With so much going on in the city’s thriving ecosystem, it is easy to miss some of the happenings in the space. This column will keep you abreast of a few of things that you may have missed in NYC Tech this week.
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ALLEY THIS WEEK
DreamIt Ventures stole the show this week as it unleashed 12 awesome startups onto the world at its Demo Day. You can read all about these companies here as we chatted with all the founders.
So Much For the City that Never Sleeps…
New York-based sleep startup Casper announced that they closed a $13.1 million Series A funding round – and FYI, this Warby Parker for mattresses just launched in April of this year and already boasts millions in sales. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), along with new participants Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments, Slow Ventures, Mike Duda’s Consigliere Brand Capital, Silas Capital, Cendana Capital, and fashion designer Steven Alan. Existing investors, including Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, Vaizra Investments, Queensbridge Ventures, and Correlation Ventures, also participated in the round. Bottom line: we sleep. But we also like comfy, affordable bedding when it’s finally lights out.
Tinder was on the mind at New York Tech Meetup this week. You can read all about it here.
Thuzio, the celebrity and athlete booking engine founded by ex-Giants running back Tiki Barber has closed a $6M Series A round with RSE Ventures and Prudence Holdings.
Rocket Fuel, a leading provider of artificial intelligence advertising solutions for digital marketers, and [x+1], Inc., a leading provider of programmatic marketing and data management solutions, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Rocket Fuel will acquire [x+1] in a cash ($100 million) and stock transaction, with an enterprise value of approximately $230 million.
Poshly, the big data company focused on the beauty space closed a $1.5M seed round with WI Harper Group, Astia Angels, and Frontier Ventures.
A big Happy Birthday and buh-bye to Frank Denbow – but just for now. The StartupThreads founder is headed to Startup Chile for the next six month and will no doubt be seeing plenty of visitors from New York once it turns chilly here. It was his birthday this past week and the locals turned out in numbers to wish him a happy, happy and a bon voyage.
Plated delivers! The two-year-old Techstars alumni company that home-delivers 30-minute gourmet recipes and all the ingredients you need to make the meal, has raised $15 million in new funding. Investors include Great Oaks Venture Capital, Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, and ff Venture Capital.
Paul Farkas of Wearable Wednesday NY hosted a panel “Wearables in a Connected World” at R|GA with Drew Austin of Augmate, Mitchell Golner, Venture Partner, DreamIT Ventures NY, Puneet Mehta of MobileROI, Linda Drabik, Founder/Organizer, IOT NY, and Billie Whitehouse, co-founder, Wearable Experiments.
Image credit: Marley Kaplan of mkThinkTank, the boutique strategy and insights agency, on a mission to help brands navigate the emerging technology/startup landscape.
InVision, a prototyping, collaboration and workflow platform enables users to more easily design their own apps, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by existing investors Tiger Global Management (who led the round) and FirstMark Capital.
