Chartbeat raised $3 million in a first round of funding from Index Ventures

Chartbeat, an analytics startup that provides subscribers with a snapshot of how people are interacting with their sites, in real-time, has raised $3 million in a first round of funding from Index Ventures.

The company, which was incubated at NYC-based tech investor and social media incubator Betaworks and launched in April 2009, pitches itself as an alternative to Google Analytics, saying that while Google Analytics can tell you how many people loaded a page in a given time period, chartbeat can tell you how many people kept the page open and are on it right now, and whether they are actively interacting with it.

Chartbeat says it has 2,500 paying customers, including Gawker Media, the Chicago Tribune and DailyKos.

In addition to Index Ventures and Betaworks, other investors include Jason Calacanis, SV Angel, Freestyle Capital, Founders Collective and Lowercase Capital.

Keep the expenses low to make a startup go

Starting a business can be expensive, as people find when they become entrepreneurs after losing their jobs. But many of these brand-new company owners have also found ways to keep those costs down.

The biggest money saver is working out of your home.

Asking friends and family to refer good but low-cost help, from accountants to graphic artists to lawyers, is another way.

Keeping startup costs down is essential when a business is young and money isn't yet flowing in. But always watching your expenses and being sure they don't get out of hand is a good way to help any company weather the downturns.

"We didn't have a choice" but to keep costs low, said Michael Volpatt, co-owner of the public relations firm Larkin/Volpatt Communications.

"What I've learned in the last 10 years is that financial stability is about sustainability." And that, Volpatt said, means making sure a business isn't ever undermined by costs.

Setting up shop at home is just one of several ways

a cost-cutting entrepreneur can get a venture off the ground

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Startup Investments Jump 53%

Venture  capitalists  spend more than $6.5 billion  on 905 firms since 08

Venture capitalists funneled more money into U.S. startups in the second quarter, indicating continuing confidence that the economy is on the mend, analysts said.

A study released Friday shows that startup investments in the April-June period climbed 53 percent from the same three months in 2009 to $6.5 billion. This is the most money invested in startups since the third quarter of 2008.

The funding was divided among 906 startups, nearly 29 percent more than a year ago and the largest number since the fourth quarter of 2008.

Funding went to moreseed and early-stage companies than in any quarter since mid-2007. The market for acquisitions and public stock offerings for more mature startups continues to be rough, though

Startup Lets Web Advertisers Bid for Your Attention

The real dream of any advertiser is to grab the attention of the right person at the right time. A new approach to online advertising, known as real-time bidding, could help make that vision easier to achieve.

Real-time bidding involves auctioning off the opportunity to show an online display advertisement to a specific type of user at a precise moment. A San Francisco-based startup called Triggit recently scored $4.2 million in funding from two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Spark Capital, based on the promise of its real-time bidding platform.

"Every person has a different value to different advertisers," says Zach Coelius, Triggit's CEO. He points to the advertising auction system used by Google for search keyword. People searching for particular keywords are bracketed together as likely having similar intentions. With display advertising, he says, the interests of the person visiting a page is less clear, and it's more difficult to match an ad to the ideal user. It is increasingly possible to gather information about a user by looking at her browser's cookies--tiny files that show which sites she has visited. But matching this information to advertising is a still relatively crude process.

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Startupbootcamp - The New European startup accelerator

Startup accelerators are becoming an important part of the ecosystem and it is great to welcome Denmark based artupbootcamp to join Seedcamp in the European scene. The leading accelerators in the US are Y-Combinator and Techstars and one of the things that makes Startupbootcamp exciting is a tie up with Techstars.

The startup accelerator model is to make a small investment (typically tens of thousands of dollars/euros) for a smallish yet significant stake (rarely much more than 10%) and provide mentoring services, usually over an intensive three month period that follows investment. For very early stage startups with say 2-3 people these programmes can be a great way to get a few months cashflow, raise their profile and get help from a bunch of people they would otherwise have struggled to reach. Applications are open to all and applicants go through a structured evaluation process which allows the accelerator to properly review the large numbers of companies that apply.

Startupbootcamp will invest in the ten best companies that apply and work with them over a three month programme from August to October.

Applications close in a couple of days on June 30th, making me rather late with this post. I was waiting on some information from the founder Alex Facet and I missed it in my email when it arrived last week, so my bad. You can apply .

I'm pretty excited about the power of the accelerator model and Startupbootcamp have set themselves up to do well. Ultimately an awful lot comes down to the people involved and Startupbootcamp have pulled together an impressive list

Read the rest of story at  The Equity Kicker

Twitter buys software startup Smallthought Systems

Twitter  microblogging site  has bought Smallthought Systems, a Vancouver startup.

Smallthought's software will help the company analyze internal and online data. Smallthought makes the Dabble DB online database and Trendly Internet analytics tool.

With the acquisition, Smallthought is no longer accepting new customers for Dabble and Trendly.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Incipi.com - An Online Workspace For Companies

We can define Incipi as an online workspace that can be used by any company in order to provide its team with a space for better communication and smoother collaboration. That is, employers who use this platform are providing its employees with a context in which projects can be managed, files can be shared and messages can be put across on the spot.

PieHire -For live job interviews

PieHire is a new recruitment service startup  that let  recruiters and employers  record  interview questions  to be answered by  applicants. Applicants can answers question at their convenience to make the right impression.

Recruiters can compare  responses side by side, or even authorize  colleagues  to review the results of the interviews to select the best applicants. This service can eliminate  the need to travel  and the stress that  interviews  always have involved.