350.org Australia Campaign Crowd Funding
With the present government in Australia attempting with all its power to hamper all the past, present and future efforts to fight the ever increasing impact…
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WePay Raises $15 Million in Series C Funding to Grow its Payments API for Platform Businesses
Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) January 16, 2014
WePay, the payments company behind platform businesses, announced today $ 15 million in Series C financing. The company will use the funds to accelerate its growth through further investments in its payments API product and international expansion. Revenue from WePay’s payments API has grown over 600% in the last year, and the company has over 300 platform partners. In addition, today the company is announcing its plans to discontinue its direct-to-consumer offering in order to focus exclusively on its payments API built specifically for platform businesses such as online marketplaces, crowdfunding sites and small business software.
This round of financing was led by financial services and payments pioneer Phil Purcell of Continental Investors, co-founder of the Discover Card and former CEO of Morgan Stanley. Continental Investors has investments in several notable financial services companies, including the leading mobile payment and loyalty company, LevelUp. Paul Purcell will represent Continental on the WePay board.
A number of top technology and payments experts also participated, including:
Max Levchin, founder & former CTO of PayPal
Maynard Webb (Chairman of Yahoo!, board member of Salesforce, former COO of eBay, and former CEO of LiveOps), through the Webb Investment Network (WIN), his early-stage venture capital firm
Angel investor Raymond Tonsing
All existing institutional investors, including Highland Capital Partners, August Capital and Ignition Partners, participated in this round. This round brings WePay’s total financing to $ 35 million.
“Platform businesses like online marketplaces, crowdfunding sites and small business software are the most exciting segment of ecommerce today,” said Paul Purcell of Continental. “WePay’s focus here, coupled with their ability to give these platforms a payment solution that offers both flexibility and protection from fraud and compliance risk, is a recipe for success.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Continental to the WePay family. The team’s depth of operating and investment experience with later stage companies, payments, financial services and the public markets will be invaluable to WePay as we grow,” said Bill Clerico, CEO of WePay.
Unlike general-purpose payment APIs and processors, WePay is uniquely focused on serving platform businesses such as online marketplaces, crowdfunding sites and small business software. WePay gives these platforms the flexibility they need to design new commerce experiences while still protecting them from the burdens of fraud and compliance. WePay’s proprietary VedaTM social risk engine underpins its API and is honed to understand the platform’s users.
About WePay
The WePay® payment API is built specifically for platform businesses like marketplaces, crowdfunding sites and small business software. These platforms are empowering millions of users worldwide to unlock all kinds of creative commerce. Through its proprietary VedaTM social risk engine, WePay gives platforms a flexible payment API that provides a great user experience while still taking on all their fraud risk and compliance burdens.
WePay has processed transactions for more than 250,000 customers and over 300 partners. Platform businesses such as GoFundMe, HoneyFund, CustomMade, Care.com and LessAccounting have chosen WePay’s API to handle their payments. The company’s customer service team won the 2013 Gold Stevie Award for its outstanding work with customers. For more information visit http://www.wepay.com.
About Continental Investors
Continental Investors is a private equity firm founded in 2006 by Phil Purcell. Continental invests in private companies primarily in the financial service industry and in consumer businesses where the Internet is important. Continental Investors are a strategic source of capital and look for opportunities where their industry experience and relationships can benefit management and other private investors. Prior to Continental, Phil was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dean Witter, Discover & Co. from 1986 until they acquired Morgan Stanley Group Inc. in 1997. He then served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley until his retirement in 2005. Paul Purcell has nearly15 years of experience deploying capital in public and private markets for financial services and payments companies.
WePay is a registered trademark, and Veda is a trademark, of WePay, Inc.
Artificial Intelligence Platform Parakweet Raises $2 Million in Angel Funding
San Francisco (PRWEB) June 18, 2013
Parakweet, Inc. today announced it secured $ 2 million in funding. The company has developed a proprietary artificial intelligence platform that uses social media- specific natural language processing (NLP) to detect and extract meaning from millions of unstructured conversations and accurately identify consumer behavior, intent and sentiment. Parakweet will use the funds for new product innovation and continued development of BookVibe, its recently launched book discovery engine.
The funding was led by a group of high-profile investors including Scott Banister, an early investor in PayPal, Zappos and Powerset; Alan Braverman, co-founder of Yammer and Eventbrite; David Jeske, former Director of Engineering at Google; and other angel investors and entrepreneurs.
Parakweet’s platform is fine-tuned for specific vertical markets, in order to best extract meaning from short, unstructured social media updates. BookVibe, Parakweet’s consumer-facing book recommendations product, scans a user’s social graph and extracts tweets that are actually about books with 96 percent accuracy. It also detects and distinguishes the person’s sentiment about the book—not the overall tweet. For example, if a tweet reads: “I’m reading War and Peace since the weather is lousy,” BookVibe understands that lousy refers to the weather, not the book. Some of the behaviors BookVibe identifies include “intent to read,” “read” and “recommend.” Furthermore, the Parakweet platform does not require users to join or recreate yet another social network.
“We started Parakweet to distill actionable insights from the unstructured language of social media,” said CEO and co-founder Ramesh Haridas. “Today, we’re providing consumers with book recommendations based on a user’s personal interests and the interests and affinities of the people they follow. Our platform also allows companies to tap into the behavioral signals consumers are generating across social media and uncover actionable and competitive insights.”
Added Haridas, “We’re inspired to have the backing and support of such a notable group of angel investors and tech entrepreneurs. With this funding, we’ve taken a decisive step to transform how meaning and understanding is derived from massive amounts of social media, which often includes slang, abbreviations and no punctuation—something that Parakweet is using natural language processing to solve.”
Investor Scott Banister added, “Parakweet’s disruptive technology gets under the hood of social media language and captures human behaviors with remarkable accuracy. Books and movies are just the tip of the iceberg for applications of Parakweet’s natural language processing engine.”
Parakweet was founded by a team of successful entrepreneurs and computer scientists including serial entrepreneur Ramesh Haridas; machine learning and search technologist Kiam Choo; and artificial intelligence software architect Ilmars Poikans.
About Parakweet
Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, Parakweet is a platform that offers product recommendations to consumers and social media analytics and metadata to global media companies. Parakweet’s proprietary artificial intelligence platform uses natural language processing technology to extract meaning from unstructured social content and accurately identify associated behaviors, intent and sentiment. Parakweet’s first product BookVibe is a social discovery and book recommendation engine for consumers launched in 2013. For more information, please visit http://www.parakweet.com.
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The Guppy Tank Will Offer $500,000 to Colorado Entrepreneurs During One-Day Funding Event
Denver, CO (PRWEB) June 20, 2013
The Guppy Tank, an event based capital provider and a kinder, gentler, non-televised version of the ABC television show “The Shark Tank,” is offering $ 500,000 to innovative Colorado businesses. Up to 10 enterprising business owners could receive equity investment funds, loans or a combination of both during a one-day funding event September 12 at Galvanize, a co-working space for local entrepreneurs in Denver.
Business owners seeking funds through The Guppy Tank must operate a for-profit organization that has been engaged in their current business activity for at least one year. Candidates have until September 8, 2013 to submit an online application to participate in the program, which requires participants to pitch the viability of their business concepts to a panel of investors and lenders. The Guppy Tank and its sponsors, including – Southern California lender Super G Funding, LLC – will make investments from $ 25,000 to $ 500,000 per business.
“We’re excited about bringing The Guppy Tank to Denver and the potential of helping the local economy by providing small businesses with the capital they need to grow and reach their full potential,” said The Guppy Tank Founder Darrin Ginsberg.
The Guppy Tank held its first funding event in October 2012 in Newport Beach and provided over $ 600,000 in funding to three local Southern California companies. A second event was held in April 2013 in Santa Monica, California, with several fundings in progress from that event.
To qualify for funds, local entrepreneurs will need to effectively identify the challenges they face, explain what makes their businesses unique, how they would utilize the funds, and how their team is poised for success. At the end of the application period, the Guppy investors will review the applications and select potential candidates to appear before the Guppy panel.
The Guppy Tank will attempt to fund at least two, and up to 10 businesses at this event. Investments are negotiated shortly after the candidates make their presentation at the event. In addition to the funding, each of the recipients will be given the opportunity to work with the Guppy investors to gain insight on how they might best grow their businesses.
“As investors, we’re always looking for exciting new businesses and this process exposes us to companies we may not learn about through traditional funding channels,” added Ginsberg. “For the participants, The Guppy Tank provides a unique way to gain capital, while also offering them the chance to gain solid feedback on their business plans and presentations.”
For more information or to apply for The Guppy Tank, visit http://www.theguppytank.com.
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