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Online coupon company Groupon may be raising, or may have already raised, up to $950 million more in venture capital, according to documents reported on today by venture blog VC Experts.
This would be the company's Series G round of funding. Rounds A through F totalled $171 million, according to Crunchbase. That means that after walking away from a rumored $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, the company may have gone on to raise more than five times all its previous funding. Mystery investors have been watching, and they like what they have seen. VC Experts argues that the funding will be used in order for the site to expand internationally, something it has said it intends to do before filing an IPO, instead of being acquired.
Yesterday we went over some the ways entrepreneurs can set themselves up for success with VCs by building a relationship far before they ever need funding. Part of that strategy involves picking the right VCs based on experience, success and, yes, even how well you get along. There are several factors that should be considered when finding the right VCs for your startup, and Atlas Venture partner Fred Destin reminds us this morning of another significant one - how a VC manages reserves.
As an entrepreneur raising funding, it's easy to get into the mentality of pitching to anyone who will listen, but an active discussion amongst the investment community has sparked considerable debate on whether or not entrepreneurs should be more respectful of the chain of command. Should startups be pitching associates directly or should they be waiting for general partners to take notice?
Earlier today Venture Hacks announced the launch of the AngelList - a curated list of angel investors with an interest in early-stage funding pitches. According to a blog post by Venture Hacks cofounder Babak Nivi, legendary investors like FF Fund angel Dave McClure, Techstars' Brad Feld and SoftTech VC's Jeff Clavier are among the site's first participants. ReadWriteStart caught up with Nivi to find out why he was moved to create the resource.
Zoho, the web office company that competes with Google's online tools (and does so quite well), has introduced a new feature to their online suite of productivity applications: Zoho Chat 2.0. Built atop the original Zoho Chat platform, this iteration now integrates all the major instant messaging networks. But a multi-protocol IM client is not the big news - it's the fact that Zoho Chat 2.0 is integrated within the majority of the company's applications to allow for real-time collaboration with colleagues.
These are clearly not the easiest times to secure financing for a startup, but Boxee, which makes an open-source media center application that works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and the Apple TV, just announced a $4 million investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Bijan Sabet from Spark and Fred Wilson from Union Square will join the Boxee board.
Boxee, which is still in private beta testing, is a media center solution that allows you to play back content from third-party providers like Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central, or Last.fm through a very slick interface.
Thanks to all who sent in their stories of gritty entrepreneurs. To those who just copied the standard PR spiel with an opening line about "gritty entrepreneurs", please stop! We will be doing some interviews. Right now we are parsing through the incoming stories to classify and spot some trends.
The first big question that jumps out is: where are the profitable VC funded web ventures?
Seen the headlines recently? These are scary times. Entrepreneurs are far too busy to focus on the mayhem in the markets - and they know that they cannot do anything about it. So the standard response is just to deal with it as a background worry. But some re-assessing of the external market reality can be useful at times like this. I have had lots of calls along the lines of "what the heck is going on and how does this impact the business we are working on?" This is my condensed, hopefully practical, advice to entrepreneurs.
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