Thursday, November 1, 2012NewEgg Kicks Off Early Holiday Shopping SeasonIt looks like holiday shopping season has officially launched, at least for electronic e-commerce retailer NewEgg, which said Thursday that it has launched its "Black November" deals, offering up sales on popular products such as laptop, ultrabooks, tablets, televisions, cameras, computer components and video games. NewEgg also said it will launch a new program which will provide a lowest price guarantee on products purchase from November 1st through December 24th, where it will refund the diffe (More info...)
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Club W Doubles Down On Accelerators With Investment From 500StartupsClub W, the personalized wine subscription service at AmplifyLA, has doubled down with accelerators, and is part of a new class of startups announced by 500Startups earlier this week. 500Startups said that ClubW--founded by Xander Oxman, Mark Lynn, Geoff McFarlane--was selected as part of its fifth class of accelerator companies. 500Startups invests between $25,000 and $250,000 in startups selected by the group, which usually work with the accelerator to help hone their business. In this case, t (More info...)
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ZapMobi Takes On Mobile WebsitesZapmobi, which is based in Los Angeles, said today that it has launched a new service which helps users create scalable, mobile websites that run on thousands of mobile devices. The new service said it has created a point, click, and drag mobile website builder which makes it easy for users to serve up mobile pages. The firm said it offers up free and premium subscription plans. Zapmobi is headed by Charlie Fallman.
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Fisker Automotive Offers Up Parking Lot For Hurricane RecoveryHurricane Sandy may have kicked the auto firm while it was down, but Fisker Automotive is fighting back by offering up the parking lot of its Wilmington, Delaware automotive plant as a headquarters location for utility crews looking to reconnect power on the East coast. Fisker said it is providing a location for over 350 personnel manning 300 utility and tree-trimming trucks associated with Delmarva Power, as a home base for power and road restoration efforts. Anaheim-based Fisker Automotive ha (More info...)
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Chewse Joins 500 StartupsSilicon valley startup incubator program 500 Startups announced its latest batch of startups Wednesday, with a surprise: a local, Santa Monica firm among the fifth batch of companies being backed by the accelerator. 500 Startups said that Santa Monica-based Chewse, which is developing a marketplace for groups to easily order food together, has joined the accelerator, which invests between $25,000 and $250,000 in Internet startups, and helps them get funded and off the ground. Chewse was founded (More info...)
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Hurricane Sandy Provides More Woes For Fisker AutomotiveIt looks like Hurricane Sandy didn't limit its damage to the East Coast. The Hurricane apparently has inflicted its damage on Southern California hybrid automaker Fisker Automotive, after surging water from the storm caused sixteen of Fisker's Karma luxury hybrids to go up in flames in Port Newark, New Jersey. The Irvine-based startup's cars--which were at a shipping facility awaiting delivery--caught fire after being submerged by the storm. A photo of the destroyed cars was posted by Jalopnik. (More info...)
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Boingo Wins Dallas Love FieldBoingo Wireless, the Wi-Fi hotspot network operator, has scored a win at the Dallas Love Field airport, the company said today. The Los Angeles company said that it will will install, manage and operate neutral host Wi-Fi and DAS networks for the airport as part of a modernization initiative. Financial impact of the win was not announced. Boingo already operates Wi-Fi networks at a significant number of airports worldwide, though it has yet to get a chance at business at hometown airport LAX. Bo (More info...)
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Invested.in Gets $830K More In Seed FundingInvested.in, the developer of a web-based platform for crowdfunding which is part of AmplifyLA, is announcing today that it has raised $830,000 more in a seed funding round. The round was led by Kamran Pourzanjani, the founder of PriceGrabber who is now head of Bestcovery. The round also included Siemer Ventures, Canyon Creek Capital, Karlin Ventures, Gordon Crawford, David Carter, Mark Schwartz, Michael Liou, Chairul Irawan, Chris Grey, Steven Roussey, Alan Stern, Irv Weintraub, Steve Reich, Ma (More info...)
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Atara Biotherapeutics Gets Funding From Amgen, KPCBThousand Oaks-based Amgen and venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have put their backing behind a new, Westlake Village based drug development firm, Atara Biotherapeutics, in an unusual spinout of technology from the biotech giant. According to Amgen and KPCB, Atara Biotherapeutics will have licenses to six Amgen assets, in various stages of development, ranging from preclinical to Phase 1. Financial details of the funding were not announced. The move is unusual in that Amgen--unlike m (More info...)
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Internet On The Go Takes On Mobile Internet AccessA new service from Los Angeles-based TruConnect Mobile is looking to provide mobile Internet access to Walmart customers. The new service, Internet on the Go, let users purchase bandwidth through refillable, pre-paid cards at Walmart. According to TrueConnect, the new wireless broadband Internet service will give users mobile broadband access on a re-fillable data plan, which rolls over data from month to month with no set expiration date. The new data plans costs $10 for 500Mb of data, $25 for (More info...)
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MINDBODY Raises $35MSan Luis Obispo-based MINDBODY has raised a big, $35M venture capital round this morning, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), along with Catalyst Investors (Catalyst) and Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP). MINDBODY provides online, software-as-a-service which lets health, wellness, and beauty businesses manage their businesses, including everything from e-commerce, payment processing, marketing, to staffing and scheduling. MINDBODY, which is headed by Rick Stollmeyer, is also backed by th (More info...)
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Dollar Shave Club Gets $9.8M For Subscription Razor ServiceDollar Shave Club, the subscription razor delivery service headed by Michael Dubin, has raised $9.8M in a Series A funding. The round was led by Venrock, and also included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Forerunner Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures, and Felicis Ventures. As part of the funding, the company said that David Pakman of Venrock joins the company's board of directors. Dollar Shave Club is one of the company's spawned out of Science, Inc., and burst onto the scene earlie (More info...)
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Science Inc.'s New TripleThread Brings Work Style To MenThe latest startup out of Los Angeles-based startup studio/incubator Science, Inc. launched today, aiming initially at providing men with work-appropriate clothes delivered monthly. The startup, TripleThread, said it has launched a new service called Fourth and Grand, which figures out a customer's style and delivers a shipment of fashionable shirts, ties, pants, sweaters, and other accessories every month. The service is the first from TripleThread, which is aiming its service at brick and mort (More info...)
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On-Ramp Wireless Names Kevin Hell As President, CEOSan Diego-based wireless communications module developer On-Ramp Wireless announced Wednesday that Kevin Hell, the former CEO of DivX, has joined the company as President and CEO. Hell headed by DivX until its acquisition by Sonic Solutions in October of 2010, and most recently was chairman of the EvoNexus startup incubator run by CommNexus. Hell sits on the boards of Hold-Free Networks, Perminova, Inc, MicroPower Technologies and Pixon Imaging, Inc. On Ramp Wireless recently raised a significan (More info...)
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