According to a regularly filing NowThis Media has raised $4M in additional funding. The company previously raised $5M under the name DailyPlanet Nework in April 2012 and its founder Ken Lerer is famously the cofounder and former Chairman of Huffington Post.

The company runs the social news site NowThis News, which appears to be staffed with a huge number of experienced writers and journalists. I was surprised I had never heard of the site before, but according to Alexa it has not yet broken into the top 100,000 websites worldwide. Lerer will be on stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt today in New York, so it is possible those attending will learn more about his plans.

To give you a sense of how much traffic that is, see this comparison. DanielleMorrill.com does roughly 100k visits per month. The site is primarily a video network though, so it is possible that driving the traffic to the property itself is less important than doing distribution deals like this one announced with The Atlantic in March.

In December 2012 The Fancy quietly filed a funding event for $6M, which appears to have gone unreported by the press. Today in a regulatory filing they revised that amount to $15M, bringing total reported funding to just shy of $60 Million.

This investment comes on the heels of $26.4M raised in October 2012 from American Express and a slew of well-known names including Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes.

Yesterday the company claimed on Twitter that just shy of 100K signups in a single day:

Hello to the 98,365 of you who joined registered with us today twitter.com/thefancy/statu…

— Fancy (@thefancy) April 30, 2013

And it looks like they’ve been keeping track of their growth rate publicly for awhile now:

Hello to each and every one of the 81,317 new people who signed up with us today!

— Fancy (@thefancy) April 25, 2013

hello to all 70,000 new people who signed up today for fancy.. a new record for us!

— Fancy (@thefancy) April 24, 2013

to the 57,000 users who signed up yesterday… welcome!

— Fancy (@thefancy) April 14, 2013

Hello to the 51,000 new fancy users who signed up today!

— Fancy (@thefancy) March 29, 2013

We had over 7 million unique visitors across all platforms last month!

— Fancy (@thefancy) February 1, 2013

And a little bit of revenue data, too:

Thank you all for spending over $133,000 with us yesterday!

— Fancy (@thefancy) November 27, 2012

thank you all for spending over $100,000 with us today. big milestone for us

— Fancy (@thefancy) November 24, 2012

According to Alexa The Fancy has seen a steady increase in it’s share of global web traffic with a sizable bump measured at +46% in the past 7 days:

At a taping of the Colbert Report, which will air at 11:30pm Eastern Time tonight, the founders of Snapchat sat down for an interview. Don’t want to wait to hear what happens? You’re in luck, a source who attended the taping has the scoop.

The popular image sharing service, which is sending more than 150 Million snaps a day (that 150% more per day than when they announced their funding in early February), received the most laughs when Colbert asked:

“do you make a profit yet? Or does that disappear after 10 seconds too?”

Colbert also equated starting an app in college to starting a band and referred to the code used to delete snaps from their servers as the “mopsquad”.

He wrapped up by taking a snap of the audience and saying “there you go, you guys are immortal. ..for 4 seconds.”

Snapchat is backed by Benchmark Capital and announced a $13.5 M Series A round of financing in February, and has the topic of much discussion and concern, while some say it’s just a bad business. Time will tell whether naysayers get to say “told you so” or quietly eat humble pie. Who knows, this could be Instagram all over again… but who is the lucky suitor this time?

I used to think snapchat was stupid.. Now I do it way more than texting..

— Snapchat Problems (@SnapchatProbbz) March 4, 2013

Snapchat >>> txting

— P-O Archambault (@ArchyGreat_94) May 1, 2013

I’d love to hear who you think is the most likely acquirer for Snapchat in the comments!

Image Source: USC Life on Tumblr

In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said the tech world at large should be ashamed for being “at an absolute minimum in terms of things that are being started”. Venture capitalists telling founders they should feel badly about the work they pour every waking moment into isn’t exactly endearing, and several readers reached out anonymously to express their dismay at the hyperbole and hypocrisy of this statement. It turns out this blatant cry for attention might not be good for deal flow either.

This is not the first time Palihapitiya has attempted to publicly shame founders. In a leaked email from October 2011 (allegedly forwarded by an assistant, later denied) he railed against Brian Chesky’s decision to give founders the option to take money off the table, but not offering employees the same deal. While the intent to get liquidity for early employees is commendable, the tone of the message and the fact that it was leaked publicly amounted to a public shaming and undermining of Airbnb’s CEO. Certainly not the kind of behavior founders should expect or tolerate from investors in general, and in their own company (in Airbnb’s case) at all.

According to Crunchbase, AngelList and other publicly available investment data he has yet to make a new co-investment in the same round with Andreessen Horowitz, who lead the round with Airbnb, or any Y Combinator companies (of which Airbnb is an alum). While no investor would ever share who ends up on their “blacklist”, it will be interesting to see if this pattern continues to hold up over time.

Actions, Not Words

When an investor calls out the industry for a lack of quality, the natural reaction is to look to his portfolio for the diamonds in the rough he has discovered. I was surprised to learn that Palihapitiya was one of largest investors in tragically mismanaged startup Ecomom, where his wife Brigette Lau served on the Board of Directors.

But perhaps the rest of the portfolio of his allegedly $275M fund (regulatory filings have not yet be updated to reflect the actual amount closed) has fared better. Let’s take a look at his personal investments and Social + Capital portfolio and, assuming his current investments were excluded from his sweeping derision of tech startups, get a sense of which companies made the cut:

Photo Credit: TechCrunch

It was reported in early February that the two product managers, hailing from Google (Walk) and Twitter (Patel) would raise a $25M first fund. It appears fundraising has gone so well that the two have closed are raising and additional $10M, bringing the total to $35M according to their Form D filing posted on Friday.

Hunter Walk was formerly a product manager for YouTube at Google, and has been an angel investor for awhile now with investments in Schematic Labs, GreenGoose, Karma, Seesaw, Lever, Tugboat Yards, and Path 101 according to his AngelList profile. He also has a profile for his infant daughter on the site but notes he “will not be entertaining M&A offers until she’s at least 18”.

Satya Patel was formerly VP of product at Twitter and is also ex-Google and ex-Battery Ventures where he was a partner, so I am going to guess he brings a bit more of the post-investment VC know-how to the partnership. He is also an active angel investor with investments in Viddy, Wealthfront, STELLAService, BoostCTR, Clever, DNA Games, Blockboard, Adku, AdNectar, Loosecubes, BlueKai, eduFire, YieldMo, Safetyweb, ProsperWorks, Adisn, Umami, Brightedge, J.hilburn, FashionStake, and Slime Sandwich.

Both have been added to the List of Popular VC & Angel Blogs.

Image credit: Giant Fire Breathing Robot

Correction, I originally said they’ve closed the round but the filing actually indicates $0 raised so far, with the option to take up to $35M.

While they’ve probably got some soft commitments (these filings are generally a lagging indicator), no word yet on the fund being closed and ready to start making investments. The founders are also unable to discuss current fundraising activity public due to SEC regulations that don’t allow public solicitation for private investment by the company. The good news: if you’re an accredited investor you might still be able to invest. The fact that they’ve set a total raise amount that is higher than originally announced might indicate prospects for raising are looking good. Time will tell. (HT: Ryan Lawler)

Earlier this month my post “Zombie VCs” raised hackles throughout the industry by naming firms who appeared to be inactive based on a lack of new investment data available in Crunchbase,

If today’s article byDan Primack of Fortune “Fewer than 100 tech VCs left?” is anything to go by, my active investors list may be far too inclusive, and the zombie VC list should probably be quite a bit longer.

According to Fortune:

New data suggests the decline has been more severe than previously thought, finding fewer than 100 active U.S. VC firms in the technology sector.

In fact, in a presentation made by venture capitalist Mark Suster to FLAG Capital it appears active investors (defined as those who have invested 1M per quarter for 4 consecutive quarters) has dropped to just 86 firms:

Fortune.com

ONLY 100 TECH VCS LEFT? @msuster SAY SO. NO LOOK AT ME, GRIMLOCK, ME ONLY ATE SOME OF THEM. buff.ly/15JXjqS

— FAKEGRIMLOCK (@FAKEGRIMLOCK) April 24, 2013