BookRenter Raises $40 Million To Take On Chegg In Textbook Rentals

College textbook rental startup BookRenter has raised $40 million in funding from Adams Capital Management, Comerica Bank, Focus Ventures, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Storm Ventures. This brings BookRenter’s total funding to $60 million.

Similar to Chegg, Bookrenter wants to be the Netflix of textbook rentals. By renting textbooks, Students are able to save money by loaning textbooks for a fixed duration, usually a semester, and end up spending only the fraction of the cost of outright purchases. The system is simple: a student searches for a book (BookRenter now has 5.5 million titles) on the website using a title or ISBN, and places an order by selecting a rental period and delivery option. The book(s) are delivered complete with return UPS labels for easy shipping. And through BookRenter’s RapidReturns service, students can return their rented textbooks at participating college stores, who benefit from increased buyback activity and merchandise transactions.

BookRenter has also made a business of partnering with a number of colleges to set up a virtual rental store on their sites. Partners have access to the same selection of textbooks available on BookRenter’s site (which are electronically sourced from the largest textbook suppliers.)

Since last March, Bookrenter is the official book rental platform for 560 college bookstores in the U.S. serving 6 million students, or 31 percent of the college population (and eight of the ten largest independent bookstores). There are between 6,000 and 7,000 college bookstores nationwide.

For BookRenter, these university partnerships have been a wise move. Not only has the company created an automatic platform for the distribution of content to universities, but it saves students money and has also given universities a way to lure students back into book stores. According to NACS’ OnCampus Research from January 2011, compared to last year, customers of stores that offer BookRenter rentals are 21% more likely to rent from their college store and 10% more likely to shop at the bookstore for items other than textbooks.

And today, the company is announcing a strategic partnership with The National Association of College Stores (NACS) designed to help college stores become the source of affordable textbooks. NACS, through its subsidiary NACSCORP, will begin offering three new BookRenter services to its 3,100 member stores. These services include RapidReturns, Inventory Purchase and Fulfillment, and Warehousing.

BookRenter’s strategy is paying off in a big way. The company is growing like a weed in terms of both revenue and usage, and is quietly catching up to competitor Chegg. BookRenter’s 2010 revenue is expected to be in the range of $20 to $50 million in 2010. Of course, this is still behind competitor Chegg, which is projected revenues in the range of $130 million in 2010.

But the new funding should help BookRenter add more resources and products in the near future. The company is expected to expand by 600 percent this year alone. The new round of funding will used for product innovation, says CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia. While he didn’t go into details, in the next 18 months, BookRenter will start executing a new digital strategy, which will be an entirely new way for students to consume content and professors to design courses.

The textbook rental space is no doubt a competitive arena and Chegg is a formidable opponent. Armed with $75 million in new venture funding, the textbook rentals giant is expected to pursue an IPO this year, just hired Netflix’s former COO, and has been making quite a few acquisitions.

That being said, textbook rentals are a huge space and just because BookRenter is the underdog, doesn’t mean it can’t continue to give Chegg a run for its money, and possibly overtake the giant in the next year.

View the original article here

Phononic Devices Raises $10 Million To Turn Heat Waste Into Energy

A Raleigh, North Carolina-based maker of thermoelectric coolers and generators, Phononic Devices, closed a $10 million series B investment from Venrock and Oak Investment Partners, the companies revealed today.

Often explained as “solid-state heat pumps,” thermoelectric technology (a.k.a. thermoelectrics) can capture wasted heat, and convert it into power. They can also displace heat and maintain a cool temperature in everything from laptops to refrigerators and lasers. The technology provides an environmental benefit versus compression-based refrigeration and other power generating technologies, because thermoelectric modules don’t use toxic coolants or burn fossil fuels, and generate no noise. They have no moving parts.

Thermoelectric technology has also been around for decades.

President and chief executive officer of Phononic Devices, Anthony Atti, said his company’s particular brand of thermoelectrics are distinct from incumbent varieties because:

“[Existing thermoelectric modules] have used bismuth telluride and bismuth selenide. Our proprietary materials are from a different class of elements [on the periodic table]. They are abundant domestically, low-cost and can be manufactured and integrated with existing operations across semi-conductor industries. Our thermoelectrics are also much more efficient than others.”

Phononic Devices previously attained a $3 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy program (ARPA-E) to improve the efficiency of thermoelectrics in cooling and converting waste heat to power.

According to an ARPA-E press statement on the company:

“In today’s energy landscape [Americans] generate most electricity by making heat, whether it’s through burning coal or splitting atoms. That heat makes steam which turns a turbine and makes electricity…Most of the heat is wasted, a staggering 50-60% according to Department of Energy estimates.

Phononic Devices [devices are projected to] dramatically improve thermoelectric efficiency from less than 10 percent today to more than 30 percent, resulting in a dollar-per-watt energy savings of 75 percent for power generation and 60 percent for cooling, respectively.”

Dr. Atti said his startup aims to bring its thermoelectric modules (image, right: they’re about the size of a matchbox) to the market of electronics cooling, first — which encompasses consumer electronics, military equipment, and medical and laser instruments — and to refrigeration for residential use. Longer term, they should be applicable in air conditioners, he said.

A partner and clean tech investor with Venrock, Matt Trevithick said the company’s highly efficient thermoelectrics — spun out of the University of Oklahoma’s tech transfer program — had disruptive potential, reminiscent of LED lighting:

“Cooling compressors have been refined for a century. They work well enough, despite some known problems, and are cheap enough to be widely deployed. We think Phononic Devices finally has a solid state technology that has the performance metrics necessary to compete directly against compressors.

This is an outlier opportunity. Other technology exists, but does not have the efficiency to compete against vapor compression technology. The story I expect will unfold will be the one that’s now unfolding with solid state lighting, which is just now becoming good enough, performance-wise, and is priced appropriately enough to compete against incandescent lights.”

Dr. Atti said his company plans to grow from about ten full-time employees today to about seventy in three or four years. He would not name specific target customers, but said Phononic Devices will use its new-found capital to develop commercial manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and build its market. The company is pre-revenue.

Corporations that use cooling technology in their high-tech products— like Siemens, GE, LG, Samsung, HP, JDS Uniphase or Honeywell — could all grace Phononics’ list of prospective customers. For a piece of that robust market, the company faces competition from peers in the field of thermoelectrics like Nextreme and MicroPelt, which have focused on harvesting heat in, and powering or cooling wearable, or low power consuming wireless devices.

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SwipeGood Raises $500K From Michael Birch And Others To Allow You To Donate With Each Purchase

Y Combinator-incubated startup SwipeGood, which allows you to donate to charity each time you buy, has raised $500,000 in new funding from Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, the recently launched Start Fund, Y Combinator, Ron Bouganim, MR Rangaswami (Sandhill Group), and Frederik Fleck (Richmond View Ventures).

Once you enroll your credit/debit card with SwipeGood, every purchase you make gets rounded up to the nearest dollar. So for a $50.50 purchase of groceries, $0.50 will be given to charity. At the end of the month, SwipeGood will send your total donation amount to the charity or cause of your choice.

To participate in SwipeGood, consumers have to enroll their credit card and the service will track your purchases, similar to the way Blippy works. Currently, the service integrates with American Expres, Citibank, Chase, Wells Fargo and others. The startup makes money by taking 5% of the donation.

Since launching in November, the startup has partnered with hundreds of charities, including Charity Water, Room to Read and Invisible Children. The startup also allows charities to create their own branded charity pages, which they can promote to their members to encourage them to donate via Swipegood. Co-founder Steli Eft tells us that branded pages have shown better conversions than monthly subscriptions.

I’ve always wanted to use the Bank Of America Keep The Change Program, but don’t hold accounts with the bank. Now that SwipeGood supports most major banks, it seems like a no brainer to join the service and do a little good with each credit card swipe.

View the original article here

InternMatch Raises $400K To Help Students Find The Perfect Internship

Startup InternMatch has just raised $400,000 in angel funding from Dave McClure, Mitch Kapor, Kenny Van Zant, and Raj Agarwal.

Part of the 500 Startups Accelerator Program, InternMatch wants to replace the career fair for college students who want internships at small and mid-size companies. On InternMatch’s platform, both internship seekers and employers can search for a match, receive skill and location based matching recommendations, and access tools to manage the application process (i.e. tips for resume creation, internship preparation, and more).

For companies, InternMatch provides a match guarantee—if an employer doesn’t find an intern within 60 days, they get a full refund. The startup wants to set itself apart from competition by focusing on regional growth and by providing a dead simple UI where students can search and apply to positions without registration. Already, InternMatch has thousands of west coast opportunities are already available.

InternMatch plans to use the new capital to expand its team, re-brand the website and increase West Coast traction.

View the original article here

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below).

As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion).

Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012.

So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.”

The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook.

So much for that slow Friday news day.

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

View the original article here

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below).

As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion).

Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012.

So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.”

The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook.

So much for that slow Friday news day.

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

View the original article here