Startups and Funding: April 2008 Archives

I can tell you from experience that most of what you see in this article is good advice, so it's a good quick read.  I would also add two things:  Most of VCs look at the team very closely - even when you present and how you interact with each other - and also they want a go to market strategy.  See my other post on the subject.

I have followed Jingle's Free411 service (1-800-FREE-411) since they are a voice service like Frucall's initial voice based comparison shopping.  They have done an amzing job, specially given the competition from Google (1-800-GOOG-411).  At this point they have about 6-7% of the US directory assistance market, and they are processing about 20M calls per month.

The company had raised two series of financing before and the valuation was around $150M in 2006.  They just announced a series C round of about $13M with existing investors.

The amount is low compared to the valuation and their series B, so I'm not sure what exactly is going on.  The company has just reached profitability, and their market share and call volume is great.  I would expect a larger amount for aggressive growth and capturing more market share.  I hope this is not a down round for them for unknown reasons.  Most probably their estimates about their expenditure have been off, and they are running out of money sooner than they think so they are doing an internal round.