Silicon Valley Wire

Mountain View-Based Kiwi Crate Raises $5 Million in First Round

Mountain View, Calif. -- Kiwi Crate, the Mountain View-based developer of a subscription-based service that produces and delivers hands-on activities for kids, said it has raised $5 million in its first round of funding. Previous backer Comcast Ventures led the round, and other previous investors First Round Capital, Mayfield Fund, Felicis Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Consigliere Brand Capital, Uj Ventures and 500 Startups participated. The company, which launched and announced its initial seed financing last October, provides all the materials, ideas and instructions for a variety of kids' activities, delivered monthly. Subscriptions cost $19.95 a month. Kiwi Crate said it wil use the funding to scale the company, expand its product offering and grow its community.
http://www.kiwicrate.com
http://blog.kiwicrate.com/

Santa Clara-Based Intel Names New COO, Chief Product Officer

Santa Clara, Calif. -- Intel,. the Santa Clara-based chipmaking giant, on Friday promoted Brian Krzanich to COO and Dadi Perlmutter to chief product officer. Krzanich had previously been a senior vice president in charge of Intel's worldwide manufacturing, while Perlmutter will continue to lead the company's Architecture Group. Both moves come as the company prepares to elevate Andy Bryant from vice chairman to executive chairman at its annual stockholders' meeting in May. Intel also has named Kirk Skaugen the new head of its PC Client Group (PCCG), succeeding Mooly Eden, who is moving back to Israel to become president and general manager of Intel Israel. Diane Bryant will succeed Skaugen as general manager of the company's data center business, and Kim Stevenson will succeed Bryant as CIO.
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/01/20/intel-announces-management-changes

Redwood City-Based Trion Worlds Raises $85 Million in Funding

Redwood City, Calif. -- Trion Worlds, a Redwood City-based developer and publisher and of connected video games, said it has raised $85 million in a new round of funding, led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Previous backer Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI) also participated in the round, which the company will use to further expand its premium online games business. "We are thrilled about entering this exciting period of growth and scale with our investors," Lars Buttler, the founder and CEO of Trion Worlds. The company launched its first title, Rift, last March, and players activated more than one million game accounts in less than four months. Trion is currently teaming with Petroglyph Games to develop End of Nations, a massively multiplayer real-time strategy game, and collaborating with Syfy to simultaneously produce a TV show and online action game in the same universe. Trion also recently announced plans to launch an initiative, code-named Red Door, that comprises both a consumer platform and a full-scale publishing and development platform based on the technology fueling its own games.
http://www.trionworlds.com/
http://www.trionworlds.com/en/news/press-releases/2012/01/growth-financing

San Francisco-Based Anaplan Raises $11.4 Million in Second Round

San Francisco -- Anaplan, the San Francisco-based developer of a cloud platform that lets business users quickly build business planning and performance management applications, said on Thursday it has raised $11.4 million in its second round of funding. New investors Granite Ventures and Shasta Ventures joined several previous backers in the round, which increased the company's total raised to more than $17.5 million. Standish O'Grady, managing director of Granite Ventures, and Ravi Mohan, managing director of Shasta Ventures, have joined the company's board of directors. Founded in 2008, Anaplan said it will use the latest funding to fuel expansion. "Customer adoption will rapidly accelerate as we expand our sales force, launch new markets and build our global partner network," said CEO Guy Haddleton.
http://www.anaplan.com 
http://www.anaplan.com/press

San Mateo-Based Plastic Jungle Lands Investment from Citi Ventures

San Mateo, Calif. -- Plastic Jungle, the San Mateo-based developer of an online gift card exchange, said it has landed a new investment from Palo Alto-based Citi Ventures, a unit of financial services company Citigroup. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company said it will use the proceeds to continue growing its service, which allows users to sell gift cards for up to 92% of their value or buy gift cards for up to 35% off. "This funding gives us an excellent opportunity to accelerate our growth and continued innovation," said CEO Bruce Bower. Plastic Jungle is also backed by Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures, First Round Capital, Bay Partners, Harrison Metal and Western Technology Investment.
http://www.plasticjungle.com
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/plastic-jungle-receives-strategic-investment-from-citi-ventures-1608259.htm

Oakland-Based Livescribe Names Gilles Bouchard as New CEO

Oakland -- Livescribe, an Oakland-based maker of smartpens designed to digitally capture everything users hear and write, on Thursday named Gilles Bouchard as its new CEO. He will succeed company founder Jim Marggraff, who will remain on the board of directors and serve as an advisor. Bouchard most recently served as the CEO and COO of Opnext, a maker of fiber optic components for the telecom and data networking industries, and previously spent 17 years at HP. Livescribe's smartpen devices include a microphone, speaker, camera and translation tools, helping users capture, access and share written and spoken information. In late 2010, the company raised $39 million in its third round of funding, led by Crosslink Capital.
http://www.livescribe.com 
http://www.livescribe.com/blog/press/?p=3430

Menlo Park-Based Shasta Ventures Names Two New Partners

Menlo Park, Calif. -- Shasta Ventures, a Menlo Park-based early-stage venture capital firm, on Thursday named two new partners, hiring Jim Barnett and promoting Sean Flynn. Barnett, the co-founder and chairman of Turn and chairman of Extole and Sojern, will focus on the consumer Internet and software sectors. Flynn, who has been with the firm since 2008, will continue to focus on the consumer Internet and mobile sectors. The moves come four months after Shasta raised $265 million for its most recent fund, Shasta III.
http://www.shastaventures.com
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120119005288/en/Shasta-Ventures-Announces-Partners

USA Today Launches First App for Facebook Timeline

McLean, Va. -- National newspaper USA Today said on Thursday it has launched USA Today + Me, its inaugural app for Facebook Timeline. The app is designed to deliver select news and information from the paper to people on Facebook based on what their friends have read and recommended, as well as stories customized to their interests. "As more and more people turn to social sites and their peers' recommendations as a means of determining which news and information they will consume, it is more important than ever to reach our audience wherever they choose to consume their news," said Dave Hunke, the president and publisher of USA Today.
http://apps.facebook.com/usatodayplusme
http://www.usatoday.com 

Wikipedia Blacks Out Site for 24 Hours to Protest Anti-Piracy Bills

San Francisco -- Wikipedia, the San Francisco-based online encyclopedia, on Wednesday went dark for 24 hours to protest a pair of anti-piracy bills in Congress that site operators contend "could fatally challenge the free and open Internet." The protest stems from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is temporarily stalled in the House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which is up for a vote in the Senate next week. Both would require Internet service providers to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights, essentially censoring the Internet. Other organizations joined the protest, with Mountain View-based Google placing a black bar over its website logo and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) blacking out its homepage, though other sections of the site remained accessible. "The bills ostensibly go after Internet pirates, but are so broadly worded as to implicate legitimate businesses," the CEA said. "If passed, they will mean more litigation and damage to the innovation economy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.ce.org/
https://www.google.com/

Redwood City-Based Tidemark Lands $24 Million in Third Round

Redwood City, Calif. -- Tidemark, a Redwood City-based developer of cloud-based applications designed to help business users make real-time data-driven decisions, said on Wednesday it has raised $24 million in its third round of funding, led by Redpoint Ventures. Previous backers Greylock Partners; Andreessen Horowitz and Dave Duffield, the co-founder and co-CEO of Workday, also participated in the round, which brings the company's total amount raised to more than $35 million. The company said it will use the capital to aggressively target large business clients. Tidemark also has named Geoff Yang, founding partner of Redpoint Ventures, to its board of directors. Current director Phil Wilmington the former co-president of PeopleSoft and CEO of OutlookSoft, will become executive chairman.
http://www.tidemark.net
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120118005542/en/Tidemark-Secures-24-Million-Series-Funding-Led

Co-Founder Jerry Yang Resigns from Yahoo; Shares Rise 3%

Sunnyvale, Calif. -- Saying the time has come to pursue other interests, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned from the Sunnyvale-based Internet company he helped create nearly 17 years ago. The move comes two weeks after Yahoo named Scott Thompson, the former president of eBay's PayPal unit, as its new CEO. Analysts believe that Thompson now will have freer rein to sell the company's Asian assets, which are potentially worth more than $10 billion. Yang co-founded Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo and had served as a member of the company's board since 1995, as well as CEO from 2007-2009. He also has resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group. "My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life," Yang wrote in a letter to Chairman Roy Bostock. "However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests." The news sent company shares up 3% in heavy trading on the Nasdaq. 
http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/221948.aspx

Mountain View-Based Nexenta Systems Raises $21M in Third Round

Mountain View, Calif. -- Nexenta Systems, the Mountain View-based developer of a software-only storage platform, said on Wednesday it has raised $21 million in its third round of funding, led by Menlo Ventures. Sierra Ventures and Razor's Edge Ventures also participated in this round, joining previous backers Javelin Venture Partners and TransLink Capital. Nexenta said the infusion of capital follows three years in which it saw 400% year-over-year growth. Last year alone, the company said it served more than 4,000 customers and tripled its workforce. Clients include the U.S. Army, NOAA and Korea Telecom.
http://www.nexenta.com/
http://www.nexenta.com/corp/newsflashes/102-2011/1016-nexenta-raises-21-million-in-series-c-funding

Palo Alto-Based Retailigence Lands $2.6 Million in Funding

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Retailigence, the Palo Alto-based developer of a mobile marketing service for retailers, said on Wednesday it has landed $2.6 million in funding from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. The company said it will use the proceeds to further develop its service, accelerate integration into major retail systems and expand retailer coverage. Retailigence's services integrate with local retail systems and aggregate their data, allowing shoppers to see a store's available inventory through their smart phones.  Launched in late 2010, the company now markets more than 10 million active products from nearly 100,000 retail locations across the U.S. and Canada.
http://www.retailigence.com
http://www.retailigence.com/blog/news/motorola-solutions-venture-capital-invests-in-retailigences-2-6-million-funding-round/

San Francisco-Based AppDynamics Lands $20 Million in Third Round

San Francisco -- AppDynamics, a San Francisco-based developer of tools designed to help users better manage the performance of their web applications, said on Tuesday it has raised $20 million in its third round of funding, led by new investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). Previous backers Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round, which the company will use to expand its engineering and sales teams. AppDynamics' technology is used by clients such as Netflix, Priceline, TiVo, ZipRealty, Taleo and Swisscom to monitor, troubleshoot and scale their production applications. "The application management market has multiple billion dollars of annual IT spending and AppDynamics is well poised to become the leading solution in the market," said founder and CEO Jyoti Bansal.
http://www.kpcb.com
http://www.appdynamics.com 
http://www.appdynamics.com/press/press-release-01-17-12.php

Former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra Named EVP of Salesforce.com

San Francisco -- Vivek Kundra, who served as the nation's first federal CIO, has joined San Francisco-based cloud computing company Salesforce.com as executive vice president of emerging markets. Kundra was a major proponent of utilizing cloud computing in the public sector while working for the Obama administration. He served as technology advisor to Obama's transition team before becoming federal CIO, a position he held for more than two years starting in 2009. He stepped down last August for a fellowship at Harvard University.
http://www.salesforce.com/
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2012/01/120116.jsp

Mykonos Software Relocates Headquarters to San Francisco

San Francisco -- Mykonos Software, a developer of tools designed to secure websites and applications from hackers, fraud and theft, said on Tuesday it has relocated its corporate headquarters from Burlingame to San Francisco. The company said the move, to 370 Brannan Street, will allow it to take advantage of a larger workforce as it looks to expand its ranks, with plans to hire several hackers and coders for its research and development department. Mykonos also has offices in New York City and Rochester, N.Y.
http://www.mykonossoftware.com  
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120117005166/en/Mykonos-Software-Opens-Headquarters-San-Francisco-Accelerates

Cupertino-Based Intransa Names Bill Roeschlein as CFO

Cupertino, Calif. -- Intransa, a Cupertino-based developer of server and storage infrastructure platforms used in physical security, on Tuesday named Bill Roeschlein as its new CFO. Roeschlein previously served as the CFO of Power Integrations and Selectica, and most recently spent time with Trident Microsystems. Intransa's server and storage platforms have been installed in a range of video surveillance, access control, video analytics and PSIM projects since their introduction in mid-2009. The company recently landed its 2,000th physical security customer.
http://www.intransablog.com
http://www.intransa.com/news/releases/2012/0117.html