客户管理工具Intercom完成C轮3500万美元融资
Intercom 成立于 2011 年，总部位于旧金山。
Intercom 为企业提供一个同时集成销售、市场、产品和售后服务的客户沟通系统，让多部门的人员能基于网页、手机应用、E-mail 为客户提供支持。
本轮投资由 coniq Capital 领投，Bessemer Venture Partners，The Social+Capital Partnership 跟投。
消息来源：techeu
Irish-founded business-to-consumer communication software startup Intercom raises $35m to scale globally
Intercom, which has developed a platform that businesses can use to communicate with customers directly online and via apps, has raised $35 million in Series C funding.
The company is based in San Francisco, but was founded by four Irish entrepreneurs and has its entire R&D and product management team based in Dublin. All in all, 50% of Intercom's 140 staff is based in Dublin today (and half of its 7,000 paying customers are outside the United States).
The funding round brings Intercom's total funding to $66 million. ICONIQ Capital took the lead, with Series A lead investor The Social + Capital Partnership and Series B lead investor Bessemer Venture Partners chipping in.
Intercom says its customers communicate 3 million times per day, with over 250 million of their end users on the platform today. The company also says it nearly tripled headcount in 2014, and plans to double again both in Dublin and San Francisco in the next 12 months.
That's the kind of growth investors obviously love to see.
硅谷
2015年08月28日
硅谷
云服务企业Velostrata完成A轮1400万美元融资
Velostrata 是一家成立于 2014 年公司，总部位于美国加州。Velostrata 为客户提供混合云解决方案，降低企业服务器的计算压力，将数据存储部署在本地，在云上运营虚拟的计算器。本轮投资由 83 North 领投，Norwest Venture Partners 跟投。
消息来源：Xconomy
Velostrata Lifts Veil On New Hybrid Cloud Model, Raises $14M
San Jose, CA-based startup Velostrata emerged from stealth mode today with $14 million in hand and a new option for businesses that are wary of storing their data in the Web-based servers of the “public cloud.’’
Velostrata’s software makes it possible for companies to tap into the computing power available from that shared Web-based infrastructure, without also being required to store their data in the public cloud. Customers can quickly switch some of their processing workload to an outside company such as Amazon Web Services, but continue to store their data in their own in-house IT centers, according to Velostrata. Dozens of businesses have been using the software in beta testing.
The tactic of “decoupling compute from storage” allows companies to use Web-based computing as needed, and avoid the expense of overbuilding their own infrastructure to handle periods of peak demand, says Velostrata founder and CEO Issy Ben-Shaul (pictured above.) The startup, which Ben-Shaul founded in 2014 with Velostrata chief product officer Ady Degany, claims its technology is the first of its kind.
“The most consistent feedback we have heard from customers, analysts and press, is that they have not heard (of) any company that does this, so there are no competitor(s) that offer decoupling compute from storage,” Ben-Shaul said in an e-mail exchange with Xconomy.
Ben-Shaul was previously a co-founder of Actona, a wide area networks optimization company that was acquired by Cisco in 2004, and Wanova, a desktop virtualization company bought by VMware in 2012.
Velostrata announced today that it has closed a $14 million Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners and 83North, formerly named Greylock IL Partners.
Norwest Venture Partners general partner Dror Nahumi, in a statement about the funding announcement, said Velostrata’s technology addresses a bottleneck in the adoption by businesses of the “hybrid cloud”—the combined use of public and private computing and storage infrastructure as needed.
“Every CIO is being asked by the management team and board to migrate enterprise infrastructure to the cloud, yet a mere fraction of IT spending goes toward cloud services,” Nahumi said. “Adoption is low because current cloud migration technologies are plagued by challenges like security and compliance risks, cost, migration time, complexity and vendor lock-in. Velostrata provides an innovative hybrid cloud approach that eliminates all these challenges and empowers CIOs to accelerate the migration quest using an evolutionary, secure, and highly cost effective platform.”
招聘软件Greenhouse获3500万美元C轮融资
这轮融资由 Thrive Capital 领投。这笔资金将为Greenhouse 走向全球市场提供动力，并为 Greenhouse 继续完善其软件提供资金支持。
Greenhouse 是招聘领域的 一家 SaaS 软件服务商，它通过定位、考核以及评估人才等为企业提供专业的招聘服务。在寻找应聘者环节，Greenhouse会将企业所有应聘者的来源（包括来自于招聘网站，猎头的推荐、社交媒体等等）汇总在一个招聘仪表盘里（dashboard），接着该软件会按照职位要求对应聘者进行A/B测试并实时提醒应聘者相关的岗位信息。在面试环节，Greenhouse会帮助雇主拟好相关面试问题并收集应聘者回答，使企业更加方便进行比较和选择。
融资历史：
2013年进行过一轮270万美元的融资。
2014年8月获得了总值750万美元的A轮融资，领投方为Facebook前Facebook前副总裁卡马斯·帕里哈毕提亚（Chamath Palihapitiya）创办的风投基金Social+CapitalPartnership。
2015年3月获 B 轮 1360 万美元融资。此轮由 Benchmark、TheSocia+Capital Partnership 和 Felecis Ventures 共同完成。
Hiring Software Juggernaut Greenhouse Swallows $35M Series C
“We’re not trying to be the all-singing, all-dancing HR system. I don’t know how to be kickass at payroll” says Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait. But what his startup is kicking ass at is hiring software. It now has over 800 customers including Slack and Pinterest, almost double the 450 it had when it announced its $13.9 million Series B in March.
That progress, plus dreams of international expansion and selling to even bigger corporations, has won Greenhouse another round that brings it to about $60 million in funding. The $35 million Series C led by Thrive Capital will give Greenhouse fuel to grow abroad and refine its software for larger clients. It’s not a unicorn yet, but will be soon at this rate.
The Greenhouse product fertilizes a company’s recruiting and hiring efforts. It compiles sources of job candidates such as job boards and referrals in a hiring dashboard where companies can A/B test job listings and remind employees about openings to be filled. Then during the interviews it helps hirers coordinate, Greenhouse structures the questions asked and answers received so they’re easily comparable. It all makes going from empty desk to strong hire quicker and cheaper.
Greenhouse’s revenue is set to quadruple over the course of 2015 and headcount is swelling as employees pile onto the rocket ship. But Chait’s top concern is keeping his human resources company human.
Staying personal is easy when the whole company fits around a few desks, but now Greenhouse has 125 employees. “You have a culture, but it’s very implicit, based on the founding team. As you grow, in order to sustain that culture you have to make it more explicit, talk about it, hire based on it.”“We try to act like real people” he tells me. “There’s a tendency of a lot of people where when you show up at work, you put on your worker personality and leave your real personality at home. I don’t think that does anyone justice. If you hire great people, they you should let them be themselves.”
Chait tells me payroll, hiring, and other HR tools all used to be sold in “one big monolithic system from a vendor that did everything.” Think Oracle’s omni-tool Taleo. “I want to make the case to the customer that you can be 10X better at this stuff” by using dedicated software that does a smaller set of things.
At least Chait won’t have to worry about funding for a while, since the Series C brings in more than all its previous rounds combined. He says he chose Thrive Capital because “they’re very smart, very hands-on, very involved. They’re not some corner office banker looking at a spreadsheet.”
Greenhouse has only 10% of its business overseas right now, so the funding will partially go towards more international sales offices and staff. It will also go to development of better infrastructure and compliance so Greenhouse’s software can serve even larger massive clients. There’s a few secret R&D projects in the works too.
Meanwhile, Greenhouse is hoping to keep its focus on functionality while beautifying the interface. When asked about mobile-first hiring startup Lever, Chait admitted its platform is “better looking than ours, it’s pretty.” But he stressed that hiring and setting up interviews is inherently complicated, and warned against over-simplifying it.
“When you start out, you gin yourself up to this idea that there’s this big opportunity but you can only picture so many steps ahead,” Chait says with a tinge of nostalgia for quieter days. “At this point, it’s a really tangible set of problems that we’re trying to solve. The imagination is already there.” While others sing and dance, it’s time for Greenhouse to execute.
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2015年08月26日
硅谷
数据可视化服务BlueData完成2000万美元C轮融资，Intel领投
数据可视化服务 BlueData 完成 2000 万美元 C 轮融资，Intel 领投 本轮投资由 Intel 领投，Intel 高级副总裁 Doug Fisher 加入 BlueData 董事会。
同时 Intel 与 BlueData 宣布达成战略合作。Amplify Partners, Atlantic Bridge, Ignition Partners 和一家匿名的战略投资者也参与了投资。
BlueData 由两位VMware校友创办，帮助客户将大数据集群进行可视化处理，基于 Hadoop 或是 Spark 为用户提供服务。最近 BlueData 基于 OpenStack 开发了一个使用KVM虚拟机的Epic平台，将Hadoop中各种不同的系统存储的各种不同格式的数据进行统一处理。
本文编译自：TC
Big Data Vendor BlueData Announces $20M Round And Intel Partnership
BlueData, a company that helps customers generate virtualized big data clusters, announced a $20 million Series C round and a partnership with Intel today.
Intel Capital led the round. Also participating were Amplify Partners, Atlantic Bridge, Ignition Partners, as well as a strategic investor who chose to remain anonymous. As part of the deal, Doug Fisher, senior vice president of Intel and general manager of its Software and Services Group, will join BlueData’s board of directors.
BlueData’s founders have their roots in VMware. The goal with BlueData has been to make it as easy to spin up a Hadoop cluster as it is a virtual machine, company founder and CEO Kumar Sreekanti told TechCrunch.
“Enterprises require efficient and agile implementations for their on-premises big data solutions. Speed and innovation are essential in big data analytics, and the infrastructure can’t slow this down.” Sreekanti wrote in a blog post.
The product is essentially Hadoop- or Spark-as-a Service, but instead of living in the cloud, it resides on-premises on customer hardware. It combines the agility, speed and multi-tenancy of the cloud with the performance of running on bare metal in the data center.
What’s more, it works with any version of Hadoop or Apache Spark. The company is also planning on supporting Docker containers in an upcoming release.
The deal with Intel will involve several levels including engineers from both companies working together. BlueData will also have early access to new hardware releases. The idea is that BlueData will work to optimize its products on Intel architecture, particularly Intel Xeon chips.
The two companies will also work together on joint marketing and sales projects, and Intel will provide BlueData with the entree at the large enterprise customers it craves.
The partnership has the potential to be a huge boost to a small company like BlueData, which currently has 35 employees. The agreement is part of Intel’s ongoing effort to support big data companies, and comes on the heels of a similar deal with Cloudera, a BlueData partner, last year.
This isn’t the first time, Intel has shown interest in BlueData. It also contributed to the company’s Series A and B round.
Intel has been spreading the wealth this week. Just yesterday, it announced a big cloud push to go with its big data initiative. As part of that, it invested significant money and resources in Mirantis , an OpenStack company.
Since it launched in 2012 BlueData has raised a fairly modest $39 million across three rounds including today’s announcement — and it wasn’t looking for a big score this time.
“We weren’t looking for a huge amount of money. It’s too early for that,” Sreekanti said.
Sreekanti wouldn’t say exactly how many customers it has, but it lists several on the company website including Comcast, Orange and Symantec.
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2015年08月26日
硅谷
Coursera获4950万美元C轮融资，重点拓展中印及拉美市场
在去年引入前耶鲁大学校长Rick Levin担任新 CEO 以后，在线教育巨头Coursera的策略就瞄准了扩张市场。当然，这些扩张离不开资金，现在增援的资金来了，C 轮的第一批 4950 万美元已经完成，预计到今年秋季还会有 1050 万美元到位，从而令本轮融资总额达到 6000 万美元。
成立于 2012年 的 Coursera 是全球最大的 MOOC 提供者之一，目前已经开设了 1100 多门课程，在全球拥有 1500 万的学习者，其中 75%分布在美国以外，其中中国、印度和拉美是其重点海外市场。
此轮融资由 New Enterprise Associates 领投，KPCN、International Finance Corporation、International Finance Corporation 以及 Times Internet Limited 等跟投，此轮融资过后，其融资总额将达月1.35 亿美元。此轮融资所得将用于拉美、中国与印度市场的扩张。
今年4月，从 Rick 在中国密集的行程中可以看出，Coursera 市场扩张的策略将是全球化、职业教育以及本土合作，现在这一策略已经初见成效，就在今年7月，Coursera 中国注册用户数已经突破 100 万，超越印度成为其美国以外的第二大市场。不过值得注意的是 Times Internet Limited 这家拥有印度时报等媒体资产的投资机构的参与，Coursera 也有可能借助它的力量进一步打开印度市场。此外，以巴西为首的拉美市场则是 Coursera 的第四大用户群。这些市场的拓张均离不开资金支持。
此外，Coursera 还将继续加强产品研发，改进学习评估技术以及与学员的互动。同时，进一步探索在线教育的货币化之路。而最近 Coursera 开设了多门付费的职业教育课程已经成为其主要收入来源。
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2015年08月26日
硅谷
数据分析工具提供商 Datameer 获得 E 轮 4000 万美元融资
本轮融资由 ST Telemedia 领投，Top Tier Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Redpoint, Next World Capital 和 Software AG 等机构跟投。
Datameer 成立于 2009 年 总部位于旧金山，是一家数据分析工具提供商。利用开源 Hadoop 分布式计算框架，帮助客户分析大型数据。本轮融资将用于全球性的拓展。同时，本轮融资后 ST Telemedia 合伙人 Nikhil Eapen 将加入Datameer 董事会。
Datameer Snags $40M Series E for International Expansion
Datameer, the San Francisco-based data analytics provider, has received a $40 million round of Series E funding to help it expand globally. The company was founded in 2009and uses the open source Hadoop distributed computing framework, meant to help businesses run analytics of large data sets, Datameer says. The Series E round was led by ST Telemedia, along with Top Tier Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Redpoint, Next World Capital and Software AG. Nikhil Eapen, chief strategy and investment officer of ST Telemedia, is joining Datameer’s board. The company says Eapen has extensive knowledge of communications, media, and technology in Asia.
原文链接：http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2015/08/18/datameer-snags-40m-series-e-for-international-expansion/
Coursera 如何破解中国市场的谜题
编者按： 达瓦尔·沙阿（Dhawal Shah ）是 Class Central的创始人兼首席执行官。
今年 7 月，Coursera 宣布 自己在中国的注册用户人数超过了 100 万，而中国也超越印度成为其第二大市场。在打入中国市场方面，大部分美国消费互联网公司都遭遇了困难。
文化差异和互联网防火墙是巨大的进入壁垒。甚至连谷歌、Facebook 和 Twitter 那样的科技巨头，他们要么退出了中国市场，要么被隔绝在中国互联网防火墙之外。所以，作为一家相对年轻的公司，Coursera 是如何取得这一重大里程碑的呢？
合作伙伴，合作伙伴，合作伙伴
“合作伙伴在中国的重要程度超过了世界其他任何地方。”——Flipboard 首席技术官埃里克·冯（Eric Feng）在 KPCB CEO Workshop 大会上的发言。
为了扩大在中国的影响，Coursera 跟多家本地公司和大学机构进行了合作。这些本地合作关系通常牵涉两件事情：翻译和分发内容。
为了对网站进行本地化和翻译内容，Coursera 跟中国社交网站果壳网和翻译社区译言网进行了合作。
为了分发内容，Coursera 跟 网易公开课 合作 创建了 Coursera 社区 ，这是由网易托管的Coursera.org 汉语门户。为了提升中国用户的使用体验，Coursera 还在网易的服务器上存储了自家视频的本地副本。
今年早些时候，Coursera 宣布 跟中国最大的互联网学习平台沪江网达成合作。Coursera 计划在沪江网平台内部创建自己的网络 ID 和社区系统，以此打通跟后者 8,000 万活跃用户的连接。
Coursera 在中国跟 5 所大学进行了合作，分别是：复旦大学、上海交通大学，北京大学，西安交通大学，以及南京大学。这些大学加在一起提供了 50 多门课程，其中大多数是汉语内容。综合起来，Coursera 平台在中国提供了 125 门课程，其中既有原生汉语内容，也有翻译内容。
可靠的人脉网络
在成为 Coursera 的首席执行官之前，里克·莱文（Rick Levin）是耶鲁大学校史上任期最长的校长。他任内的重要成就之一就是在全球范围内建立合作关系，并尤其侧重于亚洲和中国。
在他担任校长期间，耶鲁大学跟中国大学开展了多项联合行动，其中包括在北京建立国际性的工作/学习计划，以及举办由中国 14 所顶尖大学参加的领导力培训项目。
莱文曾会见中国两任国家主席（江泽民和胡锦涛），被复旦大学授予荣誉职称，还被选入了美中关系全国委员会（National Committee on United States-China Relations）。
因此，在 Coursera 的中国战略方面，里克·莱文带来了人脉和威信。莱文要跟中国名牌大学开展高级别的对话可能本就不是什么难事，但更重要的是，他拥有在重大议题上跟大学和政府领导人进行合作的经验。
忧虑
当 Coursera 跟网易的合作关系被公布后，Coursera 的少数大学合作伙伴选择了退出，持有 Coursera 股份的宾夕法尼亚大学就是其中之一。
宾大担心那项合作会对政治和学术自由产生影响，因此希望谨慎行事。情况看起来是，宾大的担忧已经得到缓解，该大学的课程现在已经登陆了网易公开课。事实上，沃顿商学院刚刚上线了中文版本的 《商务基础》课程 。
中国的一些大学领导人 担心 ，“外来思想”会通过 MOOCs（大规模在线开放课程）进入中国。还有人担心，成本低廉的 MOOCs 会造成实体大学的崩塌。
中国教育部正在推进 MOOCs 的发展，并 鼓励 中国高等教育机构创建更多的在线课程。教育部还计划“建立一套检验机制，以监督平台的教学过程和运营，防止有害信息传播”。
查理·钟（Charlie Chung）对本文亦有贡献。
How Coursera Cracked The Chinese Market
Dhawal ShahCrunch Network Contributor
Dhawal Shah is founder and CEO of Class Central.
Coursera announced in July that they crossed 1 million registrations as China became their second largest market, overtaking India. Most U.S. consumer Internet companies have a hard time breaking into China.
Cultural differences and the Internet firewall are a huge barrier to entry. Even tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter have pulled out or found themselves on the wrong side of the Chinese firewall. So how did Coursera, a relatively young company, achieve this significant milestone?
Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships
“Partnerships are more critical in China than anywhere else in the world” — Eric Feng, CTO Flipboard @ KPCB CEO Workshop
To increase their China footprint, Coursera has partnered with a number of local companies and universities. The local partnerships usually revolve around two things: translations and distribution.
To localize the website and translate its content, Coursera partnered with Guokr, a Chinese social networking site, and Yeeyan, a translation community.
For distribution, Coursera partnered with NetEase to create a Coursera Zone on 163.com, a NetEase-hosted, Chinese-language portal to Coursera.org. To improve performance for its Chinese users,Coursera also stores local copies of its videos on NetEase servers.
Earlier this year, Coursera announced a partnership with Hujiang, China’s largest Internet learning platform. Coursera plans to build its own online identity and community within the Hujiang platform in order to access its 80 million active users.
Coursera has five partner universities in China: Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Peking, Xi’an Jiaotong and Nanjing. Combined, these universities offer more than 50 courses, most of them in Chinese. In all, Coursera has more than 125 courses in Chinese (native + translations) on its platform.
A Credible Connection
Before becoming the CEO of Coursera, Rick Levin was the President of Yale University, serving the longest tenure in the school’s history. One of the hallmarks of his tenure was cultivating relationships internationally, especially in Asia, and particularly with China.
Under his presidency, Yale conducted a number of joint initiatives with and for Chinese universities, including helping establish international work/study programs in Beijing, and hosting a university leadership program for leaders from 14 of China’s top universities.
Levin met two Chinese presidents (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao), has an honorary appointment at Fudan University and was elected to the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Thus, Rick Levin brought connections and credibility to his role at Coursera with respect to its China strategy. It would probably not have been difficult for him to initiate conversations at the very highest levels at prestigious universities, but more important is his experience in working with university and government leaders on issues that were important to them.
Concerns
When the NetEase partnership was announced, a small number of Coursera’s partner institutions opted out of the arrangement. Penn, which owns an equity stake in Coursera was one of those universities.
Penn was concerned about political and academic freedom and wanted to proceed cautiously. It seems that Penn’s concerns were addressed and now their courses are available on NetEase. In fact, Wharton just launched their Business Foundations specialization in the Chinese language.
A few university leaders in China were concerned about “foreign ideas” being imported via MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses). There were also concerns of MOOCs, by virtue of being cheaper, might cause the collapse of physical universities.
The Ministry of Education is moving forward with MOOCs, and is encouraging higher-education institutes in China to create more of them. The ministry also plans to “set up an inspection system to supervise the teaching process and operation of the platforms, preventing harmful information from being disseminated.”
Thanks to Charlie Chung for contributing to this story.
来源：techcrunch.com
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