The latest from TechCrunch
- Centro Media Rakes In $22.5 Million
- Xpert Financial Is About To Fly Out Of Stealth With A New Way To Trade Private Shares, And SEC Approval
- What The "Great Delicious Exodus" Looked Like For Pin-Sized Competitor Pinboard
| Centro Media Rakes In $22.5 Million | Top |
| According to an SEC filing today, the Chicago based Centro has just raised a whopping $22.5 million (rounded up) in equity only funding. Listed on the SEC form are Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker and FTV Capita l Partner Eric Byunn as Director. Centro is a digital media and technology services company founded in 2001, serving over 350 ad agencies world wide . The company’s recently launched platform Transis automates and centralizes the media buying and selling process so agencies can save time and money. This looks to be the first major funding round for Centro; The company had also raised a much smaller $276,247 round back when it was called Intergent. CrunchBase Information Centro Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Xpert Financial Is About To Fly Out Of Stealth With A New Way To Trade Private Shares, And SEC Approval | Top |
| Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission is starting to take a closer look at the increasing amount of trading in private company stock, a new startup that’s been in stealth mode since August, 2009 is preparing to launch another way to trade private shares. The company is Xpert Financial which, through its registered subsidiary, Xpert Securities, brings to the table a tacit stamp of approval from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ( FINRA ), or at least approval to begin operations as an alternative trading system ( ATS ). Existing secondary markets for private shares such as SharesPost and SecondMarket do not have the same standing in the eyes of the SEC, although it is not clear how much that matters at this point. Xpert Financial will operate an electronic trading platform for private company shares. It is a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and it recently got approval from the SEC to run an alternative trading platform. Xpert Financial will be the first ATS approved for private stock sales. More common alternative trading systems are ECNs, or Electronic Communication Networks, for publicly traded securities. As an ATS, Expert Financial cannot call itself an exchange, which is why it changed its name from Xchange. In contrast to “bulletin boards and phone-bank brokerages that have positioned themselves as stock exchanges,” as the company calls its competitors, Xpert Financial will be a completely automated, electronic trading system. It will also work with the companies whose shares trade on its ATS to solicit their approval (SecondMarket and SharesPost work with shareholders, not necessarily with the companies). Xpert will also provide a way for companies to share financial information with prospective investors. More disclosure would certainly be welcome in this opaque corner or the financial markets. The company is backed by angel investors including Tim Draper, who invested personally. Of course, just because Xpert Financial has permission to operate as an ATS by the SEC that doesn’t mean that companies whose shares trade there wil be immune from SEC scrutiny. As these private trading systems bring more liquidity to secondary markets, the number of shareholders for any given company will increase and the greater chance there will be that a company will gain more than 500 shareholders. Once that happens, the SEC can require full financial disclosure just like a publicly traded company. Update : A SecondMarket spokesperson notes: “SecondMarket is a registered broker-dealer, and we are fully regulated by both FINRA and the SEC. Also, working with the private companies is a critical aspect of our business model.” The difference is that it is not an ATS, and Xpert Financial is already trying to use that distinction in its marketing against the established players. CrunchBase Information Xpert Financial SecondMarket SharesPost Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| What The "Great Delicious Exodus" Looked Like For Pin-Sized Competitor Pinboard | Top |
| When word got out two weeks ago that Yahoo is not 100% committed to Delicious, people who still use the bookmarking service started to panic and look for alternatives. One competing bookmarking site that some people turned to is Pinboard , a barebones bookmarking site which looks a lot like Delicious did in its early years: lean, no-frills, and very useful. The company saw an influx of traffic and activity. The chart above shows requests per minute to its servers in the three days following the Delicious news compared to the week before. A couple hour ago, Pinboard Tweeted out a link to the chart: @PinboardIN Pinboard This is what the Great Delicious Exodus looked like to our servers: http://bit.ly/frLwmA (contrasted with normal traffic a week earlier) about 21 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply The service wasn’t handling a huge number of requests to begin with—a few hundred per minute at peak—but that number increased about tenfold to over 2,500 requests per minute. Pinboard allows you to import your bookmarks out of Delicious. Mike suggested switching from Delicious more than a year ago. But from what I can tell it only has about 9,000 users. You are asked to pay a one-time fee to sign up, which helps to prevent spammers from joining. The current fee is $9.07 and it is based on the number of users. So not a whole lot of Delicious users switched to Pinboard, but it was enough to move the needle for the small bookmarking site. Update : Pinboard says it has closer to 16,000 users. The longer Delicious remains in purgatory , the more users are going to look for alternatives like Pinboard. The site even provides an honest list of pros and cons for those considering the switch. CrunchBase Information Pinboard delicious Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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