Ina Fried

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Crittercism Nabs $12 Million in Funding to Expand Beyond Tracking Mobile App Bugs

crittercism_screenCrittercism, a San Francisco-based company that helps mobile app developers track their performance, has raised a further $12 million from its existing investors.

The company’s technology lets mobile app creators such as Netflix and LinkedIn understand how and why their apps crash, although Crittercism plans to use the new funding to further expand into other areas of app performance monitoring.

While testing apps is important, Crittercism CEO Andrew Levy says that there is no way for app makers — even big ones — to foresee every possible issue.

“You just can’t test every possible hardware and software combination,” he said in an interview.

Levy recalls a recent issue one large customer had using its app in conjunction with certain Motorola phones. The company didn’t even have Motorola phones in its office, but Levy said his company’s product was able to gather enough information from real-world users to diagnose the issue.

The company, which consisted of just over a dozen people for much of last year, is now up to 23; Levy said he expects to have more than 60 by the end of the year, with most of the new hires going to beef up the company’s engineering ranks.

“We are looking to scale pretty rapidly,” he said. Even with a fairly small team, Crittercism’s technology is in use on more than 450 million iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 devices. Among those using its technology in their apps, Levy said, are Netflix, Home Depot, LinkedIn and TripAdvisor.

The Series B round was led by Google Ventures, an existing investor in the company. Shasta Ventures and Opus Capital, also prior investors, provided additional funding.

Google has said it is looking to boost its presence in mobile funding deals.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”