Funding Daily: Farms

Today, a startup that helps farms got funding and we’re tickled piggy-pink about it.

C’mon, it’s a farm startup. In a sea of mobile, big data, security, and social news, a startup that helps farms be more productive is awesome. The company is called FarmLogs helps farmers figure out which crops will sell best and how to increase the harvest.

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Cloudy new startup ClearSky Data nabs $12M

A stealthy, Boston-based startup with under 10 employees just pocketed a sizable funding round to kickstart its business. ClearSky Data has closed a $12 million funding round from Highland Capital Partners and General Catalyst, reports Boston.com. We’re not entirely sure what the company is doing, though it’s hiring people with experience in security, storage, networking, and virtualization. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Contently puts freelance journalists to work as marketing hacks

The Internet has not been kind to journalism. It has created a world where anyone with an Internet connection can fancy themselves a publisher, and where “content marketing” and “brand journalism” are on the rise. Contently is a team of self-described journalists and nerds building tools for this new world. The NYC-based startup announced today that it has closed $9 million in funding. Sigma Prime, Sigma West, Lightbank, Countour Ventures, and David Lerner participated in this second round of funding.

Confer captures funding to protect more devices from cyberattacks

As employees depend more on their own laptops and mobile devices to do work, their employers have to keep those devices safely ticking away. A startup called Confer brings a crowdsourcing twist to the challenge, and the approach has caught the attention of investors. Today the Waltham, Mass.-based startup launched itself and announced $8 million in funding from Matrix partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

FarmLogs harvests $4M to make farming more profitable & productive

The only thing that’s perhaps more important than food is the ability to grow it effectively. And today agriculture tech startup FarmLogs has raised a fresh $4 million round of funding to help farms across the country do just that. FarmLogs offers user friendly web and mobile apps that help farmers across the country increase their productivity and profitability by producing more of the crops they’re likely to sell. The funding was led by Drive Capital, with participation from Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Hyde Park Angel. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Jun Group gets $2.5M for online video advertising

Video advertising company Jun Group received $2.5 million in debt financing led by Western Technology Investment today after tripling in size since its first round with WTI. Online video advertising is already a huge arena for companies looking to bring television advertising success to multiple screens. Jun Group provides a number of different ad unit preferences including sponsored content, where a brand gets an entire page on a “premium publisher site” to display its advertising; embedded videos on existing content; as well as native ad units. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Disco e-discovery tools for lawyers gets $2M

Disco received $2 million in its first round of funding today to help lawyers through the e-discovery process of a lawsuit. During a civil lawsuit, lawyers will go through the “e-discovery” process, which including the collection of evidence to support their case. This might include requesting many documents from the opposing parties and may also include forensic digging for information within a computer. Tools like Disco help organize this element of the lawsuit. The round was led by LiveOak Venture Partners and will be used to hire new employees in Disco’s engineering, sales, and operations teams. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

EquityMetrix scores $5M

Big data startup EquityMetrix has taken $5 million in growth investment from Peterson Partners, a Salt Lake City-based private equity firm. The company, which provides land data management services to the oil and gas industry, tells us via email that the cash will be used to roll out new services for pinpointing revenue problems. EquityMetrix is based in Dallas, Tex., and was founded in 2003. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Pingboard hopes to bring office management out of the Office Space era

It’s 2014, but there’s a good chance your office manager maintains order in your workplace simply with lots of spreadsheets, shared files, and a bit of luck. Austin-based Pingboard hopes to offer some hope for the the tortured office manager with its software, which serves as a single place to store critical office information and communicate with employees. Pingboard announced today that it has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by Silverton Partners. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

FusionOps gets $500K in funding for supply chain analytics

Businesses like “big data” and that’s why FusionOps got $500,000 in funding today, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Iit looks at your business and is able to answer questions about how your operations are going and where you can improve. More specifically, the company says it evaluates with the supply chain. The funding comes from Sierra Ventures. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. Read the full story on VentureBeat.