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90% of Colorado VC dollars in Q1 flow into Boulder Valley

April 23, 2008

According to a MoneyTree Survey (via BCBR), “eighteen companies in the Boulder Valley received venture capital funding totaling $266.8 million during first quarter 2008.” This doesn’t include angel investment - we’re just talking about reported VC investment.

Outside of Boulder Valley, just eight more Colorado companies were funded in Q1 meaning that nearly 70% (18 of 26) of the statewide deals were done in the Boulder area. Looking at the dollars, a staggering 90% ($266.8M of $297.7M) went to the Boulder area deals. The nearly $300M invested by VCs in Colorado was reported as the highest level since 2001. Much of that was driven by a single $130M renewable energy investment.

By my quick count, about $35M was invested last quarter in a wide range of web and software companies such as HiveLive ($5.6M), Tendril Networks ($12M), Filtrbox ($500k), Collective Intellect ($6.6M), and Mark Sawyer’s post @Last/Sketchup/Google effort Vico Software ($3M).

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Podcast: A Conversation with HiveLive’s John Kembel

March 19, 2008

Social networking. It’s all the rave these days thanks to major players such as MySpace, Facebook and BeBo. Social networks have traditionally been associated with computer-savvy teens and young adults sharing photos with their friends, embedding music on their profiles and writing notes to their mini-blogs.

Now, companies are vying for more than just young, computer-savvy users: Business users are now in the cross-hairs of many social networks seeking to wring out new revenue potential, growth and services.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Boulder-based HiveLive has created a social platform specifically designed for business use. Previously covered here on separate occasions, this is our first podcast conversation with the company’s CEO, John Kembel.

In this podcast, Kembel covers a lot of ground including HiveLive’s most recent financing round ($5.6M), how the company was founded, its competitors and much more.

Download this podcast.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Todd Vernon is also liveblogging VCIR

February 27, 2008

If you don’t give a crap about VCIR, at least you only have to deal with these posts all in one day. At least you’re not me, currently sitting through a pitch on semi-conductors in a language that I don’t recognize at all.

I just noticed that Todd Vernon is also live-blogging VCIR, and making fun of me at the same time.

Here are Todd’s thoughts on some presenting companies from this morning: HiveLive, Control4*, Filtrbox, WBS Connect*, and Zayo Group*. The companies with asterisks are ones that I did not cover - there are two tracks here so I’m glad Todd is getting to see and cover some different stuff.

I’ll be sure to post an embarrassing photo of Todd here later in the day.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

HiveLive announces 5.6M in new funding at VCIR

February 27, 2008

hivelivelogo.jpgHiveLive (covered previously, but significantly evolved since then) announced 5.6M in new funding from GroTech Capital and existing investors today. It was fun to watch John Kembel start off his pitch today with “Well, some stuff has changed since two months ago when we started preparing for VCIR, and now we’re done (fund raising)!” Previously, the company had raised 2.2M from angel investors.

HiveLive has evolved significantly into an enterprise social networking platform. Using HiveLive, enterprise customers can engage their customers using social tools more directly than with traditional point solutions such as Wikis, blogs, or forums. Hivelive says that the key differentiator in this emerging but already crowded market is their flexibility. John eloquently explained that bolting a wiki onto a social network and then onto a forum is not a scalable solution that larger brands will find success using. With HiveLive, customers can build highly customized systems with configurability, not code. I think it’s neat that end users can even add their own components (given appropriate permissions), thereby literally allowing the customers to build the community components themselves. That’s ultimate power to your natural community.

Hivelive has gotten into some interesting distribution opportunities. For example, Rally Software has implemented HiveLive in their new Rally Community Manager, which the company distributes through a SalesForce integration with its products.

Congrats to HiveLive for all the great progress and the funding.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |