Zendesk Releases New Help Center, Adds First Outside Director to Board

Betsey Nelson, former CFO of Macromedia, joins the board.
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As YouTube Stars Invent Their Own Ways to Get Paid, Patreon Raises $2.1M

Goodbye ads, hello automatic tip jars?

Now Fully Kickstartered, Pebble Raises $15M in Venture Capital From CRV

Charles River Ventures backs the Kickstarter darling.

Tophatter (A.K.A. Blippy 2.0) Gathers a Lively Crowd for Live Auctions

Blippy is now called Tophatter. It’s also a social shopping product, but it’s totally different.

News Byte

Crushpath Raises $6M for Sales Pitch Tool

Crushpath, a $9-per-month service that helps people craft and keep track of pitches, has raised $6 million from investors including the Social+Capital Partnership and Charles River Ventures. You can see the pitch that the company sent me about their funding round here.

Inside ToyTalk, the Startup That Wants to Bring Toys to Life

Look who’s talking now.

DataGravity Lands $30 Million From Andreessen Horowitz; Levine Joins Board

Extracting intelligence from stored data is hard.

News Byte

Google Ventures-Backed Start-Up TrueLens Nabs $1.2 Million

Social analytics start-up TrueLens announced Monday that it closed a $1.2 million round of funding led by Google Ventures. Other participants in the round include Charles River Ventures, Common Angels, 500 Startups and Boston Seed, as well as a handful of other angel investors. After compiling and analyzing data from multiple social networks, TrueLens offers more granular customer information to brands for marketing campaigns.

News Byte

Social Media Marketing Firm HubSpot Adds $35 Million in Funding

HubSpot, which helps users with marketing via social media, has completed a new funding round of $35 million. The Cambridge, Mass., software company had previously raised about $65 million. The latest investment included previous investors Altimeter Capital and Cross Creek Capital, as well as, reportedly, Fidelity Investments. Earlier fundings have included General Catalyst Partners, Matrix Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, Salesforce.com and Charles River Ventures. The new money will be used for international growth and acquisitions.

Education Start-Up Udacity Raises Funds From Andreessen Horowitz

Sebastian Thrun gets $15 million for more MOOCs.

API Marketplace Mashape Raises Funding