Reply.com on Thursday announced it had acquired fellow Bay Area firm MerchantCircle for $60 million cash and stock. The deal is expected to go through in Q3 of this year.

The deal makes good sense, as MerchantCircle acts as a business directory for more than a million small businesses and Reply.com is an ad firm that targets advertising for local businesses. MercantCircle’s incredible network will give Reply a huge roster of businesses to which they can potentially sell ads.

MercantCircle was founded in 2005 and has raised $14 million in funding to date. The company claims to have businesses listed in 95% of U.S. cities with a population over 200.

Reply says the combined company expects more than $100 million in revenue in 2012.

Tags: deals, online advertising

Companies: MerchantCircle, Reply

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Reply.com on Thursday announced it had acquired fellow Bay Area firm MerchantCircle for $60 million cash and stock. The deal is expected to go through in Q3 of this year.

The deal makes good sense, as MerchantCircle acts as a business directory for more than a million small businesses and Reply.com is an ad firm that targets advertising for local businesses. MercantCircle’s incredible network will give Reply a huge roster of businesses to which they can potentially sell ads.

MercantCircle was founded in 2005 and has raised $14 million in funding to date. The company claims to have businesses listed in 95% of U.S. cities with a population over 200.

Reply says the combined company expects more than $100 million in revenue in 2012.

Tags: deals, online advertising

Companies: MerchantCircle, Reply

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

A new startup called Project Slice wants to make all those receipts in your email inbox genuinely useful. Similar to what Mint does for your personal finances, what TripIt does for your travel plans, and what services like Manilla do for your bills, the Palo Alto, Calif. company aims to make it easier to actually see all of your purchase information in one place, rather than struggling to find it on the right website or email.

Project Slice offers the service through both an embedded application in Yahoo Mail (which should help the company get in front of lots of eyeballs quickly) and through its own Slice Web application, which is currently invite-only beta testing. So the company says users will be able to easily track shipping, bring up a merchant’s customer service and return information, and see all of their purchases — not just the store where they made the purchase, but what they actually bought.

Slice can also aggregate all of your online purchase history with specific businesses, including popular retailers like Amazon.com and daily deals sites, like Groupon. The company says the service is powered by a “sophisticated semantic parsing infrastructure that enables us to extract and organize item level purchase information from multiple merchants and receipt formats.”

Project Slice also announced that it has raised $9.4 million from DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Floodgate (the fund from Digg and Twitter investor Mike Maples), Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and Rick Thompson.

Companies: DCM, Floodgate, Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Project Slice

People: Eric Schmidt, Michael Birch, Mike Maples, Rick Thompson

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

A new startup called Project Slice wants to make all those receipts in your email inbox genuinely useful. Similar to what Mint does for your personal finances, what TripIt does for your travel plans, and what services like Manilla do for your bills, the Palo Alto, Calif. company aims to make it easier to actually see all of your purchase information in one place, rather than struggling to find it on the right website or email.

Project Slice offers the service through both an embedded application in Yahoo Mail (which should help the company get in front of lots of eyeballs quickly) and through its own Slice Web application, which is currently invite-only beta testing. So the company says users will be able to easily track shipping, bring up a merchant’s customer service and return information, and see all of their purchases — not just the store where they made the purchase, but what they actually bought.

Slice can also aggregate all of your online purchase history with specific businesses, including popular retailers like Amazon.com and daily deals sites, like Groupon. The company says the service is powered by a “sophisticated semantic parsing infrastructure that enables us to extract and organize item level purchase information from multiple merchants and receipt formats.”

Project Slice also announced that it has raised $9.4 million from DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Floodgate (the fund from Digg and Twitter investor Mike Maples), Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and Rick Thompson.

Companies: DCM, Floodgate, Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Project Slice

People: Eric Schmidt, Michael Birch, Mike Maples, Rick Thompson

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

A new startup called Project Slice wants to make all those receipts in your email inbox genuinely useful. Similar to what Mint does for your personal finances, what TripIt does for your travel plans, and what services like Manilla do for your bills, the Palo Alto, Calif. company aims to make it easier to actually see all of your purchase information in one place, rather than struggling to find it on the right website or email.

Project Slice offers the service through both an embedded application in Yahoo Mail (which should help the company get in front of lots of eyeballs quickly) and through its own Slice Web application, which is currently invite-only beta testing. So the company says users will be able to easily track shipping, bring up a merchant’s customer service and return information, and see all of their purchases — not just the store where they made the purchase, but what they actually bought.

Slice can also aggregate all of your online purchase history with specific businesses, including popular retailers like Amazon.com and daily deals sites, like Groupon. The company says the service is powered by a “sophisticated semantic parsing infrastructure that enables us to extract and organize item level purchase information from multiple merchants and receipt formats.”

Project Slice also announced that it has raised $9.4 million from DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Floodgate (the fund from Digg and Twitter investor Mike Maples), Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and Rick Thompson.

Companies: DCM, Floodgate, Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Project Slice

People: Eric Schmidt, Michael Birch, Mike Maples, Rick Thompson

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Exclusively.In, a site that offers deals on Indian-inspired fashion, just announced that it has raised $16 million in a second round of funding.

The company, which is based in New York and New Delhi, launched in June of 2010. When I talked to co-founder and chief executive Sunjay Guleria earlier this week, he told me he doesn’t see Exclusively.In as a niche site. It serves the Indian community in the US, of course, but he noted that there’s a growing interest outside that community as well. And the company is going international today, making its deals available to customers in the United Kingdom. Exclusively.In plans to add Canada and India in the next few months.

Exclusively.In follows the “flash sale” model popularized by companies like Gilt Groupe — the deals are only available to members, and only for a limited period of time. Guleria suggested that as the site grows, he’s open to adding other programs.

The new funding comes from Tiger Global Management, with participation from past investors Accel Partners India and Helion Venture Partners. (Accel’s US team has also invested in Groupon, the most famous company in the current social commerce wave.) Exclusively.In has now raised $18.8 million.

Tags: fashion, flash sales, Indian fashion

Companies: Accel Partners, Accel Partners India, Exclusively.in, Helio Venture Partners

People: Sunjay Guleria

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Airbnb, a service that pairs travelers seeking a unique experience with locals willing to rent out their spaces for a fee, is the latest startup to grab the attention of Ashton Kutcher.

The actor has invested a significant amount of money into the San Francisco based startup and will join its team as a strategic advisor, according to the company’s official blog. Kutcher’s role will involve enhancing Airbnb’s community engagement and expanding the service internationally.

Airbnb users have booked over a million reservations from the more than 60,000 listings available across the US and Europe, reports the New York Times.

Airbnb is hardly the only startup Kutcher has invested in, however it is reported to be the largest investment he’s made to date.

Such a financial commitment on Kutcher’s behalf, while likely to pale in comparison to Airbnb’s total funding of $7.82 million, could spark new interest in the company and propel it to success.

In the last few years, Kutcher has been gaining attention as an intelligent investor in the tech startup world. He’s put money into many hot new startups such as ticket event service SeatGeek; proximity-based, buyer-powered market Zaarly; airfare pricing site Hipmunk; mobile development lap Milk; and many more.

Tags: travel

Companies: Airbnb

People: Ashton Kutcher

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Turkish game publisher Peak Games has raised $5 million to make social games for emerging markets.

The deal shows that investors are looking beyond established markets to emerging countries where social games are still catching on. Peak Games, which has more than 10 million monthly active users on Facebook, is targeting its games at Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

The investment comes from Earlybird Venture Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Munich, Germany.

Sidar Sahin, chief executive of the game company in Istanbul, said in an interview that it hopes to expand its roster of social games into markets such as Brazil and the broader Middle East region.

“We believe the next big Facebook games will come from an emerging market,” Sahin said.

While other companies try a one-size-fits-all approach for international markets, Peak Games focuses on making local versions of games that are culturally relevant to the people in the region. That’s key to getting a higher monetization than normal for an emerging market, said Rina Onur, co-founder and chief strategy officer.

Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Morgan, said Peak Games shows that the social gaming market is a global one and that it may already own a leadership position in markets such as Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

Sahin founded the company in October, 2010, and it already has 50 employees and 10 games. The company has 10 million monthly active users playing traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games on Facebook.

Onur said the company’s method is to understand its audience and make games directly for them. She noted that Turkey is the fourth-largest market for Facebook, with more than 28 million users. The number of Facebook users in the broader region grew 78 percent from a year ago.The company says it can reach as many as 56 million Facebook users now and expects that to grow to 250 million by 2015.

Previously, Peak Games raised $2.5 million from Hummingbird Ventures and serial business angels Evren Ucok and Demet Mutlu, bringing its total fundraising to date to $7.5 million in six months.

On a daily basis, 2 million people play the company’s games across five time zones, four continents, and five languages. The titles include Okey, Okey Plus, Poker Star, Komşu Şehir, Komşu Kabile, İkon Kız (FabGirl), Bizim Dünya, Komşu Çiftlik and Petiler. Okey, a card-based game, has more than 4.5 million monthly active users.

The company develops its own games and has also partnered with several leading social game developers in the West, including The Broth and MagnetJoy.

Rivals include Zynga, Disney-Playdom and EA-Playfish, as well regional players such as Brazil-focused firms Mentez and Vostu.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To pitch a startup at the Who’s Got Game contest at GamesBeat 2011, click here.

Companies: Earlybird Venture Capital, Peak Games

People: Sidar Sahin

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

GigaOm already stands out as one of the most heavily-funded sites in the tech news world — and today it nearly doubled that funding, announcing that it has raised another $6 million.

Back when the San Francisco-based company had “only” raised around $8 million, I already found the funding “kind of remarkable”. The new total, $14 million, isn’t a huge amount for a tech startup, but it certainly dwarfs the amount raised by most competing sites. (VentureBeat, for example, has raised less than $1 million, while Business Insider has raised more than $6 million.)

When I asked GigaOm chief executive Paul Walborsky about the decision to raise more money, he responded, “We are big believers in building out a big company.”

GigaOm is certainly one of the most-respected names in the field, but thus far, tech blogs haven’t been acquired for enough money to justify a higher level of funding — the biggest deal has probably been AOL buying TechCrunch for $40 million. Walborsky said that he and founder Om Malik (pictured above) are confident that they’ve figured out a model that works and can continue grow. Rather than limiting its monetization efforts on GigaOm sites (which include GigaOm itself, as well as sites like video-focused NewTeeVee and cleantech-focused Earth2Tech), it sounds like the company sees the blogs as a way to build its brand. The sites also draw in potential new customers for its conferences and the research and reports sold through GigaOm Pro. The new money will mostly go towards building out the technology infrastructure behind Pro, Walborsky added.

“We believe that the growth of GigaOm is going to be driven by our research platform and GigaOm Pro,” he said. “That does not minimize the importance of our online audience. What we write about on the blog is what brings people to read GigaOm on a daily basis.”

GigaOm now claims more than 4 million unique monthly visitors across its sites, a number that’s growing 30 percent annually. According to Walborsky, the company doubled its revenue in 2010, thanks largely to GigaOm Pro. It’s on-track to double that revenue yet again this year, and to become cash-flow positive by the end of 2011.

Tags: tech blogs

Companies: Alloy Partners, Gigaom, Reed Elsevier Ventures, True Ventures

People: Om Malik, Paul Walborsky

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Twitter has finalized its acquisition of immensely popular third-party client TweetDeck, according to a report by CNN Money. The report says the deal is worth more than $40 million in a mix of a cash and stock.

A few weeks ago, TechCrunch reported the first tidbits of the deal. TechCrunch initially cited a $40 million to $50 million range for the purchase, and if the CNN report holds up, TC’s first report will prove accurate.

Just last month UberMedia was supposedly in the process of buying Tweetdeck and had a 30-day exclusive to buy. But negotiations took too long, and that gave Twitter time to propose a better offer.

Tweetdeck is one of the most popular third-party client for Twitter users, with versions available for desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. It can display real-time tweets, direct messages, Facebook feeds, and more, all from the same interface.

Twitter says it wants to better control the user experience, and control of TweetDeck will certainly make that possible. Before this, Twitter bought iPhone client Tweetie and partnered directly with with photo-hoster TwitPic. The company is also encouraging external developers to focus on something other than straightforward Twitter clients.

The only downside to Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck will be the loss of an innovative, popular client pushing Twitter to add new features and come up with better ideas. On the upside, having Twitter and Tweetdeck on the same team could mean better and faster integration between service and client.

Companies: TweetDeck, Twitter

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals