Mu Sigma helps some of the world’s biggest corporations make sense of the vast amounts of data being produced online. The company, which is headquartered in Chicago with most of its analysts in Bangalore, employs about 1,500 people, up from about 1,200 in June.

The latest funding round was led by General Atlantic, with Sequoia Capital, a current investor, raising its stake. Sequoia had invested $25 million in Mu Sigma in June. The valuation set by the latest fundraising wasn’t disclosed.

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Participants in the fifth round include the Japanese-based telecom conglomerate Softbank Group as well as Gilt’s previous investors, General Atlantic and Matrix Partners. Other new investors include: Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital and Eastward Capital.

Softbank’s involvement is two-fold.

Not only will it be contributing $62.5 million of the round, which will all be going toward Gilt’s U.S. operations, it will also invest a smaller undisclosed amount into Gilt Groupe Japan. The two companies will each own 50 percent of the joint venture.

In all, Gilt has raised $240 million. The fifth round values the company at roughly $1 billion before the round is taken into account. The round was first reported in a regulatory filing last week.

Gilt’s CEO Kevin Ryan, who is known for being one of the first 20 employees at DoubleClick, launched the members-only site in November 2007. In roughly four years, the company has created a name for itself as the online destination for discounts on brand-name luxury items. Targeting affluent young professionals, the site lures consumers in with beautiful photography and creates a sense of urgency because the deals are gone once the inventory sells out.

In addition to selling men’s and women’s apparel, it has branched out into new markets, such as children and home decor. It has expanded into travel and local deals through its Jetsetter and Gilt City brands respectively. [Read our Q&A with Ryan here.]

The funding will go toward launching new verticals and making acquisitions to get into new markets. In the next couple of months, Gilt has committed to launching a gourmet food site and a full-priced men’s online retail apparel site, but others are also on their way.

Ryan said the round ended up being bigger than they expected and they could have easily raised up to $200 million. But there’s a delicate balancing act between raising enough and diluting the company too far.

“It will be great not to have to do this for a long time,” he said, adding that this will be the last time the company raises a private round.

The next step will be an initial public offering. ”At some point, but we have no specific plans. It’s not happening any time soon,” he said.

Softbank, which operates wireless and broadband networks in Japan and has investments in hundreds of companies–including Yahoo! Japan–will contribute other services and intangible property to help expand what Gilt has already started in Japan.

“It’s not that it wasn’t going well. We are the flash-sales leader in Japan, but when we started talking to them, it was clear that they would add value,” Ryan said. “We don’t need a partner, but we were convinced that they would add value and be a great partner. We are a leader, but we want to be a lot bigger and it’s sometimes hard to be as successful in Japan without a partner. I think that will help.”

To be sure, the round will be helpful in establishing Gilt from among the copycats flooding the market.

The company previously said its revenues would total up to $500 million for the fiscal year ending June 2011. Ryan would not provide an update on that figure, but said the overall company, which has 670 employees and 100 job openings, is not yet profitable.

Its business model is not too dissimilar to well-funded Groupon or LivingSocial. Other direct competitors, such as Rue La La and HauteLook, have recently been acquired by eBay and Nordstrom respectively. And in the past couple of weeks, one of its closest competitors, ideeli, raised $40 million in capital. E-commerce giant Amazon just began another direct competitor called MyHabit. Additionally, Vente Privée, the big French flash-sales site, which already has billions in revenues, is reportedly launching in the U.S. in the coming months with an announcement slated for this week.

Here’s the full press release:

Gilt Groupe, Inc. Announces $138 Million in New Funding
Accelerates Business in Japan with Establishment of Joint Venture with SOFTBANK

NEW YORK, NY, May 9, 2011 – Gilt Groupe, Inc., an innovative online shopping destination, today announced it has raised $138 million from new and current investors. The new financing will be used for various growth initiatives, including acquisitions, new business categories Gilt plans to launch, as well as the acceleration of growth in existing categories and geographies.

Participants in the financing round include SOFTBANK Group; Gilt Groupe’s previous investors, General Atlantic and Matrix Partners; as well as a syndicate of new investors including Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital and Eastward Capital.

SOFTBANK Group, a Japanese telecommunications, internet and media conglomerate, has invested $62.5 million into Gilt Groupe. In addition to that investment, SOFTBANK Group has made additional contributions into Gilt Groupe Japan, of cash, services, and intangible property to establish a joint venture between the two companies, representing a 50% stake for SOFTBANK Group in that business. The other partners invested a total of $75.5 million into Gilt Groupe in the US.

“We are very excited about each of the partners we’ve chosen and the opportunities this financing creates as we continue to expand into additional categories as well as make strategic acquisitions to complement existing business lines,” said Kevin Ryan, Founder and CEO, Gilt Groupe, Inc.

In the next several months Gilt will launch a gourmet food site as well as a full-price men’s online retail store as the Company continues to expand beyond its original business of off-price apparel and accessories through the flash sales model. In November 2007, Gilt Groupe launched as an invitation-only site for coveted women’s apparel and accessories. Today, Gilt Groupe has added business lines in home (Gilt Home); children (Gilt Children); men’s apparel and gear (Gilt MAN); vacation travel (Jetsetter); local services and experiences (Gilt City), and has founded the leading flash-sale site in Japan (Gilt Groupe Japan).

“I am very excited to see further expansion of Gilt’s offerings to Japanese customers,” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SOFTBANK Group. “With our Internet technology and Gilt’s innovative service, we look forward to working together to bring the Japanese market to a new stage of online shopping.”

”In just a short amount of time Gilt has successfully brought the flash sale model to Japan as well as introduced local city experiences through the launch of Gilt City Japan,” said Peter Glusker, CEO, Gilt Groupe Japan. “This newly formed joint venture with SOFTBANK will allow us to expand our offerings in Japan at a faster rate as well as benefit from SOFTBANK’s unique set of assets and expertise in Japan.”

To date Gilt has secured over $270 million in total financing since establishing operations in November 2007.

About Gilt Groupe, Inc.

Gilt Groupe, www.gilt.com, is an innovative online shopping destination offering its million members special access to the most inspiring merchandise and experiences every day, many at insider prices. Gilt continually searches the world for the most coveted brands, including fashion for women, men and children, home décor, hotels and travel experiences on every continent, and unique activities in a growing list of cities and destinations. We believe that every day is an opportunity to inspire and be inspired.

Gilt Groupe Japan, www.gilt.jp, was launched in March 2009, and has established itself as the leading flash-sales site in Japan with over 600,000 members.

The successful IPO comes despite the fact that 1) Renren is not profitable, 2) it has only 31 million active users and declining growth numbers in light of increased competition, and 3) the company lowered its growth numbers since first filing to go public and the head of its audit committee resigned from the company’s board earlier this week after allegations of fraud at one of his other companies.

But did we mention? China! Social network! SocialnetworkChina!

Shares of Renren opened at $14 and were trading above $18 the rest of the day.

Investors in Renren, which also offers group buying deals and games, include Softbank, DCM and General Atlantic, and the company is also allowing Alibaba Group, China Media Capital and CITIC Securities to buy $110 million worth of shares today through a private placement. The company had revenues of $76.5 million in 2010 with a net loss of $61.2 million.

Image credits: Stock chart via Marketwatch; Renren growth chart via RedTech Advisors, which has a PDF report on the company here.

Despite new reports of the funding today, the line of credit from TriplePoint Capital is months-old, and we’ve learned it was used primarily for building out a new warehouse in Louisville, Ky.

According to our sources, who declined to be named, only $5 million of the $15 million has been drawn down from the facility, and it’s one of three lines of credit the company has. The company spokeswoman declined to comment.

The Gilt Groupe is a members-only online retailer focused on luxury brands. It has seen huge success in offering deep discounts on items for short periods of time. More recently, it has set its sights on the local deals business, similar to the businesses being built by Groupon and LivingSocial. It has also expanded into offering luxury travel deals.

Gilt’s local deals site, called “Gilt City,” offers bargains on items ranging from massages to frozen yogurt. So far, it’s launched in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco. It’s going up against two feisty and well-funded competitors: LivingSocial, which just raised $175 million in capital from Amazon, and Groupon, which turned down Google’s $6 billion acquisition bid.

A round of funding raised this summer supported those product rollouts. In total, the company has raised upward of $50 million from investors, including General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.

The line of credit shows that the emerging company still needs additional financing for one-off capital projects as resources are pulled in other directions. A big focus is likely on hiring a local salesforce, which is considered a specialty of Groupon. Still, Gilt Groupe is considered one of the more likely IPO candidates, and has said in the past that it expects to achieve gross revenues of $400 million to $500 million by the end of this calendar year.

According to sources close to the situation, well-known Silicon Valley power player Peter Currie is joining the board of directors of Twitter.

It’s an interesting choice to bring the well-regarded moneyman to the microblogging start-up, and could indicate an intent to push to an IPO eventually.

As first reported by NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes earlier this week, Twitter is now considering funding offers from big venture funds, specifically Russia’s DST Global and Silicon Valley’s Kleiner Perkins, as well as fielding incoming acquisition interest from Google and Facebook.

Currie should know about this kind of noisy swirl around a hot start-up.

Back in the heyday of Web 1.0, as the CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the iconic browser software company into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on August 9, 1995.

While the Netscape experience ended in tears, Currie’s career has not, and he has become a kind of go-to elder statesman in the Web 2.0 era.

A year ago, for example, he joined Facebook as its temporary CFO.

That move came after the social networking site, in a bit of turmoil, parted ways with its then CFO, Gideon Yu, following mutual disagreements.

Indeed, Currie plays the calm, collected wise man well.

Unusually tall, aggressively avuncular and laid-back, he loves Elvis and enjoys pranking reporters like BoomTown.

(Case in point: Back in the day, he spread the rumor around Silicon Valley that I was short due to a medical condition.)

Now the president of Currie Capital, a private investment firm, he had previously worked at General Atlantic in private equity.

After Netscape, he was a partner and co-founder of the Barksdale Group, an early-stage (and ill-fated) venture capital firm.

Before Netscape, he was CFO of McCaw Cellular Communications and also worked at Morgan Stanley.

Currie is also board-happy, serving as a director of a variety of tech firms, private and public, which have had varying degrees of success.

They have included CNET, Critical Path, Clearwire, Safeco, Ofoto, Tellme Networks and Zantaz, as well as Sun Microsystems.

He has an MBA from Stanford University and went to Williams College.

In other words, just the kind of pedigree needed to give some additional burnish to the Twitter board, which now includes Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet, Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams, co-founder Jack Dorsey and CEO Dick Costolo.

Apparently, it’s time to toss another dude in there!

Yesterday, BoomTown dropped into the lower Park Avenue offices of the New York-based Gilt Groupe, the online fashion retail site.

Since 2007, the site has raised $83 million from General Atlantic and Matrix Partners, giving it a $400 million valuation and spurring interest from investment bankers who think Gilt might be a good candidate for an initial public offering.

That’s doubtful for now, given how important it is for Gilt to solidify and expand its business, even as competition increases.

But already, Gilt has built an important consumer brand online, using its funding to expand the member-based service that offers a range of well-known fashion brands and luxury goods at sample sale prices, much like the originator of the idea–France’s Vente-Privee.

To keep all the fashion moving forward, Gilt hired former Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) CEO Susan Lyne, who also was a big-time television exec at ABC, in 2008.

Along with a turbocharge of its operations as its sales grow, Gilt is also attempting to expand its offerings to travel and other experiences, via its Jetsetter site, and growing its base of local “city” sites for a range of services, such as spas.

Also on deck: More personalization for users, to better targets deals, as well as mobile versions of Gilt.

Of course, Gilt is operating in a very competitive arena, with rivals coming at the business from a number of different ways, such as Groupon, the hot discount deals start-up.

Here is the video interview I had with Lyne at Gilt’s Manhattan offices about all this and more:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100826/gilt-groupes-susan-lyne-talks-about-fashion-local-and-not-ipo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090401/meet-peter-currie-facebooks-new-money-man-for-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20090401/meet-peter-currie-facebooks-new-money-man-for-now/#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:11:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=11511

Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

With the first consumer-friendly browser software, which made the Web easily understandable to the masses, Netscape was at the red-hot center of the nascent digital revolution.

“Wall Street went bonkers,” said one news reporter about the IPO, and the craziness did not stop for quite a while.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush too, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of.

But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen, and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday, following mutual disagreements and announced a search for a replacement–you are correct.

In that job, the 53-year-old Currie will be helping Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 24, navigate–albeit temporarily–through some stormy economics seas on a journey that will hopefully end in an initial public offering.

The search for a new CFO will also involve Currie, obviously, and will be conducted by Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

But until a new CFO is in place, Facebook’s quest still entails sorting out a substantive advertising monetization strategy while also keeping up its speedy growth rates and managing the high costs that mount with its popularity.

That certainly was Netscape’s major challenge, which it never met successfully and which was made worse by intense attacks from Microsoft (MSFT) on Netscape’s core browser business.

That eventually led to the antitrust trial against the software giant, even as Netscape saw its star fall dramatically.

It was sold to AOL in 1998 for $4 billion, a shadow of its bubble valuation, and is now more of a footnote than an ongoing tech product (although the now-popular Mozilla browser is a direct descendant of Netscape).

In fact, in 2008, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL dropped its support for the Netscape browser and said it was no longer releasing new versions.

Still, a lot of former Netscape execs now hold other key jobs in the Web space.

Its investor relations exec, Quincy Smith, now heads up the digital arm of CBS (CBS), for example.

And Andreessen has started a number of companies and has transformed himself into an kind of elder statesman of Silicon Valley of late, as well as a newly minted venture investor.

Andreessen, many sources said, was a shadow influence on Zuckerberg’s decisions related to Yu, with whom relations had gotten tense, and to bring in Currie (pictured here).

Currie is certainly a great choice, in terms of the close-knit tech sector’s respect and experience.

Currie is also unusually tall, aggressively avuncular and laid-back, loves Elvis and enjoys pranking reporters like BoomTown. (Case in point: He once tried to spread the rumor that I am short due to a medical condition.)

Now the president of Currie Capital, a private investment firm, he had previously worked at General Atlantic in private equity.

After Netscape, he was a partner and co-founder of the Barksdale Group, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Before Netscape, he was CFO of McCaw Cellular Communications and also worked at Morgan Stanley (MS).

Currie is also board-happy, serving as a director of a variety of tech firms, private and public. They have included CNET Networks, Critical Path, Clearwire (CLWR), Safeco, Ofoto, Tellme Networks and Zantaz, as well as Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

He has an MBA from Stanford University and went to Williams College.

Here is the video interview I did with Currie and others at an event to support his friend and former Netscape exec Mike Homer, who recently died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Currie is at the 2:16-minute mark):

[ See post to watch video ]

(Image of Netscape IPO T-shirt courtesy of intothefuzz on Flickr.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090401/meet-peter-currie-facebooks-new-money-man-for-now/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090113/genachowski-to-head-fcc-maybe-he-can-finally-fix-my-broadband/ http://allthingsd.com/20090113/genachowski-to-head-fcc-maybe-he-can-finally-fix-my-broadband/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:02:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=8398

Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.

The Washington Post is reporting that Julius Genachowski (pictured here) will be tapped to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment, which will be announced in the next few days, to BoomTown.

Genachowski has previously worked for the FCC as its chief counsel under former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. But he is better known to Silicon Valley as a longtime Internet exec at Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI).

He is now a founder of a Washington, D.C.-based venture firm called LaunchBox Digital, which has invested in a plethora of unusually trendy Web 2.0 companies.

One of its investments, the social news aggregation service Socialmedian, was recently acquired by the German-based business networking site Xing for $7.5 million.

And Genachowski is also a co-founder and managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, another venture firm, and a special adviser at General Atlantic.

Perhaps most notably, he went to law school with President-Elect Barack Obama.

Thus, Genachowski worked the tech sector tirelessly for Obama’s election, along with organizing the campaign’s successful social-networking and online fund-raising campaign.

He was also clearly on the short list to be America’s first chief technology officer, which might be too light on policy-making and too heavy on pontificating for Genachowski’s tastes.

As top telecom and, really, Internet regulator, Genachowski will have a lot more power and even more on his plate, including the rocky shift from analog to digital television, now set to take place next month, as well as dealing with net neutrality and a range of other key Web issues.

But top of the agenda will likely be how to make real Obama’s promise to drastically improve broadband access across this nation and lowering prices.

The slow speeds and high costs are an appalling legacy of Washington regulators and politicians, who have lived too long and too deep in the pockets of big telecom companies.

That has made the U.S. exactly what Softbank founder Masa Son once called in an interview I did with him at a D: All Things Digital conference: the “Third World of broadband.”

Hey, Julius, you’ll fix that, right?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090113/genachowski-to-head-fcc-maybe-he-can-finally-fix-my-broadband/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20071227/ross-levinsohn-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20071227/ross-levinsohn-speaks/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:55:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071227/ross-levinsohn-speaks/ On our recent trip to sunny Southern California, we had a lively lunch in Brentwood with the ever-sassy Ross Levinsohn.

In the dullish panoply of Internet moguls, Levinsohn stands out as one of the more colorful characters, no small thing since he comes from a big company, News Corp. (owner of this site), where he played a big part in its on-the-cheap MySpace acquisition in 2005.

But big company no longer for Levinsohn!

Just before the holidays and four months after launching their digital media roll-up firm Velocity Investment Group with private equity firm General Atlantic, the former Fox Interactive Media president and his partner, former AOL head Jon Miller, announced a new and improved deal.

This time, it was a merger with ComVentures with its $1.5 billion in assets (with more fund raising to come) and a new name, Velocity Interactive Group. The investment focus of the new enterprise will be on digital media and communications.

Here’s Levinsohn talking about all that and more (excuse the noisy ladies about three minutes in):

[ See post to watch video ]

As part of the deal, ComVentures’ partners David Britts, Keyur Patel and Roland Van der Meer will stay on with Levinsohn and Miller, while two other partners–Michael Rolnick and Jeb Miller–headed out the door.

But all these moving parts are not the point for Levinsohn, who thinks the investment dollars and expertise of the new firm will give it advantages over other investors seeking to dive into the still-dicey digital media space.

Indeed, Levinsohn’s Los Angeles location and familiarity with Hollywood is a plus, as the industry and its many players seek to figure out how to make the painful digital shift and find new monetization plans that will replace crumbling old-media businesses.

Whether making the big score is possible this early in the game remains to be seen, but Levinsohn seems ready to try.

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