Funding Daily: A half-eaten Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day, readers! Whether you are nibbling on the same spaghetti noodle as your lover in a candelit restaurant, watching a TV alone with a pint of ice cream, or downing shots with your friends, Valentine’s Day triggers some sort of a response in everyone. My response? To look forward to the four-day weekend ahead of me where I will be celebrating the holiday in a distinctly “me” fashion — a day too late, with lots of chocolate.

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Violin Memory tunes up for May IPO

Flash storage startup Violin Memory filed with the SEC that it is attempting to raise $50 million in new funding from existing investors. As reported by AllThingsD, the filing is an amendment to a previous one in which it disclosed an $80 million funding round, bringing the possible total to $130 million, and is in preparation for a May IPO. Read the filing. 

Quad Learning builds $11M bridge from community to higher education

Backed by $11 million in venture capital, education startup Quad Learning launched today to bridge the gap between community colleges and four-year institutions. Quad Learning’s American Honors program supposedly helps community college students go on to earn their bachelor’s degree; students complete the first two years of their education at community colleges participating in American Honors and finish at a four-year university. Quad Learning received financial support from Swan and Legend Fund, New Atlantic Ventures, New Enterprise Associayes, Comcast Ventures, and others. Read more on VentureBeat.

Fee-fi-fo-fum: Virool raises giant-sized first round 

Billing itself as the “video ad network for the modern age,” Virool has raised a whopping $6.62 million “seed” round, the largest round in Y Combinator’s history. Virool offers a self-service social video advertising platform to make video content go viral. The list of contributors include big names in venture capital and angel investing, and Virool will use the funds to meet high demand for its product. Institutional investors include Thomvest Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurveston, Digital Sky Technologies, Phenomenon Ventures, TMT Ventures, DominateFund, and FundersClub. Individual investors include Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Troy Carter, Dave McClure, Farzad Nazem, Erik Moore, and Garry Tan. Virool was also the first company to officially receive investment from online investing platform FundersClub. Read more on VentureBeat.

Method CRM drags-and-drops $3M for drag-and-drop software

Method CRM racked up $3 million in its first round of funding. This Toronto-based startup helps businesses manage and personalize their applications. Using the platform, small and medium-sized businesses can manage contacts and leads, sync with QuickBooks accounting software, customize screens and fields, and integrate with Google Apps. Klass Capital led this round to support a complete redesign of the platform so it integrates with Intaact, Wave, Xero, Freshbooks, and other applications. Read the press release.

Selerity’s Series B only interesting to people who work in finance … or read about it

If you’ve ever wondered whether the financial services industry needs real-time event data solutions, then let me tell you about Selerity. It has raised $3 million to accelerate development of Selerity Alerts, which sends breaking news to analysts, portfolio managers, and other financial professionals. Investors in the round include Mark Faulkner, Tom Glocer, Emanuel Mond, Lee Olesky, and Sharon Rowlands.

Mambu one-two steps into $2M

Mambu, a Berlin-based provider of microfinance technology services, has raised $ 2 million from Runa Capital, Point Nine, and Kizoo to accelerate global adoption. Mambu’s software-as-a-service solution helps microfinance organizations run their operations and process transactions.