Wufoo-Sounds Like a Smart Deal!

It's been a while! Let's see what we can catch up on in the first quarter of 2013. Revamping BLOG and new web site. Happy New Year Lu'na Another Y Combinator Win: WuFoo Exits For $35 Million, After Raising Only $118,000 Erick Schonfeld Monday, April 25th, 2011

Online forms are not sexy, but every Website that wants to collect information or payments from visitors needs them. Today, SurveyMonkey acquired online form maker WuFoo to its growing bevy of tools for $35 million in cash and stock. I’ve confirmed the price with a source. What’s really great about this story is that WuFoo is another Y Combinator win. The startup launched way back in 2006 with only $118,000 in angel money (Paul Bucheit, who is now a partner at Y Combinator, was one of the investors). The company never needed to raise money again. It added payment processing options a couple years later, and now more than $100 million in transactions have been processed through its forms. SurveyMonkey should be able to ramp that up considerably. It will add WuFoo to other recent acquisitions ClickTools and Precision Polling. SurveyMonkey is on a buying spree after raising $100 million in debt last November. Expect more acquisitions to round out its offerings.

Plan for U.S. ‘Entrepreneur’s Visa’ Moves Forward

May 22, 2012, 10:52 AM

Hutchinson News / Associated Press, Associated Press A bill from Sens. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.), at left, and Mark Warner (D., Va.) would expand the visa program for foreigners with valuable skills. Plan for U.S. ‘Entrepreneur’s Visa’ Moves Forward A bipartisan group of senators will introduce legislation Tuesday that would seek to make it easier for foreign students who hold post-graduate degrees in math, science or engineering from American colleges to remain in the U.S. after they finish their studies. The legislation would also create an entrepreneur’s visa to allow people who start new businesses and create jobs to remain in the country. The four lawmakers who are backing the bill – Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Chris Coons and Republicans Jerry Moran and Marco Rubio – are hoping to convince leadership of both parties to allow the bill to come to the floor, despite the fact that it deals with the politically toxic issue of immigration in an election year. The bill would also create a targeted tax credit to encourage start up firms to invest in research and development. It would allow investors who cash in investments made in start up businesses to avoid capital gains tax as long as they had held the investment for at least five years. This last provision was included in a small business bill signed into law last year. It would require the administration carry out a cost benefit analysis of any new regulation that has an economic impact of greater than $100 million. The bill’s backers are hoping that by combining popular immigration provisions with tax and regulatory measures they can convince Senate leaders to bring the legislation to the floor, and avoid a wide ranging debate on immigration policy that would be almost certain to doom the bill in an election year. They hope to follow the model of a small business capital formation bill that moved quickly through Congress earlier this year and was signed into law by the president. A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide said there had been no discussions about the bill between leaders and any of the four lawmakers. The aide said that the only immigration measure that was likely to be brought to the Senate floor before the election was a proposal to allow children who came to the U.S. with their parents illegally be allowed to stay permanently if they go to college or enroll in the military. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has been a strong proponent of this measure, known as the DREAM Act.

NYC SeedStart Program

Check out NYC Seedstart.comProgram
SeedStart is interested in companies focusing on advertising infrastructure, e-commerce, digital content, and mobile technology.

Our goal is to help close the gap between funding and the teams who are just getting started in NYC. A major advantage of SeedStart Media is the vertical approach to the program. By involving professionals from the venture capital and startup world as well as mentors from large media companies, a full complement of guidance and marketplace feedback can be combined into the same program. Some example applications include companies that can deliver creative ideas in relation to digital and mobile advertising, virtual publications, mobile e-commerce platforms, and cloud computing in relation to media businesses.


SeedStart Media will provide finalists access to entrepreneurial mentors, $20,000 in funding, work-space, and partner and customer introductions for the company. The program will also conclude with an investor pitch day that will allow the teams a further opportunity to raise more capital.

Can we really trust the cloud? VentureBeat.com (Canada)

Can we really trust the cloud?
January 31, 2011 | Matthew Lynley
Software architects like to shorthand the spaghetti of interconnected networks that make up the Internet as “the cloud” — an amorphous entity, somewhere distant, that you don’t need to fuss over.

But events around the world have brought cloud advocates back to Earth. From Egypt and Canada to Capitol Hill and beyond, we’ve been reminded that what we call the cloud is just a bunch of computers, in buildings, tied together by fiber-optic cables, and ruled by other human beings.

Just like the rest of the Internet, cloud computing — services run on remote servers and deliver files and computing power over the Internet — are vulnerable to the whims of regulators and governments. Residents of Egypt learned that lesson the hard way when the government abruptly shut off most Internet service providers in a frantic attempt to gain control of its rioting populace after rising unrest.
Read More Here

NYC’s Top Venture Capital Firms for Early-Stage Internet & Mobile Startups – Based on 2010 Deal Activity

Which venture capital firms are writing checks to early-stage internet and mobile companies in NYC? Below is a handy list for all of you NYC startup entrepreneurs. Please note that the rankings are not of the top NYC-based venture firms. If you are an early-stage internet company in NYC, you probably do not care where the investor has their office but instead, you want to know who is providing funding to startups based in New York city irrespective of where they are based. As you’ll see in the list of firms, 1/3 of the top firms do not have an office in NYC (SV Angel, Spark Capital, Lowercase Capital and True Ventures.) SEE LIST ON WEB SITE!

And so without further ado, here is the list of the most active early-stage venture capital firms investing in NYC companies through Q3 2010 based on announced deals. Early-stage for the purposes of this analysis are Seed VC and Series A rounds. If you are thinking of pitching these investors, we always recommend doing your own investor reverse due diligence.

If you are seeking funding, try the Funding Recommendation Engine(FRE). It’s free and takes 5 minutes so you have nothing to lose and a list of potential investors to gain. Learn more about the FRE here.

Renowned Startup Factory TechStars Opens New York City Branch

TechStars, one of the best known and most successful startup accelerator programs, is expanding to New York City. Applications are now open for its inaugural NYC class, which will start in January.

TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen is temporarily relocating to the city to oversee the innaugural class; angel investor David Tisch is signed on as the New York City director.

TechStars now operates in four cities, but only has one active class at any given time, and limits its class-size to 10 companies, which David says is essential to giving each startup all the mentorship it needs.

The new program has a very impressive line-up of investors and mentors, with an emphasis on NYC VCs, angels, and entrepreneurs. Investors include DFJ Gotham, AOL Ventures, First Round Capital, FirstMark Capital, IA Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Lerer Ventures (and we could keep going). Mentors already signed on include Dennis Crowley, Chris Dixon, Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, Zack Klein, and Sam Lessin (again, we could keep going).

Just a few weeks ago, New York's first accelerator program, SeedStart, graduated its innaugural class. Now it already has company. That's great news for New York tech.

TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program that runs a three month long program in Boston (MA), Boulder (CO), New York City (NY) and Seattle (WA) once each year. The company is very selective – hundreds of companies apply and about ten companies per city are chosen. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, three months of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program.

Start-Up Weekend New York City June 11-13

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking (oh no, the buzzwords are attacking!), unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, DC and more.