DCM

SigFig Rolls Out a Smarter Piggy Bank to Help People Invest More Wisely

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on May 1 at 6:00 am PT

San Francisco-based SigFig is rolling out a new type of investment service that makes managing investment portfolios way easier.

News Byte

AHAlife Raises $6 Million to Pitch Luxury Items Using Well-Written Prose

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on July 27, 2011 at 9:55 am PT

New York-based AHAlife.com, which is merging commerce and content, has raised $6 million in new funding. Investors in the round are DCM and FirstMark Capital. To date, the company has raised $9 million. The site pitches one new luxury item for sale every day to its members, who sign up for free to receive its latest products. AHAlife attempts to differentiate itself from flash sales sites, but has a look similar to Fab.com, which raised $8 million yesterday.

News Byte

Billing Revolution Gets Funding From Citi for Mobile Payments Service

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on June 21, 2011 at 4:12 pm PT

Billing Revolution, which has launched a mobile billing platform called Single-Click Checkout, has raised additional capital from its partner, Citigroup. The undisclosed investment is from Citi Ventures and follows a $6.6 million second round of funding from DCM and SK Telecom Ventures last month.

Project Slice Partners With Yahoo; Raises $9 Million in Capital

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on May 26, 2011 at 6:00 am PT

Project Slice has the somewhat obscure idea of helping consumers organize all of their electronic communications with retailers, but is getting a huge boost in confidence today with a new round of funding and a partnership with Yahoo.

Renren Evades Red Flags to Raise $743M and Soar 40 Percent on IPO Day

Liz Gannes in Social on May 4, 2011 at 10:54 am PT

Investors are ravenous for social networking and Chinese Internet companies. That’s the only rational explanation for Chinese social network Renren’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange today, which raised $743.4 million and saw shares sustain a 40 percent gain in afternoon trading.

PapayaMobile Raises $18 Million for a Mobile Game Network

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on April 27, 2011 at 6:00 am PT

Papaya Mobile, which is building a mobile social gaming network on Android, has raised $18 million in a second round of funding.

Formspring Absorbs What's Left of Q&A Competitor PeerPong: The People

Liz Gannes in Social on April 21, 2011 at 3:29 pm PT

Q&A start-up PeerPong has closed, and competitor Formspring has already picked up PeerPong CEO Ro Choy to serve as its COO.

With Backing From Asia, New $100 Million A-Fund Targets the Android Ecosystem

Ina Fried in Mobile on April 21, 2011 at 11:00 am PT

In an interview, venture capitalist David Chao called the opportunity with Android one not unlike that that cropped up when Microsoft launched Windows in response to the Mac. The new A-Fund has backing from China’s Tencent along with Japanese social network GREE and mobile carrier KDDI, with more partners to come.

Do You Want To Save Your Web Ads? AdKeeper Bets $35 Million That You Will

Peter Kafka in Media on January 2, 2011 at 9:01 pm PT

Oak Investment leads a giant funding round in Scott Kurnit’s new startup, which thinks that Web surfers will stop ignoring ads, and start saving them. If he’s right, it’s a big deal. If not…

Voices

Vipshop Bags $20M To Bring Flash Sales To Chinese Consumers

Jonathan Shieber, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 8, 2010 at 1:19 pm PT

Chinese venture capitalists are buying into the country’s “flash sales” membership-based retail websites, as online shoppers in the country get a taste of steep discounts on the gilded life through offerings from retailers like newly funded start-up Vipshop.