Venture Capital Outlook 2011 [Event]

Venture Capital Outlook 2010 is another Awesome event in DC area you don’t want to miss. I have been literally attending all of them and worth every penny. Unfortunately, I might miss this one as I am on this side of the Atlantic till early or mid December.

The event is part of the Potomac Tech Wire breakfast series that brings together senior executives in the Mid-Atlantic to discuss technology issues in a conversational, roundtable environment moderated by the editor of Potomac Tech Wire. Read more of this post

Couponing: The Web’s Hottest Business Model


I’ve  been following the online coupon companies like Groupon and LivingSocial since March of this year. I started even paying  more attention to  such a new hot space, when noticed both Google and  Yelp were also gearing up for online couponing  last month. Not to mention our beloved DC-Based Living Social who just landed another cool $10 mil investment on top of their previously $49 Mil raised so far. The space is certainly HOT and getting very crowded. Read more of this post

It’s MAVA time again!


by Elias Shams
It was about ten years ago I presented my first Internet company, Telezoo at MAVA and received my first cool $3 mil funding.  I didn’t even know how to carry that much money from MAVA to my bank :-) Damn! It feels like it was just yesterday.

It’s that time of the year again.

MAVA (Mid-Atlantic Venture Association) on announced the 40 early- and expansion-stage technology companies that have been selected to present at the organization’s Capital Connection ’10 event, scheduled for May 19-20 in Baltimore.

They companies will join 14 later-stage companies to be showcased throughout the conference. Selections were made by a panel of nearly 30 investors and advisors, co-chaired by Tom Grossi of New Enterprise Associates, Steve Fredrick of Grotech Ventures, Tom Roberts of Harbert Venture Partners and Sever Totia of Edison Venture Fund. Read more of this post

LivingSocial Lands more Cool Mils


by Elias Shams
Our beloved Washington based LivingSocial is raising money faster than I have been blogging. It was just last month I covered them when they had just raised $25 million. The company raised another $14 million in their third round yesterday, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures. and Steve Case Revolution also participated in the round, which boosts the company’s backing to $39 million. Read more…

Living In Social


by Elias Shams
It is time  for someone to come up with a similar James Brown’s iconic song “Living in America” but,  change “America” to “Social”. Given, the rise of social media, social networking, social search and now our daily social deals and coupons, wouldn’t you agree?

One of our local companies, LivingSocial in social deal and coupon space just raised another $25 m for their Second Round today:

LivingSocial was one of my first coverage back in December of last year as they had just partnered with Newsweek magazine. Their series A round of financing was  $5 million three years ago led by Grotech Ventures. Steve Case, the founder of AOL also personally invested. Read more…

Congrats To Another DC Based Web 2.0 Company, Living Social!


They just partnered with Newsweek magazine. Living Social is a developer of popular social networking tools on Facebook! Last month, the two companies opened voting to Facebook users, polling millions of people about the moments and figures they felt helped shape the first 10 years of the 21st century. Newsweek’s editors and celebrities also contributed. Results are available at the link below.

Living Social, initially started out as a Facebook developer. However, they have been also creating social app across many social networks past two years or so. They raised $5 million in a series A financing from Grotech Ventures. Steve Case also personally invested. Where is the Steve Case Connection? Living Social’s CEO, Tim O’Shaughnessy, used to work for AOL and also worked for Case at Revolution Health. I still can’t get over with the $10m monthly burn rate of Revolution Health used to spend.

Living Social specializes in social apps that let people organize, review, and discover books, music, movies, restaurants, video games, and beer including ReadingSocial, TuneSocial, ReelSocial, BrewSocial, etc. They launched in February of 2008. I think they have about 40 million users. I read it somewhere.

Although, the catalog of reviews may become a valuable database, but not sure the apps themselves are that popular. I am saying that based on their number of active users on Facebook.

So, check them out and let us know what you think.

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