Venture Capital Firms

Another example how the online travel industry is growing, despite the current economic downturn, is a company called “Yapta. Yapta offers a website where people can go and compare air fare and get good flights for bargain prices. Any time, when the economy is not doing too well, people will always be looking for a bargain where ever they can get one.

Using Yapta is very easy. All you need to do is to sign up by clicking on the join link and type in your email address, first and last name, a password, and confirmation of your password. You should be getting a confirmation email as soon as you sign up, but it does take about five or ten minutes for the confirmation email to come. Upon receiving the confirmation email, simply click on the link they give you and you are in. It’s that easy and best of all signing up to Yapta is free.

Once you have signed in and logged into Yapta, working with the service is also easy. Once you sign into your Yapta account, you will see three different options, which are tracking airfare price drops, tracking hotel rates and availability, and tracking for airfare vouchers and credits. All three of these services can be a big help to the bargain hunter.

When you are looking for airfare price drops on Yapta, you will see several fields which prompt you to type in the city of departure and destination, and then you have the option to choose a round trip or one-way fares. You will also see a drop menu that will show a calendar where you need to choose departure date and for round trip flights a calendar for the date of your return flight. One problem that Yapta does have is that it can load slowly on certain internet services and sometimes the server may not respond. This might turn away the more impatient users. However, when the site does work, after you have typed in all the above information, you will see a whole list with different airlines and their airfares. The site will even tell you whether the flight is a nonstop or has stops. Supposed you want to fly to Tbilisi from Chicago O’Hare. At your departure just type in Chicago and you will have three choices, all airports, Chicago Midway, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport. You will notice that most of the flights are operated by United Airlines. You will see a hyperlink that tells you how many stops you have. The only problem is that the prices are quite unrealistic. It is hard to find a price on Yapta for this flight that is under $3000. That is awfully high when tickets for this same flight are offered by various travel agents for under $1600.

The next option on the My Trips page of Yapta is dedicated to tracking hotels and rates. This feature also helps you see if there is a vacancy at a particular hotel. To use this feature, all you need to do is to click on the Track Hotels button. You will find several fields to fill out. You can also filter out other hotels, but this can sometimes yield no results. For example if you would like to stay at Hotel Vere Palace in Tbilisi, you will not be given any information on that particular hotel. However, if you do not filter any hotel, all the hotels in Tbilisi will appear. You will first see the high-luxury hotels from Marriot, Radison, and Hilton, and then all the others. The problem here again is that it will not really find the best prices and for avid travelers, this feature may also not provide that much of a service.

The third option in My Trips is designed to find refunds from flight vouchers or other credits. For example you are flying Lufthansa to Munich with flight 435 and you want to see if you can get some credits from this flight. This feature is very user unfriendly and you keep getting error messages unless you type in the fields correctly, which the site does not explain.

Yapta is based in Seattle, Washington and the company’s investors include First Round Capital and Voyager Capital, which invested $700,000 in seed funding and $2.3 milliion in series A funding.

Voyager Capital is a vc firm that mainly invests in companies who are in the IT, digital media, wireless, and software industries. Furthermore, Voyager mainly invests in the geographical location around Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and northern California areas. Voyager’s strategy is a “go to market” strategy, which is a strategy that helps new companies aggressively take their product or service to the market and helps the entrepreneurs develop an effective marketing strategy, crucial for new startups to execute in order to be successful. Some other companies in Voyager’s portfolio include Placecast, Amplitude, AboutUs, Capital Stream, Elemental, GoAhead, and others.

First Round Capital is a vc firm that mainly invests in early stage startup companies who are in the tech industry. First Round Capital especially looks for entrepreneurs who have an innovative product that could disrupt the tech industry. The vc firm is managed by Joshua Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Rob Hayes, and Howard Morgan. First Round mainly invests in seed and early stage funding for its portfolio companies. Other companies in First Round’s portfolio include 33Across, Aggregate Knowledge, AppNexus, Aster Data Systems, BazaarVoice, BiggerBoat, and others.

Yapta does have some heavy competition. Some of Yapta’s major competitors that could pose serious competition for the company include Kayak, CheapFlights, TripHup, and others. The two biggest competitors, however, are Kayak and CheapFlights.

Kayak is a website that provides a travel search engine and offers a service similar to what Yapta provides. Some of the services that Kayak offers is finding and comparing airfares, hotels, car rentals, etc. Kayak is based in Norwalk, Connecticut and employs 75 people.

CheapFlights actually pioneered the online travel industry by offering price comparison of airfare. CheapFlights partners up with many airlines and Priceline to help find the bargains for you. CheapFlights is based in London, United Kingdom and was founded in March, 1996.

For more information about Yapta, click here.

For the past decade, the internet has become the major source of media for the majority of the population in the United States and Europe, as well as in other parts of the world. Furthermore, since the majority of the American people have had access to the internet in the mid 1990s, the internet has graduated from the slow 56k modem connection to the super-fast broadband connection of today. As the internet is able to traffic more information with a much larger bandwidth faster, many websites have started with videos and internet television. Internet television was first pioneered by Youtube, but after that all kinds of TV websites have appeared on the web. In 2006, Joost was launched as a website that shows videos and TV shows and allows you to view videos and even share them with your friends. You can even share videos with your friends on Facebook with Joost.

Joost is currently undergoing public beta testing and anyone can join Joost for free and the sign up process is amazingly easy. When you join Joost, first you need to type in a username, which must be at least four characters or numbers with no spaces. The nice thing about the sign up application on Joost is that it will point out anything filled out wrong in red lettering and if each field is filled out correctly, the lettering appears white. This is very convenient because it saves time because you can be sure that every field is filled out correctly before you hit the submit button. After you have chosen your username and Joost has accepted it, you need to type a password and reconfirm the password. After that, you need to type in your first and last name. You will also need to type in your zip code, and then hit the submit button and you’re in. Joost will send you an email to confirm your email promptly and before you get that email, your service with Joost is not affected.

Navigating and using the Joost website is also rather easy. You can also search for your friends who might be on Joost and Facebook and share videos with them on Joost. Joost also allows you to search for videos selected to your individual taste.

Joost is a privately owned company based in New York City and the company’s founder is Niklas Zennström, who was also the CEO and cofounder of Skype, one of the world’s largest IP phone and video conferencing services. Skype is not the only successful company that Mr. Zennström founded. Before founding Skype, he also founded other companies, including KaZa, which is a consumer file sharing network similar to Napster. Mr. Zennström also ran the European branch of Everyday.com as its CEO.

Some of the several successes that Joost has had since its founding include its partnership with Viacom. According to a press release on the company website, dated February 20, 2007 states that Viacom was to be a key content partner with Joost. Viacom is a large producer of TV shows and feature films. According to this article, Viacom is to provide its branded content of entertainment for free on Joost’s websites, which Joost users can view for free. The article further states that Joost is a service that combines the best quality internet TV for the new Web 2.0. Furthermore in that article, Philippe Dauman, CEO and President of Viacom stated that Viacom is very pleased to start a partnership with Joost.

In September of 2008, Joost began to offer UK viewers hundreds of hours of hit shows by sealing a partnership with ALL3MEDIA International. In an article, also on the company site, that is dated September 30, 2008, explains that with this partnership, Joost users in the United Kingdom will be able to view such shows as Peep Show, Shameless, Derren Brown, Ultimate Force, and much more. Furthermore, the article states that Joost is not just a website for viewing TV shows online, but the website also has a social networking feature that allows users to interact with each other and talk about the various TV shows that they have watched over the Joost network.

Recently, in an article dated June 30, 2009, Joost announced that it will be providing white label online videos on its website. The article further states that more and more media companies are looking for high quality internet video portals to show their premium content. Furthermore, Joost will have to rework its business practices to keep these partnerships. After reworking these partnerships and providing more solutions that will improve TV viewing online, Joost will commercially offer white paper video content online.

Joost’s investors include CBS, Inc.; Index Ventures, Li Ka Shing Foundation, Sequoia Capital, and Viacom. All of the above investors all took part in a gigantic series A funding of $45 million in May of 2007.

CBS, Inc. is one of the largest broadcasting networks in the United States and has a large selection of hit shows. CBS partners with Joost and many of its videos are featured on Joost’s website.

Index Ventures is a vc firm that invests mainly in IT companies that represent a good investment opportunity. The team at Index Ventures is a group of dedicated entrepreneurs who built the vc firm up brick by brick. Some other companies in Index’s portfolio include 7TM, AlertMe, Betfair, Boku, DoubleTwist, King.com, Love Candy, and others.

The Li Ka Shing Foundation is a fund that was created by Mr. Li Ka Shing, who is the chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited is actually a branch of the Cheung Kong Group and is based in Hong Kong. The Li Ka Shing Foundation is a charitable organization that is based on Mr. Shing’s belief on how to form a successful equitable society. According to Mr. Shing, an equitable society can only be founded when every individual in that society is ready, willing and able to do his or her part.

Sequoia Capital is a global vc firm with its headquarters in Menlo Park, California and also has offices in China, India, and Israel. Sequoia Capital was built by some of the best known successful entrepreneurs, who include Steve Jobbs, of Apple; Larry Ellison, of Oracle; Bob Swanson, of Linear Technology, and others. Some other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio include Zappos.com, Afara, AMCC, AdMob, eHarmony, and others.

Viacom is one of the world’s leading entertainment content company, which generates all kind of prime-time entertainment brands. Some of the brands under the Viacom name include Media Networks, MTV, BET, TV Land, Spike TV, VH1, and others. Viacom invests and partners with companies that can be of good interest for the large media company.

Joost does have some competitors, but the biggest competitor is Hulu. Like Joost, Hulu is an online video sharing site which believes in bringing in premium entertainment to the masses. Hulu was founded in Los Angeles, California, and has six people on its management team.

For more information about Joost, click here.

We always have everything in motion around us, moving, lively. Technology had long back evolved with capturing these motions and storing them for future viewing. Then came the era of the internet, and it became more than a necessity for the videos to be shared, it was a lifeline. Estimated increase in growth of internet video population has gone from 65% to 85% within the past few years.

Founded in 2005, Visible Measures provides new solutions and capability to allow internet video publishers and advertisers understand the audience behaviours and accurately predict and analyze the success of internet video programs. They accomplish this by capturing and measuring every video interaction in every video from every viewer, from play to pause, to rewind to forward-to-a-friend and more. They major in providing video placements with benefits to the major brand advertisers. The technology works upon integrating the video streaming and viewing of the viewers to the hosts.

The company’s video solutions are provided by three core and powerful technologies, i.e., the Video Placement Multiplier, Viral Reach Database, and Video Metrics Engine and thus providing a rich technological and interactive platform for both the user and the provider.

The website has also been in the news recently for providing the top ten movie trailers chart and continuously posts the tricks and perks of understanding the online film trailer performances. One of the main features of the website is to provide with the 100 Million view club, with ratings and other details which are trusted throughout with accuracy. The list is a diverse collection of campaigns, including music and movie videos, trailers, user-generated videos, and clips from TV shows having the user hits as the common feature for all.

The company’s Partner Program is designed so as to help partners develop new opportunities and grow their businesses into profitable ventures. Built on a strong understanding of the partners’ needs, this program is sustained on solid foundation blocks of significant resource commitments to build strong and productive relationships with the partners. The company has partnered with internet video platforms Brightcove and the platform to provide their customers with analytical services as a pre-integrated solution for there projects.

The current investors for the company are:

• * Mohr Davidow Ventures that invested in hi5 networks, ProActive Software, etc.
• * General Catalyst Partners that invested in Kayak, EZ Prints, etc.
• * Northgate Capital that invested in Widgetbox, Silver Spring Networks, etc.
• * Mohr Davidow Ventures that invested in Tiny Pictures, Mantara, etc.
• * General Catalyst Partners that invested in Sand 9, Big Fish Games, etc.

Visible Measures had been also involved in a major product release for video advertisers.
Vidmeter gathers data from across the internet and provides an accurate and detailed representation of the most popular online videos in various forms. Since, it seems impossible to tell the exact number of hits and views a given video has been receiving from every website and every download, Vidmeter accumulates the reported view count from a large cross-section of web-based video sites, and hence indicates the relative popularity of the video among the viewers.

The major competitors it faces in the industry are Intempo Digital and Mixercast. The two majors specialise in music sharing and also eat up the larger chunk of the video industry. Intempo in particular had been involved in release of a large number of products for making streaming/download easier for the user.
Mixercast on the other hand is the mastermind creation of developers from Yahoo, Microsoft and many such large firms. It highlights the fact of legal sharing and personal sharing with customised products being available for the same.

For more information about Visible Measures, please click here.

Outspark, an online game company that focuses on the community besides the engaging online multiplayer and Role playing games (RPGs), was founded in January 2007, by Susan Choe and has now over 4.7 million users. Outspark is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a subsidiary office in Seoul, Korea.
Enjoying rapid success due to a unique business model that has flourished an online community engaging in social events, in-game and around the game networking and user generated content, not to mention the amazingly personalized user experience, this site has over 5.4 million unique visitors each month engaging in “massively multiplayer online” (MMO) games.
In less than two years, Outspark has signed deals with various leading internet service distribution and game developer partner companies including YouTube, XFire, Meebo, Yahoo! Games, BesyBuy and not to mention BitTorrent, among others.
On December 2nd, 2008 Outspark recruited Paul Thind, formally working in Habbo, a competitor, as the firm’s chief business officer.
In January 2008, Outspark raised Series B $11 million capital from investors Tencent Holdings, DCM and Altos Ventures. And in July 2009 they raised series C $8.3 million capital from investors Syncom Venture Partners and SBI Investment.
Currently Outspark offers the following games:

• -Fiesta
• -Secret of the Solstice
• -Bread ‘n Butter
• -Project Powder
• -Blackshot
• -Wind Slayer( their latest offering)

They are about to release another game titled “Dance Groove”.
There are other browser based games as well, just waiting for the users to come and enjoy. With all the games free to play, it is the consumer (read player) who will benefit the most out of this venture with a plethora of games at his/her disposal.
To sign up for a free Outspark player account or for more information please visit the Outspark site.
Among those that invested in Outspark there are Syncom Venture Partners and SBI Investment.
Syncom Venture Partners was founded in 1977 and has headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. A leading media and communications venture capital firm that supports talented entrepreneurs dedicated to creating innovative business of great escalating value. Approximately $400 million of private equity capital is managed by Syncom.
SBI Investment is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, Inc., which is one of the largest and most active venture capital firms in Japan. Established in 1996, the company has since focused its investments on current growth sectors such as information technology, bio-tech and life sciences. Offering comprehensive support to entrepreneurs through its venture capital fund, provides them with the risk capital, support in the terms of taxes and finances, public offering related consultation services and capable managers. Managing various venture capital funds, its total fun size is of over $1 billion.

Founded in 2004, Xoopit which has been undergoing beta testing has now been acquired by Yahoo. First before explaining Yahoo’s acquisition of Xoopit, let’s explain what Xoopit exactly is. Xoopit is a website which is the amateur photographer’s digital dream. Founded in 2004, Xoopit allows you to upload your photos from your computer or bring in your video files from Flikr, Youtube, Shutterfly, Kodak, and Picasa in one website. Now, however, with Xoopit being acquired by Yahoo, you will be able to have more options to send your photos and video clips to your friends and family. With the acquisition of Xoopit, size limits of photos, graphic images, and video clips will be a thing of the past. As of now, Yahoo just signed the agreement for the acquisition, but in the near future, you will see that Xoopit will appear as one of the tabs in your yahoo email account.

The merger did cause some concerns for Gmail users, who have Xoopit, but as the message on the official announcement on Xoopit’s company site states that Gmail users have nothing to worry about. The first question raised by Gmail users is if the Xoopit service will continue with Gmail. Xoopit answers by saying that as Xoopit gradually gets integrated into the Yahoo infrastructure, Gmail users will still be able to use all the services that Xoopit offers for the time being. Furthermore, Xoopit is an application that was created for Gmail, so Xoopit will continue to run on Gmail and Gmail users will not notice any changes for a while.

Xoopit works by providing an app that you can attach to your email browser known as “My Photos.” My Photos is an app that allows you to organize all your photos online and even send them through your email to your friends and families.

Xoopit is based in San Francisco, California and until this acquisition was a privately owned company that worked closely with Gmail. The two founders of Xoopit are Bijan Marashi, who also serves the company as its CEO; and Jonathan Katzman, who also works at Xoopit as the company’s COO.

An article filed with Trends & News on July 22, 2009, states that the merger of Xoopit and Yahoo is official and the article’s headline reads “Xoopit + Yahoo Mail = Moving Beyond the Massive Digital Shoebox.” The article goes on to further state that most email inboxes do change into digital shoeboxes filled with intimate family photos that people share with close friends and family. Furthermore, the basic inbox can be a disorganized mess. Xoopit will organize all your photos and you can send what ever ones you want through the email. The article goes on further to state that Yahoo’s acquisition of Xoopit is a big deal, because Yahoo already has the largest photo organization system on the net and with Xoopit on board, it will get even better. The attachment limits for photos, which has been a problem for many people will be eliminated when you use the Xoopit My Photos with Yahoo.

Xoopit also has a video on its website that shows the “future of email.” The video is a quick overview of the Xoopit application and how it will work with Yahoo. It has music over the entire video, which can be muted and explains in great detail how Xoopit works and walks you through step by step on how to save and share your favorite photos and moments in your life with friends and relatives.

Xoopit’s investors include Foundation Capital, who invested together with some individual private investors in $1.5 million in seed funding in December of 2006 and then in March of 2008, Accel Partners and Foundation Partners invested $5 million in series A funding.

Founded in 1995, Foundation Capital is a vc firm, who’s single goal is to build great companies. The philosophy of the partners at Foundation Capital is that the most powerful aspect of the foundation of a company is the idea. The idea of a product or new service that can disrupt the markets is the most powerful driving force in a company’s success. Furthermore, at Foundation Capital, all the vc firm’s partners have been entrepreneurs and are willing to share their entrepreneurial experience with new entrepreneurs as they make that first step. Some other companies in Foundation Capital’s portfolio include Aktino, Altor Networks, Azure Power, BabyCare, Biz360, Calstar Products, and others.

Accel Partners has been around for over 25 years and is a global vc firm with offices in London, China, and India; along with its headquarters in Silicon Valley. Accel Partners likes to invest in entrepreneurs who are courageous and have a breakthrough idea that can take over a market. Some other companies in Accel’s portfolio include Facebook, Real, Xen Source, Glam.com, JBoss, BitTorrent, MacroMedia, RiverBed, and others.

For more information about Xoopit, click here.

As we are already more than ten years into the Information Age and the internet, search engines keep coming up like mushrooms after a rain storm. Some are general and others are more specific. Perhaps you need a particular item and you are constantly frustrated because when you need to buy an item it is out of stock at your local big box store. Well, there is a search engine for you too. Introducing Milo — the search engine for shoppers and people who like to know ahead of time before something is in stock at their local stores. Milo is the newest of the search engines out there and is still in beta testing.

Milo works by having a large choice of your large chain store names and it will browse the inventory of all the sponsored stores inventory to find what store near you has that item you are looking for in stock. The search engine itself is very simple to operate. When you first log on the site, you will find your home city and a search bar. Furthermore, you will see below all the store names that Milo will search for your item, and you can even specify a particular store name if you wish to do so. What’s even better, the service is free and you do not need to register or sign in.

To date, Milo has 13 store names available for searching a product. Furthermore, next to each store logo you will see a caption showing the location of the nearest store in or near your city. The stores, who’s inventories Milo can browse, include Lowe’s, JC Penny, Home Depot, American Eagle, Barnes & Nobles, Best Buy, BevMo, Ikea, Borders, Guitar Center, Staples, Office Depot, Nordstrom, Sears, Macy’s, Micro Center, Radio Shack, Target, Wal-Mart, and EBGames. Note, however, Milo is still undergoing public beta testing, so in the future the list is likely to grow.

Using the search engine is also quite simple. Suppose you are doing some landscaping and you want some landscape lighting to accent certain parts of your landscaping, such as specimen trees or bushes, water features, etc. In the search bar simply type “landscape lighting” and a whole list of stores and varieties of different landscape lighting will come up. Landscape lighting may be a too broad term, so you may want to narrow the choice of what type of light you are looking for. After you made the query, you will notice below the search bar a whole variety of choices. For example, you may want to see what is in stock in all the stores. As default, Milo will have the check box by all stores check marked. Next to the all box, you will see a box next to other stores that carry some of the top brands of lighting fixtures. For landscape lighting, you have the option to search the inventories of either only Lowe’s, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, or you can click on the hyperlink that asks you if you want Milo to show more and all the stores that have linked to Milo will show up.

If you are knowledgeable about the different store names, you should be able to know which stores sell what. For example, Best Buy is a store chain that mainly specializes in consumer electronics and appliances. Obviously there is no sense in looking into that store’s inventory. Lowe’s and Home Depot, however, are stores that specialize in home and garden products, so these stores are the more sensible to look up.

For other products you can also search for a specific brand, but that does not apply to home & garden merchandise. You can also choose the price range that you are looking for.

Now, let’s go back to the search. You will notice that “landscape lighting” is too broad of a search for you and you want the low voltage landscape lighting. With just landscape lighting, you will find that you will find other light fixtures as well. What will happen if we narrow the search down to “low voltage landscape lighting,” or “solar landscape lighting?” If you narrow the search down to just “low voltage landscape lighting,” you will find that all the low voltage or 12 volt lighting fixtures or whole sets that are available in your location and the stores that have these items in stock. For example, in Michigan City, IN, there are two stores that have low voltage lights in stock. These stores are Wal-Mart and Lowe’s, and besides Michigan City, you can also find items in other stores near Michigan City. The items that are in stock in the Wal-Mart or the Lowe’s in Michigan City will appear at the top of the list, but if you scroll down, you will see items in stock in stores that are in towns near Michigan City, such as La Porte, Valparaiso, Chesterton, or even as far as South Bend or Chicago.

Other helpful features on Milo are maps that are provided by Google Maps which show your location and you can also find the stores that are listed in your search where the product you want is in stock.

Milo is the brainchild of the child prodigy, Jack Abraham, who named the search engine after his beloved dog, Milo. Jack Abraham started his career in computers and technology at age 13, when he started working with data extraction encoding and processing mechanisms for ComScore. Mr. Abraham also worked on behavioral targeting strategies for Microsoft and Drugstore.com. Another one of Mr. Abraham’s achievements is the development of the automated arbitrage system for eBay. Mr. Abraham is currently studying at the Wharton School of Business, where he will be graduating magna cum laude with a customized degree in Technological Entrepreneurship, which is a merger between business and computer sciences. When Mr. Abraham graduates, he will receive the title of Joseph Wharton Scholar. Mr. Abraham still works at Milo as the company’s CEO.

Another cofounder of Milo is John Evans, who is a seasoned entrepreneur and has founded several other companies before founding Milo. Mr. Evans also worked at J. P. Evans, Inc., which is a small software company with a seven-person staff, where he ran all operations. J. P. Evans was also founded by Mr. Evans and builds custom solutions for various technical problems and has some Fortune 500 companies among its clientele.

The third cofounder of Milo is Ted Dziuba, who is casually known as the company’s minister of defense and works on the company’s Python code. Mr. Dziuba joined the founders of Milo after hearing about them from Pressflip, which is a machine learning company in which Mr. Dziuba was also a cofounder. Mr. Dziuba is also one of the cofounders of Google.

Milo’s investors include ICBT Capital Partners and Youniversity Ventures, along with several individual investors, who are Keith Rabois, Len Lodish, Jawed Karim, Kevin Hartz, and Dr. Magin Abraham.

ICBT Capital Partners is actually a privately owned hedge fund that invests in both public markets and high growth private equity funds. ICBT is based in San Francisco, California.

Youniversity Ventures is a vc firm that seeks business students or young entrepreneurs who have an innovative product and are in the internet and consumer industries. Besides providing entrepreneurs with the necessary capital, the people at Youniversity also provides mentorship, expertise, and the contacts that are vital to get the business up off the ground and in flight. Youniversity Ventures is located in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and invests in the geographic location of the Twin Cities and the Bay Area in California. Some of the entrepreneurs that Youniversity Ventures has backed include the founders of Paypal, Youtube, Linkedin, and others.

For more information about Milo, click here.