VC Buzz – $257.92+ Million in Today’s Deals

PALO ALTO, Calif. — InterSurvey closed a second round of financing of $36 million. Meritech Capital Partners led the round. First round investors Oak Investment Partners and Alloy Ventures also participated and were joined by new investors Oak Hill Venture Partners and the Washington Post Company. The funds will be used to expand InterSurvey’s consumer research panel. Unlike other Web surveys, which are restricted to existing Internet users and have limited multimedia capabilities, InterSurvey is able to deliver high-quality video to a random sample of households — including households without computers.

NEW YORK– FreeRide.com LLC, an online marketing and loyalty-rewards program, received $30 million in equity funding from Fleet Equity Partners, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), Hambrecht & Quist, and ING Barings. FreeRide completed a $12 million round of equity financing in April that was lead by Odeon Capital and NetGain Development Inc. FreeRide.com provides an online loyalty program that awards consumers with FreeRide Points for interacting with marketers and advertisers at FreeRide’s site and those of other program participants.

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.– Saba, a provider of e-Learning infrastructure to Global 5000 companies, government agencies, learning providers, and Internet businesses, raised $30 million in its most recent round of financing. Berkeley International Capital Corp. joined early backers Sequoia Capital and Crosslink Capital in investing in the company.

SEATTLE– AtomFilms completed a second round of strategic financing totaling $20 million. Chase Capital Enter

tainment Partners LLC and Chase Capital Partners led the round, joined by Arts Alliance, Frank J. Biondi Jr., general partner at WaterView Partners and former chairman and CEO of Universal Studios, Intel Corp. and Trans Cosmos USA Inc. AtomFilms markets and distributes high-quality short form entertainment through 15 prominent Web channels for broadband users, and with television, airlines and home entertainment companies.

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Vividence Corp announced that both Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital invested in the company’s second round of venture financing. Sequoia Capital led the round, which totaled $12.5 million, and this marks Kleiner Perkins’ second investment in the company. Vividence also announced that Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufleld and Byers, is joining the company’s board of directors. This announcement, coupled with previous funding from top investors such as Ben Rosen, Ron Conway and Jim Brock, brings Vividence’s total funding to $18 million dollars. Vividence offers an integrated solution to help companies improve the Web experience of their customers.

SAN FRANCISCO– Newbury Ventures announced its participation in a $12.25M round of equity financing for NetCentrex S.A., a French-based start-up specializing in telephony products and services on Voice over Internet Protocol. The NetCentrex technology was developed to solve two major problems of IP telephony: management of quality of service, and the provisioning of innovative services. NetCentrex provides a multimedia service development toolkit that seamlessly controls voice, video and data communications on a single data network. Newbury Ventures led this second round of financing and was joined by a number of investors: CDC Innovation (Caisse des Depots et Consignation Group), Crescendo Ventures, Innovacom, the Intel Communications Fund, T-Venture, and Viventures, as well as “angel investors”, including Jean-Michel Planche, founding member of Oleane. Ossama Hassanein, managing general partner of Newbury Ventures, is a director at NetCentrex.

ACTON, Mass.– Cascade Systems Inc., a provider of e-Merchandising solutions used to deliver targeted promotions for Web, print and email, completed a new round of venture funding in the amount of $12 million. Tudor Investment Corporation of Boston led the f

inancing which included Cascade’s earlier investors: Adobe Ventures and H & Q Venture Associates LLC. Cascade will use the new investment to accelerate the development of its e.merchandiser, context.server and promotion.manager product lines and to fund its recently announced acquisition of workflow software developer MidSystem Technologies.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.– MadeToOrder.com closed an additional $12M funding round from its current investors, which include Sara Lee Corp., Alloy Ventures (formerly Asset Management Associates), and Alpine Technology Ventures. MadeToOrder.com launched its business-to-business service providing customers with an online source for premium logo merchandise — including apparel, employee awards, business incentives, and business gifts — in September 1999.

STAMFORD, Conn. — RealCall, a provider of digital response services based in the UK with U.S. headquarters in Stamford, CT, agreed to terms of a record first-round venture capital funding of $12 million. The London-based finance house Advent Venture Partners leads the funding package; ACT Venture Capital is also involved in the funding round. The amount of funding is considered significant for an Internet start-up in the UK. RealCall provides a Web callback and customer alert service that enables companies advertising their services on the Internet or interactive television to respond to customer inquiries directly by telephone within seconds, providing online consumers with a “human voice” on the Web and allowing businesses to capture more online sales. The funding announcement follows the appointment of Stephen Voller, former managing director of Netscape UK, as the company’s CEO, and Vytas Kisielius, former general manager of Frontec Americas, as president of the company in the U.S.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.– ShoppingList.com, an Internet site focused on helping consumers shop in real world stores, raised $10.8 million in venture capital from Trinity Ventures, Brentwood Venture Capital, Venture Strategy Partners, Comdisco Ventures and Technology Development Fund. In connection with the investment, Tod Francis of Trinity Ventures has been named to ShoppingList.com’s board of directors. ShoppingList.com is a comprehensive, current, and impartial resource that consumers can browse to find local shopping information. The site lists thousands of advertised sales in over 350 product categories, 17,000 brands, and 120,000 store locations nationwide.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Cambridge Incubator, a Boston area e-business incubator, formed strategic partnerships with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and The Boston Consulting Group. The two firms will make a combined direct investment of $10 million in Cambridge Incubator and will take seats on its board of directors. In addition, Draper Fisher Jurvetson will work with the Incubator to establish the $100 million Cambridge Incubator Fund, which will serve as a source of capital to support the ongoing development of the Incubator’s member companies as they continue their accelerated growth.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.– TelekomNet, a pioneer in business-to-business E-commerce of networking and telecommunications equipment, secured up to $7.8 million in funding from Spencer Trask Securities Inc. In addition to direct E-commerce, the site includes discussion groups, a used gear auction, articles and columns from networking professionals, and a comprehensive library of networking and telecommunications information.

NEW YORK — ereorg.com Inc. completed its third round of financing with Warburg, Pincus Equity Partners, L.P. Warburg, Pincus invested $7.5 million in ereorg in exchange for eq

uity in the company. Other investors in ereorg include AMT Capital Management and Shearman & Sterling. The proceeds will be used by ereorg to introduce new products and services in the U.S. and to fund international expansion. ereorg is a business-to-business e-commerce company which has developed the first global, online auction market for trading an estimated $340 billion of bank loans, trade claims and sovereign bank debt.

NEW YORK– Younology Inc., a provider of smart personalization technology and solutions for eBusiness and consumers, received $7 million in a first round of venture capital financing led by J. & W. Seligman & Co. Inc., with further investment from Archery Capital and others. Additionally, Hugh D. Evans, a principal with Stonington Partners Inc. has joined Younology’s board of directors. Younology’s Smart Personalization product bring’s businesses closer to their customers by combining Web-wide behavioral information with demographic and legacy data to dynamically change the consumer Web experience while leaving complete control of personal information directly in the hands of those consumers.

AUSTIN, Texas — USCreative.com, an online resource for creative services professionals, secured $5 million in its first round of venture funding from Menlo Park, CA-based Convergence Partners. USCreative offers a set of smart business tools to the creative community, including a database of more than 350,000 professionals and portfolios, distance learning, news, idea and discussion forums, online chats/events and collaborative workspaces. In addition to its database, USCreative provides industry editorial content and access to top professionals within various creative disciplines.

NEW YORK– Virtual C

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Scriptics Corp., a developer of business integration tools, secured $3.5 million in financing from Lighthouse Capital Partners of Greenbrae, Calif., with $3 million in cash and $0.5 million in leasing, which brings Scriptics’ total funding to $8 million to date. This investment follows financing by Accel Partners of Palo Alto, in January 1999, and an angel round in early 1998, by Andy Bechtolsheim, Pehong Chen, and Gary Hromadko. Funding will support the expansion of Scriptics’ business-to-business integration server, Scriptics Connect, an XML infrastructure for developing business-to-business applications.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — EBon

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.– ONEWORLD Software Solutions, an e-business software services company that defines, designs, develops, and deploys e-businesses and Internet software products, closed a round of financing in the amount of $1.65 million. The investment was led by New Horizons Venture Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm.

MENLO PARK, Calif.– Mohr, Davidow Ventures invested in Shutterfly, a new company that has launched an all-digital photo printing service. Chaired by Jim Clark, Shutterfly takes images from digital cameras and delivers 35mm-quality prints to the doorsteps of photographers, their friends and families. George Zachary, general partner at MDV, helped build Shutterfly from the ground up with Jim Clark and the company’s founding team and now serves on the company’s board. MDV and Clark are the co-investors in the company.

SAN FRANCISCO– A team of Internet industry veterans launched campsix Inc., an Internet incubator to address the needs of Internet entrepreneurs in the heart of Silicon Valley – San Francisco. campsix will provide portfolio companies’ seed capital and office infrastructure as well as transition services to next round funding and new office space. Since its inception in October, campsix has signed on its first “incubatee” College411, closed Series A financing and secured its initial portfolio investments: Red Ladder, Best Self and Get Connected.

Home Internet shoppers continued their holiday buying spree, spending over $900 million at online retail sites last week, an increase of over 60% from the previous week, a Goldman Sachs -PC Data weekly buying study disclosed. Online toy sites made their strongest showing yet, taking over the No. 1 position for the first time with 1.3 million unique buyers. Music sites came in second with over 1 million unique buyers.

PALO ALTO, Calif.– Andersen Consulting announced the formation of Andersen Consulting Ventures, a unit of the management and technology consultancy that will invest up to $1 billion over the next five years to create new electronic businesses. Andersen Consulting will seed the $1 billion venture-capital initiative with more than $500 million as well as access to intellectual property. The remaining funding will come from a variety of other strategic and financial players. Palo Alto-based Andersen Consulting Ventures will be headed by Jackson L. Wilson, who was previously Andersen Consulting’s managing partner, Global Markets.

MIAMI — Diamonddepot.com announced that the site has been purchased by The Steinmetz Diamond Group and STI Ventures. The Steinmetz Diamond Group is an international diamond trading company specializing in diamond cutting, polishing, and trading. Steinmetz is the largest customer of The De Beers Group, the world’s leading diamond supplier and producer. STI Ventures is the high-tech investment arm of Beny Steinmetz, who serves as chairman of diamonddepot.com. Additional strategic investments were made by The Laub Group, also one of De Beer’s largest customers and The Lipton Partnership headed by Alan Lipton who now serves as CEO of diamonddepot.com.

MONTREAL – SureFire Commerce Inc. (TSE: MTP) entered into a letter of intent to acquire 100% of Stumpworld Systems Inc., a Boston, Massachusetts-based e-commerce company, which includes its online shopping portal, BuyItOnline.com, and its store creation software platform, Online Merchant (onlinemerchant.com). Under the terms of the letter of intent, SureFire Commerce will issue 13.5 million shares in payment for the shares of Stumpworld. SureFire offers businesses end-to-end electronic commerce solutions using proprietary technology in the areas of transaction processing.

CUPERTINO, Calif.– H

elloBrain turned on public access to a broad-based intellectual capital exchange. An intellectual capital exchange is an Internet-based virtual exchange that trades technical intellectual capital rather than goods, services, or financial instruments. The exchange provides a highly liquid market for both pre-existing and engineered solutions to technical problems of any complexity. HelloBrain has received venture capital funding from Brentwood Venture Capital.

SAN FRANCISCO– BoostWorks, a provider of intelligent network acceleration software solutions for networks in Internet, intranet, extranet, Client/Server and legacy environments, announced the appointment of Vincent F. Titolo to chairman and CEO. Prior to joining BoostWorks, Titolo served over 30 years in top positions at global corporations throughout the United States. He was chairman and CEO of Menke Titolo Capital Corp. and served as senior vice president and CFO for Shaklee Corp., Tymeshare Inc. and Ampex Corp. BoostWorks is backed by Partech International, Sofinnova Partners and a private investor.

MENLO PARK, Calif.– Mohr, Davidow Ventures announced that it has added Randy Strahan as a new venture partner and Mo Virani to the newly created position of administrative partner. Strahan was most recently president and CEO of Telmax Communications. Virani joined MDV from Softbank Corp./Ziff Davis Inc., where he most recently was CFO of ZD Events Inc.

AUSTIN, Texas– ibooks.com, an expert source for online digital reference books, announced the appointment of Sean Devine, former senior vice president of Sales for Books24x7.com, as vice president of business development and marketing. The company is privately held with funding from TL Ventures, Arkoma Venture Partners and Murphree Partners among other venture capital firms and angel investors.

CINCINNATI– PlanetFeedback, a new web service designed to facilitate fast, effective interaction between consumers and companies, announced that Harvard Business School emeritus faculty member James Heskett and media-veteran N.J. Nicholas have joined its board of directors. The announcement follows last week’s closing of $6 million in first round financing for the Cincinnati based Internet startup by Flatiron Partners, Lycos Ventures, Blue Chip Ventures, and Allen & Co.

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