VC Funding Slipped in 2012, OnApp Kicks Off 2013

In the same week that CB Insights reported that venture capital activity had decreased slightly in 2012, OnApp, Survey Monkey, Zettaset and InsideSales.com raised money to further their cause.

Capital Funding falls $28.3 billion

CB Insights released a report last week, noting that across 3,267 deals completed in 2012 the $28.3 billion invested was down 7.5 percent and failed to reach the $30 billion mark seen in 2011. The top 5 funds based on activity were rounded out by Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital. The report details which states saw the most activity, and which sectors are hot, such as healthcare and mobile. Speaking at the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich, Ben Horowitz (jokingly) said that last year Andreesen Horowitz listened to pitches from 2,355 companies, and in the end closed only 24 deals. He went on to state that the companies that made it are those started by "college dropouts with insane ideas going after tiny markets with no way to monetize."

OnApp

Cloud management platform company OnApp announced today that it has closed a Series B round of funding, bringing total funding to more than $20 million. With existing investor LDC leading the round, OnApp will use the funding to help roll out a new line of products and services in 2013, as well as expand into new global markets. London-based OnApp products include OnApp Cloud, OnApp CDN, an OnApp Marketplace and OnApp Storage.

“In 2010, we set out to build a turnkey platform to make it easy for service providers to create profitable cloud services,” said OnApp CEO, Ditlev Bredahl. “Our customers now run some of the fastest growing cloud services out there, with an average annual growth rate of over 80%. We’ve also seen a new breed of Virtual Service Providers emerge, who are creating a wide range of cloud-based businesses on top of the OnApp Marketplace."

Survey Monkey

Web-based survey solutions company Survey Monkey announced it has initiated an $800 million debt and equity recapitalization, led by CEO Dave Goldberg and Tiger Global Management, LLC, at a valuation of approximately $1.35 billion. Google is also becoming a new shareholder. The combined transaction represents one of the largest capital raises by a privately-held US internet company. With a $444 million equity sale completed late last year SurveyMonkey expects to raise an additional $350 million in debt financing. The proceeds from the debt will be used to buy shares from employees and shareholders as well as retire the Company’s existing debt.

“This transaction affords us all of the capital benefits of a public offering without the costs and distractions of an IPO and the demands of operating as a public company,” said Dave Goldberg, SurveyMonkey CEO, who has significantly increased his ownership in the company as part of this transaction. “Given SurveyMonkey’s momentum and growth profile, this transaction is an optimal way to reward employees and longtime shareholders with meaningful liquidity while also providing opportunities for Tiger Global, Google Inc. and other new investors who are drawn to our strong business model.”

Zettaset

Big Data company Zettaset announced that it has closed a $10 million Series B financing round led by HighBar Partners, with additional participation from strategic investor Brocade and Series A investors DFJ and Epic Ventures.  The new funding will be used to further research and development as well as expand sales and marketing to meet increasing demand from enterprise customers. Zettaset produces a distribution-agnostic management platform, where software automates, secures and accelerates Hadoop deployments.

“Enterprises of all sizes are demanding robust and secure turn-key solutions for their production, mission-critical environments,” said Zettaset President and CEO Jim Vogt. “Zettaset is the only vendor providing a comprehensive, software-only solution for cluster management that can be deployed across a wide variety of operating systems, Hadoop distributions, and file systems, transparently integrating Big Data into existing environments. This funding enables us to further serve our enterprise base and more effectively address this exploding market opportunity.”

InsideSales.com

InsideSales.com announced it has completed a $35 million Series B round of financing led by U.S. Venture Partners and joined by existing investor Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. The company provides cloud-based, sales automation and predictive analytics for inside sales professionals. In the last year, InsideSales.com has grown over 100 percent in sales, and 120 percent in employee count. In that same timeframe, the U.S. Patent Office awarded InsideSales.com three patents of its many pending applications.

“We are leading the revolution of companies adopting the inside sales way of sales,” said David Elkington, InsideSales.com founder and CEO. “Our technology is fundamentally changing the way people think about and interact with their prospects and customers. We apply science and statistics to sales, increasing productivity and results for our customers. This funding will help us keep up with the demand in the market, add needed capacity, and to continue to innovate new solutions and technologies that will drive our customers success and growth.”