Ignition changing course as it seeks to raise new fund

Frank Artale

Ignition Partners has experienced a number of transformations over the years, launching a fund in China and debuting a fund just for later-stage deals. Now, the Bellevue venture capital firm — a backer of Splunk, Hipmunk, DocuSign and others — is getting ready for its biggest change yet. The firm, which is currently in the… Read More…

Ignition snaps up stake in San Mateo’s SnapLogic

Ignition's Frank Artale has been leading the charge on many of the firm's new cloud and infrastructure deals.

Ignition Partners’ investment pace hasn’t been quite as robust as last year, likely due to the fact that the Bellevue venture capital firm is trying to raise a new early-stage fund. But the firm has uncovered yet another new deal in California, joining Triangle Peak Partners and Andreessen Horowitz in a $20 million round for San… Read More…

Ignition backs San Francisco cloud application service Iron.io

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Ignition Partners continues to pump dollars into cloud computing startups — most of them which happen to be based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The latest example is Iron.io, a San Francisco company that today announced $1.4 million in venture funding from Ignition, Baseline Ventures, Cloud Capital Partners, Citrix Systems and others. Iron.io is… Read More…

Kindle Fire will outsell iPad, Windows Phone will rebound, and six other tech predictions

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Facebook will go public in 2012. Apple will lose some of its innovative edge without Steve Jobs. And the majority of Americans will be driving electric vehicles by the year 2022. Those were some of the predictions last night as the Washington Technology Industry Association hosted their annual Predictions Dinner. I had the distinct honor, once… Read More…

Ignition’s Frank Artale leads $15M round in ServiceMesh

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Back in August, I interviewed Frank Artale of Ignition Partners about the torrid investment pace that he’d engaged in since joining the Bellevue venture capital firm in March.  Well, that pace has continued right into the fall, with the former Microsoft and Citrix exec earlier this month leading a $40 million investment in Palo Alto,… Read More…

Hey, we’re no Silicon Valley, but Seattle is rising as a tech hub

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I am always interested in how national publications perceive Seattle’s technology community. After all, as long time journalists covering the daily gyrations of the tech industry here, you sometimes need a good 30,000-foot view of the situation from an outsider. Today, Bill Rigby at Reuters provides that perspective in a story titled: “In Microsoft’s shadow,… Read More…

Ignition Partners leads $40 million round for Cloudera

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Ignition Partners, Greylock, Accel, In-Q-Tel, Meritech Capital Partners and others are pumping $40 million into Cloudera, a Palo Alto, California-based maker of software and services tied to the Apache Hadoop open source project. Founded in 2008, Cloudera raised a $5 million round in 2009 and $25 million last fall. Total funding now stands at about $80… Read More…

BlueStacks raises cash to run Android apps on Windows PCs

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BlueStacks wants to make it easier to get your Android apps, in full-screen mind you, on Windows PCs. And the Campbell, California company just landed a new strategic investment from AMD, Citrix Systems and others to make that vision a reality, bringing total capital raised in the upstart to $14 million. The concept is pretty… Read More…

Q&A: Ignition’s Frank Artale is one very busy VC

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Frank Artale is new to the venture capital business, so maybe he didn’t get the memo. After all, most VCs take off the month of August to travel, play golf or get some needed R&R? But not Artale. So far this month, the newest member of the Ignition Partners team has invested in three new… Read More…

Ignition, Founder’s Co-op and Madrona join forces to back AppFog

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Three Seattle area venture capital firms are allying to back Portland’s AppFog, which has created new technologies that allow developers to quickly build Web applications. Ignition is leading the $8 million venture capital round, which also included participation from existing investors Madrona Venture Group and Founder’s Co-op. Other investors in the round include Simon Crosby,… Read More…