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Longtime technology innovation investment firm Battery Ventures increased its capital to over $4 billion Thursday as the firm announced the securing of its ninth fund at a value of $750 million. Startups and entrepreneurs may be able to look at 2010 with high hopes as Battery's fund, one of the largest seen in the last year, comes after a period of decline in venture funding. Sponsor Battery Ventures, which operates out of Boston, Silicon Valley, and Israel, has been investing in tech innovation since 1983. The firm has helped several Internet companies launch initial public offerings (IPOs), such as the early search engine Infoseek , the web app platform Akamai , and analytics provider Omniture . In a press release Thursday, Battery partner Tom Crotty expressed his hope that Battery's new fund signals a rebound of floundering investment dollars. "After a slow investment pace industry-wide in 2009, we look forward to rounding out the portfolio of Fund VIII and initiating the investment cycle for our new fund," said Crotty. "With improving market fundamentals, we believe the next few years will be healthy ones to put money to work." This fresh influx of capital for Battery, which equals the amount raised in their previous fund, should excite early stage startups who have been struggling to raise funding in the down market. Battery, which invests in all stages of companies, could be an excellent benchmark for what is to come in 2010. This new fund, along with other early signals this year, could be a precursor to a steady increase of VC funding. Google may be helping this as well, as the Internet behemoth is giving the M&A market a boost by snatching up companies left and right in 2010. So far this year, Google has acquired Aardvark , reMail , Picnik and DocVerse , all within the first 64 days of the year. In 2009, a year with poor M&A performance, Google only acquired 6 companies; at this year's pace they could buy as many as 20, though they have been known to go on quick brief shopping sprees. In the early summer of 2007, they roped in 11 companies in less than three months, but only totaled 16 that year. As the first quarter of 2010 draws to a close in a few weeks, it will be interesting to see numbers on how the M&A and venture capital markets are fairing. If Battery Ventures' fresh cash and Google's acquisitions are any barometer, things should be looking up for the rest of the year. Discuss

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Battery Ventures Rakes In $750M, Is VC Funding Over the Hump?

Early stage startups in Europe will be the primary beneficiaries of a new €6 million seed fund just announced by Berlin-based Team Europe Ventures . In the past we've talked about Europe's entrepreneurial woes, most notably a dearth of seed funding due to having a culture largely averse to taking risks financially . This new fund is a good step towards changing that trend and keeping more startups from looking for funding elsewhere. Sponsor The €6 million fund (over $8 million) will provide up to €500,000 to early stage startups in the Internet and mobile Internet spaces over the next three years. Team Europe plans to selectively choose four to five startups each year to receive the funding, rather than quickly spreading the wealth around to any worthy recipient. "If we feel that a business will succeed without us, but will be quicker, larger, nicer with us - than it's a case for us," said Team Europe partner Kolja Hebenstreit in a press release Tuesday. "Experience shows that decisive decisions are often made during the foundation phase, so we think it's good to speak with experienced potential partners as early as possible." Team Europe has also rounded up entrepreneurs from past investments and active angel investors to assist in the disbursement of the funds, including Matthias Spieß of Leipzig-based Spreadshirt, and angel Günther Faltin. "These are all people who are active in the Internet space and with whom we have successfully worked together in the past," said partner Lukasz Gadowski, explaining the "tightly-knit network of experts" that will help Team Europe pick early stage companies to fund. Hopefully this fund will start a trend among European venture capital firms. As we mentioned in February, many European startups have been looking to American incubators to help them get off the ground. If funds like these succeed, we could see these numbers go down over time, and more successful startups could emerge from Europe. Most VCs in Europe look for proven models and a solid financial foundations, so seed funds like Team Europe's and organizations like Seedcamp can help startups get a boost into the line of sight of VCs providing second, third and fourth round funding. Discuss

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For European Startups, New €6 Million Seed Fund Is A Step In the Right Direction

Whether a website sells off your email address or forces you to install some pop-up plagued toolbar just to get 10% off your next online purchase, searching for online coupons can involve treading in dangerous waters. Enter CheapTweet , which uses both algorithms and crowdsourcing to verify its content, and suddenly looking for the best deals online isn't quite so scary. The self-described "Twitter-based social deals search engine site" does precisely that - it finds tweets about deals and coupons through a custom search algorithm and then allows its users to upvote or downvote the deals on its site. Sponsor Tweeting deals, if your wondering, can be big business. In 2009, Dell made more than $6.5 million through Twitter deals and CheapTweet probably sent a few of those customers their direction. The ad aggregator is actually celebrating its 5 millionth indexed deal with a roll-out of a refurbished website, which includes upgrades to its search engine, the voting mechanism, a redesign and and new feature, the "DealStream". CheapTweet allows its users to search for deals by category and keyword and will customize the stream of tweets according to their votes and Twitter conversations. They can also up and down vote tweets, like they've become accustomed to on sites like Reddit, Digg or Google Moderator. The "DealStream", which contains a user's customized results, can also be read as an RSS feed. As CEO Hayes Davis points out in a press release, CheapTweet is poised to help distinguish the good from the bad as more and more companies prepare to monetize through Twitter. "Online channels will only become more cluttered, as social networks start to monetize with ads," said Davis. "CheapTweet's service makes it easier for shoppers to sort through the clutter online and shop more effectively." We've not only heard a number of rumors and anonymous tips on what the Twitter ad platform will look like, but other companies like 140 Proof have begun to enter the market, bringing tweet-like ads to third party clients. This doesn't even account for the vast number of small businesses taking advantage of the service to pass out Web-only deals and coupons. With all of these ads, CheapTweet will help weed out the bad apples. Its users down vote nefarious tweets, the algorithm cuts out spam using a form of natural language processing and the multiple tweets about the same deal are combined to cut down on the noise. We think that a service like CheapTweet has found a perfect niche and its the ideal service to recommend to your less technically-savvy relatives, as well as those just looking for a deal. Like we said, searching for online deals can put you in some dangerous waters and this service helps clear out some of the flotsam and jetsam. Discuss

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CheapTweet Wades Through the Sea of Tweet Deals

After recent announcements by Foursquare of partnerships with big time players like Zagat, the New York Times and Bravo , Gowalla is fighting back with its own major media partnership. Gowalla and the Travel Channel announced today that the two companies will be working together to offer "the integration of proprietary Travel Channel content into Gowalla's social networking service." Along with another deal, Gowalla has started to connect the virtual with the real, a direction we think will be key in succeeding in the location-based app arena. Sponsor According to a press release , the agreement will begin with tomorrow's premiere of "Food Wars" on the Travel Channel. In much the same way that Foursquare began offering special badges and information on venues featured in Bravo's television shows, Gowalla will begin adding new features based on the locations in the show. Here's the company's explanation: The first content integration will focus on the new series, Food Wars, a new Travel Channel offering where blindfolded participants choose sides to determine "Who Makes The Best Dish In Town." Food Wars pits the nation's most famous culinary rivals against one another for a final showdown, where a blind taste test will settle the debate. Locations used in the series will be integrated into the Gowalla platform and Gowalla users will be able to check in and find specific show information, along with the details of the culinary showdown that was filmed there, pick up Items specific to the show, and be awarded specially created passport stamps. Gowalla also quietly released an Android version of its app this weekend, which is currently available for download in the Android Marketplace. This comes just in time for SXSW Interactive, which is bound to have thousands of techies roaming Gowalla's hometown of Austin. As the CNET article on the deal points out, Gowalla has led rival Foursquare in the funding realm, with $8.4 million in Series B funding last year. And while we do like the look of Gowalla, Foursquare offers real-life incentives, such as discounts at certain locations for becoming mayor. Well, just in time for the aforementioned SXSW, Gowalla will have some real-life incentives too - Austin's homegrown Sweet Leaf Tea . Now, the Sweet Leaf deal isn't quite up to par with a Zagat partnership, but it's one to keep in mind over the next couple of weeks nonetheless, as you're wandering Austin's streets and growing more dehydrated by the moment. (Yes, we know how much beer you really drink.) According to Gowalla's blog , there will be virtual Sweet Leaf Tea cans around town that will be redeemable for the real thing, so keep an eye out. Gowalla's first foray into integrating its virtual collectibles with real-life goods came in early January, with its partnership with InCase , a maker of iPhone cases, among other things. As part of that deal, users could collect different InCase-branded virtual items and when they checked in at Apple stores, they had a chance of winning an iPhone case upon checking in. So just by going to a location, you were entering a contest for a real-world prize. And really, it's this sort of thing that we think will keep apps like Gowalla afloat. Long after the shininess of "checking in" and collecting "virtual goods" for their own sake wears off, real-life incentives will be there. Whether they come in the form of information, as is the case with the Travel Channel deal, or in the form of tasty sweet goodness, as with a can of Sweet Leaf Tea, we're going to need something more than a virtual beatnik to keep us checking in everywhere we go. And of course, letting our friends know where we are, and vice-versa, is great, but if one company gets into the real-life game and another doesn't, guess which one we'll probably be playing. Discuss

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Gowalla Follows Foursquare's Lead with Real-Life Incentives

There's good reason tweets are limited to 140 characters - the microblogging social network was developed specifically with mobile in mind and 140 characters is the size limit for a text message. With that in mind, it's no surprise that Twitter has experienced a 347% jump since a year ago in people accessing the site via mobile browser. Sponsor According to a comScore report, both Twitter and Facebook have experienced significant increases in mobile browser access over the past year. "Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile, in the company's press release . "Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile." Just over 30% of smartphone users access social networking sites using a mobile browser, comScore reports, up from 22% just a year ago. Access to Facebook using a mobile browser grew 112% while Twitter grew a whopping 347%. What do these numbers mean in terms of actual number of visitors? According to comScore, Facebook saw 25.1 million mobile users in January 2010, Myspace had 11.4 million and Twitter 4.7 million. As the report points out, "these figures do not include access of the social networking services by the nearly 6 million mobile phone owners who do so exclusively through mobile applications." As smartphones continue to grow in popularity, social networking services will get more and more traffic from mobile use, and we wouldn't be surprised to see mobile access overtake other methods of access at some point in the future. Discuss

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Twitter Sees 347% Growth in Mobile Browser Access