Enterprise blockchain adoption will increase in 2021
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 by Richard Harris
One significant trend witnessed in 2020 was the wave of large enterprises moving to execute their business logic in Layer 2 networks and simply using Layer 1 for consensus and arbitration. This combination offers enterprises the best of both public networks — with superior, distributed trust - and private networks — with lower costs and better scalability, p...
Postal.io redefines offline B2B marketing
Tuesday, May 5, 2020 by Brittany Hainzinger
Offline sales and marketing engagement is being redefined by Postal.io, particularly in today’s era of social distancing and remote work brought about by the global coronavirus pandemic. Ushering in a new era of capability and control, Postal’s sales and marketing automation platform enables enterprise B2B companies to effectively manage offline marketing pr...
Postman funding series B reaches $50M
Monday, June 24, 2019 by Richard Harris
Postman announced the completion of a Series B financing round totaling $50 million. The funding was led by CRV and included participation by Nexus Venture Partners. And CRV General Partner Devdutt Yellurkar has joined the Postman board of directors.
“Postman has created a powerful collaboration platform for the entire API development lifecycle. CRV is de...
RapidAPI raises $25M to continue scaling API marketplace
Thursday, June 20, 2019 by Richard Harris
RapidAPI announced that it has raised $25 million in Series B financing. The funding round is led by M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), with participation from DNS Capital, and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Green Bay Capital. The round brings total funding to date to $37.5 million.
Since its Series A funding announcement in March 2018, RapidAPI expand...
New crypto tool announced as blockchain makes a comeback
Monday, May 6, 2019 by Christian Hargrave
Pcore announced the launch of their Token Sale (PCC) as the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain markets rebound and investors prepare to re-enter the market. The Pcore discount invoicing platform is one-of-a-kind and based on Blockchain technology. The main difference between this invoicing system and others is that businesses using Pcore can accept more forms of payment and ...
How to make testing apps easier using HeadSpin
Tuesday, January 8, 2019 by Richard Harris
New device launches are exciting for consumers, but a lot happens behind the scenes. New devices mean new device-OS configurations. App developers have to scramble to understand how their apps will perform under new circumstances. This cannot be taken for granted, because a few seconds of additional app load time means millions of lost revenue. New device launches put a...
Data warehousing company Snowflake garners $450M in funding
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Snowflake Computing says it has closed $450 million in additional growth funding led by Sequoia Capital. The remainder of Snowflake’s existing investors also participated: Altimeter Capital, Capital One Growth Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, Madrona Venture Group, Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Wing Ventures. New investor Meritech Capital also joined t...
Making apps by collaborating and sharing the profits
Monday, September 24, 2018 by Richard Harris
Everyone has a project idea but most of them never go anywhere because getting all of the resources together to pull it off seems monumental. You might be a developer, but your not a designer. Or you might be a good marketer, but you have no sense of business.
For the past 12 months Crowdsourcer.io has been working on a web platform where people can collaborate on pr...
Code security gamification company nabs $3.5M in funding
Friday, September 14, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Secure application development platform provider Secure Code Warrior announced that it has gained US $3.5 million in funding from two strategic venture capital firms. The financing was led by Washington DC-based Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Sydney-based AirTree Ventures. The initial funding round will allow the company to further expand its rapidly gro...
Developer collaboration tools and tips from someone who knows
Thursday, August 23, 2018 by Richard Harris
Lots of organizations claim to prioritize transparency. And there are certainly plenty of tools out there that make it easy for coworkers to share information and communicate, but does that always equate to transparency? Why are people often dissatisfied with their companies' approach to developer collaboration and team collaboration in general?
We connected...
Cisco invests in Dremio to provide better data analytics
Thursday, August 2, 2018 by Richard Harris
Dremio is a new Data-as-a-Service Platform company, created by veterans of open source and big data technologies, and the creators of Apache Arrow. They just announced that Cisco Investments will be investing into the company, extending Dremio's Series B financing to $30 million. The company previously closed their Series B round in January 2018, led by Norwest...
Automation Anywhere hits $1.8 billion valuation
Thursday, July 5, 2018 by Richard Harris
Automation Anywhere has completed its Series A financing round of $250 million led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity with participation from General Atlantic and World Innovation Lab (WiL). This brings Automation Anywhere’s post-money valuation to $1.8 billion. This sizable investment will help extend Automation Anywhere&rsquo...
CloudBees DevOps suite recieves $62M in growth funding
Monday, July 2, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
CloudBees announced it has successfully closed $62 million in growth funding. The funding round was made up of $37 million of equity led by Delta-v Capital and $25 million of growth financing from Golub Capital’s Late Stage Lending business. The new equity financing included strong participation from existing investors Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and Veri...
Flying cars could be here sooner than you think
Wednesday, June 13, 2018 by Richard Harris
According to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan, flying cars are set to disrupt the mobility space with at least ten early entrants expected to launch various versions of flying cars by 2022. With helicopters and other adaptable aviation playing a vital role in supporting law enforcement throughout the U.S., airborne technology is becoming an important accessory ...
Upskill closes in on $17.2M from investors
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Upskill has announces that it has raised $17.2 million in new capital to support increased growth and product development. The funding round adds new investors including Accenture and Cisco Investments, as well as continued participation from Boeing HorizonX, GE Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and other industrial-focused investors.This latest financing build...
Music in apps: A chat with the CEO of feed.fm
Thursday, March 1, 2018 by Richard Harris
Music licensing is a pain. We know it's there for a very good reason, but let's be honest... It can be a serious barrier to the perfect experience that app developers hope to convey. Finding the right music can be a big part of that, but nobody wants to settle for the generic royalty free music.That's why we talked to Jeff Yasuda, CEO and Founder of feed.fm, to learn ab...
Triple T transport goes live with Trucker Tools
Monday, February 26, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Triple T Transport has gone live with Smart Capacity, a freight matching and carrier connectivity platform from Trucker Tools. Over the past several months, Triple T conducted an evaluation of freight-matching and trucker connectivity portals as part of a strategic technology assessment. At issue was a decision of how to invest in or build technologies that would suppor...
Mobile financing app hits $1B milestone
Thursday, February 1, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Handle Financial has announced that more than $1 billion dollars in bills have been paid through Prism, its popular mobile app dedicated to helping consumers take control of their finances. The milestone comes as Prism’s biller network continues to expand. As a financial management tool that allows users to automate tracking bills and account balances, enable mobile rem...
Immersv VR and Mobile 360 marketing firm nabs $10.5M in Series A
Wednesday, August 23, 2017 by Richard Harris
Immersv, an interactive advertising platform for Mobile 360 and Virtual Reality, has completed a $10.5 million Series A round of financing. The Series A financing builds on a year of significant product and market momentum for Immersv, which combines interactive 360 advertising with a programmatic real time bidding platform. The company has recently signed programmatic ...
WRLD expands into US offices
Tuesday, June 6, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
WRLD, formerly known as eeGeo, a 3D mapping platform, has announced it has expanded offices to the U.S. along with the launch of new tools for web, mobile, AR and VR to create the most immersive, accurate 3D visualizations for Indoor Buildings, Smart Cities and Gaming. WRLD has also announced the appointment of Faizaan Ghauri as its new chief executive officer, based in...
Mashape gets $18M in series B funding to help further the API revolution
Friday, March 24, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Mashape has announced that they have achieved a company milestone as they close a $18M Series B funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, with previous investors CRV and Index Ventures participating. The funding round, according to Mashape, "represents all the hard work by the team, our dedication to building the best and most open API Gateway f...
AirMap secures $26M to become the air traffic controller for drones
Saturday, February 25, 2017 by Richard Harris
AirMap announced a $26 million Series B funding round led by Microsoft Ventures, with additional participation from Airbus Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures (the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated), Rakuten, Sony, Yuneec, and existing investors General Catalyst and Lux Capital. The new investment brings their total funding to more than $43 million. The Series B fund...
Advancing transformational and intelligent transportation technologies
Wednesday, February 15, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) released today its “The Road Ahead: The Next Generation of Mobility” public policy roadmap that provides policy recommendations on how to advance the research and deployment of transformational and intelligent transportation technologies. Specifically, the roadmap provides recommendations on policy issues t...
Tricentis raises $165 million to speed up testing in DevOps
Monday, January 30, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
When it comes to web development, mobile app programming, or even establishing your enterprise software onto the market, there is one thing that all technology developers have in common. We all HATE having to test buggy software. I'm sure that every developer has went through the same traumatic experience at one point or another. That moment of getting so close to an ea...
AppsFlyer raises $56 million to advance mobile marketing measurement
Tuesday, January 17, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
AppsFlyer has raised an additional $56 million in Series C financing, bringing its total funding to $84 million. Having grown revenues by 500% and staff from 40 to 240 people across 12 global offices in two years, the company will invest in the enhancement of its products to help even more marketers measure every engagement with their target audiences. The round wa...
Resonance launches SDK For proximitybased device pairing
Friday, November 4, 2016 by Richard Harris
Resonance has emerged from stealth to announce the availability of its new proximity-based software development kit (SDK) for device pairing. Developers are using the Resonance SDK to create advanced mobile application features for a wide range of iOS and Android apps where secure device-to-device connectivity can provide value - gaming, e-commerce, payments, retail, tr...
How revenue recycling can help you improve capital and fund growth
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 by Martin Macmillan
Almost all app developers face a common financial challenge: Keeping cash flowing during the time between launch of a new app and payout of revenue by the app stores and platform holders.This period of time is referred to in the app economy as the “funding gap.” It’s common in many different industries, especially among manufacturers that have to shell out capital to pa...
A Peek Inside Ireland's Largest Games Developer, DIGIT Game Studios
Friday, September 30, 2016 by Richard Harris
DIGIT started in 2012 and based it in Dublin, Ireland. Not the usual gaming capital, however it's had a great impact on the company today. Their focus is on building strategy games for mobile and browser. They spent the first couple of years of the company's life focused on the underlying technology and believe they are probably the most advanced GaaS (Games as a Servic...
Security Startup Provider buguroo Launches New Threat Intelligence Platform
Wednesday, February 17, 2016 by Richard Harris
Security provider buguroo, a U.S. startup and spinoff of Deloitte’s European Security Operations Center (SOC), is launching bugThreats, a threat intelligence platform (TIP) that looks outside the enterprise infrastructure and focuses on useful intelligence gathered where the compromised end users, and their stolen data, are.Focused on intelligence and not protection, bu...
UNIFi Software Raises $4.45M in Funding To Drive Hadoop
Sunday, December 14, 2014 by Richard Harris
UNIFi secured $4.45M in financing, led by Canaan Partners, to boost Hadoop in the enterprise. The company also unveiled its Early Access Program. The program is made of several Fortune 500 companies. The IPO is backed by investors to help companies such as Havas Media and Disney in democratizing their data assets.The environment for executives is challenged with ev...
Upsight Sells PlayHaven Mobile Game Ad Network to Science, Inc.
Monday, September 29, 2014 by Richard Harris
Science Inc. has acquired the PlayHaven mobile game ad network from Upsight. The PlayHaven Ad Network services more than 18,000 games, 245 million monthly active users, and 5.7 billion monthly sessions.Science reports that it will immediately merge Chirp Ads, its mobile marketing unit, into PlayHaven. The combined company, which will take the PlayHaven name and will hel...
Seeking Investors for Your App or SaaS business Here’s What We Look For
Monday, June 23, 2014 by BJ Lackland
Recently I’ve written about why banks don’t understand App companies and how the VC model isn’t a good fit if you want to retain control of your company or don’t have a multi-billion dollar market opportunity. So it probably makes sense to talk about why we think App and SaaS companies make great investments, and what we at Lighter Capital look for.We focus on a particu...
Why Banks Struggle With SaaS Companies
Wednesday, April 30, 2014 by BJ Lackland
In the “good old days”, companies took raw materials and assembled them into products (inventory), then sold the products generating account receivables (AR). These activities required lots of working capital and created hard assets – inventory and AR. So when a business wanted to get that working capital from the bank, the bank could lend and feel “safe”; if the busine...
Find Out Which Funding Option is Right for Your App Business
Saturday, April 19, 2014 by Stuart Parkerson
Software, technology and knowledge-based companies, including app centric businesses, pose a unique challenge when the owners are considering funding to fuel their growth. These companies exist in high-growth, high-margin markets and traditional financing options don’t always provide a good fit or are may not even be available.However, the reality is that to grow a busi...
Planning to Raise Capital The Strategy You Choose Today Will Change Your Company’s Future
Thursday, April 17, 2014 by BJ Lackland
Financing discussions for early stage software, technology and app companies typically focus on the sexiest and most elusive source offending - venture capital. But the truth is VC is not the only, nor the bestoption, for early stage businesses. There are emerging sources of capital that may make more sense for your business. At Lighter Capital we spen...