—HootSuite, the Vancouver, B.C.-based social media company best known for its power-user Twitter interface, has raised $3 million in what it calls “debt bridge financing.” Millennium Technology Ventures is on board as a new investor in the round, which included return investments from Hearst Interactive Media, Blumberg Capital, and ubiquitous Seattle angel Geoff Entress.
In announcing the fundraising, HootSuite also disclosed that it has acquired TwapperKeeper.com, a Twitter data analytics company. More acquisitions are in the cards with the new financing round, HootSuite said, along with hiring, advertising, and product growth.
—Seattle cloud-storage provider Symform has raised another $1 million, which president and co-founder Praerit Garg says is an extension of the company’s previous Series A round of financing “based on exceeding business milestones.”
The money will help Symform keep up with what Garg says is rapid growth. “In fact, we are hiring and moving into a new building this week,” Garg writes in a statement. The new offices will be down on Western Ave., near the waterfront.
Symform’s also offering a new discount for customer referrals, with up to 200 gigabytes of free storage. Symform’s system is based around storage distributed among a large number of small nodes in a network, rather than in a big data center.
The company, founded by Garg and fellow Microsoft veteran Bassam Tabbara, had previously raised about $5.5 million in two rounds from OVP Venture Partners and Boston-area Longworth Venture Partners.
—Bainbridge Island, WA-based Avalara, a maker of sales tax software, has filled out a $21 million round of financing that the company first filed regulatory paperwork on in May. I couldn’t reach Avalara for comment, but CEO Scott McFarlane tells GeekWire that the new paperwork reflects an additional $7 million raised from Sageview Capital to cash out early investors.
—X2Impact, a maker of impact-sensing mouthpieces for football players, has added $350,000 in an equity round that could reach 10 times that size.
The Seattle company, whose existing investors include former NFL coach Jim Mora Jr., uses embedded electronics to measure the force of collisions on the heads of football players—a very hot topic among pros and amateurs alike, with new focus on the long-term effects of concussions.
USA Today recently covered X2 Impact’s participation in research tests of next-generation football headgear, and the site Ubergizmo says the mouthpieces will be tested in some college football games.
—Bellevue, WA digital-book startup Osprit has raised a total of $600,000 out of a potential $750,000 round. The company makes an interactive book technology that allows readers to share notes and highlights across platforms and with other readers.
The company’s first product is the ooBible (read: infinite Bible), which is the definition of a bestseller. The company is headed by CEO Colin Wong, an early Google employee, who says in an email that the company’s angel investors include Andy Liu, James Wong, Edward Yim and John Cunningham. The ooBible’s official rollout is expected before year’s end.
