PHP Fog Announces $1.8 Million Investment, Led by Madrona Venture Group

Portland, OR (PRWEB) January 11, 2011

PHP Fog, a PHP-based Platform-as-a-Service (PHP PaaS) cloud computing platform today announced that is has secured $ 1.8 million in financing from Madrona Venture Group, First Round Capital, Founders Co-Op, and other prominent angel investors.

PHP is the most popular web development language in the world, with millions of active developers and tens of millions of PHP-based sites already in deployment. PHP Fog is the only company offering effortless deployment and infinite scaling of PHP applications in the cloud. The company offers one-click deployments for many popular PHP apps and frameworks including WordPress, Drupal, Kohana, Zend, and SugarCRM. Also, with PHP Fogs N-tier scaling, customers no longer have to worry about reliability, since every part of their web stack has built-in redundancy and failover. The company is currently in private beta but expects to launch publicly in the first half of 2011.

PaaS is a red-hot sector and recent industry developments have validated the market need for cloud application platforms that help customers build, deploy and scale web apps, said Tim Porter a Partner at Madrona Venture Group who will join the companys board. PHP Fog identified an important customer need and developed an innovative, differentiated service with an all-star team that uniquely addresses it. Great companies start with great people and we are excited to help them grow PHP Fog to a large company.

“PHP Fog is precisely the kind of company – and Lucas is exactly the kind of entrepreneur – that Founders Co-op exists to support, said Chris DeVore from Founders Co-op, a seed-stage investment fund based in Seattle. He’s a developer’s developer, tackling an acute pain that he and his peers experience in scaling their own software businesses.”

The company was founded in 2010 by Lucas Carlson, a PHP developer for over 8 years and one of the leading Ruby developers in the world. Prior to starting PHP Fog, Lucas was engineer #1 at Mog and helped to build and scale the site to tens of millions of monthly pageviews. Lucas also wrote the Ruby Cookbook for OReilly and is active in the open source community.

I couldnt be more excited about all the strong investors the company has been able to attract, said Lucas Carlson. We are in a space that is changing every day, but the opportunity is massive. Now we have the resources to scale quickly and provide a world-class service to PHP developers.

About PHP Fog

PHP Fog provides simple one-click installations of some of the most popular PHP applications out there.

It just works.

You get full access to the source code of your PHP application through git. Push your code changes to us and we will publish these changes to the cloud.

We handle deployment, failover, database maintenance, scaling, and all the other plumbing that can take an army of programmers and systems administrators to handle. Automatically. You pay only for what you use.

About Madrona Venture Group

Madrona Venture Group (http://www.madrona.com) has been investing in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and has been privileged to play a role in some of the region’s most successful technology ventures. The firm invests across the information technology spectrum, including consumer Internet, commercial software and services, digital media and advertising, networking and infrastructure, and wireless. Madrona currently manages nearly $ 700 million and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, Isilon Systems, World Wide Packets, iConclude, Farecast.com and ShareBuilder.

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PHP Fog Announces $1.8 Million Investment, Led by Madrona Venture Group

The BIP Investment Team Announces the Sale of its Interest in Vendormate Inc. Generating a 6.6x Cash-on-Cash Return to Investors

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) January 12, 2011

The BIP Investment Team, managers of BIP Opportunities Fund, announces the sale of its interest in a pre fund investment, Vendormate Inc., to Primus Capital, a Cleveland based private equity firm. The sale generated a 6.6x gross cash-on-cash return in 3.5 years for the BIP team and its investors.

From the start, Vendormate presented an excellent investment opportunity, said Mark Buffington, partner at BIP Opportunities Fund. The management teams operating prowess, the strength of Vendormates products and the vast need for effective vendor management systems in the healthcare industry combined to make Vendormate one of the fastest-growing software companies in its industry.

“We are very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with the Vendormate management team over the last several years,” commented Shawn Welch, partner at BIP Opportunities Fund. “Their leadership has facilitated what many would consider to be a notable investment return under any economic conditions.”

About Vendormate, Inc.

Vendormate protects the health of hospital supply chains with a unique vendor credentialing and compliance monitoring solution. The program assures compliance with both internal policies and government mandates, including HIPAA and the Deficit Reduction Act. Registered vendors are screened and rated by custom criteria and continuously monitored for non-compliance. Integrated badges control access to facilities. Call 1-877-483-6368, or visit http://www.vendormate.com or vendorcompliance.wordpress.com.

About BIP Opportunities Fund

BIP Opportunities Fund is an Atlanta-based investment firm focused on providing capital and operational support to emerging, high-growth companies. We seek to invest between $ 2 million to $ 5 million in companies with revenues up to $ 15 million. Investments will generally be based within the Southeast but we remain opportunistic to other domestically based investment opportunities. Industry sectors covered include technology, healthcare, business services, franchising, and specialty finance. Please visit http://www.bipfund.com for more information on BIP Opportunities Fund.

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The BIP Investment Team Announces the Sale of its Interest in Vendormate Inc. Generating a 6.6x Cash-on-Cash Return to Investors

MJD Interactive Agency Launches Website for Newly Established West Health Investment Fund

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) November 09, 2011

Last week, MJD Interactive Agency launched a website for the newly announced West Health Investment Fund (http://www.westhealthfund.com). The Fund has a unique mission to lower health care costs by providing risk capital for companies with cuttingedge health care technologies and services.

In 2009, Gary and Mary West founded the West Wireless Health Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization, to identify ways to lower health care costs through technology. With the launch of the West Health Investment Fund, the Wests have put an additional $ 100 million of their own money to work to provide capital to companies creating novel solutions to the health care cost problem.

MJD Interactive was hired mere weeks before the site was set to go live and produced a highly customized site that was cohesive with the new branding initiative of the fund.

It was important to get information to people without bloating the site with page after page of hard-to-find content. We designed the site to use animated panels of content to keep things simple and clean, while giving people the information they need. We built the site using Drupal as the Content Management System. They needed a CMS that was highly scalable for future content updates as well as building a solid technology platform for future initiatives, said Jeremy Duimstra, Co-Founder of MJD Interactive Agency. Those were the technical design challenges that were overcome. We also had a great time utilizing the new branding guidelines to create what we think is a very modern, visually stunning site.

Working with MJD was a great experience for us, said Don Casey, Manager of the West Health Investment Fund. We had a very short deadline, and they delivered a compelling site to us in time for our official unveiling. The dedication they showed to get the site built was extraordinary, and the site is getting rave reviews on a daily basis.

Were really just excited to be able to put our time into a project that means as much as the West Health Investment Fund, said Duimstra. We truly believe that Gary and Mary West, their dedicated staff, and the companies they choose to invest in will have a lasting positive impact on not only healthcare, but on the world. There arent many projects that come along that have those lofty aspirations. Were honored to be part of it.

About MJD Interactive Agency

MJD Interactive Agency specializes in web development, online marketing, and technology solutions. Areas of expertise include design, user experience, mobile application development, Drupal Development, Joomla, WordPress and Sitecore. Online Marketing strengths include Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search, Social Marketing and Analytics. Web Development and Online Marketing is both an art and a science. Our award winning design and marketing teams work closely together to ensure that the creative sparkles and the campaign performs meeting or exceeding your specified goals. We believe our job is to create demand. To drive response. To deliver results. Our success is based on your success.

About the West Health Investment Fund

The West Health Investment Fund (http://www.westhealthfund.com) is the first investment fund with the mission to lower health care costs for the public by providing risk capital for cutting-edge health care technologies and services. Launched by entrepreneurs and philanthropists Gary and Mary West, the Fund aims to spur an entirely new ecosystem for health care innovation that lowers health care costs.

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MJD Interactive Agency Launches Website for Newly Established West Health Investment Fund

Big Boulder Finance Panel to Review Social Data"s Growing Role in Investment Strategies

Boulder, CO (PRWEB) June 19, 2012

BOULDER, Colo., June 14, 2012 Gnip, the leading provider of social data for enterprise applications, today announced the lineup for the finance panel at Big Boulder, the worlds first conference on social data.

Big Boulder will be held June 21 and 22 at the St Julien Hotel and Spa in Boulder, Colo. The panel will survey the increasingly sophisticated uses of social media for asset managers, risk management and other financial products. The panelists will be:

Big Boulder Finance Panel to Review Social Data"s Growing Role in Investment Strategies

Zemanta Adds Seed Funding From Union Square Ventures Seedcamp 2007 Winner Receives First Investment from U.S. Firm

London (PRWEB) September 15, 2008

Zemanta (http://www.zemanta.com), the leading provider of content creation and discovery tools for bloggers around the world, today announced that the company had received seed funding from Union Square Ventures, the first American investor for the Slovenia founded company. The funds will be used to expand the company’s business development operations in the US.

By applying advanced text-processing algorithms, Zemanta reads user-created text, such as a blog post, article or web page, and recognizes the contextual content. Zemanta then combs the web for the most relevant images, smart links, keywords and text, and instantly serves these results so the user can enrich his or her content.

“I’ve been using Zemanta for several months on my personal blogs and it’s changed the way I work. Now I write and do my research at the same time, it’s a more efficient way to blog. In addition to recommending related content for me to read (and link to), Zemanta recommends images, hyperlinks and tags, all of which are incredibly useful to me,” said Fred Wilson, partner, Union Square Ventures. “But as I’ve used Zemanta more and more, I’ve come to realize that it can and should recommend many other things to me while I create content. What Zemanta has really built is the equivalent of adwords for content creators.”

Zemanta was founded in May 2007 by Botjan petič and Andra Tori, with the goal of simplifying the creation of online content. In September 2007, Zemanta was chosen as one of the winners of Seedcamp, an annual week-long event that brings together EMEA-based entrepreneurs who compete for venture capital funding. In March, Zemanta launched its beta service for bloggers which has been enthusiastically adopted among early adopters.

“Since HTML was introduced 10 years ago, online content tools have been largely unchanged,” said Botjan petič, Zemanta’s director of products, Zemanta. “We are changing the way people blog today and our mission is to transform the way online content is produced. Now, with the guidance and connections of Union Square Group, we can take our work to the next level.”

To date, Zemanta has also raised investment capital from Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group.

About Zemanta

Zemanta the leading provider of content creation and discovery tools for bloggers around the world, has created an easy-to-use way to up your blogging game. With Zemanta, you can reach across the Internet to bring the photos, links, tags, reblogs and documents that add depth, credibility and entertainment to your blog. More importantly they help you increase you readership and hold onto your audience. A browser plug-in that also works within your blogging service, Zemanta delivers “smart sources”, which appear as you are typing. Available for FireFox and Internet Explorer, Zemanta works with multiple blogging engines including WordPress, MovableType and TypePad, Blogger, and 7 more. Zemanta is backed by Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group.

Press Contact:

Bostjan Spetic

Zemanta ltd.

+386 31 565 846

bostjan @ zemanta.com

Clarissa Horowitz

Sparkpr for Zemanta

415.321.1881

clarissa @ sparkpr.com

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Zemanta Adds Seed Funding From Union Square Ventures Seedcamp 2007 Winner Receives First Investment from U.S. Firm

123ContactForm.com Secures Investment and Takes Online Form Building to an Upper Level

(PRWEB) July 06, 2011

123ContactForm.com, a European startup, which offers the easiest online form builder, is announcing latest company news. During the last 6 months, the team raised an angel investment round from a local investor, completely redesigned the website and added many new features and integrations with third party services.

Adrian Gheara, angel investor and entrepreneur, partnered with the 123ContactForm team in 2010 and offered financial aid and expertise. With additional funding, new talent was added to the team, which boosted the business development in the last 6 months, and will further support the growth of the user-base. 123ContactForm will expand its operations from the European & US markets to other international markets. The additional funding allowed the company to quickly enhance the application and add many new features and service integrations, which makes forms very powerful tools for any website owner or administrator.

123ContactForm has made major improvements to its platform:

The website was completely redesigned and rebuilt from ground-up for a better user experience.
A new drag & drop real-time form editor that allows users to view modifications instantly.
Integration of third party applications (Google Docs, MailChimp, SalesForce, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, Google Sites, WebHook, and more) that facilitate data manipulation and post-processing. With these integrations in place, forms are much more than just forms. All website owners should take advantage of these powerful tools and link their forms with other business processes.
A form management application for Facebook which makes it very simple to post forms on Facebook pages;
Form management plugins for different blogging platforms, like WordPress, Blogger.
Integration of three payment processors: PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net, that can be used within forms to accept payments from submitters;
New form field types that ease and improve form-submitter interaction, and a new theme manager to increase the appeal of the forms.

The 123ContactForm service is still free, as it has always been, with the option to scale up and upgrade to premium accounts if needed.

About 123ContactForm

Launched in 2008, in Timisoara, Romania, by Florin Cornianu and Tudor Bastea, 123ContactForm provides complex web form creation services. During the past few years, the 123ContactForm engine has become one of the worldwide most popular and professional platforms in its field. More details about the new platform features can be found on the 123ContactForm Blog.

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123ContactForm.com Secures Investment and Takes Online Form Building to an Upper Level

WordPress Analytics Platform PressTrends Partners with WooThemes, Plans Integration, Takes Strategic Investment

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) March 29, 2012

PressTrends, the WordPress-centric analytics platform and provider of real-time trends and insights for developers, designers, consultants and publishers, today announced a major partnership with WooThemes, one of the largest theme and infrastructure providers for WordPress sites. The partnership also includes a strategic investment by WooThemes in PressTrends current round of financing.

The agreement is part of a broader strategy to support and integrate strong players in the WordPress ecosystem, and further solidify WooThemes as an end-to-end platform for the best sites, services and stores worldwide. PressTrends will be integrated into all WooThemes themes and plugins, including WooCommerce, opening up the tool to hundreds of thousands of new users.

Offering a beautiful and easy-to-read dashboard interface, PressTrends gives developers, designers, consultants and publishers a robust picture of how audiences are interacting with their themes and plugins, as well as the actual content on the underlying sites.

There are currently over 45,000 WordPress instances sending data through PressTrends with over 5,000 sites added per week on average. PressTrends is currently integrated into over 300 themes, over 300 plugins and has tracked almost 3 million activations.

We’ve been using PressTrends ourselves for months now. We finally have visibility into how our customers are interacting with WooThemes product offerings, in real-time, said WooThemes co-founder Adii Pienaar. PressTrends has made us more responsive and adaptive. It gives us insights we cant get anywhere else. No other platform out there right now can track and analyze qualitatively as well as quantitatively. A deep partnership and strategic investment made obvious sense, and our forthcoming integrations will provide our community with the same powerful capabilities we currently enjoy.

With PressTrends, anyone can track engagement across whole WordPress sites and individual elements alike. PressTrends isolates usage trends within themes, plugins and content categories. PressTrends makes it easy to track multiple products. It can also look at how a given site or blog performs against the larger community.

Most importantly, PressTrends provides suggestions to improve performance, based on historic and real-time data.

The foundation of PressTrends is the pursuit of a better Web. We identify what design, development and content strategies facilitate the most user interaction, said founder and CEO George Ortiz. Were thrilled to have the support, both financially and organizationally, of WooThemes, and look forward to combining our resources to provide the entire WordPress community a better tool for understanding their own audience.

PressTrends plans to leverage the investment to help further build out and improve the current platform and is also exploring strategic partnerships with other premium vendors to help increase traction and adoption. They will also be building out their team and infrastructure to accelerate the growth of the platform in the coming months and are building out a suite of premium features.

WooThemes co-founder Adii Pienaar and KissMetrics co-founder Hiten Shah have also been added to the PressTrends Board of Advisors.

Anyone can download the PressTrends plugin directly here. For more documentation and guides to help implement PressTrends into themes, plugins and sites, visit the PressTrends library.

More information on PressTrends:

WordPress Analytics Platform PressTrends Partners with WooThemes, Plans Integration, Takes Strategic Investment