B2B startup accelerator 9Mile Labs taps Microsoft VP, veteran VC to lead the charge

Enrique Godreau

Sanjay Puri thinks more needs to be done to help entrepreneurs in the Seattle region — one of the reasons why he recently formed the startup accelerator 9Mile Labs. He calls the early-stage funding environment in Seattle at the moment “inadequate” — something I’ve also discussed in recent columns and remarks. Well, now the former marketing… Read More…

Blue Box raises more cash, this time from David Frankel’s Founder Collective

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Jesse Proudman’s Blue Box has reeled in $800,000 in fresh capital, part of an oversubscribed venture capital round that the Seattle startup just closed. The cloud hosting company, founded by Proudman nine years ago, raised the new cash from Founder Collective. As a result of the funding, David Frankel of the New York-based seed fund has joined… Read More…

Cloud hosting startup Blue Box raises venture capital after nearly 10 years in business

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Blue Box, a Seattle-based cloud hosting company which has bootstrapped its way to success over the past nine years, has raised $3.5 million in a round led by Voyager Capital.  It marks the first outside capital in the company, whose nearly 600 customers include MTV, CrowdStar and Bonanza. “Building applications for the Web comes with… Read More…

Chart: VC returns on the mend

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Earlier this year, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation issued a blistering report which said, among other things, that the majority of venture funds it had invested in over the years had failed to exceed returns available from the public markets. The report rattled the opaque VC industry, if for nothing more than its bluntness. Now, here comes a… Read More…

Maker of electric vehicle charging stations raises $47M from KPCB, Voyager and others

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Coulomb Technologies, which operates more than 6,000 electrical vehicle charging stations in 14 countries, including dozens in the Seattle area, is fueling up with a new $47.5 million venture capital found led by Braemar Energy Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Existing investor Rho Ventures, Siemens Venture Capital GmbH, Harbor Pacific Capital Partners and Hartford… Read More…

WPP’s Kantar unit buys Global Market Insite

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Kantar, a unit of advertising giant WPP, has purchased Bellevue-based Global Market Insite for an undisclosed price and merged it with online market research firm Lightspeed Research. Together, the companies said that they will “create one of the world’s largest online panel and sample providers.” As a result of the deal, David Day of Lightspeed… Read More…

Boston and Seattle mobile analytics startups merge, choose New York for HQ

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Seattle-based Ground Truth has merged with Boston-based Umber Systems to create a new company called Mobile Intelligence Solutions that will be based in New York and serve clients with detailed analysis about what’s happening in the wireless industry. As a result, the new company has scored $8 million in venture capital funding from North Bridge Venture… Read More…

Venture capitalists upbeat about Microsoft’s massive $8.5 billion buyout of Skype

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Microsoft has been fairly quiet on the M&A front over the past 18 months, a fact that has not been lost on venture capitalists who love when cash-rich tech titans come knocking on their portfolio companies’ doors. But Microsoft surged back onto the scene Tuesday with its blockbuster $8.5 billion buy of Skype. Some of… Read More…