Bambi Francisco, Vator complete funding round

Bambi Francisco, the former columnist for financial news site MarketWatch who resigned last month after ethical questions were raised about her relationship with Vator.tv, has announced that the startup has completed a round of fundraising.

Among her investors are Peter Thiel, the PayPal cofounder, and Richard Rosenblatt, the former CEO of MySpace's former parent company, Intermix. In an interview earlier this month with Beet.TV, Rosenblatt announced that he had joined the round.

Vator invites entrepreneurs to videotape their "elevator pitches," or a request for funding, and post them to the site. This way an entrepreneur makes one pitch instead of having to do it dozens of times to different investors and venture capitalists.

Francisco quit MarketWatch after CNET News.com and the Wall Street Journal published stories about how she had written about Thiel and some of Vator's business partners after her MarketWatch bosses forbade her from doing so. Most news organizations attempt to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In her interview with Beet.TV, Francisco did not discuss how much funding Vator received, but the blog VentureBeat estimated that the size was at least several hundred thousand dollars.