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Virtual social network IMVU raises $35M from China’s NetEase and others

TechCrunch

The line between social networking and gaming is increasingly blurring , and internet incumbents are taking notice. IMVU has raised more than $77 million from five rounds since it was co-founded by “The Lean Startup” author Eric Ries back in 2004. The company declined to disclose its post-money valuation.

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Second-Class Investor Citizens: Facebook’s IPO and Dual-Class Equity Structures

Gust

This is nothing new; long favored by family-controlled media empires such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation , among Internet firms alone, Google took a dual-class approach when going public in 2004.

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What Startups Can Learn About PR and Crisis Management

Both Sides of the Table

During the 2004 election he was accused of having made up material facts from his service in the Vietnam War in an election against somebody who didn’t serve in a war. That, or incumbents. Think John Kerry and the “swift boat&# scandal. He’s verbose, often off message and wooden. How do you lose that debate?

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“Customer First” Healthcare

abovethecrowd.com

From 2004 to 2014, the average payments for coinsurance rose 107% from $117 to $242. Coninsurance plans require the patient to pay a percentage (usually 10-30%) of the healthcare costs up to the deductible limit. Also like high deductibles, coinsurance usage in on the rise.

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What Does AirBnB's 'Shares for Hosts' Idea Imply for Blockchain?

Tomasz Tunguz

In 2004, six years later fewer than 1000 of these shareholders had traded their shares for cash. If the SEC permits AirBnB and other network-effect companies to reward usage with shares, the SEC may dull the competitive threat from blockchain - especially where there’s an incumbent. The company honored its commitments anyway.

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The Quirky M&A Environment for SaaS Companies in 2016

Tomasz Tunguz

The second largest, Jasper, is an internet of things software company founded in 2004, which Cisco acquired for $1.2B. Large incumbent technology companies including Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft are buying large public companies with dominant market share to bolster their current businesses and expand to new markets.

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Unbundling the Game Engine: The Rise of Next Generation 3D Creation Engines

Andreessen Horowitz

Unity, founded in 2004, took nearly 5 years of bootstrapping to launch the engine, cultivate a cult following of Mac hobbyist developers, raise venture funding and ascend the curve of relevancy such that studios with real budgets were willing to bet their projects on Unity.