In the News: Retrofit's New Funding Featured on Pitchbook
Retrofit's November 13 funding round mentioned in Pitchbook's Weekly Wrap Up November 19, 2012.
Video Transcription
Cristine: Welcome to PitchBook's Weekly Wrap-Up and your Monday morning look at the recent week's venture capital activity. VC financings occurred all over the map this past week, and we saw well over 50 deals in the U.S. as of last Monday.
Starting on the West Coast, Seattle based Zulily has put the final pieces together for another VC round, placing their current value at an estimated $1 billion. Taking the lead on Zulily's $85 million Series D financing, Andreessen Horowitz joins a group of 5 VC firms that have already invested $53.6 million in this Flash sale site.
Rose, why is it not surprising that Andreessen took the load on this round?
Rose: Andreessen Horowitz is a VC that leads a significant number of the rounds it participates in. For the internet retail industry in particular, a few standout, later stage rounds led by Andreessen come to mind.
Last year there were a couple, including Kim Kardashian's ShoeDazzle, which walked away with a $40 million round when the firm led the company's Series C financing in May of last year. Then later last year, in December, Andreessen also took the lead on Fab's $40 million Series B round.
So clearly the firm has proven itself to be an interested and very capable investor when it comes to successful and fast growing companies operating in the e-commerce space, which is why Zulily's $85 million haul, led by Andreessen doesn't really come as that big of a surprise.
Cristine: The state of California nabbed one-third of all capital invested for the week. San Francisco headquartered SocialWire is included in this portion after raising $2.5 million of seed funding. The provider of an online advertising and marketing platform helps retailers use Facebook Open Graph to drive users from their sites to Facebook for word-of-mouth product sharing.
Investors on the deal include Five Hundred Start-ups and First Round Capital. Both have gained the title as two of the most active VC investors for the week after being involved in two and three financings respectively.
Venturing south to Texas, Outbound Engine has gathered $1.6 million of Series A funding to continue helping businesses automate their email and social media marketing. Floodgate, Austin Ventures, Silverton Partners, and Capital Factory all participated in this November 14th deal.
This online platform isn't the only company working to help busy professionals in this week's VC headlines. With their primary office residing in Skokie, Illinois, Retrofit embraced a $10.7 million round to help busy professionals partake in a data driven weight loss program. They closed the final $8 million installment of their Series A financing this past Tuesday. Lead investor on the round was Draper Fisher Jurvetson, who contributes $6 million of the $8 million.
The northeast region of the country was involved in about one quarter of the week's total deal count. With their headquarters in Acton, Massachusetts, Affirmed Networks is the provider of a subscriber management and service software and has raised a massive $52 million. Before this additional financing, the company raised $14 million in early stage funding.
With such a huge portion of the week's deals, Rose, what other financings on the East Coast stand out to you?
Rose: Last week we saw over $50 million go to a couple of companies based in New Jersey, Live View and Billtrust. Bain Capital Ventures poured $25 million into Billtrust, while Live View scored funding from a group of investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pitango Venture Capital. Both of these deals actually rank in the top five for New Jersey's biggest rounds race so far this year.
Cristine: Another contribution to the northeast deal count was the $1 million of seed funding from lead investor Winklevoss Capital to help finance the New York based shopping site, Hukkster. This online resource tells shoppers when their desired merchandise drops in price. Founded by former J. Crew merchandisers, the startup has partnered with several department stores since their launch in May to help grow their user base to over 10,000 to date.
Stay tuned to PitchBbook TV where we'll wrap up the past week's investment activity every Monday morning.