch] on the technology, the product design, the branding, the marketing, and several other aspects of this interesting new product bursting with potential.”

Led by Josh Miller, Hursh Agrawal, and Cemre Güngör, Branch launched last summer as a “group blogging/debate platform.” Of their time with InSITE, Josh said “When we were heads down, obsessively tinkering with in the details of our product, it was very helpful to have the InSITE folks there to help us understand the ins and outs of the financing process.”

With a lot of initial buzz and some heavy hitting advisors, the Branch team has stayed true to their initial vision as a place for meaningful conversations online. Biz Stone’s announcement of the deal describes Branch as a platform that…

… enables a smart new brand of high quality public discourse. Curated groups of people are invited to engage around issues in which they are knowledgeable. This service holds the promise of a new platform for dialogue on the web—a necessary departure from the monologues we have grown so accustomed to reading online.

For the last several months Branch has been working in San Francisco to prepare for their beta launch at SXSW. They’ll continue working out of the Obvious Corp offices there until they return to New York this summer to take up residence in Betaworks.

Congratulations to Josh, Hursh, and Cemre on their recent success and best of luck as they “turn the Internet’s monologues into dialogues

Post written by Owen Kirshner.

Happy Holidays! BestVendor Raises $3 million in Series A Fundraising

InSITE — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:17:41 +0000

On Monday, BestVendor secured $3 million in Series A funding to support the company’s mission to become the leading resource for business professionals looking for the best web, mobile and desktop applications. Seeking to capitalize on a market segment seemingly neglected relative to the consumer app space, BestVendor is building a community that reviews and recommends work applications for prospective users, thereby generating optimum results that are in line with its goal to let people ‘discover work apps you’ll love.’

BestVendor views the work app sharing segment as a logical extension to today’s social web, in which users have demonstrated their willingness to showcase and share all aspects of their personal lives. “Ten years ago it would have seemed weird that we all share our resumes online using LinkedIn. We’re working towards a world where professionals are sharing the tools they’re using online and it becomes part of their identity,” BestVendor co-founder Jeff Giesea told VentureBeat earlier this year. The company, which was founded in January 2011, launched its beta in early-November and already has over 5,000 startup and small business professionals signed up and sharing their favorite work apps.

The $3 million investment, co-led by RRE Ventures and SoftBank Capital and supported by Lerer Ventures, Old Willow Partners and David Tisch, comes after a $600,000 seed investment in mid-2011. “We’re thrilled to partner with SoftBank Capital and RRE Ventures to level the playing field in business software,” said Giesea. “They share our vision of bringing greater openness to this rapidly evolving market and to business purchasing in general.”

In addition to CEO Jeff Giesea, BestVendor is led by co-founders Ben Zhuk, Head of Product and InSITE alumni, and Magnus von Koeller, Head of Engineering. Over the last several months, InSITE has worked with BestVendor’s senior management team to support the company’s rapid growth, providing strategy advice within several key areas, including viral strategy, user testing, financial and user growth modeling, and recommendation engine development. The InSITE team consists of Adler Perotte, Rebecca Allen, Alejandro Chahin, Mark Krafft, Ed Rayner and Zak Schwarzman. Zhuk said of his experience with the InSITE team:

It’s been great to come back to the other side of the InSITE relationship and bring a new group of students into a startup. InSITE students are always a cut above, and a great help at whatever they set their minds to. This fall, our team split into functional units to create value in every part of the company: our financial model, our marketing plan, product-market fit and user testing, and even the math behind our recommendation algorithm.

I only wish the term could be longer, so we could keep working with this group!

This post was written by Mark Krafft, Columbia Business School Class of 2013.

RightsFlow Acquired by YouTube

InSITE — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:30:08 +0000

YouTube has just acquired RightsFlow, a startup that manages music licensing and payment services.

Launched in 2007, RightsFlow helps online music services, record companies, distributors and artists license music and lyrics while also managing royalty payments for the rights-holders. The company’s proprietary licensing technology and 30-plus million song database allows RightsFlow to license content, render accounting, and pay royalties on behalf of clients.

As CEO Patrick Sullivan writes in his announcement: We’re pleased to now be taking a momentous step with the team at YouTube, that shares in our vision of solving the really challenging problem of copyright management. Combined with the worldwide platform and reach of YouTube, we’ll now be able to drive awareness, adoption, and licensing success to a much larger audience — ultimately benefiting users, artists, labels, songwriters, publishers, and the entire global music ecosystem.

YouTube says that RightsFlow has been at the “forefront of solving the complex issues of licensing and royalty payment management.” The startup’s technology will be integrated into the video platform to allow musicians to efficiently license music on YouTube. Clearly helping musicians get compensated for the use of their work make YouTube even more appealing a a platform to showcase music and talent.

Company Update: Holstee

InSITE — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:28:39 +0000

It has been a wild ride for everyone at Holstee since graduating from inSITE! When working with our great group of Fellows the Holstee team comprised four people, today we have grown to eight. Originally we were intending to raise capital just after inSITE; however, we were fortunate enough to focus on our own growth through sales. Exceeding all of our expectations, the Holstee Manifesto went viral around the world–between Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the blogosphere we estimate that it has been shared over 15 million times. This made the Manifesto Poster our best selling item, and we had an extremely successful summer. One day in August we had as many sales as we had in the whole month of January, when we started working with inSITE.

As a healthy and strongly growing company we decided to pick up the fundraising project again a couple of weeks ago and were able to gain the support of some incredible individuals. Expect some great news near the end of this month on that front!

We recently launched a project we had been working on to bring the Holstee Manifesto to life: the LifeCycle Film. Again, we are amazed at how rapidly it has gone viral–amassing over 70,000 views only a week after we launched the film. It has been so amazing to us to see how many people have been inspired through the words of the Manifesto, and the response to the film has been a true testimony to how deeply the values of Holstee resonate with our fantastic community.

We are so glad to report that we are growing! There are many new products in the works that are set to launch this winter, including a limited edition color of our minimalist Upcycled Wallet that will go live in the next few weeks. We are honored to be connected to the inSITE community and thrilled to see where the adventure will take us next!

(Here is the link for the film: http://www.blog.holstee.com/lifecyclefilm-debut

This post was written by Mary Shouvlin (@maryshouvlin), Holstee’s Community Engagement Officer.

UpNext, InSITE Fall 2007 Company Raises $500K

President — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:05:47 +0000

UpNext Scores $500,000 From Chris Sacca And Others For 3D Mobile Mapping
by Erick Schonfeld | TechCruch | Mar 14, 2011

Mapping is a big boy’s game, with Google Maps, Bing Maps, and MapQuest dominating maps on both the Web and mobile. But sometimes it takes a startup to push things forward. 3D mobile mapping startup UpNext is hoping to get on the map, so to speak, with its detailed 3D maps of cities and venues like the Super Bowl stadium. … (More)

Sportaneous wins at NYC BigApps

President — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:26:51 +0000

“]

Congrats to our Fall 2010 Company, Sportaneous for their prizes at the Big Apps Competition.
- Grand Prize Popular Choice Award
- 2nd place Best Overall Application
Full press release here.

Way to go Omar and Aaron! For more on Sportaneous, contact Co-Founders, Omar Haroun or Aaron Royston

2010 Spring Final Pitch Event

InSITE — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:00:36 +0000

On 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

InSITE — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:00:48 +0000

On 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

InSITE — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:00:46 +0000

InSITE 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

InSITE — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:00:30 +0000

InSITE’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.