Funding Daily: A really big first round

It’s not every day that a startup raises an initial funding round worth more than a few million dollars. Today is one of those rare days.

In our funding news roundup today, we’ve got the lowdown on the $63 million first round for ZipRecruiter. Check it out and see how long it takes before a startup beats that figure for a first round.

Alsop Louie Partners looks to raise $100M fund

Fresh off its biggest exit yet, venture capital firm Alsop Louie Partners is raising its third fund. That exit would be Amazon’s $970 million all-cash acquisition of Twitch. Alsop Louie was one of the first investors in Twitch back in 2007, when it was still known as Justin.TV, a small startup that existed primarily (or so it seemed) to support founder Justin Kan’s “lifestreaming” project. Alsop Louie partner Stewart Alsop claims that the third fund is already in positive returns territory. Even though it is not closed yet, the firm has already started investing the money, including an early bet on security chat tool Wickr. After Wickr’s big series B round closed earlier this year, Alsop said, Alsop Louie’s return is already at five times what it has invested.

Read more on VentureBeat: After Twitch sale, Alsop Louie Partners looks to raise new $100M fund

ZipRecruiter grabs $63M

ZipRecruiter, a startup that helps companies find job candidates by posting job descriptions on scores of Internet job boards, has secured $63 million in venture funding. The money will go toward product development and acquisitions, among other things, the company said today in a statement. This marks the first time ZipRecruiter is raising venture funding, a spokeswoman told VentureBeat in an email. Institutional Venture Partners led the round. Basepoint Ventures and Industry Ventures also participated.

Read more on VentureBeat: ZipRecruiter grabs a $63M first funding round to help companies hire more people

Bizible raises $8M

Bizible, a startup with tools for doing marketing analytics inside of Salesforce.com software for tracking leads, has raised $8 million in fresh funding. Bizible’s software shows how much money resulted from Google AdWords and paid social media campaigns. The Scale Venture Partners led the round. Customers include ADP, Aveda, Kaplan, and MongoDB. Seattle-based Bizible started in 2011.

Read more on Bizible’s website: New Funding and the Road Ahead

Feedvisor gets $6M

Israel-based startup Feedvisor gives Amazon resellers the tools to change the price of their goods automatically throughout the day based on demand, time of day, and other factors — also known as dynamic pricing or algorithmic repricing. Having been in business for two years, the company has amassed quite a set of data on its clients. Now it’s just landed $6 million to build out a business intelligence suite so it can can share those insights with its clients. Square Peg Capital led the round. Investors from previous rounds JAL Ventures, Oryzn Capital, and Micro Angel Fund also contributed.

Read more on VentureBeat: Feedvisor gets $6M to show e-retailers how to sell their products better

Lumiata raises $5M

In case it wasn’t clear already, big data is attracting a lot of attention from investors. You can see this recent injection of capital into Lumiata, bringing its total investments to $9 million. According to an SEC filing dated for Aug. 11, the predictive analytics company that uses a medical graph for making smarter care decisions raised $5 million in equity funding. Back in January, the company raised $4 million in its first round of series A funding. The primary investor was Khosla Ventures. That round of funding went toward improving the company flagship analytics engine and expand to more hospital networks and health insurance carriers.

Read more on VentureBeat: Lumiata raises $5M to further its optimized medical-care analytics

Datanyze raises $2M

Knowing who uses your competitors’ products can be a huge competitive advantage. Knowing when potential customers start a trial of your competitor’s product could be a lifesaver. That’s the appeal of Datanyze, the “Google of sales and marketing.” The company, which trawls the web for scraps and pieces of code that reveal what software-as-a-service products companies are using on their website, announced today that it has raised a $2 million seed round — and that it’s been growing at the astonishing rate of 25 percent per month all this year.
Investors in this round include AngelList, Gil Penchina, Neeraj Agrawal, Jeff Epstein, and Kyle York, as well as the already-mentioned Mark Cuban and Google Ventures, and the lead investor, IDG Ventures.

Read more on VentureBeat: The ‘Google of sales & marketing’ raises $2M to tell you who’s using competitors’ software

Strut lands $1.5M

Social shopping app Strut just closed on $1.5 million in funding to bulk up its team over the next six to nine months. Khosla Ventures led the round. Strut may seem like a shopping app, but really it’s a social platform that supports shopping. It’s hard to know exactly what Strut is, because it hasn’t launched yet. But its goal is to be more like Vogue than to innovate on the shopping experience. The startup’s founders plan on quietly launching the app in October with a big advertising push closer to the holidays.

Read more on VentureBeat: Strut lands $1.5M to build the perfect window-shopping app

Admittedly grabs $1.2M

Ed-tech service Admittedly, which helps high school students find (and maybe even get into) their dream college, today announced a $1.2 million seed round. RRE Ventures and Quotidian Ventures both participated in the round.

Read more on VentureBeat: College counseling startup Admittedly grabs $1.2M to help students find the right school