Pulse, a popular news-reading app for Apple's iOS and Google's Android, could end up being the Netflix of the news business if Akshay Kothari can have his way.

Kothari is one of two 24-year-old co-founders -- along with fellow Stanford Institute of Design grad Ankit Gupta -- of Alphonso Labs, the Palo Alto start-up that makes Pulse, which is on a bit of a hit streak lately.

Alphonso Labs announced Thursday that it had closed a $9-million round of funding to help Pulse make its way to other mobile platforms. Pulse won an Apple Design Award at the tech giant's annual Worldwide Developer Conference this month. Alphonso Labs also rolled out a new website, Pulse.me, which enables its users to save stories they find on the Web to read in the Pulse app later on.

This month Alphonso Labs surpassed 4 million downloads of Pulse across Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as phones and tablets running Android.

"We really want to create something that stays with you wherever you are, that stays consistent across platforms and devices," Kothari said in an interview Friday. "I really like how Netflix works in wherever you stop watching something, it picks up right where you left off. No matter what app or platform you're using Netflix on, you can pick up at the same spot if you want next time you use Netflix. You don't have to start over.

"I'd like to bring that sort of thing to news reading, so we might explore that a bit."

Pulling off such a lofty goal, and being as disruptive to publishing and journalism as Netflix has been to movies and TV, will take some resources -- probably far more than the $9 million that Alphonso Labs has just raised.

It will also take having the right people guiding the company's growth, Kothari said, who noted that he believes the company has the right people in place.

Those people include Alan Patricof and Ken Lerer, who were part of the team that first financed the Huffington Post website, which has provided a bit of disruption to the paradigm of news websites and blogs.

Patricof is managing director at Greycroft Partners and Lerer manages Lerer Ventures, two venture capital firms which, along with New Enterprise Associates, make up the funders of Alphonso's $9-million round of Series A investments.

Lerer will serve as an advisor to the app maker, which was founded just 13 months ago. Patricof, along with New Enterprise's co-head of consumer investing, Patrick Chung, will join Alphonso Labs' board of directors.

Kothari said the new leadership and advice should help Pulse, a 10-employee company, continue to grow by bringing in some news-industry savvy that wasn't around before.

"I think not having the background allows us to in some ways think from a very clean-state perspective," he said. "We're basically technology people. We're product people. We don't have a deep understanding of journalism or publishing. But we do have a deep understanding of user interface and we just wanted to make news reading fun again."

As graduate students at Stanford when Alphonso was founded, Kothari said he and Gupta were hoping to make Pulse something people would want to go back to multiple times a day, in the way millions of people do with other popular mobile apps.

"If you have five minutes in a coffee shop and you look at your phone, you're looking at Twitter or Facebook," Kothari said. "So we wanted to try and make that five minutes worth spending in our app becoming more informed, reading the news. And what we're seeing is the same person coming back four or five times a day to get some small news and then coming back again. We don't have a lot of people just sitting reading in the app for an hour."

While that type of user behavior is what Alphonso Labs had hoped for, other user reactions have been a bit unexpected, he said.

"I wouldn't have thought it would have ended up here when we started as really a class project," Kothari said. "We didn't do any marketing for the app, but when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4, he mentioned some iPad apps they liked and we were one of the apps mentioned. That really helped. And from there, we've just seen more and more growth."

By the end of November, Pulse was downloaded 200,000 times, "and in just six months from that, we've passed 4 million," he said. "It really feels like a dream sometimes."

RELATED:

Gigwalk pays iPhone users to do odd jobs

Playa Vista start-up's exoskeletal arms give workers a helping hand

Ashton Kutcher invests in and will advise travel booking start-up Airbnb

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Image: A screenshot of Alphonso Labs' Pulse news-reading app on an Apple iPad. Credit: Alphonso Labs /Apple

Pasadena-based OpenX Technologies Inc., the online advertising firm whose products are built on largely open-source technology, has raised $20 million in additional venture capital, an infusion it believes will be the last one it needs on the way from a tiny start-up to a full-fledged digital ad concern.

Since its founding in 2007, OpenX has raised $50 million over four investment rounds. OpenX makes and distributes software that allows websites to sell the space on their pages to marketers, much like highway billboard owners look to profit by renting their blank signs to whatever advertiser will pay the highest price. The company says its ad software is used by 200,000 websites in more than 100 countries.

"We continue to make a lot of progress," said Tim Cadogan, the company's chief executive. In just the last year, he said, OpenX, has doubled its headcount to 100, and hopes to add another 50 this year. The company's early success, Cadogan said, has "drawn attention from a lot of really interesting big global companies who want to help us grow."

The latest venture round was led by SAP Ventures, the investment arm of German business software giant SAP. The round included new backers AOL Ventures, Japan's Mitsui & Co. Global Investment Inc. and Presidio Ventures, as well as earlier investors Accel Partners, Index Ventures and DAG Ventures. 

OpenX is trying to capitalize on the rapid growth of the display advertising business, which deals the visual ads you see on Web pages rather than the text-based kind alongside search results.

In the U.S. last year, the $12-billion search advertising market, long dominated by Google Inc., was still larger than the market for display ads, according to a recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau. But the display market grew 24%, to $9.9 billion, nearly double the growth of search advertising.

Unlike the painstaking hand-selling of ads well-known in the print and magazine world, OpenX's systems enable digital blank space to be automatically sold and resold every time a new user visits the page -- potentially thousands of times every minute. Those transactions are taken care of by bidding algorithms that conduct lightning-fast auctions, seeking the best price in milliseconds, then sending the winning ad to be featured on the Web page. OpenX takes a 20% cut of most of those transactions.

The company says revenue from its ad marketplace, called OpenX Market, has increased 600% over the last year and that the firm brings in "many tens of millions" in annual revenue. OpenX expects to be profitable within a year and, Cadogan said, the added cash should help the company go "the whole way" toward going public.  

RELATED:

Microsoft, OpenX to share ad technology

OpenX, Orange team up to crack display market in Europe

Twitter ad revenue could hit $150 million this year, research group says

-- David Sarno

Photo: Congressman Adam Schiff (D - CA), left, visiting OpenX and CEO Tim Cadogan in August 2010. Credit: Alex J. Berliner

Andreessen Horowitz announced Wednesday the formation of a $200-million investment fund, pushing the firm to a total of $1.2 billion in investments overseen.

The Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm will use the new fund to invest in "growth-stage" companies that are past an initial "seed round" funding level or a secondary "venture round" funding stage, John O'Farrell, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a blog post.

"These companies have a substantial need for capital -- they're hiring aggressively, expanding internationally, making acquisitions, investing in facilities, pouring money into marketing -- all to double down on their success and win the entire market," O'Farrell said of the types of companies the fund will target.

"Often, they want to meet their needs with one new investor. The size of their market opportunity allows for very attractive returns for the investor they choose to work with."

Andreessen Horowitz is known for its investments in successfull tech companies that have gone from start-ups to major players, such as Box.net, Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter and Zynga.

The company is currently invested in more than 30 companies.

RELATED:

Meg Whitman to join venture capital firm, report says

Venture capitalists bet on former Facebook exec Dave Morin's social networking service Path

Groupon looking to raise the largest round of equity financing since Pixar

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo:  Cash.  Credit:  Getty

Meg Whitman, the former EBay CEO who lost the California governor's race in November, may soon take a new job at a marquee Silicon Valley investment firm, according to a report.

Whitman is joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a strategic advisor, according to a Reuters report.

Kleiner Perkins representatives were unavailable for comment on the report Tuesday afternoon.

The venture capital firm is known for its investments in the tech industry, biotechnology and green energy, with shares in Google, Twitter, Flipboard, Zynga, Bloom Energy and dozens of other companies.

According to Reuters, Whitman's role would be one of "mentoring and coaching executives" at companies in which the firm owns equity, as well as identifying worthwhile investments. An anonymous source told Reuters that Whitman was planning to join Kleiner Perkins in April.

Al Gore, the former vice president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is a partner at the firm. So is John Doerr, who is considered a pioneer in Silicon Valley with successful investments in the lionized Netscape and Amazon. Mary Meeker, a former Morgan Stanley analyst known for accurately foreseeing tech trends, is also a partner.

Whitman sits on the boards of Hewlett-Packard and Procter & Gamble.

RELATED:

Venture capitalists bet on former Facebook exec Dave Morin's social networking service Path

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin leads $8-million financing round for Qwiki

Groupon looking to raise the largest round of equity financing since Pixar

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Meg Whitman speaks to supporters after conceding victory to Jerry Brown at the Hilton in Universal City on Nov. 2. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

Path, the social networking site that bills itself as a "personal network," has raised $8.65 million in venture capital funding, the San Francisco company said Tuesday.

The brainchild of former Facebook executive Dave Morin, Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning and Dustin Mierau, Path has drafted some high-profile backers including venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is making big investments in social networking. Kleiner's Chi-Hua Chien and Index Ventures' Mike Volpi are joining Path's board of directors, as is Mierau.

Path lets you interact only with close friends and relatives, limiting your connections to 50 people. The company says that more than 2 million photos and videos have been shared on Path through the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is working on an Android app.

And, in a move that will open up the service beyond the iPhone and iPod Touch, it has also made it possible for users to e-mail photos and videos to their contacts.

RELATED:

Former Facebook exec Dave Morin wants you to show your emotions

Dave Morin's Path and Facebook make a connection

Path, a new social network, limits users to 50 friends

Venture capitalist John Doerr makes a big bet on the next wave of the consumer Internet

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Dave Morin. Credit: Sean O'Shaughnessy via Flickr

Facebook co-founder and billionaire Eduardo Saverin is one of the leading investors in an $8-million round of financing for Qwiki, software that verbally and visually presents information on computers from search queries, according to TechCrunch.

Saverin is known for starting Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg while the two were students at Harvard, and then being pushed out of the company with about a 5% share in hand.

Qwiki debuted its software -- which works sort of like a computer-generated teacher explaining information to users -- at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Saverin, TechCrunch said, watched Qwiki's demo at the event, see above, via a webcast from his Singapore home.

He then contacted and later met with Qwiki's founders and now he's an investor, TechCrunch reported.

But Saverin isn't the only investor with some history, the website said. Jawed Karim, a co-founder of YouTube, reportedly upped his stake in Qwiki from an earlier round of funding.

Qwiki has created some buzz particularly because its software generates presentations of information directly from computers -- humans don't produce visual layouts, embed videos or photos themselves or feed data to the software, it does all that on its own, the company said on its website.

The software is still in the early stages of development. A Qwiki iPad app is being worked on, TechCrunch said, and the company has also previewed an iPhone app on its Vimeo page.

ALSO:

Perfect Market, news ad firm, lands $9 million in funding round led by Comcast

Groupon looking to raise the largest round of equity financing since Pixar

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Video: Qwiki via Vimeo.

Perfect Market Inc, a start-up that seeks to help news organizations make more money through online advertising, has won $9 million in new funding in a round led by Comcast Interactive Capital, the cable giant's venture arm.

This is the fourth capital infusion for the Pasadena company since it was seeded with $1 million by Pasadena start-up incubator Idealab in May 2007. Perfect Market has now raised $28.1 million from a variety of sources, including venture companies Trinity Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times' parent company, Tribune Co., led a $6-million investment round.

“The substantial support we’ve received from investors to date affirms Perfect Market’s mission," said Perfect Market Chief Executive Julie Schoenfeld in a statement. The company, she said, was looking to "satisfy a gap in finding new monetization opportunities for leading Web properties in the ever-expanding online advertising marketplace.”

Counting among its clients 30 national news sites -- including latimes.com -- Perfect Market evaluates the often voluminous archives of large news organizations to determine which pieces of its older content might be most profitably brought to the surface -- and paired with ads. The company works with Hearst Corp., the Orange County Register and an NBC-owned site, among others. 

Groupon, which recently turned down a takeover bid from Google rumored to be as high as $6 billion, is out to raise money on its own in a big way.

The online coupon company’s board has authorized it to raise up to $950 million, according to a report from the website VCExperts.com. That would be the largest round of equity financing since Pixar sought about $500 million in 1995.

A Groupon spokeswoman declined to comment, but Andrew Mason, the company's founder and chief executive, wrote in a Tuesday-evening message on Twitter, "Groupon is in the process of completing a new round of financing -- we'll let everyone know when there's more to announce."

According to estimates from VCExperts, the new round of financing would make the privately held Groupon worth about $6.4 billion.

Currently, Groupon operates in 35 countries, with more than 3,000 employees and expected annual revenue of $500 million this year.

The company is said to have turned its first profit after just seven months in business.

Its backers include Chicago-based investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, the venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners, and the Russian firm Mail.ru Group, which was formerly named Digital Sky Technologies.

Groupon makes its money by taking a 50% cut of each discount coupon it sells through its website.

As of November, Groupon had about 35 million users, with 18 million Groupon coupons sold in North America, the company said on its website.

RELATED:

Groupon reportedly rejects Google's acquisition offer

Groupon for Groupon mocks rumors of Google buying Groupon

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photos, from top: Groupon signage is displayed on the entrance to the company's headquarters in Chicago on Dec. 14. Groupon employees at the company's headquarters. Credit: Tim Boyle / Bloomberg

Mary Meeker, a renowned technology analyst and researcher, is leaving her longtime home at financial-services firm Morgan Stanley to become a venture capitalist.

Meeker has joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner, the firm announced Monday morning.

"We're at the beginning of another great wave of tech innovation, and I am incredibly excited by the opportunity to help the next generation of Internet technologies and leaders," Meeker said in a statement.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is well-known in the tech industry for investing in Google, Amazon, Zynga and many other companies.

Meeker led a research team covering many of the same companies at Morgan Stanley, including Google and Amazon, as well as others tech heavyweights such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and EBay. Meeker joined Morgan Stanley in 1991.

At Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meeker will advise companies in which the venture capitalist firm has invested in, particularly social media, mobile and "new commerce" Internet companies, the firm said.

Aside from her research and analysis, Meeker is known to have a knack for foreseeing tech trends. Her speeches and presentations at tech conferences also tend to be a hit.

This year, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Meeker spoke about the state of the Web.

Last year, in her Web 2.0 presentation, she forecast that eventually 10 times more people will use mobile devices to surf the Web than desktop computers and that about 1 billion people worldwide will be mobile data users by 2013.

RELATED:

Andreessen Horowitz raises $650 million venture fund

Venture capitalist John Doerr makes a big bet on the next wave of the consumer Internet

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Photo: Tech analyst Mary Meeker speaks during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Nov. 16. Credit: Tony Avelar / Bloomberg

For small businesses, advertising can be a nightmare. How much to spend? Where to go? Online or print? (Is that old-fashioned of us to ask?)

That's where Vurve comes in. The company, which launched Tuesday after a private beta phase, purports to offer "advertising on autopilot" to small businesses.

Here's how it works: You sign up for the service and tell Vurve how much you'd like to spend per month, from $200 to $10,000 (the upper limit the company will allow from customers per month). Then Vurve comes into play -- by creating ads, placing them on sites like Facebook and Google and steadily improving the client's ad strategy.

The company's technology analyzes which ads work and where they are placed, figuring out what recipe of search, display, social and shopping engine advertising will be most effective. If most of your widgets are sold through Facebook ads, for example, Vurve will give you the breakdown and move more ad money into the social networking site.

Founded by Amit Kumar, Yahoo's former director of product, Vurve raised $1.2 million in venture capital funding last year.

"Roughly 75% of small businesses would rather do taxes than advertising," Kumar said. "We figured that people that have that much money can get all the help they need. We want to do it for the small guy."

RELATED:

Facebook: Friends, games and 297 billion ad impressions

Online ad revenues hit record high, up 11.3% over last year, group says

-- Shan Li