SacStarts - funding

How to Fund Your Small Business or Start-Up

Adam Kalsey — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:00:24 +0000

Date:

Jun 16 2010 - 8:30am - 11:30am

The ability to raise capital and maintain cash flow is a key element of success for Start-ups and Small Businesses as well as larger organizations. Participants will explore both equity and non-equity funding methods, including the SBA Loan Guaranty Program.

Full event listing »

Location

Drexel UniversitySacramento, CA

See map: Google Maps

Engine Yard closes $15M Series B

Adam Kalsey — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:01:38 +0000

Locally founded Engine Yard, a provider of Ruby on Rails hosting has closed a series B round of $15 million from New Enterprise Associates, Amazon.com, and existing investor Benchmark Capital. NEA led the round, and partner Peter Sonsini is joining Engine Yard’s board.

The money raised in this Series B will help Engine Yard develop a platform for cloud computing clusters and to continue funding the development of Rubinius and Merb, their open source projects.

In January 2008 the company raised a $3.5 million Series A round from Benchmark Capital. The quick turnaround to a Series B comes because the company wanted to raise money before they needed it, says Engine Yard’s CTO, Tom Mornini. The company’s board was concerned about the tightening market for venture capital, and decided to raise enough cash to carry them for some time.

The company is growing quickly. When we profiled Engine Yard in January of last year, CEO Lance Walley said they had 34 customers. Mornini tells me they currently host more than 400 companies and experienced 40% growth in the first quarter of this year.

With the new funding, Engine Yard plans to start deploying their managed hosting clusters on existing cloud hosting providers. Mornini wasn’t able to say which providers, but with Amazon as an investor, it’s safe to say that EC2 is a likely target.

The addition of Amazon as an investor is an interesting move. Thanks to Amazon’s cloud infrastructure services EC2 and S3, the company is widely seen as a leader in the emerging cloud computing market. They’ve been criticized, however, for not providing uptime guarantees, service level agreements, or managed services. This investment now ties them to a company that’s providing fully managed services for cloud deployments.

The size of Amazon’s investment was not disclosed and neither company is talking about any specific plans for working together.

The company currently hosts their clusters in traditional data centers, placing racks and server hardware in data centers around the country. Mornini says they plan to continue to use this infrastructure for clients that require physical hardware. Many clients, he says, are unwilling to move their data into the cloud, often citing security or regulatory concerns.

Freepath lands $1.5 million from Velocity, others.

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:11:16 +0000

Folsom startup Freepath has closed a $1.5 million Series A round led by Folsom’s Velocity Venture Capital. Local investors Strategis Early Ventures, Sacramento Angels, and Sierra Angels also participated in the round.

Freepath creates presentation software designed to make it easier to incorporate multimedia, web content, and local documents into presentations. The technology grew out of software that allows churches to present rich media, sermon notes, and song lyrics to their audiences.

Freepath is led by CEO John Stone, a co-founder of Powerschool who remained at Apple as a Vice President after Apple’s acquisition of Powerschool. He joined Freepath after the founders pitched him as a prospective angel investor. “[I] became so excited about the technology and market opportunity that I joined the team,” he says.

Mutant Logic Secures Funds

Geoff Sakala — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:23:21 +0000

Mutant Logic, the El Dorado Hills startup, which has developed software that allows makers of integrated circuits to analyze chip designs has secured $500,000 in funding from local angel investors. In addition, the company has signed a licensing deal with UCD, a milestone for a campus that's been pushing to convert its research into commercial ventures. Bob Bennett, formerly of Sharewave, was hired as the CEO last November. Bennett says as much as 70 percent of the design process involves "verification" of the chips' integrity. "We think our product can cut that verification time in half," he says. The founders are former UCD grad students Jorge Campos, Brian Hoblit and Ben Mok, who met while studying at UCD's Center for Entrepreneurship. Mutant Logic has received support and guidance from El Dorado Hills Technology Incubator.

Arkos closes second round of funding

Adam Kalsey — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 05:51:09 +0000

Folsom chip designer Arkos Silicon has landed $10.1 million in funding, according to a report published in the Sacramento Bee.

The firm’s second round of funding came primarily from San Francisco venture capital firm Levensohn Venture Partners, but also included money from earlier investors Bay Partners, SPM Capital and US Venture Partners — all Silicon Valley firms.

Founded in early 2005, Akros designs chips for use in network-connected devices, such as VoIP phones, wireless routers, security cameras and security badge readers.

The chips are designed to help manage energy consumption and to allow the devices to be powered by electricity coming over data lines, rather than through power cords, said company Chief Executive Francois Crepin.

Revionics lands funding

Adam Kalsey — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:02:21 +0000

Bob Shallit is reporting that Revionics, a Rosemont-based software company that helps mid-sized grocery retailers manage prices, closed a round of financing last week.

The company has reportedly received just under $2 million in funding.