If Nearpod CEO Guido Kovalskys has his way, overhead projectors and PowerPoint presentations will never bore students again. Instead, he wants to see cutting-edge technologies and interactive content become standard tools of the teaching trade. To that end, Nearpod has raised $9.2 million in Series A funding led by Reach Capital to help teachers use mobile tech for live instruction, rather… Read More
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Pivotal filed a Form D last week with the SEC indicating that last week’s $253 million round was actually closer to $653 million. Where did the extra money come from? Well, existing investors EMC converted $400 million in debt to equity to account for the additional money recorded in the SEC form, according to a Pivotal spokesperson. It’s actually interesting that EMC, which is in… Read More
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Some exciting news from the John McAfee camp today: America’s favorite (and most entertaining) cybersecurity expert has a new gig! MGT Capital Investments, a publicly traded company that owns and operates social gaming apps, has announced the appointment of John McAfee as Executive Chairman and CEO. MGT Capital Investments trades on NYSE’s MKT small-cap exchange, with a market cap… Read More
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All the energy for venture funds flows from LPs — the money goes from LPs to partners at funds, which in turn invest in startups. But since the number of IPOs and exits has started to dry up, the pressure is starting to rise on LPs, and Venture Investment Associates’ Chris Douvos knows it. And he made it abundantly clear to investors on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt NY… Read More
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CoreOS, the company behind the container-centric CoreOS Linux distribution and Tectonic container management service, today announced that it has raised a $28 million Series B round led by GV, the fund formerly known as Google Ventures. Other investors include Accel, Fuel Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and the Y Combinator Continuity Fund. In total, the company has… Read More
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Bango, the U.K.-based mobile payments company that provides tech to enable consumers to charge app store purchases directly to their phone bill, has acquired the U.S.-based carrier billing service BilltoMobile from Danal Inc. Read More
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Swedish edtech startup DigiExam, which also has offices in the U.S. and U.K., offers software-as-a-service for academic testing and grading. It enables students to take tests digitally and in turn teachers to grade the results more efficiently. Read More
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Alibaba has broken the seal on its startup fund for Hong Kong after it backed its first three companies in undisclosed deals. The companies are unsurprisingly in the e-commerce space: Yeechoo is online fashion store focused on renting not buying, Shopline helps online sellers use the internet for marketing, while GoGoVan is delivery on-demand. Read More
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It takes some serious engineering magic to build low-latency group mobile video chat and simultaneous content viewing. That’s why Sean Parker’s recently relaunched video chat room app Airtime acquired vLine, which offered video chat infrastructure to SaaS companies. Founded in 2010, vLine was backed with $1.5 million from Kleiner Perkins and Harrison Metal. vLine’s team will… Read More
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eBay announced today that it is acquiring Expertmaker, a Swedish company that specializes in analysis of big data with a machine-learning twist. Read More
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