Happy Thursday, Austin. The end is in sight. Here’s what happened in the last week that you need to know about besides Prop 1 failling (though we touched on that, too).
This week’s fundingsLet’s start with the $47 million in equity investments Austin tech has raised in the past week.
: $30 million
The story
The company’s new round of equity funding was led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based GGV Capital, which has also invested in Alibaba, Houzz, Square, Slack and Domo.
Why you should care
BigCommerce makes software that enables those SMBs to quickly build and maintain online stores. They opened a downtown office at 800 Brazos Street last fall to accommodate their growing engineering team. [Built In Austin]
: $16 million
The story
OutboundEngine announced a $16 million Series C funding late last week led by S3 Ventures.
Why you should care
The Austin company will use the new capital to hire in its Austin and Scottsdale, Ariz. offices, nearly doubling its workforce from 238 to more than 400. [Built In Austin]
: $1 million
The story
The additional investment brings Vyopta’s series A equity round to a total of $6 million.
Why you should care
Vyopta is providing holistic analytics and troubleshooting for video conferencing at a time when more businesses are relying on virtual collaboration than ever before. [Built In Austin]
“Scale” category
Companies with more than $10 million in funding
“Growth” category
Companies with between $1 million and $10 million in funding
- ESO Solutions
- Firefly Space
“Emerging” category
Companies with less than $1 million in funding
and Datami team up for toll-free mobile ads in emerging markets
The story
The two companies have developed a way for advertisers to sponsor ads on mobile devices in emerging markets that need low-cost mobile data.
Here’s how the companies explained the savings to mobile customers:
In one use case, the user is only using data on actual content and not on ads. The ads are sponsored, so they aren’t impacting the customer’s data. In another use case, the user may see an offer like “download this app and receive 50MB” or “earn 200MB when you buy something on this app.”
Why you should care
“Free data becomes like free shipping or provides an incentive to complete the transaction,” said David Nowicki, CMO and Head of Products at Datami. “This actually solves a big problem since ads can take up somewhere between 5 percent to 50 percent of a user’s data plan depending on where they surf.”
Have a news tip for us or know of a company that deserves coverage? Tell us or tweet us @BuiltInAustin.
