Technology

Capital Gains: The Week’s Venture Capital Brief

It’s the who-got-money week in review.

by Kurt Wagner

Oct 4, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

Vjeran Pavic for Re/code

Home remodeling site Houzz raised $165 million in funding led from Sequoia Capital. The round was formally announced this week, but had previously been previously reported by Re/code.
Good Technology, which helps businesses manage their employees’ mobile devices, raised $80 million from a group of secret investors despite filing for an IPO in May. In an interview, CEO Christy Wyatt said the company is not rethinking its plan to go public.
Reddit, the self-described “front page of the internet,” raised about $50 million in funding led by Y Combinator president Sam Altman. Altman, along with other investors, plans to allocate 10 percent of the equity they are buying to Reddit users. How exactly that’s going to be managed hasn’t yet been figured out.
Remind, the messaging app for teachers, students and parents, said it raised another $40 million, bringing total capital raised to $59 million. The Series C funding round was led by current investor Kleiner Perkins, as well as Social + Capital Partnership and First Round Capital.
Glow, which develops apps designed to help women manage their reproductive health, raised $17 million in a Series B round led by Formation 8. The round included previous investors Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. Glow, which is based in San Francisco, claims that it has helped 25,000 women conceive in the past year.
Appboy, which helps businesses retain the customers they attract through mobile apps, raised $15 million in Series B funding led by InterWest Partners, which also was an initial backer of Marketo.
Tile, the company behind the tiny device of the same name that attaches to your keys, wallet and anything else you wouldn’t want to lose, raised $13 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital. Other investors include Tencent, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Nick Woodman of GoPro, and Dave Morin of Path.
Twitter invested $10 million in MIT’s Innovation Lab to create the Laboratory for Social Machines, an organization to better understand how people are communicating and sharing online.
Sharethrough, an ad startup specializing in “native ads” nabbed $10 million from British Sky Broadcasting. As part of the investment, Sharethrough will provide all of the native advertising for Sky’s media properties, which includes Sky Sports.
An upcoming device called Navdy — which promises to let people more safely use their phones while driving, via a transparent dashboard display controlled by hand gestures and voice commands, raised $6.5 million from Upfront Ventures. The device is scheduled to ship next year.
Food52, the cooking and shopping website for foodies, landed a $6 million investment led by 14W and with participation from Food Network parent company Scripps Networks Interactive. Food52 has now raised $9 million.