• Joyus

  Led · Equity · Jun 2015

  Joyus is a direct response online video network led by Founder & CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy that produces and distributes premium lifestyle video content for women. Its content is published across the Joyus Network, including Joyus.com and partner sites such as People, AOL, Real Simple, Hearst, Hollywood Life, CenturyLink and Verizon. The network showcases more than 500 brands daily across beauty, fashion, health and lifestyle categories. Joyus monetizes its video content directly through commerce, integrating brand showcases into video programming. The company plans to use new funding to invest in product and engineering and to expand distribution for its video network. Recent executive additions include David Lazar (President & Chief Customer Officer), Kathy Samuels (Chief Content Officer), Jennifer Sharp (VP of Partnerships), Sandra Szahun (Head of Sales and Branded Content) and Jonathan Hoeh (VP of Operations). Joyus is a San Francisco, CA-based video shopping company led by Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. It provides a platform to help shoppers discover goods via short-form videos, with a team of curators led by Gina Pell who share apparel, beauty and lifestyle finds each week and demonstrate how to use them. Each item featured is available for sale for a limited time through the company’s exclusive video sales platform. Users can share videos with friends on Facebook and Twitter. The company raised $11.5m in its second funding round and is actively hiring. Joyus previously raised $7.9m in a first round in August 2011. JOYUS launched in public beta as a video sales platform designed to help brands engage with customers and sell products online. Each week the company’s curators share apparel, beauty and lifestyle items that are available for sale for a limited time through the platform. The company was founded in January 2011 by Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, a former Google executive, and is based in Palo Alto, CA. Its management team includes Co-Founder and VP of Product Diana Williams, Chief Curator Gina Pell, and CTO and VP of Engineering Sin Mei Tsai. JOYUS has closed a $7.9M first round of funding to support its public beta and growth.

• FunPlus

  Participated · Equity · Mar 2014

  FunPlus, founded in 2010 by Andy Zhong and Yitao Guan, is a Beijing-based mobile social games company. It has launched titles including Family Farm and Royal Story on Facebook and Family Farm Seaside on iOS, Google and Amazon. All of the company's games are free-to-play with options for users to purchase virtual currency and goods. FunPlus has over 200 employees across Beijing, San Francisco and Vancouver. The company plans to use new funding for growth, including recruiting in its global offices and launching at least two to three additional games in 2014. It previously closed a $13m Series A in 2012.

• Chukong Technologies

  Participated · Series D · Oct 2013

  Chukong Technologies operates an innovative mobile entertainment platform offering a full suite of solutions and services to enable developers worldwide to develop, publish and monetize content and to provide engaging mobile entertainment experiences to users. The company creates and maintains the Cocos2D-x game engine, the CocoStudio tool set and the CocoaChina.com community. It has offices in Beijing, Menlo Park, Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei and employs more than 800 people. The business supports developers with both developer-facing tools and consumer-facing community services. In December 2014 Chukong received an investment from Qualcomm Incorporated; the amount was not disclosed in the report. Chukong Technologies is a Beijing-based mobile entertainment company that develops games, publishes titles in China and manages gaming communities under the Coco and CocoaChina brands. Led by CEO Haozhi Chen, the company has published popular mobile titles in China, including the Fishing Joy franchise. It also sponsors and manages Cocos2D-x, a widely used 2D game engine, and supports large mobile developers entering the Chinese mobile market. Chukong intends to use the new funds to expand publishing and game engine development, increase R&D and cover marketing expenses for its mobile entertainment platform. The company has additional operations in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Menlo Park, California. Following the Series D, its total funding to date stands at $83m.

• Zettics

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2013

  Zettics offers a suite of analytics solutions for operators that support data monetization, marketing, customer care, and network business units. Tier 1 carriers in the U.S. and internationally use Zettics’ services to monetize data with third parties, enrich CRM systems, identify network abuse, analyze pricing plans, enhance advertising offers, reduce churn, improve customer care, and forecast usage growth. The company is led by President and CEO Sterling Wilson and is based in Concord, MA. Zettics intends to use newly raised funds to accelerate global expansion, explore acquisition opportunities, and increase investment in research and development. The article notes the company is hiring. No operating metrics (revenue/users) are provided in the article. Mobile Intelligence Solutions is a merged entity combining Umber Systems and Ground Truth to provide mobile analytics and measurement. The company delivers precise, timely and actionable mobile insights for carriers, advertisers and publishers via two divisions: a carrier analytics business under the Umber brand and a syndicated mobile market intelligence business under the Ground Truth brand. The merger is intended to solidify the combined company’s position in the marketplace and enable new product opportunities and sophisticated analytics across applications, devices, networks and locations. Mobile Intelligence Solutions has raised $8 million from a group of venture investors and is described as venture-backed. Leadership includes Sterling Wilson as President & CEO and Asa Kalavade as CTO and SVP of Engineering. The company is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in Boston, Seattle and Pune, India.

• EdgeCast

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2013

  EdgeCast Networks is a content delivery network (CDN) that helps companies accelerate and deliver static and dynamic content to end users. Led by Chairman and CEO Alex Kazerani and based in Santa Monica, CA, the company serves major customers including Yahoo!, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, WordPress, Sony, Hulu and Imgur. EdgeCast plans to use recent financing to develop and launch new web acceleration, routing and security services and to further strengthen its intellectual property portfolio. The company also intends to expand its global network and grow international sales and marketing efforts. The article notes the company is heavily hiring in Santa Monica, signaling operational expansion. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article. EdgeCast is a content-delivery network that helps websites deliver multimedia (video, music, live streams) to end users. The company emphasizes a flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing model with no fixed bandwidth contracts. EdgeCast serves over a thousand clients, including IMAX, WordPress, ESPN, Kelloggs, LinkedIn and Lionsgate, and has grown from roughly 300 customers in early 2009 to more than 1,000. Management says it has been profitable since the fourth quarter of 2009. The company is expanding its product pipeline and plans to accelerate development and launches. To support that growth it is adding staff and expanding sales and marketing programs, while growing its delivery network and working with resellers like Deutsche Telekom. EdgeCast is also targeting smaller businesses through partnerships such as the pay-as-you-go offering with ClickStreamTV. EdgeCast is a content-delivery network (CDN) focused on delivering rich media such as live video and music for websites and streaming services. It differentiates itself by charging customers for bandwidth instead of lumping bandwidth costs into other CDN services, which should allow customers to see bill decreases as bandwidth costs fall. The company counts IMAX as a recognizable customer. The broader CDN market is estimated around $800 million, with Akamai controlling about half, underscoring a competitive landscape. EdgeCast closed a $6 million Series B that brought total financing to $10 million and plans to use the new funds to expand internationally, scale network capacity, enhance features, and market to more businesses. Its investor base includes Steamboat Ventures and earlier backers such as Mark Amin and Jon Feltheimer.

No current team members are available.