Co-founder of SimpleGeo Matt Galligan as steps down; Will focus on assisting the TechStars and non-profit

MG Siegler wrote to TechCrunch since 2009. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, in fact all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He had previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

In November last year, the location of the launch, SimpleGeo, former CEO of Digg's Jay Adelson has replaced co-founder Matt Galligan, Director-General. While Zach Galligan slid as Chief Strategy and became a public face of the company. Now he is leaving the company altogether.

You can read news on the SimpleGeo blog here, as well as Zach Galligan own thoughts here. But in fact it is something that has been in the works since Adelson took over these many months ago, Zach Galligan said. The company is now moving into the next phase of Zach Galligan believes that the time has come to step aside. He will continue to act as an adviser, but Sheldon Adelson and SimpleGeo co-founder Joe Stump will continue to steer the ship.

While Zach Galligan figures that he wants to do next, he's going to take an extended period of time. He dove right into SimpleGeo (then known as Crash Corp.) following the resignation of AOL in May 2009. He sold his first startup, Socialthing, AOL in August 2008.

But Zach Galligan did not fully away from the scene at the time of its launch. He'll be helping out of TechStars incubator, giving much needed voice and presence on the West Coast. Zach Galligan has long had ties with TechStars community as Socialthing first class in 2007.

In addition, he will soon be starting a non-profit foundation with Shervin Pishevar, longtime businessman and currently the Managing Director of Menlo Ventures. "1% of nothing", the Fund will request the founders to commit one percent stake in their company should be given to charity in the event of a liquidity event. Zach Galligan did it himself, giving a percentage of the sale of Socialthing Foundation in Boulder, Colorado.

SimpleGeo has raised about $ 10 million in funding so far. As they enter the next stage whispers have them there more.

SimpleGeo provides ready-to-use location infrastructure, which allows you to easily location-aware ad functionality for applications. The company was founded in 2009, Galligan as Matt and Joe Stump.

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TechStars is a seed fund. He offers $ 6000, the founder of the company that make your list for up to 3 founders. In turn, TechStars is 6% of the shares.

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Square co-founder and others put in online merchant creditor Kabbage $ 17 m

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

Atlanta-based startup Kabbage, which provides for working capital for online merchants, has raised $ 17 million in series b financing, led by MOHR Davidow Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital; Warren Stevens, CEO of Stevens; UPS strategic Enterprise Fund, Jim McKelvey, co-founder of the square; and other participation in the round. This brings the total funding Kabbage to $ 24 million.

Kabbage, which was founded by Mark Gorlin, Rob Frohwein and Catherine Petralia, essentially a way for online merchants and vendors in the markets as eBay and Amaxon to get the capital that they would not otherwise qualify for a bank. Kabbage uses technology to analyze sales online sellers and credit history; client traffic and reviews; and prices and inventory, as compared with competitors. And merchants active, you can add information to their Kabbage account immediately increasing their access to capital.

Via PayPal Adaptive payments API, Kabbage will provide cash advances on eBay and other online Marketplace sellers quickly (Kabbage says that many transactions take as little ten minutes).

Gorlin tells me that many small businesses and online merchants are unable to obtain financing from traditional banks, and aimed to disrupt this space Kabbage, providing a painless way to help these sellers access cash.

Kabbage makes money from fees charged to merchants for the replenishment of working capital. Fees will depend on how long the online merchant is holding in the capital (maximum of 6 months) and client maturity risk. The stakes range from 6% to 16% of the initial amount in advance. Kabbage currently supports merchants on eBay, Amazon and Yahoo platform and plans to add support for sellers on Facebook, Etsy, Shopify, and Sears. currently, there are thousands of merchants using Kabbage and Gorlin to total volume Kabbage vendors plan to reach $ 3 billion next year.

In connection with the financing of Kabbage also announces that it has been granted United States Patent No. 7, 983, 951, entitled "instruments for liquidity provision in the online auction market," It covers essentially the system in which the capital provider uses information
with regard to the history of the merchant sales on the Web site of e-commerce, to make a decision on the granting of funds. For a company that just launched a few years ago, snagging a patent is impressive.

Gorlin said the new funding will be used to add additional sites, distribution of new financial products and for international expansion. He explains that there is huge potential for growth in international markets and run continuously to sellers outside of the United States who are interested in Kabbage for services.

Similar to credit card size mobile access for small businesses and that Greendot prepaid credit cards has covered, Kabbage brings working capital and small loans for online merchants who may not qualify for the cash infusion from a traditional bank. As mentioned above run has some potential to disrupt the market industry.

Kabbage provides financing options for online merchants. Kabbage provides funding for online merchants, using commonly available information from online marketplaces for risk assessment and help to determine in advance the amounts and related ...

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Social game developer Kixeye raises $ 18 million, adds Zynga co-founder Andrew Trader to its Board

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Back in April, a developer of games, casual collective rebranded as Kixeye and launched a new real-time strategy game, titled battle pirates. Since launch, it was hard work at improving some of the new capital to expand his team and implement additional headers. Officially it happened to pass this morning as the company announced that it has closed $ 18 million Series c round of financing, bringing the total investment to $ 23.5 million.

The new round led by Jafco Ventures, were from returning investors Trinity Ventures and enterprise partners. The increase, Jafco managing partner Joe Horowitz is the signing of the Council of its launch and will be merged into — big symbolic feather in the CAP for Kixeye — Zynga co-founder Andrew Trader, aka "a. t."

According to Kixeye CEO will Harbin run hit his achievement over the past 8 months, which has become profitable and positive cash flow. So when you add a trader's Board of Directors, Kixeye hopes to use Zynga's Executive Vice President of sales and business development experience (especially in the scale Zynga in the largest player in the social gaming) to help continue its recent growth.

With regard to the trader, he said that he saw Kixeye emerge as one of the leading innovators in social gaming space, especially for hardcore gamers. "Gamers want a big game, not re-skinned versions of the same," said a. t. "I am pleased to be part of this company and I look forward to helping them continue their successful trajectory." And speaking of skins and cloning, both things that Kixeye became extremely conscious, given that the launch last week accused funded competitor Kabam, copying its successful backyard monsters and skins for the beta launch Kabam in the Edgeworld.

As Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, while charges skins have become commonplace in the rapidly growing (and competitive) social games space but Kixeye thought that "especially egregious" in this instance. "This is not only offensive to us," Harbin told VentureBeat. "It's very bad for this space. We are fighting an uphill battle to create hardcore games on Facebook. More clones for these games, the more they can sour cream consumers in the market ".

And that more charges of stealing (and hides), also known as Zynga (and hence, a.t.), who was accused of stealing source code for Farmville, for example.

Thus players social gaming, everyone is looking for ways to distinguish their brands and their names from the competition. In the case of Kixeye, Harbin said that the company plans to use some of its new funding to start a new, aggressive release cycle, which will include some new approaches to social games.

"Next year we will be releasing one major title for the quarter, since our future war Commander RTAS," said the Director. "We're also going to create games for Facebook, which nobody had seen before, including dynamic MMORPG, racing game and, hopefully, titles that really push the envelope". And Harbin has every reason to want to take these genres in Facebook, as racing, action, and the hidden objects are genres that have multiple names on Facebook at the moment.

And the company is growing at a rate that justifies his new quest: over the past 18 months, Kixeye has grown its group from 3 to 60, and passed with little presence on Facebook to more than 5 million monthly active users. Part of the reason that Kixeye was so firmly defending backyard monsters is that the game was really what put Kixeye on the map, as it is currently averaging more than 1 million active users per day.

So as a developer of games of San Francisco goes ahead with a WAD of cash in his pocket, you can probably expect run continue to focus on creating a Facebook titles for the hardcore gamer, trying to make a more interesting and challenging games, older and more mature audience. And I would expect that occurs after the top engineering talent will be part of these efforts.

More information on Kixeye check 'em out at home here.

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