Funding Daily: Welcome to the Winners’ Circle

During the first part of this week, 77 companies showcased their products at DEMO. The primary goal for many of these startups is to get enough venture capital to get the company off the ground, and — one day — to be included in Funding Daily. Yes, inclusion in Funding Daily may be an even better prize than the $1 million in “media”. Congratulations to today’s mentionees. To the DEMO companies, perhaps I shall see you on my illustrious podium soon.

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RainStor pulls in $12M for “big data”

San Francisco-based RainStor pulled in $12 million today for its relational database products that allow new ways to store large amounts of data. RainStor runs on the Hadoop Distributed File System, which means it can scale out its data storage and analytics capabilities, potentially to multi-perabyte data volumes. RainStor’s third round was led by Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners, with participation by existing investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, Storm Ventures and The Dow Chemical Company. This most recent round brings the company’s total funding to $23.5 million. Read more on VentureBeat. 

MindMeld melds $2.4M to tell you what you want to say 

Three weeks after being chosen as a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt, Expect Labs has raised $2.4 million in its first round of funding. The startup has developed technology called the Anticipatory Computing Engine, which analyzes and understands conversations in real time. Its flagship app MindMeld is built on this engine and uses the information to present the converser with relevant subject matter.

The money will enable production of the MindMeld Developer Platform, which can be used to enhance existing consumer and enterprise apps. Investors include KPG Ventures, IDG Ventures, Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, and angel investors.

Punchbowl stirs $1.5M into its party mix

Online party planning company Punchbowl has raised the roof with $1.5 million. The site’s features include digital invitations, save the dates, and thank you cards. It also offers tools for managing RSVPs, gift registries, and supply lists, as well as potluck sign ups, cocktail preference polls, and sharing capabilities.

The funding follows the company’s recent introduction of Shopping Aisle, an online retail site that guesses what a customer needs for their party based on previous interactions with the site. Silicon Valley Bank was the sole investor in this round. The company has raised $4.18 million to date, with previous investors Intel Capital and Contour Venture Partners. It is based in Massachusetts.

‘Big data’ startup Trifacta comes out of stealth with $4.3M in Accel funding

Trifacta is coming out of stealth mode today as the latest “big data” startup. Accordingly, it has raised $4.3 million from Accel Partners’ Big Data Fund. Trifacta is creating productivity platforms that make data analysts more productive. And the company’s visualization software makes normal folks into database analysts. Besides Accel, other investors include X/Seed Capita, Data Collective, and angel investors Dave Goldberg, Venky Harinarayan, and Anand Rajaraman. Read more on VentureBeat.

Contacts+ makes contact with $1M

Contact information is often spread across multiple devices and platforms, and Contacts+ strives to unify it all in one place. The Android app integrates messaging and social networks into address books, and the user interface is more attractive than the typical contact list. Today, the company has announced collecting $1 million from TriplePoint Ventures, Tencent, TMT, and angels. The founders graduated from accelerator program UpWest Labs.

Bango Fo Fango Bananafana Dobango raises seed round

Pinterest sometimes receives flak in the Valley for its lack of a monetization strategy, and there is skepticism over whether it genuinely drives sales for brands. Dobango is a social gaming platform for Pinterest that can be used for marketing purposes. This morning, the company disclosed $600K in seed funding.