New Tech Meetup in Boulder began with a discussion of the possibility of bringing Google’s pilot fiber network to Boulder. The City of Boulder plans to submit the required technical and factual information required in the RFI but community interest and submissions also represent an important piece of the response. Those interested in more information should go to boulderfiber.com.
Graphic.ly announced its acquisition of iFanboy today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Graphic.ly, a 2009 Boulder TechStars alum now headed by Micah Baldwin, seeks to create the iTunes of digital comics including a store to purchase comics and related materials, digital delivery optimized for reading on a computer or mobile devices, and a community of comic enthusiasts. The acquisition of iFanboy, a leading online community for comic and graphic novel enthusiasts, brings Graphic.ly a long way in terms of gaining access to its key customers in a familiar online setting. iFanboy will become a division of Graphic.ly and its founders will join the Graphic.ly team. Graphic.ly expects the integration of iFanboy into its website to be complete within 30 days.
The Boulder edition of New Tech Meetup got off to an entertaining start featuring a fireside discussion between Robert Reich and Jason Calacanis who was in town for the first Boulder Open Angel Forum. Calacanis started the Open Angel Forum in response to Angel groups that charge companies to present, a practice he is strongly against (see his blog post here).
Red Door Interactive convened its first panel of 2010 to discuss the use of social media to accelerate the customer lifecycle. Moderator Scott Esmond of Red Door prompted the panel discuss the impact of social media at each stage of the customer lifecycle: acquisition, conversion, and retention/loyalty.
The panelists at the event were:
NewsGator announced that it has acquired Tomoye, which provides a community and social platform for organization’s using SharePoint. Along with its product offering, Tomoye brings a strong presence in the government sector including the social community for the US Army with over 150,000 users. NewsGator, whose previous customer base was concentrated in the private sector, also offers resources to enhance social networking and access to information within the enterprise. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. NewsGator is based in Denver, Colorado and Tomoye is headquarted in Quebec, Canada.
New Tech Meetup held its Denver edition last night and featured two new company presentations along with Matt Emmi (new gadgets) and Su Hawk (potential changes to CO software tax law), who revisited their presentations from the Boulder meeting.
ProVault allows individuals going through a divorce to prepare their sworn financial disclosure online, a process that traditionally required detailed paper questionnaires that were then transferred into a desktop application by a paralegal billing about $100 per hour. ProVault seeks to offer a TurboTax-like system that guides users through the process of preparing the document in an understandable way. Currently, ProVault is sold to lawyers who then direct their customers to the site. The company charges a small subscription fee for law offices plus a $65 charge per item that can be passed through to clients. The company, which just launched its product in early December, plans to create a product for consumers and a white label option for law offices.
Today, OneRiot announced the broad availability of RiotWise, an ad network for the real-time web. The network can provide contextually relevant ads to real-time applications, clients and search engines. Developers have flexibility in displaying the ads from traditional banner displays to integration into the real-time stream. Based on its pilot, OneRiot reports click through rates three to four times higher for RiotWise ads relative to industry standards. Ad revenues from the network are split between application developers and OneRiot. Based in Boulder, OneRiot produces a real-time search engine that mines traditional information sources and the social web to identify the most relevant topics and information in real-time. Along with its own search engine available at OneRiot.com, the company also provides real-time results to several partners including Yahoo.
New Tech Meetup kicked of the year to a full house and a full slate of presenters. First up was Lorenzo Carver presenting Liquid Scenarios, which makes it easy to calculate the value of illiquid assets such as stock in a private company. According to Carver where the product really excels is when there are a number of types of equity – including different preferred types of stock – and liquidity preferences along with warrants and options. Liquid Scenarios is able to account for all the recursive relationships among these instruments and evaluate the payout for a particular investment given an exit value.
Filtrbox announced that it has been acquired by Jive Software. Both companies are venture backed and play heavily in the social media space. Filtrbox allows users to set up “filtrs” for specific words to monitor mentions on both traditional and social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook. Jive expects to integrate Filtrbox into its Jive Market Engagement solution that combines social media monitoring with Social Business Software, creating what both companies believe is a complete social media engagement strategy. Based in Boulder, Filtrbox is an alum of the inaugural TechStars class of 2007 and has received funding from Flywheel Ventures and True Ventures. Jive Softare is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and its funders include Sequoia Capital.
Rally Software announced that it has secured a $16M round of funding led by Greylock Partners. Rally is a leader in Agile application lifecycle management, providing products and services that facilitate software development using the Agile method. The new funds will allow for accelerated hiring of engineers. Rally has continued on a strong growth trajectory seeing product revenues nearly double in 2009 and expects to be cash flow positive this year. Tom Bogan, a Partner at Greylock, will join Rally’s board as part of the new round. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Rally had previously raised a total of $33M in funding.
For a more detailed look at Rally, RockyRadar talked to founder and CTO Ryan Martens in May.
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