This map shows where venture capital dollars are flowing in the U.S.

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Check out this cool map, produced by The Atlantic in partnership with the Martin Prosperity Institute, which shows where venture capital dollars flowed in 2012. As one would expect, the East and West Coasts have the biggest pockets, led, of course, by San Francisco/Oakland (No. 1) and San Jose (No. 2). Based on the 2012 data, Seattle… Read More…

Microsoft Courier vets score $15M from Andreessen Horowitz to expand beyond blockbuster iPad app Paper

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FiftyThree, maker of the sketching and illustration app Paper, the Apple 2012 iPad App of the Year, has scored $15 million in fresh funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angels and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The company has offices in New York and Seattle, and the new funds will be used to make a… Read More…

Big data startup SpaceCurve lands $10 million

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SpaceCurve, which is developing a big data platform that it says provides “instantaneous intelligence” for location-based services, commodities and other markets, today is announcing that it has raised $10 million in venture funding. Investors in the deal include Triage Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures and Divergent Ventures. The money will be used to fund the Seattle company’s… Read More…

Yabbly raises cash to help consumers get product advice, names Ben Huh and Andy Liu to advisory board

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Yabbly, the Seattle startup that’s looking to help consumers get solid advice on consumer products, everything from smartphones to baby strollers, has raised an additional $500,000 in angel financing from a group of a dozen investors. Total funding now stands at $1.3 million, with investors such as former Facebook general counsel Rudy Gadre; former Qpass… Read More…

A new marketplace: Nimia offers one-stop shop for managing and licensing professional video

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Zach McIntosh was busy wrapping up another video production project for National Geographic when he first realized a big problem: Someone at National Geographic had licensed content he had produced without him even knowing. “I realized there was a synergy to be made between contractual and license video production,” McIntosh recalled. Fast forward two years… Read More…

Report: Portland’s AppFog to be acquired by Savvis

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Portland platform-as-a-service startup AppFog is set to be acquired by Savvis, the big co-location and data center operator that’s owned by CenturyLink, according to a report in GigaOm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it could mark an exit for three Seattle venture capital firms — Ignition, Madrona Venture Group and Founder’s Co-op…. Read More…

Q&A: Madrona’s Julie Sandler on startups, women in tech and getting promoted at Seattle’s top VC firm

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Venture capitalists tend to have sharp elbows and prickly demeanors. But Julie Sandler, who joined Madrona Venture Group two years ago after a stint on Amazon.com’s Kindle team, is taking a different approach as she builds bridges in the Seattle entrepreneurial community. “Our entrepreneurs rave about working with Julie,” says Madrona’s Greg Gottesman. “One of… Read More…

TalentWise spins off from Naveen Jain’s Inome with $25M from mysterious backer

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TalentWise has spun off from Naveen Jain’s Inome in a $25 million financing round led by an undisclosed Seattle area private equity firm. The Bothell-based company, which employs more than 280 people, says the new money will be used to expand its service for screening, hiring and onboarding new employees at large organizations. Jain, who… Read More…

InternMatch raises $4M to connect college kids with hot employers

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The market for talent continues to heat up, which means it is more important than ever for big and small companies alike to try to track down the sharpest college kids around. Enter InternMatch, a three-year-old startup that got its start in Seattle but now calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. The company, which… Read More…

Optimum Energy heats up with $12.2M to intelligently adjust temperature settings in buildings

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Optimum Energy, a Seattle startup whose software intelligently adjusts a building’s temperature in order to reduce energy consumption, has scored $12.2 million in fresh financing from new investor Navitas Capital and existing investor Columbia Pacific Advisors, GeekWire has learned. The company says it has been experiencing “torrid” growth, with the software now used to manage heating… Read More…

Mobisante raises $4.2M for smartphone-based ultrasound imaging system

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Mobisante, the Redmond-based company that makes ultrasound technology viewable on a smartphone or tablet, just pulled in $4.2 million in fresh funding to continue providing customers with a low-cost alternative to other expensive high-end portable ultrasound systems. Founded in 2009 by Sailesh Chutani — a former Microsoft mobile exec — and David Zar — a researcher at Washington… Read More…

New startup Porch raises $6.25M, aiming to fix home-improvement market with ‘massive amount of data’

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After operating under wraps for the past year, a new Seattle-based startup called Porch is making its presence known for the first time, in a big way. The company, which is building a data-driven marketplace for home improvement, has raised a whopping $6.25 million seed round from an unusually large group of investors — more… Read More…

Q&A: Photo sharing upstart Linea raises $4 million to fix ‘broken photo libraries’

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It’s 2013 — nearly 10 years after the founding of Flickr and more than a year after Facebook bought Instagram — and yet we still can’t seem to find the perfect way to store and share photos. Well, here comes Linea, a new Seattle startup that just scored $4 million in angel financing from undisclosed… Read More…

Automating the acquihire: ExitRound plays matchmaker for startups with nowhere else to turn

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It’s the hard truth of startups. Most new companies never make it. Jacob Mullins has seen this reality play out hundreds of times as a former venture capitalist who previously led marketing efforts for Microsoft’s BizSpark program and served as director of business development at VentureBeat. In those roles, he’s encountered plenty of startups that… Read More…

The VC drain: Yes, we’re a big importer of capital too

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At the Technology Alliance annual luncheon this week in downtown Seattle, industry leaders lamented the sad state of the educational system. Zillow co-founder Rich Barton and Apex Learning CEO Cheryl Vedoe spoke in detail about how Washington state isn’t doing a good job of educating our own students, relying on “imported” talent to fuel the innovation… Read More…

Ex-Insitu CEO takes flight with stealthy big data startup Seeq

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Steve Sliwa, the former CEO of Insitu Group, the maker of unmanned aerial vehicles that was purchased by Boeing for $400 million, has emerged at a stealthy startup company by the name of Seeq. We came across the startup today in a SEC filing, which indicated that the company, previously operating under the name Nebula… Read More…

VC returns improve for 10-year horizon, but you’d still be better off investing on Wall Street

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There’s certainly been some good news in the venture business in recent weeks, with Yahoo announcing its $1.1 billion deal for Tumblr and Seattle software company Tableau Software pricing shares in a spectacular IPO. Those types of deals offer hope for venture capitalists, many of whom have been battered in recent years. But, for now,… Read More…

Fast-growing Solavei scores fresh cash, aims to top $100M in revenue

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Solavei, which rewards customers for signing up friends, family and co-workers for its wireless service, has scored $2 million in fresh funding from boutique investment banking firm Clark Dodge & Company, GeekWire has learned. The cash is part of a larger financing round that is expected to close in the coming months, and it brings total funding… Read More…

Dave McClure’s 500 Startups backs online presentation upstart 9Slides

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9Slides, the maker of online presentation software that syncs video with slides, has raised capital from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups as well as angel investors such as Terrapass co-founder Karl Ulrich and Tom Miner. 9Slides rolled out its iPad app in February, competing alongside fellow Seattle area startup Haiku Deck. The company’s other backers include Rudy… Read More…

Ride sharing service Lyft zooms forward with $60M from Andreessen Horowitz

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Lyft, the ride sharing service known for the distinctive pink mustaches that drivers attach to their vehicles, has raised $60 million in venture funding from Silicon Valley powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz. The new funding values the San Francisco-based company at $275 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The new money will be used to supercharge… Read More…