Recent Fundings and IPO Filings

Here is a (by no means exhaustive) summary of web/tech fundings and IPO filings that I've come across during the past days.

Email marketing firm Constant Contact has received US$15 Mio. in funding (press release). First time investor Greylock Partners is leading this round with US$10 Mio. CC's existing investors Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Hudson Ventures, Longworth Venture Partners, and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners chip in an additional US$5 million. Lead investor Greylock Partners' better known portfolio companies comprise Red Hat and DoubleClick.

Mobile marketing software developer Mozes Inc. has received US$ 0.75 Mio. in funding from angel investors. SiliconBeat reports more on how Mozes works.

Zopa, a UK-based online marketplace for P2P borrowing and lending, received US$5 Mio. in addition to the US$15 Mio. it recently secured from Bessemer Venture Partners as well as existing investors Benchmark Capital and German VC boutique Wellington Partners.
Bessemer also funded Skype, which might explain why Tim Draper - also a Skype investor - decided to pull out this round's US$5 Mio. out of his pockets, together with the Rowland Family (and I don't have the slightest clue who their are, but apparently some wealthy (UK?) family with a track record of allocating their money to Internet companies, e.g. Autonomy). Wellington Partners is well known in Germany due to their investment in Alando, a German eBay copy-cat, which eBay itself acquired only three months after Alando's go-live. Alando's founders, ze Samwer brothers, to build a ringtone business with Jamba, acquired by Verisign in 2004.

iBloks sealed US$3 Mio. from Seattle-based Maveron LLC. iBlok has created a software which enables consumers to combine photos, video, music and three-dimensional animation into personalized applications. So one more company that rides the user-created content wave.

That leads to Shutterfly, probably the first online photo-sharing company that attempts an IPO. Shutterfly was formed in 1999 and according to VentureWire has been profitable for three years through printing and shipping photo prints and selling photo-based mugs, mouse pads and frames. Its net income in 2005 surged to $28.9 million from $3.7 million the year before, as revenue increased to $83.9 million from $54.5 million, but find out yourself by checking Shutterfly's S-1 filing. VC backers of Shutterfly are Silicon Valley Bank, Adobe Ventures, Mohr, Davidow Ventures, and Netscape founder Jim Clark and ex-KPCB partner Tom Jermoluk.

Next IPO candidate is Optium Corporation, which produces optical transmission equipment. Optium has filed its S-1 (link), but interestingly enough there is no news release on their website. I guess  the folks at Optium are really busy doing other stuff then. Their revenues in FY 05, which ended on July 30, were US$37 Mio. and a net loss of US$1.5 Mio. Revenues for the first three quarters of FY 06 were US$48 Mio. and a net loss of US$9.3 Mio. The large raise in net loss is due to the acquistion of Engana,  a producer of wavelength selective switch modules, which Optium decided to expense with US$11.2 Mio.

And finally, GigaOm has more on the rumors of another optical IPO, that of Infinera.