Boston Briefs: Wayfair, Proletariat, Iora Health, Pixability

[Updated 5:10 pm to correct dollar figure to orders in first item.] Private companies big and small are making fundraising headlines this week:

—Online home furnishings retailer Wayfair reported that its first-quarter sales grew by 40 percent since last year. The company also tells the Boston Globe that orders for its goods reached nearly $200 million during the quarter, compared with about $140 million in 2012. The company says it collected $600 million in revenue in 2012. Last year marked Wayfair’s (apparently successful) rebranding into a smaller group of home e-commerce sites, from a larger group of brands under the old name CSN Stores. The company has raised more than $200 million in investment over its lifetime, and aspires to be a public company in the coming years.

—Proletariat Games, a small mobile-game startup formed by veterans of Zynga Boston, has raised $2.25 million in investment, according to an SEC filing. The paperwork indicates the round could increase to $2.5 million. Listed as a board member is Nabeel Hyatt, the founder of Conduit Labs, which became Zynga Boston after it was acquired. Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak declined to comment on the filing, and I couldn’t find out whether Hyatt is an angel investor or backing the company as part of Spark Capital.

—Iora Health, a Cambridge-based medical company that operates alternative primary-care clinics, says it has raised $14 million in growth financing. Joining the investor group is Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online shoe seller Zappos. Previous investors Fidelity Biosciences, Polaris Partners, and .406 Ventures also were named in the deal. Iora Health operates primary care practices that focus on overall health improvement and preventive care, with an upfront, per-patient billing model—you can read much more about the approach in this Boston Business Journal profile.

—Video marketing startup Pixability has raised a little more than $4 million in new equity financing, according to an SEC filing. The company, based in Cambridge, offers software to help companies market themselves with online videos. It started off mostly offering an editing-for-hire service for company promotional videos. It had previously landed about $1 million in angel investment.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.