Month: October 2012

Angel Investment Network’s Weekly Funding Roundup

Here’s a roundup of some of the recent seed-stage and angel deals from around the world:  

  • LocalVox, a local, social, and mobile marketing platform, recently obtained $7.4 million Series A funding
  • Marinexplore, a big data collaboration platform for searching, analyzing and collaborating with ocean data, has closed seed funding
  • Money-Wizards, an offline money and finance education provider, has secured seed funding from Tenshi Peak Ventures
  • Bangalore-based online kidswear brand Unamia, who make kidswear for trendy kids and choosy parents, land $1.2 million seed funding
  • Ad Hoc Labs, creator of Burner, an app for users to obtain temporary, disposable numbers for voice & SMS communication, gets angel funding
  • Cucumbertown, which gives amateur cooks & chefs an easy way to publish recipes in an easy-to-use interface, lands $300K seed funding
  • Quarri, security software company that empowers organizations to keep their most sensitive data secure, has raised $1.288 million financing
  • Selectable Media, a leader in enabling consumers to unlock digital content, has raised $2M Series A funding from Avalon Ventures
  • Musicplayr, a music sharing and discovery platform, lands a €500,000 seed investment
  • Goalbook, a platform for schools to manage and collaborate around student Individual Learning Plans, has raised $915,000 seed funding
  • Appy Couple, which lets brides create an entirely unique app for their wedding, has raised a $1.2 million seed round
  • Commonfloor.com, a real estate and apartment management portal, raises Series B funding from Accel India and Tiger Global Management
  • Zagster, a startup that offers a bike-sharing service, has raised $1 million in funding led by LaunchCapital
  • CrowdSource, a leader in enterprise-level managed crowdsourcing solutions, raises $12.5 million Series A funding
  • Tictail, a start-up which offers a platform to set up e-commerce websites, has just raised €1.2 million in a round of funding
  • Prepaid Expense Card Solutions has secured $3.2 million Series B funding to accelerate growth of its PEX Visa® Prepaid Card
  • Independa, provider of technology to connect and remotely monitor seniors, to help them live independently longer, gets $1M angel funding

To get regular updates, come follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/angel__network or register for our blog at https://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.netwp-login.php?action=register.

Have you managed to raise capital for your company?  We always love to hear from entrepreneurs who manage to get funded.

Or are you looking to raise funding?  Send me a summary of your project at mike@angelinvestmentnetwork.co.uk and we’ll try to help.

Infographic – What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business

The most prominent brands in the world are defined by their colours. Think of McDonald’s golden arches, the name Jet Blue, and UPS’ slogan, “What can Brown do for you?” These companies, and many others, strategically use colours in their logo, website, and product to appeal to customers. As a B2B marketer, it’s important to think about how you utilize colours and what the colours you choose say about your business.

Research has found that different colours provoke very different reactions in people. Marketo choose to use the colour Purple for branding because at the time Marketo was founded, purple was relatively un-used. Additionally, purple represents wealth, royalty, and richness which also has associations to leadership and revenue. Integrating your brand colours in your logo, landing pages, product, and more will help you achieve the highest impact. This infographic shows how each colour can help you connect with your consumers.

Source: https://blog.marketo.com/blog/2012/06/true-colors-what-your-brand-colors-say-about-your-business.html

CFD trading can help you gain maximum market exposure – Some facts you should know

By CFD trading, you can gain the freedom of investing in companies, currencies, indices and commodities across the nation and internationally by using a single trading account. They will let you exchange the variation in the price of the underlying asset between the time at which the trade is opened and when it is closed. The CFDs will help you trade on whether or not the price of the value will rise or fall in the near future. The difference between the buying price and the selling price will determine the profits that you make o the asset that you’re trading. If you want to know more on CFD and learn the strategies that you should consider while trading, read on the concerns of this article.

  • Check if you have an edge: It certainly goes without saying that you need some kind of positive expectancy or an edge on the trading markets if you wish to gain huge profits. There are always professionals who are waiting to strip you off the money and therefore you need to have a huge expertise in the market if you want to boost the returns or the yields. Stay confident and focused in order to trade smartly.
  • Control the CFD leverage: The CFD leverage is very powerful when things go well and if you can trade the markets effectively, you can easily keep on increasing the positions. You should keep up your small leverage and always try to keep the total exposure amount lower than the capital base. If you start by 0 leverage, this will multiply 3 times the size of your account.
  • Establish a determined goal: When it comes to investment, you should always a pre-determined goal and the case is same with the CFD trading. You should always keep a goal and take the needed steps to move towards it. The CFD trading market is also fraught with risks and therefore you have to measure the steps that you take.

Therefore, when you want to trade the CFD market, ensure that you know a lot about the nuances of the market. You may also get help from a professional agent who can help you complete the entire process successfully.

The futures trading strategies that can ensure success

With all the different trading strategies and terms, the futures trading market can become very confusing. But with the increase in the financial issues in the lives of the people, lots of them are looking for ways to boost their monthly income without incurring huge risk. The investment market provides them with such opportunities to earn more and the futures trading platforms are a lucrative option among all the others. The concerns of this article will deal with futures trading options and you can easily know how to become successful with this kind of trading.

The futures market is a place where the speculators and the hedgers try to meet and anticipate the price behavior of a particular product or currency or any market index that will rise or fall in the near future. Like any market, this will also have risks but if you trade in the right manner and by following the best strategies, you can easily earn better profits. Check out some kinds of futures trading options and some strategies that you should adopt in order to boost your profits.

The commodity market

In the commodity market, the prices are entirely determined by the forces of demand and supply as these are physical products. Such products might include grain, precious metals like silver, gold and also energy. This is a centralized market where the speculators will predict if the market prices will rise or fall. The strategy that you can use while trading this market is using straddles. This is constructed or built by holding the same number of puts and calls with the same expiration date and strike. The main idea that will play the key role is that you have to think that the prices will remain volatile and they may move either up or down.

The currency market

Just as you do with the commodity market, here too you will trade predicting that the price may rise or fall in the near future. One of the most common strategies that you can adopt while trading the currency market is scalping. In this process, the traders gain short-term profits from the incremental changes in each kind of currencies. By executing this time and again, you can easily gain huge profits through the currency trading market.

Therefore, when you’re wondering about the ways in which you can trade the futures trading platforms, you can follow the strategies mentioned above.

Angel Investment Network’s Weekly Twitter Roundup

Angel Investment News:  

Business Plans & Pitching:

Fund Raising:

Marketing & Social Media:

Start-Up & Entrepreneurship:

To stay updated, come follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/angel__network or register for our blog at https://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.netwp-login.php?action=register.

Read anything interesting? Feel free to add links to any articles or resources you’d like to share with the angel community.

Or are you looking to raise funding?  Send me a summary of your project at mike@angelinvestmentnetwork.co.uk and we’ll try to help.

 

Infographic – How To Promote Your Blog Posts

If a blog post is written and no one reads it, does it really exist? Rather than ask philosophical questions like this, just ensure people are reading your blog posts! There are a variety of easy ways this can be done, from social media to email.

The people at Launch Grow Joy assembled a number of promotion ideas into a an easy-to-review infographic:

Source: https://launchgrowjoy.com/30-ways-to-promote-your-blog-posts/

Angel Investor Aydin Senkut on Opportunities in the Middle East

A chat with Aydin Senkut, who previously worked at Google and has funded entertainment company Rovio, which built Angry Birds, as well as Yamli, the transliteration and smart search technology platform built by Wamda’s CEO, Habib Haddad, both through his Silicon-Valley-based angel investment fund, Felicis Ventures.

Here Senkut chats about the opportunities he sees in the Middle East and North African markets, what it takes for a startup to be successful, and what angel startups should take when it comes to building on other platforms.