In an unusual gift, Helen Gurley Brown has given Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering $30 million to create a bi-coastal Institute of Media Innovation.

Said the schools in a joint press release about the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, “it is designed to encourage and support new endeavors with the potential to inform and entertain in transformative ways. It will recognize the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology, bringing the best from the East and West Coasts.”

Each university will get $12 million, with the additional $6 million to build a “state-of-the-art, high-tech newsroom” at Columbia’s famous J-School in upper Manhattan in New York.

(Full disclosure: I went to graduate school there, but we used typewriters way back then.)

Among the advisors to the project is well-known Silicon Valley exec Bill Campbell.

The move will be interesting as a collaborative venture between the East and West coasts, although it is unclear what it might yield.

Interestingly, last week, Harvard University announced an on-campus venture fund with New Enterprise Associates to better compete with the enticements of California.

Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens,” said Gurley Brown in a statement. “It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

Here’s the official press release on the Brown gift:

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM SCHOOL AND STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING ANNOUNCE JOINT $30 MILLION GIFT FROM DAVID AND HELEN GURLEY BROWN

Gift Establishes First of Its Kind Bi-Coastal Institute for Media Innovation — Bringing Together the Best in West Coast Technology with East Coast Content

NEW YORK and PALO ALTO, Calif., January 30, 2012, 1:00 p.m. ET – Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University’s School of Engineering today announced a $30 million gift from longtime Cosmopolitan magazine editor and author Helen Gurley Brown to establish the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation.

The Institute and the collaboration between the two schools is groundbreaking in that it is designed to encourage and support new endeavors with the potential to inform and entertain in transformative ways. It will recognize the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology, bringing the best from the East and West Coasts.

The Institute, the first of its kind, is inspired by the memory of Ms. Brown’s late husband, David Brown, a graduate of both Stanford University and the Columbia School of Journalism. Brown, who along with partners Richard Zanuck and Steven Spielberg created such classic American films as Driving Miss Daisy, The Verdict and Jaws, was also a former journalist, publisher and, late in his career, a stage producer whose credits included the musicals Sweet Smell of Success and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Of the total gift, each school will receive $12 million for Institute activities. The gift to Columbia’s Journalism School, the largest in its history, will endow a professorship whose holder will be the Institute’s East Coast director. The gift to Stanford’s Engineering School will similarly endow the position of the West Coast director. An additional $6 million will go to Columbia which will also pay for the construction of a highly visible signature space at the eastern end of the J-School’s landmark building, featuring a state-of-the-art high-tech newsroom.

The funding of the Institute will support graduate and postgraduate fellowships, both at Stanford and Columbia, and competitively awarded “Magic Grants,” intended to seed the most innovative and promising ideas for future development conceived of by Brown Fellows.

Commenting on the announcement, Helen Gurley Brown said, “David and I have long supported and encouraged bright young people to follow their passions and to create original content. Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens. It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

The east-west collaboration of the two schools will enable students at both institutions to build upon their ideas with professors and innovators at both universities. At both locations there will be a strong emphasis on executing new ideas and demonstrating products and prototypes. The
Institute will establish ongoing links to business leaders and media companies to bring its innovations to market.

“New York City, as the major center for the television, music, print media and advertising, is profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technology,” said Stanford engineering professor Bernd Girod, who will serve as the Institute’s founding director until Columbia appoints his East Coast counterpart. “The Brown Institute will bring together creative innovators skilled in production and delivery of news and entertainment with the entrepreneurial researchers at Stanford working in multimedia technology.”

“This gift from David and Helen Gurley Brown is truly transformative for the school,” said Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. “As we enter our Centennial year, the Browns’ generosity will enable us to explore new and exciting realms of leadership in our field. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to collaborate with Stanford Engineering.”

“Stanford brings to this partnership its exceptional research and teaching, a history of transformative technology innovation and a tradition of multidisciplinary collaboration,” said Stanford University President John Hennessy. “We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Columbia University’s truly outstanding School of Journalism, and look forward to combining the expertise of New York and Silicon Valley at a critical point in the evolution of media.”

Stanford Engineering has a storied history of achievement and entrepreneurship. Its faculty and graduates have founded such iconic companies as Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Yahoo! and contributed to such groundbreaking technologies as lasers, global positioning, magnetic resonance imaging, digital sound synthesis and modern web-search algorithms.

“Under Dean Nick Lemann, Columbia Journalism School is building on its tradition of leadership by developing innovative teaching and research addressing the future of a fast-changing news media,” said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who has written extensively about press freedom. “We are deeply appreciative of Helen Gurley Brown’s vision in honoring her late husband by bringing together his two alma maters to develop the next generation of digital journalism. We look forward to working with Stanford in seeking new ways for technology and creativity to enhance a robust free press in our society.”

The Institute will have a distinguished board of advisors including leaders from technology, venture capital and media including, among others, Frank A. Bennack, Jr., CEO of Hearst Corporation; Bill Campbell, Chairman of the Board at Intuit and an Apple Inc. board member; and Eve Burton, Vice President and General Counsel of Hearst Corporation.

Helen Gurley Brown, who turns 90 in February, is one of the world’s most popular and influential editors. She led Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965 to 1996 and authored many books, including the 1962 bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl. Her impact on popular culture and society has reached around the globe, largely due to the three-plus decades when she put her personal stamp on Cosmopolitan in a way that has rarely been replicated. Under her reign, Cosmopolitan became the go-to magazine for women worldwide and remains the best selling young women’s magazine around the world today with 64 editions, in 35 languages and more than 80 countries.

“As both CEO of Hearst Corporation and advisor to the Brown Institute, today marks a very special day for education, journalism and technology,” said Bennack. “I’m very proud of David’s legacy and Helen, who understood the power of community, in particular, and its importance to women, long before social media had a name.”

(Photo credit: Hearst Corp.)

Earlier today, Harvard University and New Enterprise Associates announced the Experiment Fund, aimed at making sure that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates can stay on campus and innovate without having to head West.

The irony of the pair of legendary entrepreneurs dropping out — decades apart — of the even more legendary university to start two of tech most significant companies, Facebook and Microsoft.

No longer, apparently.

The early-stage incubator, which will award funding to four to six start-ups in amounts from $250,000 to $500,000. It will focus on seed ventures in the Cambridge, Mass. area around Harvard, which includes many other schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Experiment Fund came from an idea born Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which involved NEA. Today, SEAS Dean Cherry Murray hosted an event that unveiled the initiative.

But, while faculty members will advise for the fund, Harvard has no financial stake.

In an interview NEA’s Patrick Chung said the intent was to enable talented students to “build a company here in Boston rather than have to go elsewhere.”

NEA will have full-time staffers working on the fund, investing in a wide range of companies. It has already backed a health app company, as well as a live Internet television offering.

“There has been an envy of the left coast, certainly,” said Chung. “Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed.”

Added Chung: “They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.”

In other words, let’s hope the third time’s a charm.

Here’s the map of exactly where the Experiment Fund is and official press release:

XFund press release

The planned IPO is notable because it’s the first time that a pure-play mobile ad company has gone public. Most of Millennial’s other competitors have been acquired instead, most notably by Apple and Google, the company’s primary competitors.

The company’s S-1 reveals that the start-up lost $7.1 million on sales of $47.8 million in 2010, and $417,000 on sales of $69.1 million in the first nine months of last year. Millennial’s business is focused on selling advertising that runs on mobile apps, and it says it reaches 200 million users worldwide; in December it processed 40 billion ad impression.

The Baltimore-based company says it most recently gave itself an enterprise value of $305 million. That was back in September 2011, when it granted a block of options. The company’s primary backers are New Enterprise Associates, Charles River Ventures, Columbia Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Aneel Bhusri

Allen is said to have advised Workday on its recent funding round, which closed in October. As exclusively reported by AllThingsD at the time, Workday raised $85 million at an implied valuation of $2 billion. The Series F was led by T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus and Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment entity of Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg also says that Michael Dell’s personal investment vehicle, MSD ventures, was in on that funding round, which grew to $100 million since the closing.

Previous investors include Dave Duffield and Greylock Partners, who are in for $90 million across four rounds; and New Enterprise Associates, which joined a $75 million Series E round in 2009.

Apparently encouraged by the successful IPO of Jive Software earlier this month, and the performance of its shares, which are up nicely since the debut, Workday now appears poised go through with the IPO that CEO Aneel Bhusri (pictured) hinted in October would take place during the second half of 2012.

And there’s no question that Workday is in a hot space. SAP’s $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors last month, plus Salesforce.com’s deal for Rypple last week, attest to the urgency with which larger companies want to be in the HR software business.

Think about it: Every company — of any size — needs to keep track of its people, their salaries, performance-review information and so on. And why bother with software that runs on the local machines, when the cloud is so much more efficient?

Bhusri was a senior executive and co-chairman of PeopleSoft’s board, and was on hand for that company’s hostile takeover by Oracle. After losing that battle, he and co-founder Dave Duffield concluded that the next battlefield for enterprise software would be in the cloud.

Workday’s average customer has between 10,000 and 15,000 employees. Among its 250-odd customers, the biggest is Flextronics, the huge electronics manufacturing company, which has 200,000 employees. Others include Time Warner, Thomson Reuters, Chiquita Brands and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Salesforce.com. Workday has some two million employees in its system.

And while there’s no S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to peruse yet, the IPO watch on Workday officially begins now.

The most recent round was led by Accel Partners. Existing investors New Enterprise Associates and FirstMark Capital also participated.

“That’s pretty huge for us,” Lot18’s founder Philip James said in an interview. “We are a year old. We launched on Nov. 10, and it’s a little bit of a surprise that we raised an A, B and C in such a short period of time.”

James said the funding was justified because Lot18 is growing so quickly.

In the past year, it has expanded to 90 employees, added 600,000 members and sold 500,000 bottles of wine. In addition, the company has added two new product categories, “Gourmet” and “Experience,” which sell food and travel, respectively.

James said it is Lot18’s goal to be the leader in the epicurean space — and to be all about eating and drinking.

On a standalone basis, that makes it similar to Gilt Taste, which is a full-priced online gourmet store owned by e-commerce company Gilt Groupe, which dabbles in everything from discount to full-price fashion and daily deals.

Also in the space is Wine.com, which has been selling wine online since 1998 and has a selection of hundreds of thousands of bottles. It also operates WineShopper, a members-only daily wine deals site.

James said he doesn’t anticipate getting into other categories, such as fashion or home accessories, as many other sites in the category have. He also says international expansion is not on the immediate roadmap, since shipping alcohol faces so many regulations.

Lot18 is a marketplace, so it does not own any inventory or warehouses; its cost structure is a little different from some of the others. Instead, the company’s headcount is a considerable expense, as are its marketing costs to get new members — just like Groupon. In addition, it subsidizes shipping, since wine is so heavy and fragile.

As the company grows, those costs continue, but there’s also a chance they may fall, as volume discounts on postage start to apply.

The company offers between 10 and 20 new products a day, from wines to travel and food. Users sign up to receive a daily email; James said that if people don’t make purchases, or even read the emails, the frequency drops. Its top-tier users have an open rate of more than 50 percent.

“We are blurring the line between content and commerce,” he said. “It’s for people who care about what they eat and drink. Even if they don’t buy it, they like learning about it.”

And unlike other companies, it’s not all about the discounts.

“The value proposition is curation, access and value,” James said. “When I think of flash sales, I think of discounts on products I already know. When something is artisanal, and it comes from a small, family-owned business, it’s about introducing people to brands they don’t already know.”

The $30 million round follows a $10 million second round in May, and a first round of $3 million. Quidsi founders Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, who sold their company to Amazon, are also investors.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company helps brick-and-mortar retailers track shopping behavior by putting sensors in their stores; the sensors pick up Wi-Fi signals from smartphones.

Euclid has raised $5.8 million in capital, led by New Enterprise Associates with Harrison Metal, Triple Point Capital and other investors also participating.

Euclid’s CEO Will Smith said the system tabulates anonymous foot traffic and collects the data on a dashboard, where retailers can track loyalty by a phone’s unique user ID.

Challenged with the suggestion that most people turn off Wi-Fi on their devices to save battery life, Smith disagreed. “It’s accurate,” he said, adding that the sensors can even tell whether someone is entering the store, or just walking by.

The system cannot collect any information on a person and can’t communicate with them. But it can track whether the same person visited a coffee shop in the morning and returned for lunch in the afternoon.

The company’s COO, Scott Crosby, is the co-founder of the original Urchin team that was acquired by Google in April 2005, and which became the basis for Google Analytics.

Aaron Levie, the 26-year-old CEO of Box.net, said the expansion round brings in strategic partners like Salesforce.com and SAP Ventures, as well as venture-capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates and Bessemer Venture Partners, along with former investors including Andreessen Horowitz. In total, Box.net has now raised $162 million.

Box.net, founded in 2005, gives businesses a secure way to share content online and on mobile devices.

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Hadoop is an open source technology known for its cute cartoon elephant mascot (hence the photo). It has its roots at Google and was inspired by MapReduce — one of the fundamental technologies that makes the Google search experience what it is — and was created at Yahoo, which donated it to the open source community by way of the Apache Software Foundation. That means it’s free.

It’s used by companies as varied as Facebook, Groupon and AOL to turn workloads involving huge sets of data into manageable tasks. It’s so popular, in fact, that several companies have sprung up hoping to turn a profit by helping other companies run Hadoop, in much the same way that Red Hat makes money by helping companies run Linux.

I’ve written here in the past about Cloudera, and Yahoo’s Hadoop team recently spun out as Hortonworks (again with the elephant references).

Now there’s another Hadoop company on the scene — MapR — and it has just secured a $20 million round of venture capital funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates also participating. This comes on top of a strategic relationship with storage giant EMC, in which the hardware maker is offering MapR’s Hadoop distribution with some of its systems.

So what does MapR aim to do? Create an industrial-strength version of Hadoop that’s ready for the enterprise. I talked with CEO John Schroeder. “We created a reliable and dependable platform that’s built for high availability so clusters don’t fail. And we also added data protection, so you can back up your data and recover to a point in time that works in large clusters,” he said.

MapR also tuned its version of Hadoop for speed. It’s not uncommon, he said, for MapR to run two to five times faster than other distributions on standard benchmark tests. As you might expect, faster is better. You can arrive at your analytical answers sooner, or run more workloads on larger data sets, or you can run the same ones on cheaper hardware. So Schroeder is only half kidding when he says it’s “cheaper than free.”

I talked with Satish Dharmaraj, a general partner at Redpoint, and asked him what he sees in MapR. The market for “big data,” he says, is real. “It’s pretty clear to us that the MapReduce method of crunching big sets of data is the easiest and most cost-efficient way of doing things, and it’s disrupting the analytics and software industry in how they process big sets of data.”

Dharmaraj also likes the team. Schroeder was previously CEO of Calista Technologies, which he sold to Microsoft, and before that, CEO of Rainfinity, now part of EMC. His co-founder and CTO is M.C. Srivas, who ran one of Google’s search infrastructure teams, and so has an intimate familiarity with the original MapReduce to which Hadoop is so closely related. Srivas was also chief architect at Spinnaker Networks, now part of NetApp; before that, he ran the engineering team at Transarc, now part of IBM.

Finally, Dharmaraj likes MapR’s approach. “Hadoop is great, but it’s an open source project, so there’s nobody really building all the things around it that an enterprise would need, like disaster recovery. It’s also really fast. Jobs that take 30 hours on other versions are taking five hours,” he said. “That, to us, makes this the first version of Hadoop for the enterprise.”

Fremont, Calif.-based Leyden Energy hopes to change that. The start-up is focused on a new battery chemistry it says should allow its batteries to run 25 percent longer on a single charge and last for three years, as opposed to the typical single year of useful battery life.

The chip industry touts the fact that performance tends to double every 18 months or so, a maxim dubbed Moore’s Law in honor of the Intel founder who noted the trend. Battery life, meanwhile, has barely been able to double over the past 20 years, Leyden CEO Aakar Patel said in an interview.

And Patel would know, having spent his career in the battery industry. Before starting Leyden, Patel was chief operating officer of a battery distributor and also spent five years at Duracell.

“We don’t follow any Moore’s law,” Patel told AllThingsD.

Leyden may not be able to change that entirely, but Patel said significant improvements are possible by changing the electrolytes from those used in the current crop of lithium-ion batteries. Patel’s approach has drawn significant interest, including a $20 million Series B investment round being announced on Wednesday. New Enterprise Associates is leading the new funding round, which also includes new money from the company’s existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Sigma Partners and Walden Capital.

NEA partner Ron Bernal, who is joining Leyden’s board, said he has been tracking the company for about 18 months and is pleased with the progress it has made.

“A year ago when they were out, they hadn’t quite delivered everything,” Bernal said. At this point, however, Bernal said he is convinced that the company is on the right track and will be able to deliver on the big gains it is promising. “With what they’ve shown and delivered, it’s pretty compelling.”

Leyden started back in 2007 and now has 30 employees.

“We went in with one single premise, which is how we could make batteries better,” Patel told AllThingsD. The company is aiming to see its batteries power everything from consumer electronics to electric vehicles.

Although the company is in volume production, it has thus far publicly announced only one deal — an agreement with a Canadian after-market firm called Dr. Battery. Patel said it should also have some deals with tablet companies to talk about in the coming months. In addition, the company has nearly $3 million in grants from the California Energy Commission to produce electric vehicle batteries.

“For a relatively small company we have done amazing things,” he said. “We’ve been fast to commercialize our product.”

The challenge, clearly, will be getting to greater scale, something Patel said the new funding should help with.

“We always had commercialization in mind,” he said. “We didn’t just want to innovate for the sake of innovation.”

The company is relying on an unspecified manufacturer in Asia to make its actual products, which are designed using Leyden’s process.

As product endorsements go, it wasn’t one that CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince would have sought. Nevertheless, it showed in a very public way that the company was onto something potentially big.

Now we get an idea of how big it might be. CloudFlare has been running so far on a relatively small Series A investment of $2 million from Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners. Today it announced that it has landed a beefy $20 million Series B round, led by New Enterprise Associates, with Venrock and Pelion also participating. Scott Sandell, a general partner at NEA, will join CloudFlare’s board of directors.

NEA has backed companies as varied as Atheros, the wireless chip company now owned by Qualcomm; Fusion-io, the chip-based server storage concern; and Groupon.

So what does CloudFlare do? Webmasters can — for free — point their domain name servers to CloudFlare’s, rather than those operated by their Web hosting provider. The result of that simple change adds the site to CloudFlare’s distributed network, which protects against common attacks by hackers and spammers and makes a site resistant to distributed denial-of-service attacks that typically overwhelm servers and knock sites offline.

CloudFlare evolved out of Project Honey Pot, a nonprofit project that aimed to fight spam by creating a distributed system to find and track spammers and the bots they use to harvest email addresses. Launched in 2004, it was basically a hobby for Prince and the other founders — until the day in 2007 that the Department of Homeland Security called to say it saw real value in the data the project had collected on how fraud is conducted online.

And like Project Honey Pot before it, CloudFlare gets better as more people use it. Hosted in 12 Equinix data centers around the world, it has the computing muscle to keep its customers’ sites online when a server crashes or a hacker with a botnet attacks. Pretty much anyone who operates a Web site can have it up and running in minutes. On top of its free service, CloudFlare offers a Pro account for $20 a month. A more powerful offering aimed at enterprises is coming in the fall, Prince says.

But there’s more to it than just security. It turns out, through an unexpected benefit of programming, that CloudFlare also has a tendency to make sites load faster than they do from their main servers. The initial worry was that adding a layer between the user and the site’s hosting servers would slow things down. Some obsessive attention to the code, intended to prevent that slow-down, had an interesting effect: Sites started loading 30 to 40 percent faster. From these two benefits comes the mantra you’ll hear Prince repeat often: “We help the Internet run faster and safer.”

Did I say CloudFlare is onto something? Prince reckons that about 200 million users visit CloudFlare-protected sites every month. He declined to say exactly how many sites are using CloudFlare, but characterized it as in the tens of thousands. He did say the service is adding roughly 1,000 new customers a day, from small personal sites to huge companies.

So what’s the plan for all that money? To build out CloudFlare’s team and create new services, some aimed at large enterprises, says Prince, who notes that a business-class service is coming soon. “We’ll be adding a lot of new features that our business customers have been asking for,” he says. After that comes the enterprise-class offering.

Beyond that lie some interesting services aimed at making the Web business easier. Case in point: SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, the Web’s primary security technology. “Right now it’s way too hard for Web masters to deploy SSL on their sites, and there are too few sites using it,” Prince says. “We think we can do something important to address that.” Another thing that’s too hard: The looming transition from IPv4 to IPv6. “The solutions that are being provided right now are too complicated, and we can do something about that,” Prince says.

One recent addition was the official election results site for the nation of Turkey, which held its general election on June 12. On the night before the election, its site administrator joined CloudFlare. “The next day we saw a lot of traffic from Turkey,” Prince says. Traffic from 75 million Turkish citizens all hitting “refresh” every few minutes would have brought nearly any Web site down, and at first it looked like a massive new distributed denial-of-service attack coming out of Turkey. “We quickly figured out what it was,” Prince says, “and suddenly we were really proud that we were able to keep that site online while the whole nation was coming through the service.”

Facebook’s new data center in Prineville, Oregon, is full of Fusion-io technology, and the one planned for Rutherford County, North Carolina will be as well. Fusion-io CEO David Flynn told me in an interview some time ago that servers running Fusion-io technology constitute about 80 percent of the hardware footprint inside the Facebook building. If you ever wondered what kind of secret sauce Facebook might have in its data center infrastructure, make no mistake: Fusion-io’s flash memory-based technology is it.

The close links between Facebook and Fusion-io have a lot to do with a mutual relationship. Venture capitalist Marc Andreesen sits on Facebook’s board and is an investor in Fusion-io. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering with JP Morgan and Credit Suisse. The filing doesn’t say how much the company expects to raise in the offering.

Along with Facebook, Fusion-io’s hardware partners Hewlett-Packard, and IBM also account for more than 10 percent of revenue.

This filing is a surprise, because as recently as December, Flynn told me the company was in no hurry to go public. It had just raised a $45 million C-round from Meritech Capital Partners, with Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Triangle Peak Partners also invested. Plus it has strategic investments from Samsung, the South Korean electronics and semiconductor giant–which also happens to be the world’s biggest supplier of the flash memory chips key to Fusion-io’s technology–and Dell Ventures.

But from the looks of the numbers, it appears the company needs to raise the kind of cash that an IPO can provide. The company finished 2010 with $36 million in revenue and a $31.5 million net loss despite a gross margin of 59 percent in the latest quarter. Operating expenses were nearly $52 million, led by $24 million in sales and marketing expenses. The balance sheet shows $3.5 million in cash and cash equivalents plus another $39 million in working capital. That’s not enough to fund operating expenses assuming they remain at the same level, which they won’t, given how fast the company is ramping up.

And ramping up it is. Fusion-io just last week announced a relationship with its fourth major server manufacturer, the white-box manufacturer Supermicro, and on the same day, IBM doubled the number of servers that include Fusion-io as an option. Before that, it scored a rare public disclosure from Credit Suisse that its technology was being used to speed up trading, and there are certainly more financial companies buying the technology and simply not talking about it.

At the CeBIT trade show taking place in Germany today, the pair demonstrated a server using a new Fuion-io product, the ioDrive Octal, in a Supermicro server that can do 1.4 million random input-output operations per second.

Why team up with Supermicro? For its reach. Bob Emmett, manager of OEM sales at Fusion-io told me Supermicro has relationships with scores of resellers, private-label hardware vendors and other companies that reach places that IBM, Dell and HP don’t. “They’re the anonymous supplier in a lot of cases, because the product isn’t being sold directly under the Supermicro name,” he said.

One example: When the Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced it was using Fusion-io memory to build the world’s highest-performance storage array no one mentioned that the gear in question was actually manufactured by Supermicro, and resold by another company, Appro. It’s not a huge business, but it is a growing one: Supermicro reported $721 million in sales last year, up from $506 million the year before.

And if that weren’t enough good news for the fast-moving startup that last month sought to pick a fight with storage giant EMC over who sold the most flash memory to enterprise customers in 2010, there’s more from IBM. Big Blue has doubled the number of Fusion-io based adapters for use in its System x servers it sells with with Fusion-io tech inside it, from four to eight, and boosted the number of IBM systems that can work with Fusion-io adapters to 12. Not bad when you consider that both IDC and Gartner said last week that IBM finished 2010 as the world’s leading sever vendor by revenue.

As I’ve noted before, flash memory inside a server, is by itself not big deal. Fusion-io’s difference is in how it uses flash to put actively used data close to the microprocessor, which in conventional systems spends as much as 80 percent of its time waiting around for other parts of the computer to get data to it that it can work out. That’s a lot of wasted computing cycles, that when added all up amount to a lot of money spent. Get the data closer to the chip and you eliminate a lot of that wasted time. Always eager to squeeze more productivity out of the gear they guy, CIOs are naturally lining up to buy Fusion-io-based servers or use it in other gear, such as a trading system at Credit Suisse.

No surprised it has a lot of interest among venture capitalists. Last April the Salt Lake City-based outfit landed a $45 million in series C round led by Meritech Capital Partners, with Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Triangle Peak Partners also investing.

One of its bragging points was around shipping flash memory to enterprise customers. During his remarks–the theme was “record setting”–EMC President and COO Pat Gelsinger grinned as he said the company had shipped 10 petabytes worth of flash memory in its storage products to customers in the past year–more than anyone else in the industry had.

If indeed that was a record, it isn’t standing for very long. Fusion-io, the Utah-based start-up that sells flash memory add-on devices for use in servers, said today that it has shipped 15 petabytes worth of flash memory to enterprise customers. It says that’s enough to play a continuous stream of HD-quality movies for 199 years straight.

Of course it has had help selling all that memory. Server vendors Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell are all selling Fusion-io technology as an option on their servers. There are plenty of customers buying, though few will admit to it. When we last heard from Fusion-io, it had announced that its technology is speeding up trading operations at Credit Suisse. Other customers include Myspace and Zappos.

Putting flash in a server isn’t for data storage in the traditional sense. It’s more about putting data close to the processor in a server. Most of the time–as much as 80 percent of the time–the processor chips inside servers that do the heavy number-crunching are sitting around tapping their feet, waiting to get data to work from other parts of the computer.

That equates to a lot of general waste in IT spending, CEO David Flynn told me. “If the processor is sitting idle 80 percent of the time, it may not sound so bad at first. But when you consider that you’re paying for the power and the cooling and floor space and services, it equates to a massive amount of wasted money.” How much? He thinks speeding data to the processor can eliminate $50 to $100 billion worth of waste in IT budgets. Fusion-io’s argument–and it’s one that numerous companies are buying–is that by putting data on flash chips in the server right next to the processor, you can eliminate a lot of that idle time. It’s the kind of argument that tends to resonate easily with CIOs.

As I’ve noted before, Fusion-io is coming off a busy year. Last year it hired Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist. In April it landed $45 million in a Series C round led by Meritech Capital Partners, with Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates and Triangle Peak Partners also investing. It also has strategic investments from Samsung and Dell Ventures.

SnagFilms, the online video distribution site for professional documentaries, has nabbed $10 million in funding from Comcast’s investment arm and New Enterprise Associates, and will also now be distributing fictional independent film releases.

That and the new investment giving SnagFilms a valuation of $50 million should be big news at the 11th Sundance Film Festival, the famous independent film gathering opening in Park City, Utah, on Thursday.

And SnagFilms also announced that well-known industry exec Bingham Ray is joining the start-up to spearhead its distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films.

The service, unlike the subscription-based video giant Netflix, currently distributes free non-fiction documentary films with advertising, as well as offers rental streaming and purchase options.

And it is profitable, said Ted Leonsis, the former AOL exec who is the founder and has been the driving investor in SnagFilms.

“It was always my personal frustration as a backer of documentaries that you could not get distribution far and wide,” he said in an interview earlier today.

He noted that while Netflix is really now focused on big studio fare, “what we’ve discovered is a big supply of independent video that has never seen light of day, but that has a big audience.”

SnagFilms’ strategy is to give broader reach to these films, which often don’t even have a theatrical opening–or, if they do, are very small.

Along with its site, which digitizes the films and adds advertising to them, SnagFilms also encourages Web sites and others to grab films and create a “virtual movie theater.” (You can see my effort below.)

It also has video-on-demand deals with Comcast, Verizon and more, as well as purchase options with Apple’s iTunes and others.

Earlier this month, SnagFilms also launched an impressive and free iPad full-movie-watching app.

SnagFilms also owns a popular news site called indieWIRE, which covers the independent film market, and the new funding will also be used to expand it.

That market has been in need of a boost of some kind, since it has been struggling as financing has dried up for the production of quality documentaries and outside-the-Hollywood-machine movies.

It has long been hoped that the Internet would perhaps save and strengthen the genre, with its supposed long-tail magic.

But the going has been slow. Currently, SnagFilms has 2,000 films in its online library, although Leonsis said the aim is to use the new funds to get 10,000 films on the service as soon as possible.

“We’re trying to build a beachhead in the independent film world,” he said of SnagFilms, which currently has about 40 employees in Washington, D.C., and New York. “We think we have a niche and video is the killer app on Web now.”

Leonsis, who has backed such notable documentaries as “The Rape of Nanking,” said NEA’s Peter Barris will join the board, along with existing investor Steve Case.

Case and Leonsis, of course, were the dynamic duo of AOL’s glory days.

So, I am rooting for another win in an arena that needs it.

Thus, here’s my own movie palace online and also the official press release from SnagFilms:

Watch more free documentaries

Industry Powerhouses NEA and Comcast Invest in SnagFilms

$10 million in new funding to distribute documentaries and fictional independent films on all digital platforms and devices, globally

Washington D.C.–January 17, 2011 – SnagFilms announced today it has received $10 million in growth capital from new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC). Existing investors, including Ted Leonsis (SnagFilms’ Founder) and Steve Case, also participated. The financing will be used to expand its distribution of independent films–including, for the first time, fictional independent releases–across all digital platforms and devices, and on a global basis.

SnagFilms is a leader in distributing free, ad-supported titles from a library of over 2,000 non-fiction films. Last year, SnagFilms entered the transactional world with launches of video on demand channels on Comcast and Verizon FiOS, as well as titles for sale through the Apple’s iTunes store. Earlier this month, SnagFilms debuted its iPad application with the largest collection of award-winning U.S. films offered free to iPad users.

“As a profitable company with substantial private investors, SnagFilms didn’t need to raise outside capital,” said company founder Ted Leonsis. “However, we saw overwhelming strategic value in involving NEA, a pioneer and leading venture capital firm, and CIC, the investment arm of Comcast. SnagFilms is very well-financed and uniquely positioned now to bring the full array of independent films–fiction and non-fiction, U.S. and foreign–to global audiences on all platforms and devices. We’ve amassed a library of 2,000 documentaries since our launch, and we’re now building distribution opportunities for tens of thousands of independent films in both categories. That’s great news for film fans and for filmmakers.”

“SnagFilms is perfectly positioned to fuse technology and content in a manner that has marked many of the transformational industry leaders we have helped build in the past,” said NEA Managing General Partner Peter Barris, who joins the Company’s Board of Directors. “New devices and digital platforms will allow consumers unprecedented access to quality content, and SnagFilms will be there to delight them. We are pleased to be able to invest in SnagFilms at this time, and to help them add fictional indie films to their expertise with documentaries–and to take both genres to the full swath of digital platforms and devices.” Among many other investments, Barris serves on the board of Groupon as its first VC investor.

“We are excited about the new opportunities SnagFilms creates, especially for independent filmmakers who historically could not get distribution,” said David Horowitz, Managing Director of Comcast Interactive Capital. “This investment reflects our view that consumers are demanding a diverse selection of high-quality content that can be watched on any platform or device.”

SnagFilms also announced that industry veteran Bingham Ray will join the Company to help guide its entry into distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films. Ray, former President of United Artists, October Films and Kimmel Entertainment, and honored for Lifetime Achievement by the Gotham Awards, has deep experience in the acquisition, marketing and distribution of motion pictures, including “Hotel Rwanda,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Secrets & Lies,” “War Room,” “High Art,” “Last Days” and “Breaking the Waves.”

“Bingham has been an advocate for filmmakers throughout his career,” noted Rick Allen, SnagFilms CEO. “His record of successful distribution on traditional platforms provides a strategic sense and depth of relationships that will be invaluable as we extend our model into a broader array of films. Bingham will be a key member of our large presence at the Sundance Film Festival this week and beyond.”

“I’ve been a big fan of SnagFilms from their earliest days, and am truly thrilled to be part of the team as they expand the service, bringing more filmmakers to bigger audiences on a wider array of platforms,” said Ray. “This is the future of our business.”

“SnagFilms plus Bingham Ray is a great combination,” said Tom Bernard, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “Bingham knows the indie world as well as anyone alive and is admired for his experience and for always delivering for filmmakers. He’ll be a big asset to SnagFilms’ expansion.”

In addition, SnagFilms intends to use its new growth capital to expand its indieWIRE unit, now in its 15th year as the leading web source of news, reviews and analysis of independent film.

“indieWIRE’s traffic is now ten times what it was when we purchased it two and a half years ago,” Allen said. “Before the Academy Awards are announced later this month, you’ll see new editor-in-chief Dana Harris add ongoing features to our coverage of the indie world, and exciting new blogs to our Network, like the recently-added blog The Playlist.”

About SnagFilms

SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of more than 2,000 award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film. All films are shareable across the web. Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms’ library has been featured on over 2 billion web pageviews, with more than 325 million minutes of SnagFilms titles streamed across over more than 100,000 affiliated sites and webpages, including through partners such as Aol, Comcast, Hulu, the Starbucks Digital Network, IMDb, the Miami Herald, hundreds of non-profits, special interest sites and blogs. SnagFilms also offers selected titles via VOD (with Comcast and FiOS), on iTunes and through a new free application for the iPad.

OVGuide has twice named SnagFilms a Top Site and MovieMaker Magazine named SnagFilms to its annual list of “50 Best Websites for Moviemakers.”

Next week, at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, BoomTown will be interviewing one of my favorite start-up CEOs: Andrew Mason of Groupon.

And what’s my very first question for the adorkable toast of the digital town, who has just collected a billion dollars in funding, giving his hot social buying site a $4.75 billion valuation?

No, it’s not about what Mason is going to do with all that moolah.

Not, it’s not about why Groupon spurned the $6 billion acquisition offer from Google (and the Yahoo one before that).

No, it’s not about what hair care products Mason uses to get his hair looking so much like Justin Bieber’s coif.

Most of all, what I want to know is how he’s going to manage his ridiculously large–and, let’s be honest, very opinionated–investor group, which is made up of a big chunk of the digital arena’s most prominent VC firms, institutional investors and angels.

Consider the list, which is much more diverse than Facebook’s at a similar time in its gestation (and, in fact, it feels a lot like the social networking site’s current investor stampede):

Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and others.

(How in the world is the ubiquitous Ron Conway not shoved in this pig pile? Or is he?)

And, of course, the inevitable Allen & Company acted as financial advisor for this massive funding, which also feels like a bit of a private pre-IPO.

It will be interesting to see exactly whom among this shareholder group that Mason and the other top Groupon execs will listen to and who will have the most influence over the next year.

None of the new moneybags got a board seat, which is probably a good thing. As most entrepreneurs know all too well, investors can be a tricky thing–at once helpful and then not so much.

Mason, a clearly gifted exec, certainly has his hands full now, managing expectations for the fast-growing company, as well as the business itself.

Let’s hope that now that this surreal investor sideshow circus is over, that Groupon’s precious time can be focused on just that.

Groupon has finished raising its nearly $1 billion round of financing, after weeks of noisy speculation.

Coming after its non-marriage-to-Google soap opera, let’s hope it can now go back to running a social-buying business.

The daily-deals site that snubbed Google’s $6 billion takeover offer said it will use the funds to fuel global expansion, invest in technology and provide liquidity for employees and early investors.

With this much cash on the table, there’s a huge consortium of investors participating in what is a second tranche of recent funding.

Those investors include: Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures.

Allen & Company LLC acted as financial adviser.

Groupon’s previous investors included: New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global).

For the past few weeks, the news has been dribbling out. First, it was rumored that Groupon was looking for the extraordinary sum of $1 billion.

Then it was confirmed that nearly half the round had been raised–with much of it going to buy out current shareholders (presumably to make them happy after turning away Google’s mega buyout offer).

Those investors included: T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group and Morgan Stanley.

And now this financing is all over, making it a very extraordinarily large round of private equity completed in a very short period of time.

Groupon will most likely have enough funds for its most aggressive expansion plans.

But the question now is whether this will keep it happy as an independent company, leading to an IPO, or will spur other offers of acquisition at even higher valuations?

Let’s not forget that Groupon continues to compete head-on with Amazon-backed LivingSocial, which recently garnered a much smaller cash infusion of about $180 million.

Here’s Groupon’s official press release with a hipster goofy headline–let’s hope the company’s future performance isn’t as silly:

Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars

Investment to Continue Rapid Growth of Global Social Commerce Platform

CHICAGO–Today Groupon announced that it has completed a $950 million round of financing. Groupon will use the funds to fuel global expansion, invest in technology, and provide liquidity for employees and early investors.

The financing consists of several venture capital firms and late-stage investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor. Previous funding rounds were led by New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST.)

In the last year, Groupon has been called “the fastest growing company ever” by Forbes Magazine and “America’s best website” by one of Groupon’s television commercials. In 2010, Groupon:

• Expanded from 1 to 35 countries

• Launched in almost 500 new markets (from 30 markets in 2009)

• Grew subscribers by 2,500% from 2 million to over 50 million

• Saved consumers over $1.5 billion

• Worked with 58,000 local businesses, serving over 100,000 deals worldwide

“We’re thrilled that Groupon has earned the confidence of some of the world’s most respected investment firms,” said Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. “With their support, we will continue on our mission to change the way people shop locally and serve the world’s local businesses.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/groupon-closes-out-nearly-billion-dollar-round/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110105/mobile-ad-network-millennial-media-raises-27-5-million-to-fight-apple-and-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/mobile-ad-network-millennial-media-raises-27-5-million-to-fight-apple-and-google/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:37:16 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=1220 Millennial Media, which is often considered the largest independent mobile ad network in the U.S., has raised $27.5 million.

The funding comes from Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Charles River Ventures and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).

To date, the Baltimore-based company has raised $65 million. But that hardly seems sufficient when fighting Goliaths like Apple and Google, which both made multimillion-dollar acquisitions last year in the space.

Previously, CEO Paul Palmieri said it was Millennial’s intention to stay an independent company, and therefore aim for an IPO. Is $65 million enough?

The funds will be used for acquisitions in 2011, and to invest in the company’s international business, which is considered smaller than its competitors’, such as Google’s. So far, it has built a team in London, and has begun to expand to the Asia-Pacific region.

Market share statistics are notoriously poor in the space, but in December, IDC estimated that Millennial was the largest independent mobile ad network at 15.4 percent, trailing behind Apple with 18.8 percent share and Google/AdMob with 19 percent share. Millennial’s share was estimated to be larger than Yahoo’s 10.1 percent share.

Millennial declined to give specific numbers, but said it achieved “operational profitability” in 2010, and tripled its revenues during the year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110105/mobile-ad-network-millennial-media-raises-27-5-million-to-fight-apple-and-google/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:44:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38810

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/feed/ 60 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/flash-storage-startup-fusion-io-speeds-up-trading-at-credit-suisse/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/flash-storage-startup-fusion-io-speeds-up-trading-at-credit-suisse/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:59:19 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=197 Keep a close eye on Fusion-io. Its flash-memory based storage technology is quietly winning lots of business in data centers around the world. I say quietly, because very often the companies using it don’t like to broadcast that fact to the world.

One who is willing is Credit Suisse, though it won’t say much. The $50 billion Swiss bank says it is adding Fusion-io’s memory – dubbed ioMemory – into its Advanced Execution Services trading platform.

So what does ioMemory do? It uses flash memory – not terribly unlike what’s used in USB drive – to basically re-write the rules of how companies with large database storage needs can work. Add an ioMemory card to a typical server with a five-figure price tag, and it can suddenly behave a lot more like a much larger and more expensive storage area network. The company is also known for its chief scientist, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Credit Suisse says in this case the ioMemory will be used to speed up algorithmic trading, which is using powerful, super-fast computers to analyze and movements in the prices of stocks, bonds and other securities, and determining when to buy and sell, based on a pre-programmed set of rules and conditions. It’s a business where, as The Wall Street Journal’s Donna Kardos Yeslavich wrote in October, milliseconds count, so banks and other financial institutions are constantly on the lookout anything that can speed the process up. (Eventually we’ll be saying femtoseconds count?)

A key bottleneck is the matter of recording trades made. This means getting the data related to the trade out of a computer’s active memory – that would be the DRAM chips similar to the what occasionally have to upgrade your PC – and permanently stored. DRAM is volatile memory, meaning that if it loses power, it loses whatever it’s storing at that moment. Flash is non-volatile, meaning it stores data permanently, even losing power, until it’s deleted. That makes it great for permanent storage that’s also a lot faster than a hard drive. The faster trades get logged, the more trades get done, the more money gets made. “It’s a matter of quickly putting the trade data in a place where it won’t get lost,” Fusion-io’s CEO David Flynn told me. “You have to make sure that your system won’t forget what’s been done, while at the same time doesn’t look track of what it’s doing.”

Credit Suisse didn’t make anyone available for an interview. Banks rarely go into even this level of public detail about the technology they use. However I did talk to Fusion-io CEO David Flynn, who tells me that Credit Suisse has been a fan of the Fusion-io technology for some time. He also says several other financial institutions are using it. “Its easier for them to use it than it is for them to talk about it,” he said.

From the looks of the investments and partners that Fusion-io has landed during the last year, he’s not kidding. In April it landed $45 million in a series C round led by Meritech Capital Partners, with Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Triangle Peak Partners also invested. South Korean electronics giant Samsung, which happens to be the world’s largest manufacturer of flash memory made a strategic investment last year, as did Dell Ventures. Meanwhile Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell all offer Fusion-io technology as an option on its servers. Headcount has doubled in the last year from 150 to between 300 and 400, Flynn told me.

So with all this going on, is Fusion-io going to be a hot IPO or acquisition target in 2011? Don’t count on it, Flynn says. “Our VCs are willing to wait for the home-run,” he said. “And we’re not in the business of getting acquired. We have the luxury of being able to grow this company without someone with itchy fingers.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/flash-storage-startup-fusion-io-speeds-up-trading-at-credit-suisse/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:58:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37775

According to sources close to the situation, Google has offered $5.3 billion for Groupon, in what would be its largest acquisition yet, if completed.

Sources said the deal for the Chicago-based social buying site seems likely to be struck, even as early as tomorrow, although it certainly could fall apart right up to the end.

But, if done, it will move the search giant instantly to the top spot in local commerce online and give it huge troves of data about consumer buying habits and merchant information across the globe.

Combined with its pending $700 million acquisition of ITA Software, the travel data firm, that should freak out regulators worldwide and could be considered Google’s own version of a jobs plan for antitrust lawyers.

That said, it is a killer move for Google–despite the high price–given it has long tried to enter the local advertising space, with decidedly mixed results.

With its more than $33 billion in cash and strong stock, it had previously tried to buy local reviews site Yelp, in a deal that fell apart for reasons that are still unclear.

In contrast, Groupon, founded in 2008, has taken off like a Roman candle and dominates the huge market for social shopping and discounting.

While the $6 billion Google is considering paying seems high, Groupon’s fast-growing revenue and profitability make its multiples less daunting, said those familiar with the matter.

It will certainly be a big payoff for Groupon’s investors, including Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners, as well as Battery Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Russia’s DST Global.

Groupon has gleaned about $170 million in venture funding from them, most of which it has not needed.

That’s because it has reportedly attracted upward of $50 million in monthly revenue.

It has done this by offering “daily deals”–getting a massive discount from local retailers in return for delivering customers via marketing via email and on social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter.

Typically, local merchants rely on less effective newspaper circulars or paper couponing.

In what will certainly be one of the deal’s ironies, Google could own a start-up that is largely powered by rival Facebook’s massive skein of social networking connections.

Facebook, of course, recently introduced its own Facebook Deals offering.

BoomTown first wrote about the deal discussions between Groupon and Google two weeks ago, noting the price would be well above the $2 billion to $3 billion offered by Yahoo.

That interest from Yahoo, which was first to sniff around the fast-growing social buying site, was first reported here too–mostly because I apparently like to stalk Groupon CEO and Justin Bieber lookalike Andrew Mason.

(And I will personally be fascinated to see how he’ll mesh with Marissa Mayer, the former search experience head who is now leading local for Google.)

The New York Times–which does not ever seem able to give credit, as All Things Digital and other blogs always do happily and without fuss–is also reporting a $6 billion price tag for Groupon.

While we all await the outcome of this potential blockbuster of a deal, here is a video interview I did with Mason this summer in Vancouver, where I asked him specifically about Google’s interest (actually, I suggested he mug Google co-founder Larry Page for dough).

Note the Bieber haircut:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/feed/ 30 http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/ http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 12:00:27 +0000 Ty McMahan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=25524 When asked if it’s truly possible that his portfolio company Groupon Inc. could transform in 17 months from an idea to a business worth more than a billion dollars, New Enterprise Associates Partner Peter Barris chuckled in a way that indicates even he recognizes it may be a dangerous assumption.

But Barris and other investors who accepted a $1.35 billion valuation on the group-buying Web site after a recent round don’t see a return to Internet bubble levels of price inflation. Instead, they think Groupon is one of a new breed of Internet companies worth their weight in gold because of how quickly they can grow.

These days, “you can build a big company, a very, very big [Internet] company,” Barris said. “Business is back to measuring revenue and profits.”

Groupon attracted $135 million in funding, mostly from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which has done similar deals with Facebook Inc. and social gaming company Zynga Inc. in the past year. The balance came from new investor Battery Ventures. Early investors NEA and Accel Partners did not reup, but they didn’t take any capital off the table, either.

Read the rest of this post n the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100418/groupon-grabs-135-million-from-dst-and-battery-valuation-above-1-billion-for-social-buying-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20100418/groupon-grabs-135-million-from-dst-and-battery-valuation-above-1-billion-for-social-buying-site/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:07:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26948

Groupon, the social buying site that has become one of the hotter start-ups of late, has gotten a giant round of funding from the same Russian investors that backed social networking powerhouse Facebook and game phenom Zynga.

Digital Sky Technologies is the main funder of the round, but Battery Ventures is also participating.

The money, the company said, will be used to grow the business–and to speed far ahead of numerous rivals–as well as cash out employees and early investors.

Groupon is profitable and has 270 employees.

In December, Groupon nabbed $30 million in its second round of funding, led by Accel Partners.

The innovative Chicago-based service, which launched only a year ago, previously received $4.8 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates, as well as $1 million from an angel investor.

Groupon features a daily deal with a huge discount on a wide range of products and services–from spas to skydiving–in dozens of U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston, New York and San Francisco, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, Groupon–a mashup term for “group” and “coupon”–tries to use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If it reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, Groupon sells coupons to the consumers and collects a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

At the cost of discounting and paying off Groupon, small businesses get a crack at a lot of new customers–think of it as social networking lead-generation or perhaps, the “Social Shopping Network.”

Groupon grew out of a project of The Point, an online community launched in 2007 for organizing group action.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones, Mercata, received $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

But now the group-buying space has been reinvigorated, with a spate of competitors, some of which are clear copycats of Groupon.

Here’s an interview BoomTown did with Groupon CEO and founder Andrew Mason, one of the more affable and level-headed entrepreneurs around–at least until this megafunding. (Don’t go changing, Andrew!)

I have been quite interested in the innovative Groupon, as I said in that post in March:

“The last time I really was truly bullish on a start-up and its founder–BoomTown’s motto is wait-and-see rather than hype-it-up–was AdMob’s Omar Hamoui. That turned out pretty well, with the sale of the mobile advertising site to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last fall. My 2010 start-up that passes the slightly-less-raised-eyebrow test is Groupon.”

Here’s the video interview with Mason:

Here’s the official press release:

GROUPON RECEIVES $135 MILLION FROM DST AND BATTERY VENTURES

Investment to Support Rapid Growth of Social Commerce Globally

Chicago/Moscow, April. 19, 2010–Groupon, the leading social commerce site, today announced that DST, a leading global internet investment group, will lead an investment round of $135 million in the Company. A portion of the investment will be used to fuel Groupon’s global expansion, and the rest will be used to facilitate liquidity for employees and early investors.

DST comprises the majority of the investment, with participation from Battery Ventures, which is also a new investor in Groupon.

Groupon leverages group buying and social media to provide its millions of customers big discounts on the best local businesses in more than 50 cities across the United States and in Canada. To date, customers have purchased over four million Groupons on deals ranging from spa treatments and golf outings to fine dining and skydiving and have collectively saved over $150 million on these deals.

“Our growth is a reflection of the positive impact Groupon is having on consumers and businesses at a very early stage of the market development,” said Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. “We are very pleased and excited to welcome DST and Battery as shareholders and we look forward to benefiting from their vast knowledge and experience of the social media sector as we continue executing on our growth plans in North America and globally.”

“This investment underscores our view that social networking and community based activity will drive, shape and define the web’s evolution in the years ahead,” said Yuri Milner, Chief Executive of DST. “Groupon, with its strong management team, offering and vision, is pioneering social commerce and is redefining the local advertising space. We look forward to being long-term partners of a company that is on a path to becoming a global Internet leader.”

“We’ve followed the social commerce phenomenon for many years, and are thrilled to have the chance to back such a visionary management team,” said Roger Lee, General Partner, Battery Ventures. “They saw a massive opportunity very early, and have executed flawlessly to define it and take the leadership position. We think there is a lot of runway ahead, and are energized to support the team in their quest.”

Founded in November 2008, Groupon has been aggressively expanding to cities throughout the United States, with plans to be in 100 cities by the end of 2010. Earlier today Groupon announced that it has launched its service in Orlando, Fort Worth, Tucson and Toronto, its Canadian city.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100418/groupon-grabs-135-million-from-dst-and-battery-valuation-above-1-billion-for-social-buying-site/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100304/groupons-andrew-mason-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20100304/groupons-andrew-mason-speaks/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25036

The last time I really was truly bullish on a start-up and its founder–BoomTown’s motto is wait-and-see rather than hype-it-up–was AdMob’s Omar Hamoui.

That turned out pretty well, with the sale of the mobile advertising site to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last fall.

My 2010 start-up that passes the slightly-less-raised-eyebrow test is Groupon, a group-based social buying service that nabbed another $30 million in funding in December.

So earlier this week, I sat down with Groupon’s Midwesternly-nice Andrew Mason, 29, to talk about where the start-up is headed with its pile of dough and growing base of consumers who want to make a deal.

The Chicago-based Groupon has actually raised a total of just under $36 million from angels, New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners so far.

Not that it needs it. The company–like AdMob–is profitable, despite having 200 employees and and a lightning growth path to expand its base of local sites.

The innovative service, which launched only a year ago, features a “daily deal” with a huge discount on a wide range of things–from spas to skydiving and, recently, pole-dancing lessons–in more than two dozen U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston, New York and San Francisco.

Not everything works–a recent offer of a lobster dinner shipped to buyers was a bomb, as was a tour of Michael Jackson’s childhood home in Gary, Indiana.

The deals are offered to large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, Groupon–a mashup term for “group” and “coupon”–tries to use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If it reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, Groupon sells coupons to the consumers and collects a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

At the cost of discounting and of paying off Groupon, small businesses get a crack at a lot of new customers–think of it as social networking lead-generation or, perhaps, the “Social Shopping Network.”

Groupon grew out of a project of The Point, an online community launched in 2007 for organizing group action.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing them in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones–Mercata–got $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

But now the group-buying space has been reinvigorated, with a spate of competitors, some of which are clear copycats–which, touchingly, really bugs Mason.

There is even a site, called Yipit, that aggregates all the group-buying sites.

Here’s the video of my interview with Mason at the Accel offices in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., on his second visit to Silicon Valley–as well as a video below it from Groupon about how the service works:

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

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