Funding Daily: Startup Grind

Live from Startup Grind, I bring you Funding Daily. What were the main takeaways from today’s event in Mountain View? First, free granola is always a big hit. Second, networking is a vital part of the startup ecosystem. Third when you are Dave McClure, you can yell “you are going to fail” to a room full of entrepreneurs and garner applause. Clap on friends, here are a few startups that aren’t failing…yet.

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Ravello raises $26M to virtualize web development in prettier skies

Ravello Systems has raised $26 million from Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners to launch its Cloud Application Hypervisor. The technology helps developers overcome their “internal resource constraints” by replicating their existing applications in a public cloud environment. From there, they can collaborate on projects, create blueprints, make changes, and QA test more efficiently. Read more on VentureBeat.

Readying for IPO, app monitoring all-star New Relic nets $80M from Insight, T. Rowe Price,

Application monitoring business New Relic has raised $80 million in fresh funding on a valuation of $750 million, cash that will help it grow and secure its place alongside other sexy enterprise startups like Box and Palantir. New Relic offers companies a SaaS-based dashboard for monitoring and managing their cloud, web, and mobile applications. The new funding was led by Insight Venture Partners with support by new investors T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Passport Ventures. Existing investors including Benchmark Capital, Trinity Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Allen & Company also participated. Including the new round, New Relic has raised $115 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

Securing source code: Whitehat Security gets $31M to watch over your web apps

Whitehat, which claims to be the first software-as-a-service option for application security, raised $31 million fourth round of funding today. The company’s product, Sentinel Services, monitors your web applications and source code continuously to spot vulnerabilities and tell you where they are. The funding was led by JMI Equity, with participation from existing investor IGC (Investor Capital Group). Today’s funding brings the company’s total to $53 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

Social media management startup Sprinklr grabs $15M from Intel; Battery to outclass Radian6

Social media management startup Sprinklr has raised $15 million in second-round funding to help it continue to dominate in the social management space and keep an edge over services like Radian6, Wildfire, and Involver. Sprinklr offers these high-profile clients a full suite of social media management tools to help them post across social networks and measure engagement. The new round of funding came from heavy hitting investors Intel Capital and Battery Ventures. Including the new round, Sprinklr has raised $20 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

Hailo confirms its $30M round from Union Square Ventures, Richard Branson

London-based taxi app Hailo confirmed today that investors pumped $30.6 million into the company. The round was, as reported, led by Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson with participation from Virgin founder and billionaire Richard Branson, and Japanese telecommunications provider KDDI. Hailo will also be launching soon in Tokyo. The funding round sets up Hailo as a main competitor for Uber in New York City. Hailo brought on $20 million in funding prior to this round. Investors include Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, and Atomico Ventures. The company also brought on former Starbucks vice president Tom Barr to run its operations. Read more on VentureBeat.

Accel’s latest European fund rumored at $450M

Accel Partners is raising a $450 million fund focused on Europe, as reported this morning by Bloomberg. Accel London IV will be dedicated to companies in the IT, software, internet and consumers sectors, with three-quarters allocated to early-stage companies and the remainder for later-stage deals. According to unnamed source, eighty percent of the pool will be invested in Europe and Israel, and the rest in the U.S. Read more on VentureBeat.

Pinterest’s next funding round could be valued as high $2.5 billion

Pinterest, everyone’s mom’s favorite web diversion, is in talks to raise a meaty financing round valued up to $2.5 billion, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. The talks are still in the early stages, but the deal would be a major addition to the $138 million Pinterest has raised so far. Its most recent round came last May, when Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten helped it raise $100 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

Investors spread out $18M across Spredfast

Social marketing software provider Spredfast raised $18 million from OpenView Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Austin Ventures and InterWest Partners. Spredfast reports that its revenue grew by 400% in 2012 and this capital will support product development, as well as grow the team. Spredfast’s Social Engagement Index helps enterprises manage their social actiivty, across multiple platforms and accounts, from one central place. Spredfast is based in Austin, Texas and has raised $31.6 million to date. Read the press release.

Think Big Analytics nabs $3M to help you with Hadoop 

After three years operating under the radar, Think Big Analytics is ready for its big debut. The Mountain View Calif. based startup leverages open source computing framework Hadoop and NoSQL to bring “big data” to large companies. To bring its product to market, the founding team has raised a massive $3 million seed round from former Cisco executive, Dan Scheinman, with participation from the venture firm WI Harper Group. Read more on VentureBeat.

Ribbon wraps itself up in investment dollars

Payments startup Ribbon secured a $1.6 million seed round from Draper Associates with participation from Siemer Ventures, Naguib Sawiris, Winston Ibrahim, Emil Michael, and MicroVentures. Ribbon grew out of the AngelPad accelerator to make selling across multiple platforms “as easy as copy/paste.” By embedding one link, merchants can sell directly to consumers on their site or social networks. The platform enables credit card transactions within the Facebook newsfeed, on Twitter, and on top of YouTube videos. Read the company’s blog post.

Investors keep Coalfire burning

IT governance, risk, and compliance firm Coalfire closed a $3.6 million round of venture funding from Baird Capital. Coalfire provides independent IT audit, risk assessment, and compliance management solutions to clients in multiple industries to protect their sensitive data and critical systems. This is its second round of venture funding, following a year of strong growth and expansion of its healthcare practice. Coalfire is based in Colorado and has raised a total of $8.6 million to date. Read the press release.

Pinterest-for-dudes site pins up seed funding

Male-orietned, social discovery site Tapiture closed $825K to advance its growth. The technology pairs users’ social and interest graphs to deliver content that might interest them, and will soon be adding an e-commerce platform. The funding came from private angel investors. Read the press release.

Israel stays trendy with equity crowdfunding platform of its own

Crowdfunding is hitting Israel too. OurCrowd, an equity crowd funding platform for accredited investors interested in Israeli startups, closed $5.5 million in its first round of funding. To date, OurCrowd has raised money for 12 for companies on the platform, with an average deal size of $500,000. The first deals completed on the site so far include:

• AbesMarket.com – The Leading Organic E-Commerce Site, co-investment with Accel Partners, Index, and Carmel Ventures.
• Sherpa – The new internet information venture from Bob Rosenschein, founder and CEO of Answers.com (sold to Summit Partner’s AFCV Holdings for $127 million), co-investment with Cedar.
• TradeOS – The new freight forwarding automation venture from Zvi Schreiber, the founder and CEO of Tradeum.com. (sold to Vertical Net for $450 million).
• Parko – launching a unique social parking solution and recently won the Israel Mobile Challenge Competition sponsored  by Google.
• Fireblade – leading company for protecting websites from malicious bots and scraping, co-investment with Jeffrey Citron’s (founder of Vonage) KEC Holdings.
• Consumer Physics – building a pocket spectrometer for smart phones, enabling a variety of consumer apps, co-investment with Khosla Ventures.