Exclusive: Japan’s Rakuten Wins the Heart of Pinterest in $100M Funding Race With $1.5B Valuation

The largest e-commerce site in Japan is about to get pinned by Ben Silbermann in massive funding round.
PinterestJapan

CEO and Pregnant: Piazza’s Pooja Sankar and Yapp’s Maria Seidman

“Were there days that I was so nauseous and exhausted that I wanted to lie under the desk? Yeah. But I’m committed to the product.”
PoojaSankar

Cloud-Based Phone Software Start-Up Twilio Taps Former Jive Exec as Its CMO

Not clear on what Twilio is all about? Then someone has her job cut out for her.
lynda-smith

News Byte

SendGrid Raises $21M to Send Even More Emails

SendGrid has raised $21 million in a Series B round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The Boulder, Colo.-based company sends 2.6 billion personalized emails per month to users of services like Pinterest, Airbnb and Path — with 26 billion total emails sent over the past two-and-a-half years.

News Byte

Piazza Raises $6M for College Class Discussion Platform

Piazza, a Q&A service for discussions of college coursework with the approval and participation of instructors, has raised $6 million in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and including Kapor Capital and Felicis Ventures. The company said it has 100,000 users — many of them in computer science and math classes — and that its average daily login lasts four hours.

Millennial Media Tries Cashing In on Mobile Ad Boom With IPO

It’s the first player in the small, rapidly growing mobile ad business to go public instead of selling to a bigger fish.
millennial_media_logo

News Byte

Twilio Nabs $17 Million More in Funding From Current Investors

Twilio, whose technology lets developers build telephony and messaging into their apps, announced Wednesday that it has raised $17 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures — two of its existing investors. The San Francisco-based company, which has around 100 employees, plans to use the money to help fuel continued hiring and international expansion.

eBay Buys Hunch

One of a string of pickups for eBay.
hunch_ebay

Shopify Picks Up $15 Million as It Faces New Competition From eBay

Shopify has secured $15 million in a second round of funding — which might give it the extra padding it needs after eBay announced last week that it had entered the same space.
shopify_products

Voices

Box.net Raises $81 Million Expansion Round

On the heels of raising a $48 million Series D financing in February, enterprise application maker Box.net has closed an $81 million expansion round of capital.

Millennial Media Acquires TapMetrics