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EnterpriseDB raises cash and its open-source profile

Good things come in threes, as EnterpriseDB confirmed today. The company today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series C round, including backing from IBM. With $37.5 million in funding to date, EnterpriseDB isn't hurting for cash.

This, however, has not been EnterpriseDB's primary problem. It's not cash that it has lacked, but open-source cachet. Its story of "Oracle performance and interoperability at a fraction of the cost" is a winner, but it was muted by its lack of a compelling open-source story.

That just changed.… Read more

Q&A with Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund

A lot of ink gets spilled debating technology's next big frontier. I'll leave that to the clairvoyants, but this much is a no-brainer: figuring out ways to engineer a safer, cleaner environment is going to create a lot of new fortunes.

Last year, alone, venture capitalists poured some $3 billion into clean tech. And what's really interesting is that the battle against greenhouse gas emissions is no longer caricatured as simply a "greenie" obsession. In fact, there's no shortage of policy statements on the topic from CEOs at Fortune 500 companies like Duke Energy … Read more

Why I'm fed up with the global warming debate

I've had it. Watching years of endless debate over global warming play out without a final denouement, why not face the hard truth that we're going about it all wrong? Both sides invariably trot out reams of competing statistics or quote scientific tomes to support their positions in a conversation that goes stale fast.

But I've got a better idea. If you could sit down with a big global warming skeptic like United States Sen. James Inhofe, or even with President Bush, forget the "woe is us routine." Instead, why not appeal to their capitalist … Read more

Fan-funded music: Jill Sobule

New or relatively obscure artists might have to turn to an organization like ArtistShare or Sellaband to get listeners to fund a professional-level recording project, but established artists have an easier way: they can ask their fans. (Or have their mothers do it.)

That's what Jill Sobule has done. She's best known for her minor 1995 hit "I Kissed a Girl," but has released several albums since then. Unfortunately, she's had a lot of trouble with her labels--two have gone bankrupt, and another two have dropped her. So to fund her next recording, she's … Read more

Fan-funded music

Making a professional-sounding recording can be expensive, particularly for ensembles (like rock bands) who want to capture at least some semblance of a live performance.

Sure, you can get an decent recording with a portable stereo recorder, or a couple of inexpensive mics panned left and right and plugged directly into the mixer, but most artists want their music to sound as good as it possibly can--as good as any other artist played on the radio. That takes an array of microphones and other audio gear and somebody who knows what they're doing. In other words, money.

In the … Read more

Radar Networks takes $13 million, readies Twine for the public

Radar Networks is prepping for a March public beta of Twine, a Web application that organizes information into a "semantic graph," connecting people, places, companies, products, Web pages, videos, and photos, and turning it into Semantic Web content.

In addition, the company raised $13 million in Series B funding from Velocity Interactive, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Vulcan Capital. The new capital will go toward building out the back-end infrastructure, which can be substantial as Semantic Web applications process and store large amounts of data, as well as adding staff as the business scales up, says Radar Networks founder … Read more

Mobile photo-sharing company Tiny Pictures gets $7.2 million

Tiny Pictures, a company that operates a mobile media-sharing site called Radar, announced on Monday that it has pulled in $7.2 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Valley stalwart Draper Fisher Jurvetson; previous investor Mohr Davidow Ventures also contributed.

Radar's service lets users shoot mobile photos and videos to its site through e-mail and mobile messaging. All photos on Radar are automatically friends-only; members of a user's friends list can instantly see uploaded content and comment on it from their PCs or mobile phones.

It looks as if Radar has some fairly … Read more

Intel throws venture cash behind site that encourages tequila-shot contests

Something about this just makes me uneasy.

Bragster, a London-based site "for dares and social bets," announced Wednesday that it has secured $3.5 million in Series A venture cash. The funding round was led by none other than Intel Capital, the investment branch of the famed chipmaker.

The premise of the Digg-meets-Jackass-esque site is that members dare one another (or place open dares) to perform ridiculous feats, then insist on video evidence that they were completed. Bragster, co-founded by a former Morgan Stanley employee and an Amazon.com alum, provides prizes to some of the most over-the-top … Read more

Crafty commerce site Etsy gets $27 million in funding

One of New York's most talked about tech start-ups these days is undoubtedly Etsy, the Brooklyn-based online marketplace for buying and selling handmade goods. And it's continuing to generate headlines: co-founder Robert Kalin announced in a blog post Wednesday that the company has picked up an impressive $27 million in Series D financing.

The venture funding comes from existing investors Union Square Ventures and Hubert Burda Media, as well as Accel Partners' Jim Breyer, who will take on a seat on Etsy's board of directors.

Etsy is "almost break-even" when it comes to profits, Kalin … Read more