We’re hearing from multiple sources that design-focused retail site Fab is raising a new round of funding at a $1 billion valuation. The company has previously raised $171 million in funding and we’re hearing it seeks to raise more than $100 million in this round. At Fab’s last round of financing, the company was worth around $600 million.

Twelve million users strong, Fab is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $150 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300% in January 2013 over January 2012. In fact, January was Fab’s 3rd highest sales month ever.

International is also a huge potential growth area for the company. Fab has 1 million members in the UK, which is generating nearly 40% of its sales in Europe and is its fastest growing market outside the U.S. We’re hearing that the company is seeing a lot of investor interest from Asia.

Past investors include Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Menlo Ventures, Baroda Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Thrive Capital, Kevin Rose, SV Angel, The Washington Post and others, including, oddly enough, the Times of India. New funding for the company could mean more acquisitions, new products and new areas of business development in the post-Amazon e-commerce world.

Apparently the company has some big news that will be announced next week, including a slight pivot. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, watch Fab founder Jason Goldberg tell the story of Fab’s founding at last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt New York, below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the window has closed on the flash sales concept, but apparently not. Casabu, the UK startup that targets mums with time-limited sales of clothing, toys, nursery equipment and maternity wear, has raised a £900k (~$1.4m) Series A round led by Ingenious Ventures, the private equity division of investment and advisory group Ingenious, with participation from existing investor Horatio Investments.

Competing with U.S.-headquartered and Andreessen Horowitz-backed Zulily in the UK, and also similar to Totsy (which has yet to launch this side of the pond), Casabu follows the familiar flash sales playbook. Targeting so-called “digital mums”, time-limited offers of up to 90% are sent out to its members for products for mums, babies, toddlers, and “growing’ kids, in a way that is designed to create a sense of scarcity and “buzz” around a brand. Furthermore, the only way to access the offers (or even browse them) is to become a member of the site.

For suppliers, Casabu sells itself on being able to help them reach a large ad highly targeted customer base, and a way to shift stock, promote new lines and raise a brand’s profile.

Casabu says the new funding will be used to help with customer acquisition, as it aims to reach a million members by the end of the year. In addition, it plans to further develop its product and technology, including adding more curation, personalisation and social shopping features.

The startup was founded in late 2011 by Rachel Oxburgh and John Heseltine. Oxburgh has a digital agency background, previously founder of The Storm. Heseltine is described as a successful retail entrepreneur. Casabu’s management team includes Creative Director Matt Rowe (The Storm and LBi), Head of Buying Leslie-Ann Phillips (Mothercare and House of Fraser) and Julie Fawcett (former Head of Marketing at Achica).

Prior to today’s new round of funding, Casabu had raised £240k (~$357k), of which Horatio invested £100k (~$149k), bringing the startup’s total funding to £1.14m.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Netflix just used the quiet Friday afternoon to announce that it is effectively ending its public developer program. Netflix will stop issuing API keys immediately and will not accept new API affiliates. The company will no longer offer a test environment for developer and its developer portal is already set to be read-only. Netflix’s OData catalog, which was never updated all that regularly in the first place, will be retired a month from now on April 8.

The only good news for developers here is that applications that are currently actively calling the API will remain active, so services like instantwatcher.com, Goodfilms and CanIStream.itm which all either use data from Netflix or offer integration with the service, will likely remain online for the time being. Netflix did not say for how long it plans to support its current public API.

The company says these ‘changes,’ as the company calls them, “are designed to allow us to focus our API efforts on supporting the products and features used most by our members.” Its API program, Netflix argues, has “shifted over the past few years” and is now more about supporting all of the devices that are used by its 33 million members to stream shows and movies.

Here is a list of all the changes the company announced today:

We will no longer issue new public API developer keys. All existing keys that are actively calling the API will remain active.

We will no longer accept new API affiliates. There will be no impact to existing and active affiliates.

We will no longer offer test environments. The test tools have been unavailable for a while and we won’t bring them back.

We will set the forums in the developer portal to read-only. We encourage developers to continue their conversations at StackOverflow with the tag “netflixapi”. The existing forum posts will remain on the site for now in the form of an archive.

We will retire the OData catalog, effective on April 8, 2013.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Right after yesterday’s earnings, LinkedIn shares (NYSE:LNKD) have popped 19.16 percent to 147.86. It is clearly linked to the company’s earnings. Revenue is up 81 percent to $304 million and net income is following the same trend.

Since going public, LinkedIn’s revenue has been steadily going up and net income is finally catching up — compared to the previous quarter, net income is up five times from $2.3 million to $11.5 million.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner even called 2012 a “transformative year” for the company in a statement. LinkedIn passed 200 million members with good international growth. The product received some improvements, such as a redesign profile page, new API implementations and upgrades to the mobile apps.

Overall, every metric indicates that the company is in a good shape. Contrarily to other companies that were under the IPO spotlights in 2012, LinkedIn fared pretty well. Shares were up around 200 percent from 74.32 to 147.86 over the last 12 months. Facebook, Zynga and Groupon had more troubles on this ground.

The company was first introduced in the NYSE in May 2011. Priced at $45 a share, the stock has more than tripled since that time. LinkedIn expects growth to continue. 2013 should be a good year for the social network as well.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Design-focused e-commerce site Fab.com has been having a good year (and a half), and thanks to the massive 100-plus page slideshow the company has now shared, it has the figures to prove it. According to Fab’s latest, the site reached 10 million members in 2012, and sold 4.3 million products across 26 countries.

Many of the numbers Fab shared this week were previously released, but it’s remarkable to see them here in one presentation, which looks back not only at 2012, but at the past 18 months of Fab.com as a whole. Yes, Fab.com only debuted in June 2011, which makes its growth all that more impressive.

TechCrunch’s Leena Rao profiled the company in November, telling the story of Fab’s shift from social networking site for the gay community to the design shopping site now valued around $600 million. For Fab, it’s about having a bigger vision – it wants to be the place where you shop to find the things you can’t find on Amazon or other e-commerce sites.

Fab has talked in the past about membership numbers and sales, especially in light of its large raise $105 million in new funding this July, and the more recent seven-figure investment from India’s Time Internet earlier this month. But as 2012 draws to a close, a little historical perspective never hurts.

Some of the key figures Fab released include those below. (We’ve also linked to some past TechCrunch posts, where relevant):

• 10 million members (up from 7.5 million in September)
• 5.4 products sold per minute
• 17 products sold per minute during holidays 2012
• 33% of sales via mobile
• 56% of sales via mobile on Christmas Day
• 2/3 of daily sales from repeat customers
• Several $1 million sales days in 2012 (its first was Cyber Monday 2012)
• Total sales grew by 600% in 2012 vs 2011
• Q4 2012 sales up 400% vs 2011
• 30% of Q4 2012 sales outside the U.S.
• 7,500 designers
• More than 10% of sales are art
• More than 10% of sales is jewelry
• 20% of sales are apparel/accessories
• 50% of sales are home products
• 15,000 products on site by end of 2012, up from 2,000 at end of 2011 (33% more than IKEA)
• New Fab-owned U.S. warehouse allows Fab to ship 75% of order within 2 hours of placement
• Customer service response times down to 15 minutes (avg.) vs. 48 hours in 2011
• 600 employees in NY, Berlin and Pune vs. 85 in NY in 2011

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Adobe announced yesterday that it had acquired New York-based company Behance. With 1 million members, the startup developed a LinkedIn for artists, allowing users to showcase their visual work. We just learned the financial terms from multiple sources. GigaOM first reported that it was north of $100 million. The final number is that Adobe paid slightly more than $150 million in cash and stock, with certain growth goals to attain over multiple years.

The financial details confirm that Adobe is committed to Behance’s product and developing it further. The artist community will be integrated in the newly launched Creative Cloud service. Yet, Adobe senior marketing director Scott Morris told Frederic Lardinois yesterday that the company has no plan to retire the Behance brand or make any change to the product.

Behance allows artists to build and showcase a web portfolio without having to manage a website. It makes it easier to manage and share images and information about artworks and photos. The service also powers thousands of other websites’ portfolios, such as the portfolio features of AdWeek, the Rhode Island School of Design and The Smithsonian National Design Awards.

The 32 employees will now work for Adobe but stay in New York, while Behance founder and CEO Scott Belsky will become Adobe’s vice president of community. Behance will play an important role in Adobe’s social strategy, while remaining concentrated on visual professionals. The original team will stay focused on Behance and keep working independently.

Behance was founded in 2006 and only raised a $6.5 million Series A round back in May from Union Square Ventures and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (Bezos Expeditions), Dave Morin, Yves Behar, Chris Dixon, Dave Tisch, Dave McClure, Alexis Ohanian and Garrett Camp. At a $150 million acquisition price, Behance is a good deal for investors. Moreover, Adobe is certainly a good fit for the enterprise-focused startup based in New York.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Etsy is releasing some new numbers this morning. The marketplace for hand crafted goods, which now has 20 million members (up from 15 million in May) in nearly 200 countries; passed the $700 million mark for sales so far in 2012 (compared to $525 million for all of 2011).

The company’s new direct checkout system has now processed and deposited over $100 million in transactions into seller accounts (which is double what Etsy reported in September). And by the end of the year, over 100 million items will have been sold in Etsy’s history.

With all of these milestones hit, Etsy believes that this will be the most successful holiday season in company history. Last year, Cyber Monday sales increased by more than 80 percent over the prior year, and this year is expected to create records for Cyber Monday and more.

The company is also launching a pop-up Holiday shop in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood from November 29 through December 8. The shop will showcase gift selections from celeb curators and more. Additionally, Etsy will be running a multi-million dollar online advertising campaign, including search, display, and video advertising.

One in four users are visiting Etsy from a mobile phone, so the company expects shopping via smartphones to be another sales driver this holiday season. And we know that international expansion is a huge priority for the marketplace–Etsy just raised $40 million in funding in May from Accel Partners, Index Ventures, and Union Square Ventures.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Netflix announced today that it now has more than 30 million members streaming content via its video service. That’s a lot of uses who’ve opted for on-demand, digitally delivered content. Netflix had 20 million members in 2010, so it’s added 10 million in the two years since, mostly via global expansion, although it now also has 25 million users in the U.S. alone.

The U.S. and Canada were the markets that helped Netflix reach its initial milestone, and the company has since expanded to 51 additional countries. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had the following to say about the achievement on his Facebook account:

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thirty million of you are now Netflix streaming members.

I’d like to express my gratitude to each of you. Your choice to be a Netflix member helps us get more content every year, and helps us further improve our member experience. You make it possible for us to offer the most amazing internet television experience ever. Thank you, again. -Reed

When it announced its Q3 2012 earnings earlier this week, Netflix claimed 29 million subscribers for the quarter, meaning it’s added about a million since September 30. Hastings defended what seemed to be lagging subscriber growth in some areas during the conference call discussing the company’s quarterly results, attributing it to a “forecasting error.” Overall, Netflix added 1.16 million users during Q3, but Hastings remained positive about future growth, and clearly trumpeting this milestone is a reflection of that optimism.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Video conferencing startup Blue Jeans Network is all about making video conferencing easier and more accessible for companies, with a cloud-based way to connect video conferences between existing infrastructure and even consumer-facing apps like Skype. Today it’s giving its users one more way to connect — with LinkedIn.

By integrating with LinkedIn, Blue Jeans will allow users to use their social network credentials to sign in. Once they’ve connected, other users they are video conferencing with will be able to see their headshot, bio, and other information stored on LinkedIn, as it will be automatically uploaded to their Blue Jeans profile. That will give members the ability to learn more about people on the call, without having to click through to other sites. They’ll also be able to send each other messages offline through LinkedIn during and after the conference.

For Blue Jeans, the LinkedIn integration will offer up more ways to connect, particularly for those in the HR and recruiting field. One advantage Blue Jeans has over other conferencing solutions is that users don’t have to “buddy up” to take calls with one another. Recruiters can create temporal meetings, without having to worry about being contacted on Skype by interested applicants who aren’t quite right for a particular job. LinkedIn has more than 175 million members across 200 countries, so it offers a pretty large user base who can take advantage of the feature.

The integration follows on previous work that Blue Jeans had done to allow users to connect with their Facebook credentials. It also announced in September an integration with Salesforce.com that will allow users to make calls from directly within the Salesforce app.

Blue Jeans has raised about $50 million since being founded in 2009. That includes a $25 million round of financing from NEA, Accel, and Norwest Venture Partners that it raised earlier this summer. The company is on pace to enable 25-35 million minutes of video in a year, which Stu Aaron, chief commercial officer of the startup, estimates is about 10 percent of the enterprise video conferencing market.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Busuu – the language learning community offering largely free audio-visual online courses – has been playing has been boostrapping away relentlessly for a few years and only last year raised an Angel round from FON-founder and serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. So while US-based Livemocha spent $14 million in VC getting to around 12 million members, Busuu stuck to its knitting with its free to access platform. It now claims to have more than 25 million users in over 200 countries and says it’s growing at a rate of 40,000 new members per day. That strategy appears to have paid off, as it’s now closed a Series A investment round of €3.5 million from PROfounders Capital and private investors. PROfounders Capital investment partner Brent Hoberman – lastminute.com co-founder and serial entrepreneur – joins the start-up’s board of advisers.

The company will use the investment to hire more people, and recently moved its headquarters from Madrid to London in order to scale up.

Bernhard Niesner, busuu CEO and co-founder says they are seeing strong growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia and China, where language learning is not a hobby but needed by people to improve their career prospects. The start-up was founded by Niesner and Adrian Hilti in Madrid in early 2008.

Fun fact: The company is named after the Busuu language of Cameroon which is spoken by only 8 people.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch