============================================ BAY AREA TECH WIRE -- Feb. 11, 2016 ============================================ To subscribe: www.bayareatechwire.com o Palo Alto-Based Diffbot Raises $10 Million in First Round of Funding o Redwood City-Based Rocket Fuel Names Ben Saitz as First CCO o Oakland-Based Renew Financial Lands $70 Million in Growth Funding o Jean Case Named Chairman of National Geographic Society o Forecast: Global App Economy to Double Within Five Years o Briefly Noted: EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards, Yahoo - PGA Tour _____________________________________________ > Job/Event/Marketplace Classified Listings (Full Listings Below Stories) --Federal Business Development Director - Norfolk, Virginia --Chief Marketing Officer - Tampa, Florida --Information Systems Manager and Senior Systems Analyst - Berkeley, CA --Events Manager, Government Executive - Washington, DC --Digital Entertainment Expo - Feb. 9-11 - Los Angeles - 15% Off With Code "TW" Full Job, Event, Marketplace and Services Descriptions Below in Classified Ad Section Post Job/Event/Marketplace ad at: http://www.bayareatechwire.com _____________________________________________ o Palo Alto-Based Diffbot Raises $10 Million in First Round of Funding Palo Alto, Calif. -- Diffbot, the Palo Alto-based developer of a robot that examines the web using computer vision and natural language processing, said on Thursday it has landed $10 million in its first round of funding, co-led by Tencent and Felicis Ventures. Andy Bechtolsheim (the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the first investor in Google), Amplify Ventures, Valor Capital, Bill Lee (an early investor in SpaceX and Tesla) and Georges Harik (one of Google's first 10 employees) also participated. Diffbot's technology is designed to visually recognize, read, understand and monitor web pages and components. Each element of the web page is extracted, organized, tagged, cross-referenced and stored as an "object" in its "Global Index," which currently contains more than 1.2 billion objects, and is adding roughly 10 million a day. The technology powers applications for clients such as Cisco, Adobe, Microsoft, eBay and Yandex. "We've developed a business model for AI that works, and I'm excited with this new investment to accelerate our mission even further," said CEO Mike Tung. "Structuring the world’s knowledge is within sight." http://www.diffbot.com/ http://www.diffbot.com/company/news/20160211.jsp _____________________________________________ o Redwood City-Based Rocket Fuel Names Ben Saitz as First CCO Redwood City, Calif. -- Rocket Fuel, the Redwood City-based developer of a programmatic marketing platform, on Thursday named Ben Saitz as its first-ever chief customer officer (CCO). Saitz, who formerly held roles at DoubleClick, Google and Medallia, will lead all post-sales functions. The addition builds on the company's efforts to bolster its go-to-market capabilities, which included last month's hiring of Eric Duerr as chief marketing officer (CMO) and Kevin Ferguson as vice president of enterprise sales. "Ben is a powerful addition to our executive team as we continue becoming a more ‘outside-in’ company," said CEO Randy Wootton. http://rocketfuel.com/ http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160210006431/en/Rocket-Fuel-Names-DoubleClick-Google- Executive-Ben _____________________________________________ o Oakland-Based Renew Financial Lands $70 Million in Growth Funding Oakland -- Renew Financial, an Oakland-based clean energy finance company, said on Thursday it has raised $70 million in a new round of growth funding. Major participants included Angeleno Group, Apollo Capital Management, Claremont Creek Ventures, LL Funds, NGEN Partners and Prelude Ventures. Cisco DeVries, the CEO of Renew Financial, said the financing will allow the company to "dramatically accelerate the nationwide rollout of PACE [Property Assessed Clean Energy] programs," as well as its ReHome loans and other financing products. http://www.renewfinancial.com http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/renew-financial-raises-70m-in-growth-capital-300218633.html _____________________________________________ o Jean Case Named Chairman of National Geographic Society Washington, DC -- Jean Case, the wife of AOL co-founder and venture capitalist Steve Case, on Thursday was named chairman of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society. Tracy Wolstencroft, the CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, was elected vice chairman. Case, who serves as CEO of the philanthropic Case Foundation, has been involved with National Geographic for more than a decade and joined its board of trustees in 2010. Since then, she has chaired the board's nominating and governance committee and co-chaired the search committee that tapped Gary Knell as the Society's CEO in 2013. Earlier, Case spent more than 20 years in the technology sector, including as a senior executive at America Online. "I'm deeply honored to take on this expanded role as chair," said Case. "I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities that lie ahead." The Society also announced that John Fahey, outgoing chairman and former CEO, is retiring from the board. http://www.nationalgeographic.org http://press.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/11/jean-case-chairman-national-geographic-society-board/ _____________________________________________ o Forecast: Global App Economy to Double Within Five Years San Francisco -- As large as the global app economy already has grown, it is expected to nearly double 2016 forecasts within just five years, according to a new forecast by San Francisco-based App Annie. The company said that revenue across all app stores will exceed $101 billion in 2020, up from $51 billion this year. Though driven largely by steady growth in mature app markets such as the U.S., Japan and China, sharp revenue increase also are forecast for emerging markets like India, Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina. In addition, the company said that China will surpass the U.S. in terms of total revenue from app stores by the first half of 2016, having already surpassed it in downloads a year ago. The complete report is available at the bottom link below. http://www.appannie.com http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/app-annie-reveals-future-of-the-app-economy-101-billion-by- 2020-china-to-surpass-us-this-year-300217865.html _____________________________________________ o Briefly Noted: (San Francisco) EY said it has begun accepting nominations for its 2016 Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in Northern California. Applications will be accepted at the link below through March 11, with awards presented June 24 in San Jose. Past winners from Northern California include Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Nicholas Woodman of GoPro, Lisa Im of Performant Financial, Hamid Moghadam of AMB Property/Prologis, David Hung of Medivation, Kenneth Lin of Credit Karma and Keith Krach of DocuSign. http://www.ey.com/us/eoy/norcal (Sunnyvale, Calif.) Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said on Thursday that it has partnered with the PGA Tour to deliver free live coverage and on-demand content to fans globally. Through the deal, golf fans will be able to stream selected coverage from the early rounds of PGA Tour events from tournaments such as The Players Championship and the FedEx Cup Playoffs. http://www.pgatour.com/yahoo/leaderboard.html http://info.yahoo.com/press-center/article/yahoo-sports-collaborates-pga-tour-141800862.html =================================================== Job/Event/Marketplace Listings: =================================================== To Post in Job/Event/Marketplace: http://www.bayareatechwire.com 7,000 Readers: 5 day ad: $120--10 day ad: $175--20 day ad: $300 > Federal Business Development Director - Norfolk, Va. A Virginia-based Healthcare Management Consulting company in pursuit of continued growth in an entrepreneurial environment is seeking a Federal Business Development Director to be responsible for significant customer acquisitions as well as expansion into the commercial market. RESPONSIBILITIES: New Federal (government) Business Development with the ability to expand sales into the commercial market. Achieve or exceed sales quotas on a quarterly and annual basis. Execute the entire client development cycle. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS Bachelor's Degree in Business or related field required; Master's Degree preferred. A minimum of 8 years' experience in the Federal market to include business development, sales and consultant experience across various government departments and agencies. Must have an extensive network within the Federal market that can be leveraged for sales. The full job description is at: www.potomactechwire.com/listing5733.html Interested applicants, please submit resume to [email protected] _____________________________________________ > Chief Marketing Officer - Tampa, FL. The Vice President of Marketing & CMO will be responsible for positioning Pilgrim as a world-class provider of Quality Management Solutions for global life science organizations. The CMO will have responsibility for Market Strategy, Marketing Communications and Marketing Execution. This individual will lead all of Pilgrim's marketing initiatives including market management/product marketing, sales enablement, demand/lead generation, branding, online marketing, marketing communications, analyst relations, solution marketing and event management. Please email resumes to [email protected] _____________________________________________