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• RIM Bolsters Marketing Efforts With Some Silly Cartoon Characters
• Jason Kilar: Hulu's 2011 Revenues Of $420 Million Was Actually Above The "Board Plan"
• CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web
• You Stopped SOPA. Now Let's Startup America
• GreenCharge App Reveals Cost and Carbon Savings To Electric Car Drivers
• Artspace Raises $2.5 Million For Its Contemporary Art Marketplace
• Super-Slim HTC Ville Spotted On Video With Sense 4.0 In Tow
• TrialPay Raises $40 Million From Visa, Greylock, T.Rowe Price
• Andreessen Horowitz Closes $1.5 Billion New Fund
• New Accelerator Launches In Europe Offering Valley Road Trip
• Shopkick: We Helped Drive More Than $110M In 2011 Revenue For Brands And Brick And Mortar Retailers
• E-Commerce Site For Household Goods Alice.com Raises $3.6 Million
• Dealfind Expands Into Luxury Goods With "Dream Deals"
• Appafolio Lets You Make Native Multimedia Presentations On iOS
• IBM Buys HTML5 App Development Company WorkLight For $70M To Expand Mobile Enterprise Services
• Location Labs' Safely Family Locator Hits 1B Location Checks, Partners With T-Mobile
• iOS App Downloads & Marketing Costs Hit Record High In December
• Log Data Management And Analytics Startup Sumo Logic Raises $15M From Greylock And Others
• GeeknRolla Rocks Into The London Web Summit, March 19
• On The Heels Of Nabbing 7 HP Execs, Cyber Security Startup AlienVault Raises $8 Million

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RIM Bolsters Marketing Efforts With Some Silly Cartoon Characters	Top
Way back in December, before a management shakeup saw him and his partner leaving RIM's top posts, co-CEO Jim Balsillie lamented the state of the company's marketing efforts. They hadn't "achieved the desired results" as he put it during RIM's Q4 earnings call, and promised big things to come on the marketing front come 2012. Things seemed to start off well -- you couldn't watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve without getting an eye-full of BlackBerry logos imploring you to "be bold" in in the new year. Then the Bold Team happened.
Jason Kilar: Hulu's 2011 Revenues Of $420 Million Was Actually Above The "Board Plan"	Top
Last year, Hulu brought in $420 million in revenues, with was 60 percent above the year before. The news, however, was seen as a miss because Hulu earlier in the year suggested that it would make $500 million. Today at the D: Dive Into Media conference, CEO Jason Kilar defended his record, revealing that "our board plan was $408 million." So Hulu came in above the internal goal it had set for its board.
CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web	Top
We measure every last click when it comes to the Web, but there remains a gulf between online and the real world. Yet the online world increasingly drives behavior offline, especially when it comes to purchasing habits. How many times have you researched something online or on your mobile phone before buying it? Yet when you go to a store to buy it, everything you did online might as well disappear as far as the merchant is concerned. It doesn't have to be that way. The last mile in local commerce is really only the last few inches between the credit card in your outstretched hand and the card swipe at the register.
You Stopped SOPA. Now Let's Startup America	Top
In recent weeks, Americans from all walks of life came together to stop SOPA from advancing through Congress, demonstrating the power of the Internet to rally people around an important cause. In the weeks ahead, we have reason to rally again. This time, the goal is not stopping something bad, but starting something good. Specifically, ensuring that America builds on its legacy of innovation, and remains the world's most entrepreneurial nation. Earlier today, President Obama unveiled his Startup America legislative agenda and called on Congress to pass it quickly, so he can sign it promptly. It's a very positive first step.
GreenCharge App Reveals Cost and Carbon Savings To Electric Car Drivers	Top
Electric car drivers deserve to see their positive impact on the environment and their wallets, but the official mobile apps for the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Bolt only display remaining battery. GreenCharge is a new iOS app released today that displays your car's remaining charge, but also its current range, the local energy price, a log of its usage, and your cost and carbon reduction versus driving a gasoline vehicle. Finally, an app that shows how you're saving both kinds of green.
Artspace Raises $2.5 Million For Its Contemporary Art Marketplace	Top
Artspace, an e-commerce startup that helps connect contemporary artists and galleries with potential customers, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round with participation from Felicis Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Blue Equity LLC, and Metamorphic Ventures. The round also includes a wide range of accomplished entrepreneurs. The full roster: Michael Yavonditte (Hashable, Quigo), David Rosenblatt (1stdibs.com, Doubleclick), Dave Morgan (Simulmedia), Seth Goldstein (turntable.fm), Thomas Stemberg (Founder/former CEO of Staples); Rob Selati (Madison Dearborn Capital Partners); Todd Simon (CEO of Omaha Steaks) and Peter Ricketts (former COO of Ameritrade). The company previously raised a $1.2 million seed round last spring. Artspace is setting out to make contemporary art accessible to those of us who aren't necessarily deeply immersed in the art world already — and to help connect artists and galleries with potential buyers. The site also allows art fairs to create a virtual representation of their fair, which helps expand the number of potential buyers beyond those who can attend an event in-person.
Super-Slim HTC Ville Spotted On Video With Sense 4.0 In Tow	Top
News of HTC's forthcoming Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Ville has been making the rounds since last November, but now with Mobile World Congress less than a month away, we're finally getting our first real look at it. HTC-Hub has managed to get their hands on a pretty extensive hands-on video, and it looks like the Ville is shaping up to a pretty impressive mid-range device.
TrialPay Raises $40 Million From Visa, Greylock, T.Rowe Price	Top
Offers are a booming form of advertising in which consumers are presented with offers to try or buy products. It is particularly popular in social games where players receive virtual currency in return for looking at the offers. One of the leaders in this form of ecommerce advertising is TrialPay, which just raised $40 million from Greylock Partners, Visa, T. Rowe Price, DAG Ventures, DFJ Growth and QuestMark Partners. The series C round brings TrialPay's total funding to $56 million.
Andreessen Horowitz Closes $1.5 Billion New Fund	Top
Last week, we heard from Evelyn Rusli at the New York Times that Andreessen Horowitz was in the process of raising $1.5 billion for the venture firm. Today, partner Ben Horowitz has confirmed that the fund has closed, bringing Andreessen Horowitz's total funding under management to $2.7 billion. The firm says that the $1.5 billion was raised for its Fund III. "a16z's Fund III is all about extending our capabilities to more disruptors and pioneers," said Horowitz in a release. "We're remaking the modern venture capital firm, and entrepreneurs are responding to our unique approach."
New Accelerator Launches In Europe Offering Valley Road Trip	Top
Accelerators, Accelerator, Accelerators! There's a rash of them appearing everywhere, and the latest is the Rockstart Accelerator, a new startup program aimed at Europe's most promising startups that want to hit a global scale (but then don't they all?). However, this one has some credible partners in the shape of Google, Microsoft BizSpark, Mozilla WebFWD and StartupHouse in San Francisco. Oscar Kneppers, founder of Rockstart says the program is for startups from the whole of Europe. Based in Amsterdam, it's looking for 10 teams of founders and will subject them to 99 mentors for 100 days, and combine that with an additional three-month summer program that culminates with a 25-day Silicon Valley road trip. That last point is probably not a bad idea, for obvious reasons, though Seedcamp has done this for the last few years.
Shopkick: We Helped Drive More Than $110M In 2011 Revenue For Brands And Brick And Mortar Retailers	Top
After recently announcing the milestone of 3 million active users, geo-coupon system a Shopkick is revealing that its mobile app helped drive more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011 in its first full year operating the app. Shopkick, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, SV Angel and others, provides an in-store, location-based mobile shopping platform, Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called "kicks" to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions.
E-Commerce Site For Household Goods Alice.com Raises $3.6 Million	Top
Alice.com, the retail platform for household goods, has raised $3.6 million in funding from an undisclosed group of Spanish investors. This current round brings the total funding amount raised by Alice.com to $18.2 million. Launched in June, Alice.com's retail platform allows consumer packaged goods manufacturers, like Procter & Gamble, to sell directly to consumers instead of going through retail channels like Target or Wal-Mart.
Dealfind Expands Into Luxury Goods With "Dream Deals"	Top
Toronto-based deal provider Dealfind is expanding into luxury goods with the launch of a new service called Dream Deals. Starting now, in addition to Dealfind's everyday and weekly deals, customers will also get "surprise" Dream Deals, which involve deeply discounted retail goods.
Appafolio Lets You Make Native Multimedia Presentations On iOS	Top
Like how there are all sorts of companies offering tools to let you build your own web site today, a new wave of them is doing the same thing for mobile apps. Appafolio stands out among the various options because it lets you create a polished native presentation for iOS without having to do any coding. Instead, you either download the Appafolio app (here) or use its web site to select the text, icon and images you'd like to feature. The interface reminds me of setting up a Powerpoint presentation (in a good way), in that you can create pages within your app for specific types of media that you want to showcase, including slideshows and videos.
IBM Buys HTML5 App Development Company WorkLight For $70M To Expand Mobile Enterprise Services	Top
IBM just announced the purchase of WorkLight, an Israeli startup that provides a mobile app development and infrastructure software. IBM says the acquisition will help expand the enterprise mobile capabilities it offers to clients. Financial terms were not disclosed but we've heard that the acquisition price is around $70 million, according to Israeli publication Calcalist. WorkLight, which has raised $18 million in funding, allows organizations develop and deliver HTML5, hybrid and native applications with, and deliver these applications with mobile middleware, security features and integrated data management and analytics. Worklight dramatically reduces time to market, cost and complexity while enabling better customer and employee user experiences across more devices.
Location Labs' Safely Family Locator Hits 1B Location Checks, Partners With T-Mobile	Top
Location Labs' Safely, which provides mobile services that help parents ensure the personal security kids' mobile phones, is revealing that its Safely Family Locator has enabled more than one billion family safety location checks since inception. These "locates" have been initiated by Family Locator subscribers across millions of child phones on carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T. Location Labs is also debuting Family Check-In, the newest offering in the Safely suite of digital parenting tools. While the locate service simply locates a child, the Family Check-In expands lets kids show parents that they arrived at the library or a friend's house with a location-verified map.
iOS App Downloads & Marketing Costs Hit Record High In December	Top
Mobile app marketing company Fiksu just released new data revealing the impact the holiday season had on iOS app downloads and user acquisition costs. According to the company's App Store Competitive Index, a measurement of the average aggregate download volume of the top 200 free U.S. applications, December saw 6.04 million daily app downloads. That's a nearly 7% increase from November's 5.65 million, and a clear indication of how many folks were unwrapping new smartphones during the holiday season.
Log Data Management And Analytics Startup Sumo Logic Raises $15M From Greylock And Others	Top
Sumo Logic, a startup focused on enterprise log management and analytics, has raised $15 million in Series B funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from previous investors Greylock Partners and angel investor Shlomo Kramer. The new funding brings the startup's total venture capital backing to $20.5 million. Today, Sumo Logic emerged from stealth to unveil its log management and analytics platform, aiming to help companies to uncover operational and security insights buried in enterprise log files. The startup was founded by ArcSight veterans Christian Beedgen and Kumar Saurabh in 2009, to provide a cloud based system for managing the massive amounts of enterprise log data.
GeeknRolla Rocks Into The London Web Summit, March 19	Top
Way back in 2009 there was no large event dedicated to technology startups in the UK. TechCrunch, under Mike Arrington, was busy trying to get its TechCrunch50/Disrupt programme going in the US, and outside of local meetups, the TC event juggernaut still had yet to arrive in Europe. My friend and colleague Robin Wauters was doing Plugg in Brussels, but there wasn't a startup event in London. So I launched a personal project, an event I called GeeknRolla, the name for which I literally dreamt up in a London pub. Despite those amateurish beginnings, about 400 people turned up that year, and I ran it again for the next couple of years as a fun side project. But times move on and after running it single-handedly for three years in a row, I'm going to bring the GeeknRolla "mojo" to a new event (while we wait for the TC event machine to spin up in Europe, and more on that later so stay tuned). Thus, GeeknRolla and the Dublin Web Summit, are merging to create the London Web Summit. It'll be on March 19th in The Brewery Venue, in London's "Tech City" area.
On The Heels Of Nabbing 7 HP Execs, Cyber Security Startup AlienVault Raises $8 Million	Top
Two weeks ago, we covered a fast-growing security startup called AlienVault, which had just stolen seven senior HP security executives. At the time, Barmak Meftah, who left HP Fortify to become president and chief executive at AlienVault told us that the allure was the startup's technology, which he said is "one of the more widely-deployed Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) on the market."

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