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Fund-o-rama
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Written By Anthony Iaffaldano | September 15, 2006 | Share This
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Don’t you love the smell of VC funding in the morning?
The air is rank with it these days. It seems to be getting all late-90’s around the industry lately, as funding has been flying at a fast and furious pace. Investors are trying to get in on the next big Web 2.0 app in any way that they can, buying in to a series of business ideas related to recent acquisiton targets and investment darlings like MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr and YouTube.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the companies that have scored some spending money recently…
- Dogster - Yup. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Friendster for Dogs. Dog owners can network with each other, and proudly share pictures of their pooch prodigies. There’s even a sister site called Catster. Angel investors ponied up $1 million in a round of initial financing to help the 2 year old site learn a few new tricks. Obviously, they’re hoping that the success of social networks like MySpace and Facebook translates to the pet world. And in case you were wondering, yes we’re already familiar with Dogster. Check out the profile for our office mascot, Pinky
- Fliqz - Raise your hand if you think the Web needed yet another YouTube clone. Anybody? Bueller? Well apparently, neither does Fliqz. Instead, they want to help people store, organize and share high-res versions of their personal videos with friends and family. Interesting - Fliqz is the first video search engine I’ve encountered that is actively cultivating a specific type of video. However, the question remains - if YouTube has been having trouble finding a way to generate revenue with the commercially-targeted clips they’ve been attracting, how much harder will it be to monetize personal content? Angel investors didn’t see a problem, offering Fliqz $1 million to figure out the answer.
- PostRoller - On the other side of the video world is PostRoller, a video advertising network that counts Break.com, Streetfire.com, Blip.tv and WeakGame.com among its distribution partners. According to Rafat over at PaidContent, the company just secured $600K out of a $1 million round from True Ventures and Colin Wiel Investments. This one makes a bit more sense, as PostRoller is nothing but business model. With the proliferation of me too video sites out there, there’s a big opportunity for someone to step in and offer those companies a revenue stream.
- ClickCaster
- In another report from Paid Content, Rafat reports that ClickCaster, a turnkey podcasting solution, has just brought in half a million in an initial round of funding.
Topics: Investment, M&A |
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