Another day, another honking big funding for another online start-up (and yet another broken embargo too!).
It’s like Groundhog Day in Silicon Valley as usual.
Today, Cambridge, Mass.-based HubSpot wins tech’s version of the lottery, grabbing $32 million from Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and also Salesforce.com.
It is unclear what the valuation for HubSpot is now, although it is likely high given it has raised $65 million now.
HubSpot makes marketing software for businesses, who use it to find prospects and generate leads, along with tools to analyze the process. It claims it has “4,000 customers, over 50 percent market share, five million leads managed, and 70 million page views tracked monthly.”
The Series D financing included HubSpot’s existing venture investors–General Catalyst Partners, Matrix Partners, and Scale Venture Partners–and part of it will be used to cash out existing shareholders. In previous rounds, the start-up has raised $33 million.
Here is the official press release:
Sequoia, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com Invest $32 Million in HubSpot
Marketing Software Company Attracts New Strategic InvestorsCAMBRIDGE, MA–(Marketwire – March 8, 2011)–Today, for the first time ever, Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and Salesforce.com all invested together in one company, providing HubSpot with a Series D round of financing through a $32 million investment. HubSpot provides all-in-one marketing software used by over 4,000 businesses to get found by more prospects, convert them into leads and sales, and analyze the entire marketing process.
“The fundamental way that people shop, learn, and buy has changed radically in the last few years. HubSpot helps transform the way businesses market from outbound marketing (cold calls, email blasts, and direct mail) to inbound marketing (Google, blogs, social media, mobile, etc.),” said Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.
Sequoia Capital has a long history of partnering with founders to help them build long-term, multi-billion dollar companies, including Google, LinkedIn, AdMob, YouTube, Yahoo!, Apple, and Oracle. “We back companies that are transforming their industries,” said Jim Goetz, General Partner at Sequoia Capital. “HubSpot is the emerging category leader in the SaaS marketing sector. Their customer base exceeds that of all the other relevant marketing software companies combined, including Eloqua, Marketo, Genius, and Manticore.”
“Today, every company needs to succeed in search, social, sales, and marketing–I can’t think of a more powerful trifecta than Google, Salesforce.com, and HubSpot. With 4,000 customers, HubSpot is already a clear marketing leader–now, with this new infusion of capital and recognition by Google’s venture arm and Salesforce.com, HubSpot has a great opportunity to separate itself from the pack and become the leading marketing platform in the small and medium business space,” said Brent Leary, co-founder of CRM Essentials.
Google Ventures Partner, Rich Miner (formerly co-founder of Android) said, “We agree with HubSpot’s belief that search engines, social media, and mobile devices have fundamentally changed how businesses should market themselves. We’re thrilled to support their efforts to help thousands of small and medium businesses reach potential customers.”
Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot commented, “We founded the company based on a simple premise: Businesses want an easy-to-use, complete and integrated marketing platform that helps them get more leads and customers. We plan to use this new capital to further invest in this ambitious vision and further our existing lead in the marketing software category.”
Ryan Gavin and Dean Hachamovitch, Marketing Guy and Engineer, respectively, for Internet Explorer, have announced that the final build and release of Internet Explorer 9 will indeed be at the party they’re throwing at South by Southwest in Texas on March 14th, 2011. They’ve decided to first announce this to their very favorite community at Channel9, a bunch of developers who are in love with the internet platform, and they’ve spoken here in a video at length what the browser will be able to do.
This browser has been in production for approximately a year, and now they’re going to release it, thanking profusely the community of developers who have stepped up to help them in making this a platform that has a chance at competing with the rest of the powerhouse browsers out in the market today. As you know, Internet Explorer
Hachamovitch will be doing a keynote at MIX 10 as well, showing off how the platform is rolling out, as a sort of “look what we did in a year” sort of thing. These two fellas sitting on the couch are super excited about this rollout and after saying what they came to say, they made sure to prompt Channel9 for what they call an “uncomfortable question.” What Channel9 decided to ask about was HTML5, to which they reply “WE’RE FOR IT!”
Of course the developer community knows this already, so the question is pressed, beyond what HTML5 can do for the everyday user, what does IE9 offer the fringe users who want features that not everyone will use? Hachamovitch replies with a sort of well, we DO do that, we’ve implemented things like Navigation Timing which “got 0% usage on the web,” he then going on to say that they’ve added items that don’t just come from developers who request things, they’ve essentially come up with elements that they and people at Yahoo, Google, and etc have spoken about behind the scenes, bringing these “fringe” features into IE9 at launch.
Essentially what they’re speaking about in this video and what will be coming with Internet Explorer 9 is depth as well as quality implementation of features. We’re hoping for the best!
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Spring training 2011: New York Mets' Jason Bay could start on DL with muscle strain
Mets outfielder Jason Bay may land on the disabled list with a strained muscle.
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With the drumbeat of rumors that she is heading for the door, Katie Couric was likely looking for better ratings news than what she got Tuesday. Instead, the ratings for the first quarter of 2011 showed that the "CBS Evening News" drew ...
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Take Two: Donald Trump Releases Official Birth Certificate - The Note
Donald Trump learned the hard way this week that if you're going to call on the president to release his official birth certificate, you'd better do the same. The Note, authored by ABC News' Amy Walter and Michael Falcone, ...
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Titles from major book publisher Random House will now appear in Apple’s iBooks store. The news was one of many talking points covered earlier today at Apple’s media event. Random House had previously been the only major publisher not represented in Apple’s popular iOS book store, as it was not willing to grant Apple the 30% cut taken on titles sold through iBooks. The addition of Random House is a major coup for Apple as it looks to compete with the likes of Amazon’s Kindle bookstore and other popular offerings. Hit the break for Apple’s full press release.
Random House, Inc. Makes Entire US Catalog of 17,000 ebooks Available on Apple’s iBookstore
iBookstore Now Features More than 2,500 Publishers, Including All Six Major Trade Publishers
SAN FRANCISCO—March 2, 2011—Apple® today announced that Random House, Inc., the largest trade book publisher in the US, has made its full catalog of 17,000 ebooks available on Apple’s iBookstore℠, including bestsellers by Stieg Larsson, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Danielle Steel, Laura Hillenbrand, Cormac McCarthy, Lee Child and many more of the world’s preeminent authors. Starting today, customers can pre-order upcoming releases from Random House including Lisa Gardner’s “Love You More,” Suze Orman’s “The Money Class” and Jean Auel’s “The Land of Painted Caves.” With the addition of Random House, the iBookstore now offers ebooks from all six major trade publishers and thousands of independent publishers.
“We are delighted that Apple’s iBookstore now will be carrying Random House’s US ebooks for the first time,” said Markus Dohle, Random House’s Chairman and CEO. “And we look forward to bringing our 17,000 ebooks to Apple customers.”
“We’re thrilled to offer Random House on the iBookstore,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “iBookstore customers have already downloaded more than 100 million books in less than one year, and we think they’ll love being able to choose from Random House’s incredible selection of titles to enjoy on their iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.”
iBookstore customers can choose from a wide selection of illustrated and video-enhanced books that look incredible on iPad™, including Jay-Z’s memoir “Decoded” and Bing West’s “The Wrong War”; bestselling children’s series such as Magic Tree House and Junie B. Jones; and cookbooks by Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, and the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. Random House, Inc. comprises more than 80 adult and children’s US publishing imprints including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Crown, Pantheon Books, Vintage, Ballantine and Bantam.
The iBookstore, included in Apple’s free iBooks® app, is the best way to browse, buy and read books on your iPad, iPhone® and iPod touch®. iBookstore offers ebooks from more than 2,500 publishers in more than 20 categories, including Mysteries & Thrillers, Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Children’s & Teen, Humor, Romance, Business and Travel.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
In February of 2007, 83.24 percent of users visiting TechCrunch did so from a Windows machine. One year later, in February 2008, the stranglehold remained firm at 80.44 percent. In February 2009, the number was at 74.04 percent. Last year, it was 61.59 percent. And this year? The number of people visiting our site from Windows machines dipped to 53.84 percent.
The writing is on the wall.
Look at those numbers again for a second. In four years, Windows share among TechCrunch readers has fallen 30 percentage points. That’s incredible.
The knee-jerk reaction in the comment section will likely be something like “it’s because you guys cover Apple so much”. But the fact of the matter is that Macintosh share, after rising for three of those four years, fell last year as well. It’s the mobile devices — specifically the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices — that are eating away at Windows.
In fact, if the trend over the past four years continues at about the same pace, in two years, devices made by Apple (Macs, iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads) will surpass devices that run Windows as the top visitors to TechCrunch. And depending on how popular the iPad 2, iPhone 5, and OS X Lion are, it could easily happen next year.
Here are the broken down numbers:
Feb 2007
- Windows: 83.24%
- Mac: 13.59%
- Linux: 2.51%
Feb 2008
- Windows: 80.44%
- Mac: 15.15%
- Linux: 2.97%
- iPhone: 0.77%
- iPod: 0.15%
Feb 2009
- Windows: 74.04%
- Mac: 20.48%
- Linux: 3.01%
- iPhone: 1.60%
- iPod: 0.28%
- Android: 0.09%
Feb 2010
- Windows: 61.59%
- Mac: 28.62%
- iPhone: 4.07%
- Linux: 3.49%
- Android: 0.87%
- iPod: 0.53%
Feb 2011
- Windows: 53.84%
- Mac: 27.64%
- iPhone: 6.72%
- iPad: 3.44%
- Linux: 3.28%
- Android: 3.06%
- iPod: 0.62%
While even the last batch of stats shows that Windows still has a nice cushion over number two, Mac, if you add the Apple products put together, it’s a different story.
- Feb 2007: 13.59% Apple products
- Feb 2008: 16.07% Apple products
- Feb 2009: 22.36% Apple products
- Feb 2010: 33.22% Apple products
- Feb 2011: 38.42% Apple products
In the four year span, Apple has added 25 percentage points to their share among TechCrunch readers. That nearly all of the 30 percentage points that Windows lost in that same span (Android’s growth pretty much fills in the rest).
So it currently stands at Microsoft’s 53.84 percent versus Apple’s 38.42 percent. Again, a big year for iPad, iPhone, and Mac could mean a changing of the guard as soon as next year. But unless something drastic changes, you can be sure that Apple will be dominant among TechCrunch readers in two years.
The latest rumors have Windows 8 showing up sometime in mid/late 2012. But the fact of the matter is that Windows 7, much more widely praised than the disaster that was Vista, hasn’t helped Microsoft buck this trend among our readers. Perhaps they’re only hope of gaining back share at this point is Windows Phone. So far, that hasn’t been going too well. Nokia should help that, but will it be enough to offset the Windows losses?
Humorously, Microsoft’s best hope for not falling to Apple may well be Android. If Google’s platform continues to make gains, it could prolong Apple passing Microsoft.
But again, Apple has iPhone 5, iPad 2, and OS X Lion on the immediate horizon — all within the next few months. And then there’s the very real possibility of another iPad in the fall.
The iPad 2 and iPhone 5 are likely to push the Apple share forward immediately. But don’t sleep on OS X Lion either. The early indications are that Apple has indeed made it much more iOS-like. That means millions of iPad/iPhone/iPod touch owners who have traditionally been PC users, are going to feel a lot more comfortable on a Mac than ever before.
And a new PC-to-Mac data migration system built in to Lion will only help that.
OS X Lion is going to feed off of iOS users, and vice versa. And the Mac ecosystem is going to continue to expand. Just as happened in the browser world with Chrome taking over, a transition is happening among TechCrunch readers in the ecosystem space. The numbers don’t lie. And Microsoft better pray that our readers aren’t leading indicators of overall trends in the space — which is exactly what you have been in the past.
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The Found Animals Foundation is an LA-based non-profit devoted to saving the lives of animals and solving the problem of animal overpopulation. Founded by Dr. Gary Michelson, a billionaire entrepreneur with a lifelong love of animals, Found Animals blends compassion with innovation and business sense. The organization does everything from working with local shelters to finding homes for strays to offering multi-million dollar incentives for research on animal sterilization.
The foundation will be opening its first ever "Adopt and Shop" retail space next month, so we caught up with Aimee Gilbreath, Executive Director of Found Animals, to find out a little bit more about the foundation, its goals, and LA's newest "pet shop."
HP: What is Found Animals most committed to?
AG: Our mission at Found Animals is to minimize the number of pets killed in animal shelters. We believe that our society, in the 21st century, can do far better than killing 4 million animals each year at a cost to taxpayers of over $2 billion annually. We look for innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to solving this problem. Over the past three years we have built a world class team of business and science professionals and launched programs that include sterilization, microchipping, owner support, adoption and more. Found Animals considers Los Angeles our test market for programs with plans to export successful ideas.
HP: What is the one thing you are most proud of that Found Animals has been able to accomplish?
AG: I’m most proud of our accomplishments with the Michelson Prize and Grant program. It’s our own version of the X-Prize and offers $25 million in prize money for creating a low cost non-surgical sterilant for use in cats and dogs. In addition, we are offering up to $50 million in grant funding to help researchers develop a prize winning technology. Sterilization is one of the best tools we have in our arsenal to reduce the number of unwanted pets that crowd the shelter system and overwhelm available resources. Unfortunately, current surgical spay/neuter approaches are expensive and often difficult to access for the pets and people who need them most. A “doggie Depo Provera” or “Kitty Norplant” type of product would revolutionize how we manage the pet population.
We created the program from scratch and its world class. Our Director of Scientific Research, Dr. Shirley Johnston, is world renowned in small animal reproduction and our Scientific Advisory Board is comprised of experts in many fields. Our program staff has created a fantastic grant process and we do outreach to scientists worldwide. So far we’ve received over 140 grant applications and a dozen projects have been approved for funding totaling over $5 million.
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