First Growth Venture Network

Najafi Companies Invests In First Growth Graduate & Leading Children Digital Book Company MeeGenius

admin — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:12:48 +0000

May 14, 2013 via Business Journal by Tim Gallen – Phoenix-based Najafi Cos. has invested in a company that digitizes children’s books, continuing its push into digital properties and partnerships.

MeeGenius creates apps for Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Google Android and other platforms that provide digital libraries of children’s books and classic children’s stories such as “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“Through a curated library of titles including partnerships with key publishers and brands, MeeGenius has built a strong and leading digital platform to fulfill and to enhance the learning experience for children,” Najafi Cos. Partner Daniel Shum said in a statement.

Read more at a href=”http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2013/05/14/najafi-cos-invests-in-meegenius.html” title=”Najafi Companies invests in First Growth Venture Network Graduate MeeGenius” target=”_blank”>Business Journal…

Bloomberg Businessweek: Why Customers Come Back: First Growth Grad BaubleBar’s CEO

admin — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:15:39 +0000

May 15, 2013 via Bloomberg Businessweek by Deidre Bolton – BaubleBar Jewelry CEO Daniella Yacobovsky talks to Bloomberg Television’s Deidre Bolton about BaubleBar’s customer base and strategy during Venture Crush 2013 in New York City.

Watch the video:

BaubleBar’s CEO Why Customers Come Back

Kickboard school data start-up & First Growth grad leads growing field of education entrepreneurship in New Orleans

admin — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:18:31 +0000

April 16, 2013 via The Times-Picayune by Mark Waller – After Jen Medbery combined backgrounds in software design and public school teaching to found the Kickboard school data tracking service (and a First Growth Venture Network graduate), she came to personify, in key ways, how the post-Hurricane Katrina education overhaul in New Orleans serves as a driver of the city’s heightened reputation for entrepreneurship.

Medbery grew up in Connecticut, studied computer science at Columbia University in New York and joined the precise circle that business experts often credit for powering an enterprise upswing in New Orleans: an influx of high-energy Teach for America corps members working in a landscape of independently run charter schools. She joined Teach for America after college, viewing schools as the central arena for addressing the nation’s biggest challenges. She worked in a Mississippi school, then moved to Sci Academy, a charter school in New Orleans, where she taught math.

Immersed in the increasingly data-intensive education field, Medbery soon was frustrated with the instruments available for teachers to track, interpret and share information on students’ academic progress and behavior. Individual educators concocted their own spreadsheets, traded insights in Google Docs, emailed each other and conferred in person when they could. But entire faculties lacked fast and uniform ways of parsing and applying all the numbers in classrooms.

“The engineer in me saw that we just didn’t have access to the right tools,” she said.

So Medbery left the classroom in 2009 and developed an online platform to fill that void, first called Drop the Chalk and later renamed Kickboard, a reference to a flotation device, in this case helping teachers avoid drowning in data. The service spread to more than 200 schools in 20 states and has grown so far to employ 11 people. In February, Kickboard announced it had rounded up $2 million in early stage investments from venture capital firms in New York and Maryland and several angel investors.

A New Milestone for First Growth Grad Food52

admin — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:10:05 +0000

April 1, 2013 via Food52 by Food52 Founders – We here at Food52 (a First Growth Venture Network graduate) are a little old-fashioned when it comes to money — we don’t like to talk about it. Although it has become a tradition for start-ups to announce fundings with great fanfare, we haven’t done so until now, because we’d rather show you how we’re improving the site and building the company than tell you how much money some very-smart-and-sensible people invested in our dreams.

But now the cat is out of the bag, and we wanted our community to hear it here first. And so we’re thrilled to tell you that we recently closed our Series A with a $2 million investment from some of the industry’s best media and commerce investors! The round was led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, with Vocap Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, and Gary Vaynerchuk joining as well. Lerer Ventures, 15 Angels, and angel investor Joanne Wilson followed on from our seed round, as did a number of other extremely savvy investors.

We raised money because we want to build the best food site in the world — a place where you can meet other like-minded cooks and get everything you need to eat well. We started with recipes, and have since built a thriving community; we’ve published books and an iPad app; we’ve resolved countless kitchen dilemmas on our hotline; we’ve partnered with Whole Foods Market and Real Time Farms; and we’ve begun offering food and tabletop wares in our Shop. And in recognition of all those accomplishments, we were named Publication of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in 2012.

Two years in, here’s how First Growth Graduate BaubleBar is increasing women’s metabolism for jewelry

admin — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:35:50 +0000

March 4, 2013 via PandoDaily by Erin Griffith – Last weekend, the New York Times Magazine published a devastating excerpt from the book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.” In it, reporter Michael Moss described ways processed food industry execs have maneuvered to get American consumers addicted their salty, sugary, fatty snack foods, all very carefully engineered to produce the most addictive “bliss point” among its “users.”

This is not the comparison that Daniella Yacobovsky and and Amy Jain, founders of jewelry ecommerce startup BaubleBar (and graduates of First Growth Venture Network), would like me to make, but in reading the Times piece, I couldn’t help but think of my conversation with them.

We had discussed the ways two-year-old BaubleBar has essentially increased women’s metabolism for consuming jewelry. Where a normal woman might buy a few pieces of jewelry a year, BaubleBar, with its aggressive merchandizing schedule, persistent editorial content, and realtime data analysis, has convinced them to shop — or at least engage with the brand — as regularly as every day.

They’ve turned casual customers into hardcore users, and it has been working. Last year, the company’s order volume grew 23.5 percent each month. During that time the company raised a $4.5 million Series A round of funding from Accel Partners and Greycroft Partners.

BaubleBar’s high turnover model has been most successful, ironically, in the offline retail world. H&M and Zara revolutionized apparel retail with their brand of fast fashion. All “fast fashion” means is that new inventory enters the store every week, an unheard of idea for the traditional retailers, which previously changed inventory as few as four times a year. Zara can take a new item from conception to store in two weeks. H&M also puts all of its inventory on the floor, no matter how overwhelming it might be for the customer. (Call it the anti-2 girls, 2 shirts.) At fast fashion stores, what you see — an overflowing floor of merchandize — is what you get.

With A Fresh $1M From Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, First Growth Graduate Skillshare Looks To Expand Its Course Menu And Go Big Abroad

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:37:39 +0000

February 1, 2013 via TechCrunch By Rip Empson – Tapping into the growth of online education, Skillshare (a First Growth Venture Network Graduate) launched in 2011 on a mission to build a digital marketplace for knowledge. Yet, instead of going in the direction of traditional online education or the new generation of MOOC platforms like Coursera and Udacity, Skillshare eschewed hosting classes in traditional education subjects to instead offer classes that teach people real-world skills that they can apply to their professional or personal projects.

At launch, however, Skillshare limited users to participating in classes that took place in their local area, but last year, the startup added hybrid, online classes to its platform, allowing teachers to create classes that are available globally and enable students to take live, interactive classes — on the Interwebs. Since then, the startup’s growth has accelerated, with the size of its classes growing from an average of 20 to 30 students to thousands, and teachers are now earning upwards of $30K per class.

Based on this growth, Skillshare announced today that it has added $1 million in funding from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s new investment arm, Vegas TechFund. The new capital brings the startup’s total to $4.65 million, following the $3.1 million series A round the startup raised in August 2011, led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Hsieh also joins Founder Collective, SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, David Tisch and a host of other angels as Skillshare’s newest investor.

Read lots more over at TechCrunch.

Weddings Startup And First Growth Graduate Lover.ly Scores Content/Ad Deal With Real Simple, Prepares Website Relaunch And New Mobile Apps

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:15:29 +0000

January 28, 2013 via TechCrunch by Sarah Perez – Lover.ly, a search engine for all things wedding (and a First Growth Venture Network graduate), is today making a move that will broaden its reach considerably: The company is announcing a partnership with Real Simple to power the content for the site’s first-ever online weddings channel. Real Simple, which is best known for its magazine about home decor, beauty and fashion (it’s like an offline version of Pinterest), will now be helping to sell Lover.ly’s advertising inventory as a part of this deal.

For those unfamiliar, Lover.ly launched in fall 2011, as a centralized place for brides to discover and save wedding ideas and inspiration, and then received $500,000 in seed funding last February. Similar to Pinterest, the site lets its users create boards (on Lover.ly, they’re called “bundles”) to keep track of their favorites. But as founder and CEO Kellee Khalil explains it, Lover.ly is more of a search engine than it is a “Pinterest for weddings,” so to speak.

Lover.ly’s content comes from 35 prominent wedding bloggers, a handful of wedding magazines like Bridal Guide, Southern Weddings, Smitten Magazine and others, plus retailers, brands and vendors. By participating on Lover.ly, these sources can grow their traffic and/or sales, while bloggers can score brand partnerships and get help with advertising.

Forbes: 4 Secrets Of Fundraising From First Growth Graduate BaubleBar

admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:00:20 +0000

January 17, 2013 via Forbes by Meghan Casserly – When Harvard MBAs Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky began raising funds for their fashion jewelry site BaubleBar (a First Growth Venture Network Graduate), which sells pieces directly from designers at deep discount, they spent more than half of each pitch meeting on the frustrating task of convincing investors that women like jewelry.
“It could take up to 45 minutes of our presentation just explaining what fashion jewelry was, who the consumer was and what their shopping patterns were,” Yacobovsky remembers of early meetings with what she says were mainly all-male teams of venture capitalists. As a result the pair often had fewer than 15 minutes to introduce their business, leaving both sides of the conference table frustrated and unsatisfied.
$5.6 million in venture capital later, BaubleBar celebrates its second anniversary this month and Jain and Yacobovsky have trimmed the fat from their presentations to investors, partners and design collaborators who’ve included Erickson Beamon, Nina Garcia and Atlantic Pacific. Since the launch the company has grown from the two founders to 50 full time employees and 2012 revenues have been estimated as high as $11 million.
To celebrate their birthday, Amy and Daniella gave us the gift of good advice, and share four hard-won pieces of advice on raising a successful first round.

On Mashable: How to Land a Job at First Growth Venture Network Graduate Birchbox

admin — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:48:18 +0000

January 16, 2013 via Mashable by Lauren Drell – Looking to start your dream job in 2013? Our new Dream Job series will give you an upper hand. We’re talking to recruiters at top tech companies like Spotify and Kickstarter to get the behind-the-scenes knowledge about what it takes to get a gig.

Don’t know much about Birchbox (a First Growth Venture Network Graduate)? The company launched in 2010 and has received $11.9 million in funding to date. The discovery commerce platform has 140 employees (100 in New York, the rest in London, Paris and Barcelona) who surprise and delight more than 300,000 subscribers every month with a box full of high-end samples that you can buy on the Birchbox website. (And no, this startup’s not just for ladies — its bright new digs are indicative of the “de-pinking” of Birchbox. Haven’t you see Birchbox Man?)

This week, we spoke with Melissa Enbar, director of recruiting at Birchbox. Read on to find out how to score a gig at Mashable.

First Growth Graduate CB Insights Report: $28.3B Was Invested In 3,267 VC Deals In 2012; Seed Funding Hits Record Levels

admin — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:22:15 +0000

January 16, 2013 via TechCrunch by Leena Rao – Venture capital database CB Insights (a Fall 2009 Vintage First Growth Venture Network Graduate) is releasing a new report today on the state of the VC industry and investments in 2012. For the year, $28.3 billion was invested by venture capital firms in 3,267 deals. However, it’s interesting to note that while seed VC funding hit highs during the year, overall investment fell from 2011’s $30+ billion level. And VC funding actually dipped for the second consecutive quarter in Q4 2012.

After Q3 2012’s deal activity levels (these were the highest since the dot-com days), Q4 stayed strong on a number of deals, which dipped slightly from 835 financings to 834 in the quarter. Funding in Q4 fell for the second straight quarter coming in at $6.8 billion. Funding slipped 7.5 percent from 2011 but still remained up 36 percent versus 2009.

Read a lot more with handy charts over at TechCrunch.