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[Investing] (Trendbird) CloudShare Raises $10M from Sequoia


CloudShare, formerly IT Structures, today announced it has received $10M in series B financing from Sequoia Capital, Gemini Capital, and Charles River Ventures (CRV).


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The company plans to use the investment to fund product development and expand its go-to-market capabilities.

CloudShare, a Menlo Park-based startup, has developed what could be revolutionary for solution providers and ISV’s selling software or appliances: A way for organizations to instantly deploy multiple, independent copies of their existing demo or training environments in the cloud. The company says its ability to raise a significant round of funding at a higher valuation than its previous round — in a down economy reflects the stability of the company and the value it provides.

“CloudShare has taken all the necessary steps to solidify its market position and prepare for future growth. We are impressed by the team and track record CloudShare brings to the table, and are immensely pleased to be backing a company that we believe is not only capitalizing on cloud computing, but using it in the right way to benefit business users,” said George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures.

CloudShare customers, which include such industry leaders as VMware, Cisco, SAP and more, have already delivered over one million VM demo, PoC (proof of concept) and training hours to date, representing over six quarters of consecutive double-digit usage growth for CloudShare. This early success demonstrates the practical, revenue-oriented, immediately useful nature of the CloudShare platform.

“Since founding CloudShare in 2007 we’ve been focused on developing our technology, with the promise that it will revolutionize the way sales demos and PoC’s are conducted. We’ve officially come out of stealth mode with marquee customers, a proven cloud-based technology platform, and $10M in funding to help build out our vision. We now have all the right assets in place and we look forward to reaping the benefits in 2010 and beyond,” said Zvi Guterman, CEO of CloudShare.


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About CloudShare

CloudShare is a quick and easy way to share copies of your complex IT environments, online, so you can collaborate with customers, partners, and colleagues – for Demos, Proofs-of-Concept, Training, or other enterprise applications – without wasting time copying gigabytes of software or shipping machines and people. Going beyond basic webinar or “virtual lab” offerings, CloudShare’s solutions enables users’ extended interaction in dedicated “hands on” production-grade replicas of their existing IT, delivered as cloud-based SaaS – while centrally monitoring and managing it all. Leading solutions providers have adopted CloudShare as their vendor of choice to extend access to their virtual infrastructure from the Enterprise to the Cloud. Backed by Gemini, Sequoia Capital and Charles River Ventures, CloudShare is a privately held company based in Menlo Park, with globally accessible sales offices and SaaS platform.


CloudShare Overview
View more presentations from CloudShare.




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[Investing] Jive’s Gets Another $12M for Social Software


Jive Software, which uses social networking to help businesses collaborate internally and externally, has raised another $12 million from Sequoia Capital.


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Portland, Ore.-based Jive’s products include sites where employees can collaborate, customer discussion forums, and company social networks. Despite being part of the flood of companies offering business social networking tools, Jive seems to have done well. The company says its revenue doubled in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year and that it’s profitable.

Sequoia also provided Jive’s $15 million first round of funding. Here’s how chief executive Dave Hersh says he’s going to use the cash:


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    It’s about innovation.
    We are going to continue to expand the Jive SBS product footprint by dramatically increasing our R&D efforts. We’re doing a lot more hiring! In just the last month, we have added 11 new Jivers with 10 more starting in the next two weeks. If you’re interested, take a look at our open jobs. We’re also going to be pursuing smart acquisitions that complement our portfolio.
  2. It’s about customers. We will build out our customer-facing teams to further support the success of our clients and to grow the company.
  3. It’s about partners. We have seen some great success with channel partners and we will be building out that ecosystem to get Jive onto the desktops and mobile devices of more customers. And we’ll continue to improve the “partner-friendly” aspects of our application to allow for deep yet hassle-free customization and integration.
  4. It’s about championing SBS. Jive has built a great community around SBS in the last few years, and we want to continue to spread that gospel. I’m happy when I see new customers say, “I never knew I could do that!” But I’m even happier when I hear them say, “This has changed how I work, and I want more.”


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[venturebeat]



 

[Investing] Sugar Inc raises $16M, buys Shopflick


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Sugar Inc
, a women-focused media company, is in the middle of a big expansion. It has closed a new, $16 million round from existing investor Sequoia Capital and used some of that money to buy back shares from another investor, NBC Universal. It also used some of that money to purchase of women-focused “indie” video-driven shopping site Shopflick. The founder and chief executive of that company, David Grant, is becoming the president of a new, Los Angeles-based unit of Sugar Inc. Grant, also a former FOX Network executive, will be working with Hollywood media companies to expand Sugar Inc into movies, television, videogames and other formats.

This is all part of a plan that chief executive Brian Sugar tells me has already made his San Francisco company profitable — half its revenue comes from display ads, and the other half comes from e-commerce.

Shopflick will be integrated into another Sugar Inc property: Shopstyle, a sort of clearinghouse for name-brand women’s clothing and accessories. Sugar Inc bought Shopstyle last year, after it realized that its core property, a women-focused blog network, was sending a lot of lucrative traffic to women’s retail sites, Sugar explains. It since integrated Shopstyle by, for example, linking to items offered in that site when they’re mentioned in Sugar Inc blog posts. Now, it is making money either through getting paid when it sends links to a retailer, or when the user following the link actually makes a purchase. Shopflick will be integrated with Shopstyle and other Sugar Inc properties to flesh out the video component. While Sugar is still testing different ideas for this new interface, Sugar says that it could include overlays, or links to items featured in videos, photos and prices to further encourage clicks and purchases.

The full departure from NBC is indicative of how well Sugar Inc is doing today. It previously quit an advertising deal with NBC last year when it brought its advertising sales team in-house. The company was making $15 million in revenue last year, according to TechCrunch, and today has 97 employees. It raised the new money in order to do acquisitions, and Sugar tells me his company is hunting around for more.

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[venturebeat]