Qualcomm Likes Juice Wireless

Wireless chip maker joins $2.3 million investment round.
By Scott Martin

Mobile video startup Juice Wireless has quietly captured $2.3 million in funding from a pair of investors including Qualcomm. Juice Wireless' technology allows people to shoot video on mobile phones and then upload it to the startup's JuiceCaster video boxes that can appear on social-networking destinations and other sites. The investment, part of a second round, includes 21 Ventures and has yet to be formally announced. The company said the additional funds will allow it to pursue deals with large wireless carriers. "The funding is used to get the carrier deals and then support the carrier deals," Juice Wireless CEO Nick Desai said.

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Yahoo: Right Media for $680M
Search company picks up Internet ad exchange.
By Red Herring Staff
Yahoo on Monday agreed to acquire Right Media, an online advertising exchange, for $680 million in cash and stock. "We see that to be a very vibrant marketplace," Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said in a conference call. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo plans to purchase the remaining equity in Right Media, following its October 2006 agreement for a 20 percent ownership stake in the startup, formed in 2003. Yahoo took the original position in Right Media as part of a $45 million second round investment in the advertising company that included Redpoint Ventures and other existing investors. The October investment gave Right Media a valuation of about $200 million at the time. The move comes just days after Google agreed to pay $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, stealing it away from interested bidders including Microsoft and Yahoo. The DoubleClick deal promises to give Google a significant foothold in display advertising.

Report Card for VCs
TheFunded.com turns tables, letting startups rate funders.
By Ken Schachter
Venture capitalists, long accustomed to taking the role of Simon of "American Idol" in judging startups, are seeing the tables turned. That's because TheFunded.com recently launched, inviting entrepreneurs to post to its web site ratings of venture capital firms. On Thursday, after collecting more than 500 reviews, TheFunded.com released a list of the top five venture firms worldwide. Venture capitalists said it was inevitable that VCs became subject to the same scrutiny as college professor (RateMyProfessors.com), doctors (RateMDs.com) and contractors (AngiesList.com). "It was only a matter of time before this came up," said Sarah Tavel, an analyst at Larchmont, New York-based Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the firms ranked in the top five. "Increasingly the process is becoming more transparent and, perhaps, more symmetrical."

GE Spins Out VideoIQ
VideoIQ business exits parent, gets $8 million in funding.
By Ken Schachter
In what amounts to a rounding error for the multinational giant, GE has spun off its video analytics business into a 13-person startup, VideoIQ. As part of the deal, VideoIQ closed an $8-million first round of funding from Atlas Venture and Matrix Partners. The funding will be used primarily for research and development. Video analytics systems are designed to recognize threats without the need for people to review hours of video. In the wake of the 2005 London subway bombings, for example, investigators had to pore over video from 2,500 cameras.VideoIQ's systems can analyze networked video—differentiating, for instance, between a man and a dog or a car and a truck—and generate a QuickTime movie clip of the relevant event that is emailed to the user's mobile computer.