paidContent » baseline ventures

Pocket (formerly Read It Later) raises $5m in second funding round

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:00:37 +0000

Pocket , the company for saving online content formerly known as Read It Later, has raised $5 million in a Series B funding round and will use the money to expand its platform.

The funding round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Baseline Ventures and Google Ventures.

Read It Later relaunched as Pocket in April and made its app completely free. The company says it has nearly six million users, up from about 4.5 million in April, saving a million pieces of content a day. It is integrated into over 350 third-party apps, including Flipboard and Twitter. Thirty percent of the content saved to Pocket is saved from news and reader apps.

Xobni Raises $16 Million In Third Round For Outlook Plug-In

Joseph Tartakoff — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:18:51 +0000

Xobni, which sells a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Outlook plug-in that helps users keep track of their mail and contacts, has raised $16.2 million in a third round of funding. The startup — one of several selling e-mail add-ons that have recently raised rounds — adds a host of features to Outlook, including faster search, as well as profiles of contacts that include their most recent updates on various social networks. A basic version is free, while the company charges $29.95 for a version with no ads and some additional features.

Microsoft has itself been moving to add social features to Outlook; it recently introduced a feature that lets users track the activities of contacts on social networks from within their inboxes. That, however, obviously doesn’t seem to have impeded Xobni’s funding round, which was led by Khosla Ventures and new investor RRE. Existing investors Baseline Ventures, Atomico, First Round Capital and Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) also participated. The funding brings the four-year-old startup’s total backing to more than $30 million.

Text-Video Publishing Platform Vook Gets $2.5 Million Seed Funding

David Kaplan — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:57:42 +0000

Mixed-media book publisher Vook has raised $2.5 million in seed funding as the company looks to capitalize on the wider adoption of e-readers and other portable devices. The funding comes from individual investors Ron Conway and Huffington Post chairman Ken Lerer, along with Maples Investments, Baseline Ventures and Founder Collective. The primary proposition of the Alameda, CA-based company is that it integrates video and social media elements with the text. Although it only launched last fall, Vook has been able to strike deals with major publishers such as Simon & Schuster, HarperStudio and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.

Expensify Raises $1 Million For New Hires, Mobile App Development

Tameka Kee — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:26:46 +0000

Expensify, an online expense report management startup, has raised roughly $1 million in its first round of funding, per an SEC filing. The new money came from Hillsven Capital, Baseline Capital Ventures and Red Swoosh and Scour investor Travis Kalanick; CEO David Barrett said Expensify will use the investment for new hires and tech development, including the launch of mobile apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre.

S.F.-based Expensify debuted at the TechCrunch 50 in 2008; it launched a public beta of its business expense tracking and reimbursement platform this March (via TechCrunch). The company also offers a branded MasterCard that links to a user’s existing credit account, so that employees can keep their business and personal expenses separate (and trackable).

Online Dictionary Site Wordnik Gets $3.7 Million Funding

Rafat Ali — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:21:11 +0000

Wordnik, the online dictionary site which has been under some controversy due to this NYT story last weekend about its P.R. strategy, has raised $3.7 million in funding, according to an SEC filing just filed. The site, based in Chicago and started by Erin McKean, former editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, has previously said it had funding from Roger McNamee (of Elevation Partners but he invested personally in this), and Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, but hand’t disclosed the amount. According to the filing, that amount is now at $3.7 million, from a total of nine investors. No word on who the other investors are, and company refused to comment.

As for the site, it is a combination online dictionary which aggregates more than just word meanings: it includes context of the word, including usage and from Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, Twitter feeds and Flickr photos that include the word being looked up, and also allows users to add their own meaning and context to the words, with the idea being it would be a lot more up to date than other competing dictionary sites. Cute idea, relatively niche audience. Would be interesting if they were to cut a deal with *Google* or any other search engine for definitions (currently *Google* uses Answers.com (NSDQ: ANSW) by default, and throws a lot of traffic there, but there is no formal deal between the two companies).

Casual Games Firm OMGPOP Raises $5 Million

Rory Maher — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:26:25 +0000

Just a few days after changing its name from iminlikewithyou.com to OMGPOP.com (people were having trouble typing the old name as a URL), the gaming company announced it has raised $5 million in venture financing. Bessemer Ventures led the round, and current investors Spark Capital and Ron Conway’s Baseline Ventures also participated.

OMGPOP creates games for a growing user-base of teens and college kids to play online either by themselves or with others. Two of the more popular games are Draw My Thing, an online version of Pictionary, and Blockles, which feels a lot like Tetris. The site was founded in 2006 by programmer Charles Forman. It is advertising-supported, but CEO Dan Porter said he also plans to introduce subscription accounts and virtual goods to its product mix.

Stealthy 750 Industries Gets $1 Million First Round

Joseph Weisenthal — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:22:08 +0000

750 Industries, a stealthy SF-based startup, has raised a $1 million first round from Ron Conway, Maples Investments and Baseline Ventures, TechCrunch reported. What’s the company do? Not clear. It’s notable because one of its co-founders wrote a controversial guest post on TC, which was basically a tutorial on how to game YouTube. NewTeeVee says the company is something resembling TubeMogul, a video tracking and syndication firm, plus something having to do with video marketing.

Social Gamer I’m In Like With You Raises $1.5 Million First Round

Joseph Weisenthal — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:05:00 +0000

I’m in Like With You, a NY-based social gaming startup, has raised $1.5 million led by Spark Capital, along with Baseline Ventures, Betaworks, Ron Conway, and Marc Andreesen. The news was first reported by CNET’s Caroline McCarthy. The company, which began as more of a dating site, raised an unspecified angel round last year. Om had a good writeup about its original form, when it had an auction-based model for flirting. There’s still a bit of that element, though the interaction is all around gameplay — casual games, mainly, drawing inspiration from classics like Tetris and Snood. The site was started by Charles Forman, something of a gossip blog fixture.

Yardbarker Raises $6 Million Second Round For Sports Community And Ad Network

Joseph Weisenthal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Yardbarker, a community site and ad network revolving around sports, has raised a $6 million second round from DFJ along with past backers Russ Siegelman, Ronnie Lott (yes, that Ronnie Lott), Jarl Mohn, Labrador Ventures, Baseline Ventures, and others. The company previously raised unspecified seed funding last April. The Berkeley, CA-based start-up offers a Digg-like social voting system for sports news stories, along with blogs and other user-gen media. It also touts blogs from pro athletes including Donovan McNabb, Baron Davis, Dontrelle Willis, and Greg Oden. In addition to the site itself, the company runs an ad network that claims an ad network of some 300 sites. In the release CEO Pete Vlastelica touts the support of DFJ due to its involvement with ad network Glam. Release.

Sendori Raises First Round for Paid Traffic Redirection

Joseph Weisenthal — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:06:00 +0000

Sunnyvale-based Sendori, a service that allows companies to bid on the traffic of unused domain names, has raised an unspecified first investment round from First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and Maples Investments, according to Venturewire (via VentureBeat). Basically, the service offers an alternative way for domain name holders to monetize their traffic. Rather than populating a site with the typical link ads, a domain name owner can redirect their traffic to the highest bidder. The company’s claim is that domain owners can get 25 percent more revenue through this model than they could by serving up ads from Google. Co-founder and CEO Ofer Ronen was formerly a partner at Big Red Ventures.