TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Aviel Ginzburg

Our decision to pursue funding started with a simple realization, jumping startup to startup, we didn’t have enough cash personally to fund the company and our basic living expenses of rent and Ramen. From Damon’s experience at his last startup, we also knew that we didn’t want to get sucked into the full time consulting mouse-wheel (we got REALLY close). So, we decided to raise a little capital to focus on doing what we do best: building social media products that make people’s lives better and easier.

Informed by Damon’s 6 months at Madrona Venture Group, we knew that we had no business looking for VC money (wrong scale) and my experience raising an angel round, I knew that we’d have challenges completing it because we didn’t have a complete beta product.

So we turned to the several options we saw in the market of incubators and seed stage funds: YCombinator/TechStars and seed-stage investment funds like Founder’s Co-op. The next question of course, was how much money we needed, and how much of the company we were willing to give away to get it.

Seattle 2.0's latest tabulation of the top Web startups in the Seattle area had a big change over the past month as longtime top 10 performer Picnik was gobbled up by Google. (List creator Marcelo Calbucci removes startups once they've been acquired).

Other than that, the list looks pretty much the same at the top with Cheezburger Network, Zillow.com, BuddyTV and Survey Analytics in the top five. SEOMoz gained four spots, rising to number seven, perhaps using some of its own search engine optimization techniques to drive traffic to the site.

Today's your last chance to sign up for the first TechFlash Live event of 2010, taking place Tuesday March 23 at the Showbox Sodo. We've got a fantastic panel on hand to discuss how to make money online and the future of advertising. If that's not enough to whet your appetite, we're also rolling in some ping pong tables so folks can warm-up, scout the competition and challenge your tech rivals in advance of the big TechFlash pong tourney later this summer.

Registration will close later this afternoon. So if you haven't signed up yet, now is the time to pull the trigger. Tickets here.

Seattle online attorney rating service Avvo has scored $10 million, a significant financing round that CEO Mark Britton said comes at a significant uptick in valuation over the previous round. Total financing in the four-year-old company now stands at $23 million.

The new funds -- led by Silicon Valley-based DAG Ventures and including participation from Ignition Partners and Benchmark Capital -- will be used to bankroll new offerings from the company. Britton declined to disclose what those projects are, saying he didn't want to tip off the competition.

Koester

Learn That Name is not your typical entrepreneurial success story. Conceived on a whim at Startup Weekend last August, the mobile application was built by a group of 14 co-founders during the 54-hour coding marathon. But the iPhone app -- which won top honors at the event for a quiz game that tests one's memory on LinkedIn contacts -- has already achieved a big success.

Tonight, one of the key creators of the idea confirmed that the startup (if you can even call it that) has been acquired by Seattle-based Gist. Terms weren't disclosed. But co-creator Eric Koester tells us that all 14 co-founders who played a role in the development of the project will get a "nice little payday" as a result of the acquisition.

It's probably a good thing Koester spends his days working as a corporate attorney at Cooley Godward, since managing the expectations of 14 people during acquisition talks sounds like a potential nightmare. In fact, Koester said that many of the people who participated in the creation of the idea went their separate ways after Startup Weekend concluded.

Zillow.com's iPhone app has quickly grown into one of the most popular in the real estate category, with close to one million downloads to date. Now, the Seattle startup is looking to expand its reach, today unveiling an Android App that allows user to browse some 95 million properties across the U.S. Here's a quick look:

The free Android app has some of the same functionality as the iPhone app, including the ability to pull up Zestimates on nearby homes. However, it has some new features which are specific to Android. Those include voice search in which a potential home buyer can say the address, city or neighborhood in order to find specific properties. The app also includes street view images courtesy of Google.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has led a $28.8 million venture round in UpWind Solutions, a Medford, Oregon-based company specializing in operations and maintenance services for the wind generation industry. The company -- founded in 2007 by former GE employee Bo Thisted-- currently manages hundreds of megawatts of wind generation on behalf of utilities.

NetMotion Wireless is taking steps to go public on the Toronto Stock Exchange through a merger involving a new corporate entity established in the Cayman Islands last month. According to the prospectus, NetMotion Wireless Inc. -- established in the Cayman Islands on February 26 -- will use funds from the public offering to acquire an interest in NetMotion Wireless Holdings -- the parent company of Seattle-based NetMotion Wireless USA.

NetMotion Wireless USA -- which makes mobile networking software used by police departments, healthcare providers, public utilities and government agencies -- was founded in 2001 as a spin out of WRQ.

Wimax service provider Towerstream announced today that it is buying certain assets from Sparkplug Communications for $1.6 million. As part of the deal, Towerstream will take over the customer contracts, network operations and other assets in Chicago and Nashville.

That will double Towerstream's customer base in Chicago and add about $1.3 million in revenue, while Nashville represents a new market for the Middletown, Rhode Island company. Towerstream, which operates its high-speed wireless sercvice in 11 markets, including Seattle, said it was already profitable in Chicago.

Ojjeh

We've seen a lot of startup activity in recent weeks around behavioral targeting, the idea that technology can help companies utilize mountains of data to better deliver marketing messages to select demographic groups. Just last month, BlueKai -- a Bellevue company led by former Audience Science executive Omar Tawakol -- landed $21 million.

Now, a new startup whose top exec also hails from Bellevue's Audience Science is launching a new company in the space. The company is called nPario, and it is the brainchild of Bassel Ojjeh who co-founded and served as COO of Audience Science. He later went on to serve as Senior Vice President of the Strategic Data Solutions division at Yahoo.

Looking to rent your ski lodge, beach house or mountain retreat, but don't feel comfortable turning over the keys to some random stranger?

A 6-month-old service called Second Porch allows owners of vacation homes to tap into their trusted networks on Facebook in order to find potential renters. The Portland startup today is announcing a $1 million round of financing from the Oregon Angel Fund, money that CEO Brent Hieggelke said would be used to hire staffers, build out the platform and boost marketing efforts with second home owners throughout the U.S.

Say you want to organize a small gathering at a local pub for this Thursday's NCAA men's basketball tourney. You could send an e-mail to your friends, then wait for the responses to flow back in. Or, you could take an extra step and create an Evite, a Facebook event or another similar online invitation. But, if the email seems a little too unwieldy and the Evite or Facebook scenario a bit too formal, there's another alternative.

PencilYouIn, a new service created by the young Seattle Web developers behind the ride-sharing service Ride Penguin, today is rolling out a new idea that's designed to fill the gap between e-mail and Evites. The site still has a few kinks to work out, but co-founder Ben Eidelson said that the idea is to add a "social layer" to your online calendar.

Google's mobile operating system, Android, certainly is gaining some buzz as a potential rival to the iPhone. But while some of the advertising talks about everything that "Droid does," there's one thing that Seattle entrepreneur Chris DeVore doesn't think it really does that well. And that's allow people to easily find new applications on the Web, a la the Apple App Store.

AppStoreHQ is looking to fill a void in the marketplace with a new offering being announced today that allows users to browse by category and keywords for any app in the Android Market.

Sigl

Susan Sigl has worked as an accountant, a technology executive and most recently a venture capitalist. The co-founder of Seapoint Ventures plans to use all of those experiences in a new high-profile role as chief executive of the Washington Technology Industry Association, one of the state's largest technology organizations. We caught up with Sigl this morning to get her take on where the state's tech industry is heading and her hopes for the new job.

Sigl

Venture capitalist Susan Sigl has been named the new CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association, one of the largest technology groups in the state. Sigl is well known in the Seattle startup and venture capital communities, having previously served as co-founder and general partner at Seapoint Ventures. At Seapoint, Sigl worked with a number of startups in the mobile sector, serving as interim CFO at SnapIn Software, Zumobi and Ground Truth.