vc

Web meeting provider Dimdim raises $6 million

Open-source Web conferencing provider Dimdim has raised $6 million in Series B funding, the company is set to announce on Wednesday.

The funding round, which was led by current investors Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and Draper Richards, will enable Dimdim to introduce enhancements to the free service and expand its market reach.

Dimdim competes with fee-based services like Webex. Because it is open source, it could become a platform for real-time communications if it garners enough developer support, my CNET colleague Rafe Needleman predicts.

Since its private launch 10 months ago, Boston-based Dimdim has attracted more than 500,000 … Read more

Video surveillance firm gets $10 million in VC funding

Video surveillance firm VideoIQ is set to announce on Wednesday morning a $10 million Series B funding round.

Lehman Brothers Venture Partners is leading the round, and current investors Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture are participating.

The funding will be used to help VideoIQ expand to new markets and continue product development of its IP video surveillance and video analytics products, the company says.

Bedford, Mass.-based VideoIQ was spun out of GE Security in 2007 and is headed by Scott Schnell, a former RSA executive.

Open-ness and the economics of information

I was reading an interesting post from Union Square Ventures Brad Burnham about entrepreneurship and the idea that they (along with many other VCs) are more likely to fund companies that are open with their ideas.

Many of the better entrepreneurs we know engage anyone they come across about their ideas. On the surface, this seems kind of dumb. Every time you describe your plans, you are providing a blueprint for a competitor. So, why do they do it? My hypothesis is they do it because their experience has taught them that, on average, every time they describe their ideas, … Read more

Amazon invests in Animoto

Amazon has invested an undisclosed amount in Animoto, a site that enables people to easily create videos from their photos and music.

This is the first big investor for Animoto. Previous funding has come from friends and family.

Animoto.com, which launched in August, has more than 160,000 registered users, with 7.5 percent of them paying a $30 annual fee to be able to create longer videos. The company also has a Facebook application, which launched in March and has more than 750,000 users.

The Amazon funding doesn't exactly come as a surprise given the links … Read more

Search engine Blekko gets more funding

Search engine Blekko, which is so stealthy it doesn't have a public Web site yet, has raised a second round of funding of $3 million, TechCrunch reported.

Last year, Blekko raised $2 million from Baseline Ventures and two ex-Googlers. They joined in this round, along with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, SoftTech VC and Western Technology Investment.

Blekko was founded by Rich Skrenta, who founded news aggregation site Topix and co-founded Netscape's Open Directory Project.

Where we kill a deer every day to bring you this show

EPISODE 99

Eric Litman and Rana Sobhany stop by The 404 to wish Randall the best. We'll talk about HBO on iTunes, Google Street View face blurring, and how Speed Racer lied about how well it did at the box office!

Don't forget to leave your farewell messages for Randall! E-mail them to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

BlackBerry maker launches mobile VC fund

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is working with three other companies to launch a $150 million venture capital fund that will invest in companies developing new applications and services for mobile devices.

Electronic publisher Thomson Reuters and venture capital firms JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners have joined RIM to establish the fund. RIM said the fund won't be restricted to investing in BlackBerry-specific applications. It will also invest in start-ups as well as relatively mature software developers.

Specifically, investments will focus on services and applications such as mobile payments, advertising, retailing, and banking. It also will support companies … Read more

Where I can't stop laughing

EPISODE 68

Eric Litman from WashingtonVC joins us to talk crap on idiotic startup founders, we invent a new social network for plants and apparently elephants can paint portraits, no joke. Oh, and by the way, your April Fools' joke isn't that funny.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Open source funding news: $9m for Alfresco and $11m for Zenoss

Today Alfresco announced a $9 million strategic funding round from SAP Ventures while Zenoss announced an $11 million round from Grotech Capital.

While I don't expect 2008 to have the volume of open source related fundings that we saw in 2006 and 2007, it's because the majority of the companies who raised money are not strapped for cash.

Now I'll just sit back and wait for these guys to send me my stock options and/or sign over 15% of all future earnings.